What I’m seeing are things that say: Prepare yourself for changes that are even more unpredictable and potentially more damaging than you may have ever seen before in your lifetime, particularly if you live in the US. But as we all know, when the US sneezes, the rest of the world gets a cold. So it’s affecting people all over the world. And I see things like articles about how to live in an autocratic society, how to live in a society where ideas are imposed by threats of violence or whatever, and where people, there are things like roundups of people for deportation and so on. No one knows exactly what’s going to happen, but these are very frightening articles. And everything they describe maybe will come to pass. We do not know. However, as so many people correctly, I think, say, it’s really dumb to not anticipate dangers that may be coming our way.

And statistically, with some probability, maybe a fairly high degree of probability, may be coming our way. Climate change and the weirding of the weather is not just coming our way, it’s here, and it’s going to get bigger. And with fewer environmental protections invoked, it’s going to go faster. It would be ridiculous not to look at those things and say, “Whew! Yeah, things might get a little sporty out here.” And when I’m reading these articles, I read these articles to my friends and loved ones and they’re like, “Why did you?” Sometimes I’m too jolly about reading things that are genuinely, legitimately frightening like climate change, but also things like autocracy and what it is to live in a place that has, instead of democratic rule, has autocratic rule, those things. So I am aware of the things that could happen, and I think we should all be aware that many, many things could happen that would be difficult, and the appropriate response to that is fear.

However, in one article I read, it said when you are in a situation where you don’t know who’s telling you the truth, where things can be deep-faked, and half the people strongly believe certain statements that have no evidence supporting them, but the other half of the people strongly believe exactly the opposite, and both of them are highly convinced that they’re right—in times like these, you have to be very aware of your intuition. There’s something that I call the “sense of truth” that I wrote about in my book The Way of Integrity, which is the deepest feeling of sort of concord, peace, and calm that comes into us when we feel, when we say or believe something that feels deeply true at the very deepest levels of the self. This sense of truth, this a-ha, it’s a trusting that whatever we’re believing at that moment is actually real.

And it turns out that a lot of the things that we are anxious about are not real, not yet. They’re potential, but they’re not real, not in this moment. So there is this difference that I saw when I started studying anxiety between fear, which is a rational response to a clear and present danger and anxiety, which is a fraying, wearing, horrific suffering sense of being afraid of things that may not ever happen and being afraid for long periods of time. Now, bad things definitely are happening in the world and will continue to happen, and we need to deal with those things, but we don’t need to be lying awake every night afraid of them. If we’re lying awake afraid every night, we will not be able to encounter conditions that are frightening and respond in a constructive way. 

So I was reading this article about making sure your intuition remains sharp, and I realized that what a lot of people around me are saying is, “I need to stay alert. I need to stay—in order to follow my intuition—I need to really be aware of the scary things. I need to read about everything. I need to anticipate everything. I need to prepare for anything, and I am exhausted from it.” It is so horrible to be afraid all the time. 

Well, because I just wrote this book about anxiety, I thought, wait a second. Our whole culture has conflated these two ideas. One: intuition, the sense of what might happen and what to do about it. And the other: anxiety, always being afraid. Because anxiety insists—one of the lies anxiety will always tell you is that only by staying anxious can you be safe because when you’re not anxious, you’re not alert. But in fact, exactly the opposite is true. It’s people who are anxious who aren’t alert.

There’s the famous and horrible case of a truck driver who was having an argument on a hands-free headset with one of his relatives. He was driving this bus that had passengers. It was a double decker bus and it had passengers on both levels, and he drove straight at a bridge that didn’t have enough clearance and went right into it at like 60 miles an hour because he did not see the bridge. His eyes were clear, his hands were free, he was just attentionally blind because he was busy having an argument with his sister, it was, over the phone. And when you’re in a fight-or-flight state, you focus on the thing you think is dangerous. In his case, it was his sister, and you actually blank out of the present moment where you are.

