So today we are going to talk about truth and intuition,
Satya,
Divine guidance.
This is a topic that's very near to my heart because I think I spent a huge portion of my life not listening.
And it was sort of a real turning point for me when I started listening.
And it's not easy,
I'm saying that like it's really easy,
Oh you just listen and make a different choice,
It's not that easy,
That's why I think it's such a journey.
And so this,
Our talk today is going to have three basic sections.
The first section we're going to talk about why it's so hard to hear,
The things that sort of get in our way.
The second part we're going to talk about what exactly are we even hearing.
Then the third part we're going to talk about how to hear.
And I'm just going to tell you sort of tricks that I use in my life to try to discern between all the voices in my head.
Because we have pretty active minds and it's not always easy to hear what our truth is.
So that the whole thing is quite a journey.
If you're new to Insight Timer,
We do mention that there's a donation button and if you ever want to donate you can donate anytime,
You don't have to at all.
But if you want to it's good,
I just want to mention it before we get going.
Okay,
You ready?
So I'm going to start with a story from my life because that's really where it began.
So when I was 29 I was sick.
I had breast lumps,
My mom had just died of breast cancer and all the women in my family had died of cancer.
And so,
And I had little kids and I thought I had a life I really loved.
You know,
I was married to a wonderful man,
I had two children,
We had a farm,
I had a roof over my head,
I had gone to university,
I was educated.
Not that I was using my math degree on the dairy farm,
But I had sort of done the right things,
You know,
I had sort of done the things I was supposed to do.
So in my mind,
My life,
I was happy,
I was pretty sure I was happy.
Little did I know.
And then I got sick and the lumps were growing very quickly.
So a man appeared in my life,
As they do,
He was actually a mentor helping us transition our farm to organic.
And he had been electrocuted years before that and from that not electrocuted,
Like he was carrying an extension ladder and he hit an overhead wire and he died.
And when he came back,
He had abilities to see,
To intuit,
To help.
And he was helping us and of course,
Luckily,
He was in my world when this was happening.
Because for me,
I didn't want to do medicine,
I have nothing against medicine,
But everyone was dead,
Right?
I was only 29,
I was the oldest woman in my family.
So definitely there was a different path needed.
So here I am and I'm lying on this man's table because eventually I,
It's a whole process,
I actually wrote a book about it,
It's my first book about this whole journey with him and it's called What If You Could Skip the Cancer?
Because it ended in a miraculous healing,
Which is so wonderful.
But I'm lying on his table and he couldn't figure out why I couldn't just tell the truth.
He was like,
Why aren't you being honest in your life,
Katrina?
Why aren't you listening within?
Why aren't you honoring this?
And it was so funny because I didn't even know what he was saying.
Because in my mind,
I was very honest.
I never lied to anybody.
I was everything for everybody,
Right?
I wanted to be,
And this leads into our first point.
So there's four big points that I want to make about the things that block our intuition,
The things that block our ability to hear our inner truth.
And I invite you to maybe just scribble the heading down and then later think about it in your own world.
The first one is the persona that we have developed who we really want to be.
And at that time,
All I wanted to do was,
I had this like superwoman thing going on.
I wanted to be everything for everybody.
I wanted to be the best wife.
I wanted to be the best mother.
I wanted to be the best daughter-in-law.
I wanted to be the best person on the parent-teacher association.
I wanted to be the best daughter.
I wanted to be the best friend.
Like I just had this,
I want to be the best.
So I created this persona and it's not evil.
It's not like I had it.
It's not like an ego trip,
I think.
I think it's just,
I don't know,
I think it's part of our training that we have to be an A student or something in every aspect of our life.
And I think we want to be loved,
Right?
We really want to be liked by other people.
We want to be in the group.
So for me,
Here I am,
Imagine,
Right?
So you go to someone asks me a question.
They say,
Katrina,
Would you like to do this?
Right?
Well,
The first person I have to check with isn't me.
I have to check with my persona,
Right?
