It’s not the feminine people I have a problem with. It’s the faux-intuitive.
This is a personal, figuring-myself-out kind of article. Don’t take it as a blanket statement. You probably can’t relate.
Recently, I’ve written about sexist bias and how our society perceives “intuition” as a feminine thing (when in fact, men also display it). If you’re curious, follow this link.
It got me thinking — maybe I’ve been making that same mistake. It’s time to try and fix it.
I mean, sure, in a way it IS true that most people who openly identify themselves as very intuitive are women or female presenting. But that’s not because of nature. I think it’s actually because we all grow up with these stereotypes and social roles, so it’s always easier to just conform to them and shut up. It’s what a lot of people do without realising. This is the pattern I have been observing — because I tend to fight with people who misuse their intuition, and they tend to be women — but I assumed it WAS a natural tendency; And in fact, no, it isn’t. Society conditions us that way.
Perhaps I’ve also interacted with a lot of highly intuitive men, but the reason they don’t fight tooth-and-nail to defend this intuitive perception they have is, well, they’re men. Men are socialised to be “rational”. Men don’t care that much about proving their gut feelings are right. So whenever these gut feelings are actually wrong, they’re more open to stand corrected. And that serves me well.
It’s not people’s close-mindedness I dislike, it’s their lack of discernment. And I specifically dislike it BECAUSE divination is my job. It’s my path. It’s the bread-and-butter of what I do spiritually. So I can’t turn a blind eye to the people who are doing it wrong (and worse, insisting on the mistakes).
This is sort of like when you’re a physicist and watch an action movie full of impossible feats that defy the laws of physics; or when you’re an IT technician and have to fight the urge to facepalm when your 70-year-old auntie says she tried to wash her laptop with water and soap and now wonders why it won’t turn on.
“Oh but you can’t just say people are acting dumb. That’s not very nice. That’s mean. You’re not spiritual, you’re a mean girl. Shame on you! Mean girl!”
Some think the above. To those, here’s my message:
Here.
The photo above. THIS is the image most people have of oracles like me; Or anyone who openly identifies as “spiritual”. It’s a Christian bias and it needs to go. We’re not saints, we’re professionals like any other kind of worker out there. We’re 100% allowed to lash out at you if you give us too much of a hard time. We’re NOT obligated to be super compassionate, kind, patient, affectionate and warm to you regardless of the shite you throw at us. We’re not obligated to protect your ego at all costs or sugarcoat the correction when you’re clearly insisting on a mistake.
That’s because, let me repeat, we are not saints. We’re not! I’m sorry to disappoint, but it is the truth. You can run away from the truth all you want and it won’t stop being true.
And again, I’ll repeat a thing I said above at the beginning of this article: yes, you will find esoteric workers, and monks, and you-name-it, who put on a “saint” facade to deal with you. Yes, they WILL validate the stereotype you all know and love. That’s because society conditions us to act a certain way, and it’s easier to conform and shut up, and some people DO conform and shut up. I don’t judge them, I know first hand how exhausting it is to go against the stereotype. I empathise with those who just conform and call it a day. But the thing is, they’re choosing to conform and call it a day. What else can I say? Will I lie? No, I will not.
But just because some people conform, it doesn’t make it productive and desirable. It doesn’t make it the absolute rightest thing to do, it’s just a survival strategy they have. And the thing about survivors is they adapt to everything they’re given; They don’t change the world at all.
Saints are few and far between. Not everyone who works with spirituality will ever get even close to becoming saints. How many tarot readers do you think exist? How many gurus, priests, priestesses, monks, shamans, witches, etc in every religion combined, do you think exist? Are they all worshipped after death? Are you sure about that? No, they aren’t.
And just because they aren’t, it doesn’t mean they didn’t do a good job. It just means they didn’t say “bye bye” to their humanity in life. They stayed human, imperfect, with an ego. AND IN SPITE OF THAT, they still did a good job. Because “doing a good job” in religion and spirituality does not automatically mean transcending humanity and becoming this passive punching bag everyone can use and abuse.
If you still think the above is wrong, you have a Christian bias. Indeed, Christianity preaches that everything “human” is bad. The only good role models are in heaven and away from all this disgusting Earthly life we lead here. If you believe that, of course you’ll disagree with me here. And you’re allowed to believe that. But in that case, don’t be a hypocrite; Don’t consult oracles; Don’t use spiritual services outside the church; Don’t read my blog or any other Occultist material. Wasn’t that a sin? Or whatever your holy book says?
“How do you know what’s productive? Are you just guessing, Lucy?”
And to that I’ll reply “no. I’m discerning”. Discernment is important. Discernment is what makes your “guesses”, your “gut feelings” and other subjective shit USEFUL for you. Without discernment, it’s all USELESS.
When I call some people “faux-intuitives”, I don’t mean their intuition itself is fake. What I mean is they don’t know how to use their intuition and don’t care to learn, because they just assume it will come to them naturally and there’s no need to learn or study anything.