Real intuition arrives when all our anxiety is quiet, when it goes away. Now if there’s fear—Oh look, there’s a bridge, we don’t want to hit it, put on the brake—that’s a fear response. It keeps us alive. It’s good. When there’s a tornado warning in our area of Pennsylvania where there didn’t used to be tornado warnings, our family gets the alarm, goes down to the basement and sits there, keeping everybody calm because there’s no use staying scared once you’ve taken all the measures you can possibly take to stay safe. So a lot of people are walking around constantly anxious, thinking they’re alert, thinking they can trust their intuition, and in fact, we’re blotting out our intuition with anxiety. All right?

So as usual, in this episode of the Gathering Room, we are going to do our Space, Silence, and Stillness Meditation in just a few minutes. This meditation is designed to make us aware of our present circumstances in a very sensory way. So in a way that accounts for the whole neuroception and nervous system sensing of the present moment and then goes even deeper into presence by looking at the sort of matrix of stillness and silence in which material activity occurs. That’s really, really peaceful. If you’ve felt it before doing that meditation, I certainly feel it every time we do it. It’s like the group energy is really intense and it puts me in a state of bliss, really. That is the state where intuition can talk to you.

So our jobs, if we are on a more and more dangerous planet—I don’t think that’s true, I think it’s always been pretty damn dangerous, but yeah, it’s getting spicy as I said before. So here we are. Our best strategy for staying safe is to go into that peaceful state and learn to anchor our brains. Remember what fires together, wires together in the brain. If we go into that stillness, if we go into whatever calms us, over and over and over and over, you’re firing the brain over and over into peace so that it wires for peace.

I was just reading another thing online about the studies on meditators and how the brains of meditators are more wired for peace and happiness than other people, other brains, and folks who hadn’t read this research already were like, “Oh my gosh, this is mind-blowing, but how do we know they just weren’t born that way?” The answer is that there’s a dose-response relationship with meditation and a brain wired for happiness, which means the more these people meditate, the denser the neuron connections are in the part of the brain that turns on to create states of peace, joy, receptiveness, sensory alertness.

So it’s when we are at our most peaceful that we feel things intuitively. I wrote, 30 years ago in my first self-help book, I wrote about how I had this weird burst of intuition one day when I was in graduate school, and I was walking home and my then-husband and I were going to have a party and we were going to cook this Japanese dish that needed pork cutlets. And I was trudging home from class after a day in graduate school to our apartment, and as I walked past a grocery store, clear as a bell, something inside me said, “Go in there. They have pork cutlets on sale.” And I was like, “What? All right.” So I went in. This was before Adam was born, this was before I went all woo-woo. I was like, all right. I went in there and I went back to the meat department and literally as I arrived, the butcher was putting out beautiful, beautiful packages of pork cutlet on sale. And I was like, “I get one strong intuitive message in my entire life and it’s about pork cutlets? Okay…”

And then of course, then I did get pregnant with Adam, and I did start having psychic experiences, and I really learned a lot more about intuition. But it always came in the moments when I momentarily could let go of my fear. And into the place where fear had been, this love, this kindness, this information that I needed, it all flowed into the spaces where fear was just for that moment absent.

So what I want to do now is us all do the Space Silence and Stillness Meditation, and then I’ll answer some questions. But just know that we are deliberately wiring ourselves, as we go into this meditation every single time on the Gathering Room, to be more open to all kinds of really helpful guidance from within and, who knows, from around.

All right, so we’re going to start as usual with a couple of deep breaths in and out, especially out. The long sigh of relief is one of the best signals to the brain and the rest of the nervous system that we’re safe. Okay, whoo. Even if you don’t feel safe, go “Whooo” as if you were safe. And then get as comfortable as you can.