What answer do I have to give that meets all the expectations I've created in the person I want other people to see?
So what would superwoman say?
Oh,
Well,
She'd say yes.
Well,
If my husband wanted to do this and this and this,
What would a perfect wife that just supported his every desire and need say?
Oh,
She would say this.
Oh,
What would a perfect,
You know,
It's sort of this,
I was checking in with this pretend version of myself and seeing what she would say.
And that's who I who answered all the time.
That had nothing to do with me.
It had nothing to do with the soul that came onto this earth to have some kind of journey I had no idea about at the time.
It was just,
I was checking in with this version of myself,
Sorry,
That I created.
It wasn't real.
It was just a mental construct that I believed was my ideal self.
Again,
It's just a,
I don't think,
I don't even think it's an ego trip.
I think we genuinely desire to be the best we can be.
And so then our brains trying to help say,
Oh,
Okay,
Here's a great definition of self.
Here's something else you could look like.
And then maybe we watch movies and we say,
Oh,
I want to look like that.
And not even just physically,
But I want to be perceived.
I want to feel like Jackie Oh,
I want to be that,
You know,
Like I want to be perceived in a certain way.
So when someone asks us a question,
We're going to respond in a way that reflects this created being that we are.
And that's a big deal to let that go.
But,
And we don't for a long time.
The second thing that really affects us are the expectations of others around us.
Right?
If,
If we've acted a certain way,
Like even,
You know,
For example,
We get married,
Right?
So I was married for 20 years.
My ex husband is a wonderful man.
We're still really good friends.
And one of the reasons I think we're such good friends still is neither of us blame each other for anything that sort of went wrong in the marriage,
Because we fit like puzzle pieces,
Whatever his gifts and issues were fit my gifts and issues perfectly.
Just fit together.
So to change means that he has expectations that we fit together.
We've done this for a long time.
Why would anything change?
Right?
Well,
If I change,
He's going to have to adjust because we have such an intimate relationship.
Right?
But it's okay.
It's not easy.
It's the same thing with our parents or our family.
There'll be an expectation because we will have played a role up until this point.
And so if they ask us a question,
Do you want to come for this?
Do you want to do this?
Do you want to whatever we will respond to the expectation that's expected of us.
It's almost hard to even discern that we could say anything different.
Well,
How could we go against that?
It's almost like we're part of this.
This is a thing I'm a part of.
How can I go against what's expected?
Right?
It's not a,
Again,
I don't think any of this is evil or bad.
It's just the world we've grown up in.
Right?
The third point I want to make,
It's the fear of the opinions of others.
It's the fear of harm or abandonment.
So it's much bigger than that.
It's actually almost going back to the,
Maybe we have ancestral memories of being part of a clan or a tribe where we had to have unity.
You had to all believe the same thing.
We all had to be on one page or else we were going to war and we all had to be on the same page.
This was important.
So there's that.
There's sort of that fear of being thrown from the clan.
And that historically meant survival.
So that's really important.
Right?
So it's okay to just note these things that says,
Wow,
Maybe these are not letting me hear my truth.
But on a really more personal level,
And I speak to this as a woman,
I was amazed when I got married.
So here I am.
I was this like independent woman.
I went to university,
Studied mathematics.
I was a computer programmer,
Like independent woman growing up in Toronto,
You know,
All that.
Then I fell in love with a dairy farmer,
Moved to the middle of nowhere.
And I got married and there was something about putting that ring on my finger.
And I forgot that I was this independent woman.
I can't tell you what happened,
But something happened.
It was like a new book of rules opened up.
And here's the role of a wife.
And here's what you will do.
It was so strange.
It wasn't until,
You know,
20 years later that it kind of I snapped out of it and went,
What was that?
What was that strange spell I was under?
And again,
This has nothing to do with my ex husband.
It's just,
It was me.
I fell into some kind of now here's what you must do.
And I would even say things like,
Oh,
I'm afraid.
What would he think?
He would never have hurt me.
He would never have done anything like that.
But I had this fear inside of me.