They take their intuition for granted as if it was an instinct, but no, it’s not. Eating is an instinct; we all know how to do it. Walking is NOT an instinct: we need to learn it when we’re babies, and we need help for that. Intuition is like walking. We have the apparatus, but we’re not born with the know-how.
It’s sort of like when you buy a complicated gadget, refuse to read the manual, and then wonder why it’s not working for you. Well, Einstein, I think you need to learn a thing or two from the specialists. They wrote this manual. Read it.
I have funny stories about manuals, in fact. You see, I translate for a living. A lot of the stuff I translate has big bold warnings and signs all over, telling you what will happen when you misuse the gadget. What is that? Condescension? Lack of empathy? Calling people “dumb” for fun like a bully? No, karen. It’s legal protection. It’s because some people refuse to read the manual, get hurt, and sue the manufacturers. I know, it’s dumb, but it happens. Are these people “evil”? No. They’re just acting dumb. They’re oblivious, and willfully so. They overestimate their ability to use a thing, because perhaps it’d hurt their ego too much to read a manual and feel like a “learner” again.
Adults have huge egos. They think their education in all aspects of life came to an end when they graduated high school. In fact, I have a separate rant you can read about that — follow this link if you feel like it.
And what are some spiritual service providers doing? Ah, yes. ENABLING adults’ huge egos to stay huge. *Slow clap*. Bravo.
People overestimate their ability to use their god-given intuition without learning discernment… And then they’re given a reality check by an oracle, and lash out at this oracle for simply telling them the thing they should have learned by themselves in the first place. I bet you any money, if it was socially acceptable to sue oracles, people would do it. You’d see a whole bunch of fortune tellers being taken to court; Most of them innocent. Why? Because people are just entitled brats, deep down. They don’t want a useful direction if it’s uncomfortable, they’d rather choose to keep going in circles and getting nowhere because that makes them feel in control.
What is discernment, after all?
In a nutshell, the way I understand it: discernment is the ability to categorise intuitive data.
Yes, the IT crowd did in fact have a point when they named their organisations, languages, and products after mystical seer-related concepts like Oracle and Windows. (There’s more, but I won’t give away secret knowledge. If you know, you know). In a way, a lot of human creations mimic natural processes. Computers, as it happens, mimic divination.
And what do computers do? It’s in the name: they compute. They don’t just take a bunch of data and use it “as is” without making sense of this data or separating it into more useful patterns.
Similarly, I can’t just deliver everything I receive “as is” without discerning, because that can create problems (Click here for details on which problems, how and why). And even if you choose not to work with divination, that’s ok, but you’re still a human being. You still have an intuition you can use for your own benefit. So, it doesn’t hurt to learn the basics of discernment for that.
When you get a gut feeling about a situation, and don’t discern, you’ll just end up concluding the easiest or quickest thing to conclude, and it isn’t always useful or right. For example: let’s say you had a gut feeling that your lover will cheat on you. Is that true? Is that useful? Well, I don’t know. It depends on the context. Maybe he’s been showing signs he is not loyal; In that case, ok. But maybe he hasn’t. So… Will he? Let’s discern further: do you fear the possibility? Because if you do, chances are this feeling is being “polluted” by your own stuff, and it’s not just an external message you somehow got from spirit. You fear it, well, gee, that makes sense, that’s WHY it’s on your mind.
But maybe you’re not anxious about that. Maybe you’re a more trusting person. Okay, in that case, if the feeling just hit you suddenly and it’s unlike your normal patterns of preoccupation, it could be external. Now what? Trust it blindly? Nope. There’s a third layer of discernment: confirmation.
It’s about the future, so you can’t confirm it via more mundane means. Try an oracle, any kind. Multiple ones could come in handy. Are the answers usually negative? Well, then, in that case, maybe the likelihood is low and you shouldn’t worry just yet. “But why was the feeling so strong”? Honey, you’re human. We’re hard-wired to feel strongly about negative stuff. It’s our survival instinct. We hear about a faint possibility that a disaster will occur, and what do we do? We prep like crazy. And then it doesn’t… Because the likelihood was faint; it was very low. But did our brains register that? No. They just registered “disaster”. That’s scary. Survival instinct is activated. *Shrugs*
Sometimes, things don’t go the way you predicted. That’s the fourth layer of discernment: it could be (and often is) the case you misread it against all odds. It happens. We see “deceit” and automatically assume “cheat on me with another woman” when in fact it just means “in a near future he’ll give up last minute on a plan you had together” and there is no love problem in the equation.
We often conclude an entire system (of divination, in this case) does not work at all, BECAUSE we simply lack imagination to interpret messages accurately; OR because we’re so invested in one interpretation that we forget about all the other ones since they don’t hold as much emotional value — but could be truer.
All in all, for discernment, it’s important to at least try and not be so emotional. At least not when you’re interpreting a message or feeling you got. You’re free to emote all you want before and after, but remember the comparison I made here: computers are machines. That’s why they get so much stuff right. And there’s nothing wrong with being emotional human beings… it’s natural and good. But we sort of sacrifice accuracy to make room for that. So, don’t try to “eat the cake and have it too” in this situation. Life is made of compromises. You can’t have it all.