And we’re going to start with the strange but brain-altering question: 

Can I imagine (say this silently to yourself) can I imagine the distance between my eyes? Can I imagine the distance between my eyes? Can I imagine the empty space in the atoms between my eyes? Because the empty space is much greater in volume than the actual particles. Can I imagine the distance between this temple and the other one? Can I imagine the distance between my forehead and the back of my skull? Can I imagine the distance between the crown of my head all the way down through my neck, my chest, my guts to my sit bones? Can I imagine the distance between the top of my head and the bottom of my spine? Can I imagine the distance between the top of my head and the bottom of my spine? Can I imagine the distance between the bottoms of my feet and the top of my head? Knowing that most of the volume of my body is empty space, can I imagine the space inside my body? Can I imagine the space that is the matrix holding all matter in place? Can I imagine the unbroken space that is holding everyone on this phone call or everyone listening to this podcast? Can I hear the silence under all the sounds of the world? Can I hear the silence under the voices in my head? Can I feel the stillness in which all action and all   matter occur? Can I feel that stillness that will still be here 10 million years hence? 10 billion years from now, the stillness will be the same. So can I imagine that the stillness, the silence, and the space that connect me with everything in the universe are conscious and alive and compassionate? Can I imagine myself buoyant in a sea of love?

Another deep breath. Come back into this state if you were gone a while, and I’m going to address some questions that have come in.

All right, Delia says, “How do you build enough self-trust to actually hear intuition, especially if one has at times thought that intuition was anxiety?” 

I would really love–I love this question, first of all. It’s almost like you are a chemist detecting certain types chemical in different emotional mixes. So have you ever had—you know what it feels like to have a dark feeling that frightens you, I’m sure you do, and probably you thought, “Oh, oh, that was my intuition.” Actually, the impulse that said, “Don’t go down that street” may have been intuition, but the fear, the anxiety that follows after it is generally an add-on. If you start trusting your intuition and working with it, you actually never go into the dark streets, but you’re not even afraid because you trust that you’re being guided. So what I’d love you to do is just pay attention to the difference between “Ah! Something’s going to happen!” and a time when you knew something fun was about to happen. If you have a dog and that dog likes to go outside for walks, and you know not to say the word “walk” because the dog will go “Huh?” And you spell it out and then the dog learns to spell the one word because dogs love fun. They love, dogs are full of joy, and dogs are full of intuition. I remember we had one earthquake here in Pennsylvania since we’ve lived here, and I was sitting in the house and I was there with Bilbo, our cockapoo. Nobody else was there. And in the middle of the day, suddenly Bilbo said, he made a noise, and I’m going to make the noise now. It sounded exactly like this: “Ohhhh noooo.”

And then the whole house started to shake and I was like, oh, Bilbo has his little intuition and then his anxiety. But also dogs are very, very tuned in to things that are good that are about to happen. They get excited about everything. So if you’ve been around a dog or another enthusiastic animal, and you felt that state of fun, like, “Ooh!” that actually is more like what intuition feels like. “Ooh!” I used this example, before I went on my long walk in England, Ro, the Gracious Badger herself, gave me some walking sticks. Fancy walking sticks, they were, because she always gets me the best. She’s so sweet that way. Anyway, I thought, “I don’t really need walking sticks and it’s more weight and it’s more bulk.” And so I didn’t pack ’em. And then I was looking at all the things that I was going to take and something said, “Take those sticks.”

And I was like, “What? No.” “Take those sticks.” And I remember thinking, “Ooh! I may need these sticks.” And in fact, I did. It was so much hillier and there were no, I’d been walking on pavement in Pennsylvania, and we rarely touched pavement during that week we were walking through the Cotswolds. We were mostly on grass or rocks or dirt. And if I hadn’t had those sticks, especially in the hills, good lord, I would not have been able to do that walk. But there was that, “I’m going to go for a walk!” Literally, I was like a dog: “Ooh! Take those sticks. I’m going for a walk, I’m going for a walk.”

Just keep feeling that and then noticing what happens, and then noticing how horrible anxiety feels, and just keep wiring yourself to go for the fun instead of the fear. Okay? Yeah. Technically, it’s anxiety, but I like the alliteration.

All right, so D.E.Harto says, “I thought I was keeping myself and my family safe and business safe by staying focused and vigilant, which caused huge anxiety in my whole self. How do you let go and still be safe?” 