And what's really interesting,
And this isn't just for women,
For sure.
I mean,
It's certainly for men who maybe had very oppressive families or parents or stuff.
There's a lot of us that are afraid to go against the opinions of those who are close to us,
Right?
But as a woman,
And again,
The cool thing right here is I'm speaking here as a woman growing up in Toronto,
Canada,
But I'm quite sure my example spreads to all genders in many,
Many,
Many cultures.
It's kind of fun talking to a worldwide,
Worldwide group.
So from my perspective,
Women,
I mean,
We weren't even persons 100 years ago,
We had no rights,
We couldn't work.
We had to make our husbands happy.
No matter what,
Their comfort was 100% or else we would be kicked out and we couldn't work.
So all we could be is maybe prostitutes or something like that.
And we had children because there was no birth control.
So now we had the mother bear thing that said no matter what,
My children must be safe.
I will not speak up if I have,
You know,
I will quiet my truth in order to keep peace in the family because my children have to be raised.
And that's not even my personal experience.
But all I know is the minute that ring went on my finger,
I became that woman.
I became this woman who was so terrified to be thrown to the streets that I would do anything and including bury my truth if it meant making my husband uncomfortable.
And that was really interesting for me.
I,
Before that happened,
You couldn't have convinced me it would ever have happened.
And even I still feel it today.
I still feel it every so often.
I can get into a relationship and all of a sudden I kind of have to snap myself out and go,
Hey,
You're doing it again.
I don't know where this old training came from,
But you know,
You're doing it again.
So that's an interesting piece.
And the fourth piece I want to talk about in terms of what makes us not necessarily say the truth or listen to our intuition are the fear of repercussions,
Which I know blend into all of those,
Right?
That we fear,
Well,
What if I make this choice?
And like,
I really felt this strongly with when I was raising my children because I was very afraid of screwing them up.
And the idea that,
You know,
What if I do this?
Okay,
You know what?
I'm just going to do what the books say,
Right?
I'm just going to do what the books say because then they must know better or we're going to,
I'm going to do what my mom did or I'm going to do what this person did or,
You know,
I like that person.
So I'm going to do what that person did because I'm so afraid of making the wrong choice.
And luckily for me,
I had this experience with my teacher,
Jim,
When my kids were two and four years old.
So they were,
We were very early into the parenting life and the children.
And because through this journey,
I had to learn to listen.
I had to learn to listen within.
I actually,
That's actually how I ended up raising my kids.
And I actually would just sit with them and I would just stare at them if something was going wrong.
And I would literally be listening to them and praying all at the same time,
Asking for words,
Which we'll talk about in a minute.
And yeah,
We'll go into how to have faith in what we hear.
So then what happened to me?
So here I am and I think I'm doing all the right things.
I've created a persona that I believe is beneficial to the world,
My husband,
My children.
I think I'm being the best person I can be.
I'm conscious of everybody else,
What everyone else needs and wants.
I don't want to hurt anybody.
I also have some personal fears that I had to admit to.
And I just want to do the right thing.
And then I end up sick.
And I end up realizing that I'm severely depressed.
And you know,
They talk about how depression,
I was kind of like that smiling depressed person.
I still did everything.
I still went out and I did everything right,
Right?
Whatever that means.
But inside,
I was dying.
And in truth,
And what I found through my journey with my teacher,
Is I wasn't sure I actually even wanted to be here anymore.
There was one night I was going to bed.
This was during my time with my teacher.
And my husband was lying snoring in the bed beside me.
And I sat down on the bed.
And this knowing came over me like this,
Knowing that I was going to die in my sleep that night.
And it was like I remember reading a story of a native elder who knew he was going to die.
So he simply put his affairs in order,
Walked out to the sacred rock,
Laid down and passed on to the next world.
I remember reading that and that was what it felt like.
I wasn't afraid.
It just felt like,
Oh,
I just won't wake up tomorrow.
But then I laid down and I started crying.
And I started fighting it.
