May you feel the blessings and love that surround you always! In case you missed it, my alma mater, Scripps College, published a profile about me and my book on its website! Click here to read it.
I hope you have enjoyed reading these posts as much as I have enjoyed writing them and sharing them with you! This will be my last biweekly blog post for a while. Going forward, I will publish new posts periodically, whenever I have news to share with you. If you want to read past blog posts, worry not… I’ll keep all of my posts available on this website. Please feel free to come back anytime. Today’s post is about the spiritual practice of Following Your Intuition.
In the autumn of 2009, I was working on my dissertation when I opened my email to read that Pres. Obama would be visiting campus to give a speech. Since I had volunteered for the Obama campaign the year before, I contacted the person who had been my supervisor to see if he could help me secure a ticket to attend the speech. He replied by asking how many tickets I would like. With that exchange, I was officially Obama bound!
The morning of Pres. Obama’s speech, I rode the shuttle to the site of the speech. Once I got off the shuttle, I saw a line to get into the auditorium that was about the length of half of a football field. This was a concern because it was a cold, damp New England morning. From the looks of the line, I would have to sit outside in the cold for at least two hours.
Knowing that my muscles would have a fit if I sat in the cold for that long, my friend found a police officer to see if an accommodation could be arranged. After I explained my situation, the officer escorted me into the lobby of the auditorium.
“Wait here,” the officer instructed.
After I went through security, the officer began walking me to the accessible entrance to the auditorium. Prior to this, I was quite calm. While there was a definite excitement in the air, everyone was quiet and serious. The officers were focused on making sure this event was safe and that single-minded energy permeated the air outside the auditorium.
However, once I was on the verge of entering the inner sanctum of the auditorium, it hit me. I was about to attend a speech given by the President of the United States. I had to do it! I just had to… I let out a small squeal of absolute joy. Upon hearing my trademark squeal of excitement, the police officer who was escorting me to the auditorium and who had exactly two facial expressions, serious and even more serious, looked at me. A slight smile came to his otherwise stoic face as he said, “This is quite a day.”
I nodded my head and said, “Yes, it is! I’m so excited!”
The officer opened the door to the auditorium and showed me where to park my chair. There was a section in the first row for 5 or 6 people in wheelchairs. Our section was on the left side of the auditorium. The podium where the President would speak was on the far right side of the stage. A barrier separated the seats on the left side of the auditorium from the seats on the right side of the auditorium. Audience members who could walk could step over the barrier but wheelchair users had no way to get around it. The police officer seated next to the barrier so I would have the best possible view of the President as he spoke.
After about two and a half hours, Pres. Obama stepped onto the stage, walked to the podium and began his speech. I was completely enraptured! I couldn’t believe that I was in the audience to hear his speech. My trademark smile stayed on my face for the entire 20 minute speech. Pres. Obama spoke about clean energy, microchips, and other topics that had absolutely nothing to do with what I was studying, but did I care? NOPE! He could have spoken his entire speech in a dialect of a dead language that I never heard of, and I still would have loved every single millisecond of it!
At the conclusion of his speech, he made his way to the top of a staircase that led to the front of the stage(right where the barrier was located). Audience members had been told to line up on the right side of the barrier to shake hands with the President.
I wanted to shake his hand too, but there was no way my chair could go over the barrier that separated the two sides of the auditorium. Not one to let inaccessibility stand in my way, I raised my hand and looked straight at the President. Pres. Obama, who was surrounded by Secret Service agents and preparing to go down the steps that led to the right side of the barrier, looked up when he saw my hand. He looked straight at me, walked down a different set of stairs that led directly to the wheelchair accessible section, came over to me and chatted with me as we shook hands. IT WAS AWESOME!!!
After we finished talking, he shook hands with everyone else in the wheelchair accessible section. He then jogged to the right side of the barrier and shook hands with everyone who had lined up to meet him.
You may be wondering, “Allison, what made you think that he’d see your raised hand over the throngs of people that surrounded him?” Honestly, nothing. I didn’t think about the action I was taking. Something inside of me, the voice of the Divine, just told me to raise my hand. Since time was short and I had to move quickly, I didn’t have time to second guess the action. I simply trusted my intuition and raised my hand.
Following the guidance of your intuition, your hunches, your gut instinct (whatever you want to call it) is key to living a life of joy because your intuition only wants the best for you and knows the easiest way for you to live the life of your dreams. Our intuition is the voice of the Divine. The Divine loves each of us more profoundly than our human brains could ever comprehend. So, when we listen to our intuition, we are quite literally listening to unconditional love!
Until next time! 💜(purple heart emoji)
Love, blessings and purple,
Allison
Try incorporating this exercise into your week. If you need modifications to the practice, scroll down to the section titled Access Notes.
Affirmation
Everyday this week (or as many times as you can), hop in front of a mirror or an app that reflects your image back to you. Say the following affirmation three times in the morning(or three times at night) while looking into your eyes:
“I welcome my intuition! I listen to what it tells me!”
The following modifications are intended to create equal access to the spiritual practice above. These modifications are somewhat general to be as useful as possible to as many people as possible. Please feel free to further tweak the exercise as needed so that you can participate as fully as possible while honoring your body’s needs.
1. If you are blind or have low vision, memorize the affirmation or have the affirmation accessible to you. Close your eyes. Place both of your hands over your heart as you say the affirmations aloud.
2. If you are d/Deaf or hard of hearing and communicate via sign language, feel free to sign the affirmation as you look into your eyes.
3. If you are Deafblind and communicate via sign language, memorize the affirmation or have the sentences handy as you do the exercise. Close your eyes and place your hands over your heart. Take three slow, deep breaths. Sign the affirmation three times. Place both hands over your heart and take three more deep breaths.
4. If you are Deafblind and communicate via speaking orally, memorize the affirmation or have the sentences handy to read. Close your eyes. Place both hands over your heart. Say each sentence.
5. If you are non-verbal, nonspeaking or minimally verbal, here are two ways to modify this exercise. If you’re unsure of which method to try, try both and determine which one feels better to you.
a. Instead of verbally saying the sentences, say the affirmation in your mind while you looking into your eyes.
b. Either have your communication device or another person speak the affirmation while you look at your reflection. If you have another person speak the affirmations, ask the person to say your name instead of saying the pronoun ‘I’.
6. If you can speak but saying the affirmation three times is not possible, say the affirmation as many times as is healthy for you.