Well, it’s like when you learn to drive a car. At first you’re like, “Oh, what am I doing? Okay, gas brake, especially if it’s a standard, gears brake pedal, gas pedal, oh, steer, mirror, what am I doing?” At least I was that way, and some people are just thrilled to do it. That’s a very anxious and attentive way to drive a car. And trust me, it was not safe. Sorry, I got a little cough. I just have to laugh when I think about how I used to drive. And then I got relaxed with it and I got to be a much better driver because a relaxed driver is always going to do better. And a relaxed tennis player will always play better, and a relaxed mathematician will always see more answers. And a relaxed writer will receive more interesting language. Relaxation is the way to be safe. It doesn’t mean that anxiety is bad, it just means don’t mistake it for your intuition. Intuition feels fun and relaxed, and that’s one of the ways you can recognize it.

All right, Tracy says, “I can move myself back to peace, but there are plenty of folks around me who struggle. Other than maintaining my own or convincing folks to create something, any ideas? I’m thinking about work peeps.” 

Okay, so I may have talked before about entrainment. Entrainment is this interesting thing where wave functions, things that oscillate, tend to start doing it in unison. So if you put a whole room full of grandfather clocks together, their pendulums will all be swinging at different times. But if you leave them there for a few days, all of the pendulums will start swinging in unison. That’s a phenomenon called entrainment. And our brainwaves and our heart waves are also oscillating. So when we sit in a room with someone who’s very, very calm, the calmest brain state in the room is what our brains know is healthiest. And it’s electrical, it travels through space. So if you sit three people in a room with their brains wired up, within about 20 minutes, everybody’s brain is oscillating at the same frequency as the calmest person in the room, even though they haven’t spoken to each other. This is a study that was done.

So if you can stay really calm, if somebody comes in, “Ahyayaya!” and you’re like, “Yeah, tell me.” And you just hold your own state of peace and even fun, you’re not going to react in a way that spikes the anxiety. Anxiety always works like a flywheel. It spins around and then people kick it, give it a kick. “Ooh, I believe that we’re in danger!” And then it gets faster and it goes higher and it never comes back down. And all of us want to come back down out of fear, out of pain. And so when a peaceful person comes into the room, their behavior, even their brainwaves, certainly their mirror neurons, are going to communicate peace to the rest of the group. And worst-case scenario, they don’t pick up on your peace. All right, you’re still in peace. That works for me.

S.J. Kramer says, “Wondering, let yourself feel sadness makes you experience joy fuller. Does being and allowing anxiety make you more intuitive? This would be good news for me. What are your lovely thoughts?” 

Maybe, I think—yes. A lot of intuitive people that I know grew up in very dangerous circumstances, abusive families, parts of the world that were under trauma, undergoing all kinds of horrible things. And I do think that they get more intuitive, but not if they never relax. If they never relax, they get really, really sick because that level of continuous anxiety is not what our bodies are designed to survive. We develop all kinds of degenerative illnesses and mental illnesses when we’re constantly afraid. So I do think that if you have been through frightening situations, your sensitivities are going to be greater. And if you can then relax into fun…I was talking to a friend of mine and I said, I think we were both put through really horrible childhoods so that we’d get really, really sensitive spider senses, and that was the training. And then the fear was taken away and the spider senses remained. That’s kind of typical for the folks I call Wayfinders, the people who would be the medicine people in a traditional culture. So, S.J. Kramer, I think you’re right. I think having been afraid is wonderful for your intuition as long as you can relax. If you stay afraid, it won’t work.

Sandra says, “For me, it is the anxiety loop I gotta watch out for to not feed it. How can one reset when a strong loop has taken hold?” 