I was like,
No,
I don't want to die.
I don't want to die.
I don't want to die.
And I started crying and crying and crying and crying and praying and praying.
And all of a sudden this word came.
These words came.
And the words were choose.
It's up to you.
So then I had to argue with that for a while.
Like,
What do you mean choose?
It's not up to me.
And I had to argue with the voice.
But then I realized that I had to choose.
And I laid there.
And the most shocking thing,
The thing that really turned me around in my journey was I had to think about it.
I had been given a choice to step out the back door and no one would ever know.
They'd known I was sick,
But they didn't know anything else.
And I could just have been free of this.
And I had to think about it.
I couldn't believe it.
I thought,
Wow,
Are you really that depressed?
Are you really kidding yourself that much?
Are you really?
My friend,
I have this lovely Irish friend,
She used to say,
I dear we are the mistresses of self-deception.
And that was it.
I was completely lying to myself.
I was completely living a life that there was no truth in it.
There was no me truth.
There was all this other truth about what I believed was right and trying to make everyone else happy.
But I was dying.
Me,
The soul,
Wasn't even here.
And this was the turning point in that healing journey,
In my opinion,
Because I literally had to sort out my whole brain and my whole life because I really thought I was doing the right thing.
When I wrote that book,
I did a lot of research about people who had spontaneous remissions because for me what happened is the lumps,
Eventually they came right out the side of my breast like I was in the bathtub and they just came out.
It's a very gory story actually,
But pretty awesome.
And then my body just completely healed like you would never know anything ever happened.
And so when I wrote my book,
I actually did a lot of research about spontaneous remissions.
And one of the people,
I studied a lot of people,
But one person was Rollo May who was a psychologist back in the 70s.
And he used to say that the most pivotal point of any person's psychological journey was the I am moment.
That if you have not had the moment where you realize that I am,
He said it didn't matter what you did,
It didn't matter what processes you did,
It didn't matter what psychological help you got,
It doesn't matter.
Unless you had that foundation that you mattered,
You as a soul mattered,
We would never heal.
Which of course perfectly corresponded with my path.
So the next question,
So for me,
Part of that journey was actually even asking myself,
Well,
If I'm listening to a truth that's inside of me,
That seems to go against maybe what my brain thinks is right or what society thinks is right or what my husband wants me to do,
Who am I listening to?
Who is this voice?
Who is this voice of my soul?
Right?
And in no way am I going to pretend I can answer this question for you.
Talk about the unanswerable question.
But we can hint at it.
Like there's a reason that the great mystics who wanted that direct connection with God spoke in poetry.
Because if I pretend I'm going to say the right thing,
You know it's wrong.
So the best I can do is speak around this next part of our talk.
One person that's really affected me in my life and obviously many,
Many people was Gandhi.
And Gandhi,
What I loved about him is he wrote an autobiography called My Experiments with Truth.
Because people always asked him,
Oh,
Well,
Will you write an autobiography?
And he said,
Why is it interesting to you where I grew up or who I dated or that's not interesting.
That doesn't tell you who I am.
That tells you where I came from and what I did.
But that's not who I am.
And he said,
But if you really want to know who I am,
Watch me listen to my inner truth and watch the struggle I have staying with it.
Watch me into that 11th hour,
That final hour when I'm being tested and I'm losing faith in myself,
In my truth,
In how I see the world.
In those moments,
You will know who I am.
And this is where his entire,
He's associated with nonviolence.
But Satyagraha,
Coming from the root Satya,
Truth.
You know,
Sometimes when people write,
They write with a big T truth.
Satya.
This is not just,
This is what I think.
This is truth.
Truth that I feel from divine guidance from something deeper,
From that thing I can't explain that we cannot put words to.
Right?
Satyagraha is standing in your truth no matter what.
Without fighting for it,
Without anything,
Just standing in your truth and living your life.
This was the greatest message that I took from Gandhi.
I'm sure there's a million messages that are important from his life.