Yeah, it spins and spins, and it grabs you. The brain state of anxiety is a spinning feedback cycle. And the way to interrupt it, we just did that with the meditation: Can I imagine the distance between my eyes? What a weird question. But if you really focus on it and ask it over and over again, it stops the spinning of anxiety. And if you can say, what am I feeling?Close your eyes and hold your hands out to your side and say, where are my hands? And how do I know they’re there even though I don’t have my eyes open? And you can wiggle your hands. Now you’re feeling proprioception, and that’s also going to take you out of the little tiny spiral of anxiety. Imagining biting down on a lemon until you actually start to get saliva in your mouth because it’s so vivid, that will take you out. Any sensory present experience will bring you out of an anxiety loop. You must read my book or go to the Wilder Community where we talk about it a lot or find out how to not be anxious. It is awesome when you learn how to interrupt that loop.

Okay, gosh, it’s really fun to see so many people from Wilder, from our online community, Wilder here. Welcome, Wilder folks!

So let’s see, Andrea says, “I have times when I just feel sad, floppy, and depressed for a day or two. Even in that state, how can I tap into my intuition?” 

Yeah, this is the state of so-called dorsal-vagal collapse where you just, it’s what an animal goes through when a predator has caught it. It just goes completely limp. And they think it’s because there’s a chance the predator will not be attentive, and if you’ve just lain there limp, you might have preserved enough energy to get away. That’s how I’ve heard it explained. When you get into that state, this is what you must do. You must be kind to yourself. We’ve talked about this before. You must be able to say, “Oh sweetheart, I completely see why you’re exhausted and why you don’t want to get up and you’re dejected and it’s okay.” And get yourself a fuzzy blanket and put on a show you like and call in sick for work. Really, really care for yourself. And I know that that’s every phrase, “You should do self care. You go to this spa.” It’s a cliche because it’s true. You’ve got to be kind to yourself. But I mean physically. When you’re in that state, if you’re that low, we’re talking a little mug of soup or tea with honey and a fuzzy blanket and your best friend and your dog and a good TV show to binge. That is how to get back on track. That is not slowing down further. That is how to get back on track. And when you rise enough to feel a little lilt of joy, that’s when your intuition can reach you again.

Okay, two more questions. IMR271—good name—says, “How can you tell the difference between the silent intuition that is safe, safe and true, versus your wants and wishes?”

Well, one is wanting and wishing something—a sense of: “I lack, I need, I want.” Intuition is a sense of: “Ooh! Something wonderful is here. Something wonderful is about to happen. I need to do something. This is wonderful.” I read something the other day, or Ro read it to me, where it said, “You need to know whether you are choosing your actions because of something you love, going towards something you love, or in order to prevent something you fear.” Doing something to avoid something you fear does not have the same frequency as doing something because you really genuinely love the thought of it happening. And wanting is a state of fear, of lack. Intuition is a state of abundance of joy and abundance of presence. There’s no fear of anything in it. So you’ll feel it when you get there. It’s just, it’s like the sense of truth. It locks in and you’re like, “Oh, that’s my natural state.”

Okay, last question. Buddha Field says, “How do you stay in peace with anxiety in your home from loved ones?” 

Double up, folks! I have doubled my meditation time. I have, I spend more time walking outside again. I am spending more time painting. I’ve doubled up on all the things that keep me happy, keep me in the right hemisphere of my brain, well, my whole brain, and away from my anxiety loops. And because of that, I have felt I’ve had some, since the election in particular, I and my family have had some really strong intuitive ideas about things we should do. And there are three of us, three adults in partnership, and the odd thing is that all three of us always get the same intuition before we’ve consulted with each other. And that’s very validating. If it’s just two, it’s one thing, but if it’s three, there’s a pattern. 

So find the calm space where you can feel the space, the stillness, the silence. Stay there and look for that sense of fun a dog has when it’s going for a walk. And then just listen for anything like, just odd things like pork cutlets on sale. Your intuition can come in the goofiest, most wonderful ways once you realize it’s meant to be a frequency of joy and never a frequency of anxiety. But if you’re in anxiety, big hugs from me and from Rowan, the Gracious Badger, and from everyone here. I love you so much and I’ll see you again very soon on another Gathering Room. Bye for now.