But for me,
This journey of Satyagraha to listen within no matter what,
Because it is,
It's not only who I am,
It's that connection of the divine aspect of me with the physical.
It's my highest truth,
However you understand that.
It's literally us living in our full wholeness is honoring that truth within.
We're not just physical bodies.
We are wise,
Divinely inspired beings.
And so to live according to Satyagraha means to bring that wisdom into the world.
It means to bring that truth.
It means to bring this person who I am,
This unique being,
Just like every one of us here today,
Is a very unique being that has beautiful divine truth to bring to the world.
Like this is such a,
He was sharing in my opinion,
A very beautiful vision of humanity.
Imagine a world where every single person lived according to this wonderful truth they heard inside.
Another person who I love is Ramanojahn.
And most people haven't heard of him,
But in the movie Good Will Hunting,
There's a scene where the professor is trying to convince Robin Williams to work with Will Hunting.
And he mentions that he says,
There was once this Indian boy back in the early 1900s who had never had any mathematical training.
And yet he came up with incredible equations that mathematicians to this day have not solved.
This was Ramanojahn.
And there's a beautiful movie that I highly recommend called The Man Who Knew Infinity.
And it's the story of Ramanojahn.
And how he came to Cambridge,
He went to Cambridge.
It was in 1914 that he had these notebooks full of incredible mathematical equations that came to him in prayer.
Like literally,
People often ask me how I could go from being a mathematician to teaching tantra or spirituality.
Of course,
You can imagine that all of this new world of mine came out of this experience with my teacher.
Suddenly,
The world I was living before that felt a little shallow.
But mathematics isn't just arithmetic.
Mathematics is actually understanding that the world is so perfect.
You could write an equation.
And numbers are the purest science.
It's like if you can map the universe with numbers and a beautiful story that we're going to write into that in that mathematical language,
It's almost proving the existence of God.
It's proving the perfection of the universe.
And that's what mathematics is.
The great mathematicians were philosophers because they were trying to understand the world.
So here comes Ramanojahn.
And he goes into prayer.
And these beautiful equations come to him.
And he writes them all down.
And he goes to Cambridge.
I apologize because I do want you to watch the movie.
But I'm going to tell you a bit of what happens at the end because it's part of the story.
But of course,
The people at Cambridge.
So he eventually goes to Cambridge University in England.
And they are gobsmacked.
They're like,
How could this possibly have happened?
Where could you have gotten these from?
You have no training.
What theorems did you use?
How can you prove them?
And of course,
Ramanojahn is going crazy because he's like,
What are you talking about?
They came from God,
Their perfection.
And he's like,
I don't know what you guys are talking about.
So it goes through this whole like very difficult conflict between Ramanojahn who is listening here 100% and recording what he hears.
And then he has these people saying,
Well,
Prove it.
And he's like,
Like,
You're asking me to prove God or something.
And he couldn't even begin to understand because he didn't have that brain that we have that created all these expectations that I was just speaking of that said,
No,
Here's the structure you must think within.
He was just 100% listening.
And at the end,
There's this point where the professor,
Ramanojahn actually gets angry because he doesn't really get angry.
But eventually he got angry because the professor kept saying,
Your intuition is not enough.
Your intuition is not enough.
And he kept saying this.
And Ramanojahn finally just freaked out.
And he said,
It's not intuition.
You make it sound like it's just something I hear in my mind.
And he said,
Because you are an atheist,
You will never understand me.
You will never understand where this comes from.
And we will never be able to work together.
And I just rewatched this movie a couple days ago,
So it's very close in my heart.
This to me is the real truth of what we're listening for.
This is what intuition really is.
This is what satya is.
This is what satya graha is.
It's more than just something I hear in my mind.
It's more than just something,
A fleeting thought.
It's truth.
And it's,
It's,
On a very personal level,
It may be the reason we're here,
Individually.
So the third person I want to talk about,
In the land of people who have formed my ideas of what truth is,
The third person is Viktor Frankl.
And Viktor Frankl wrote a book called Man's Search for Meaning.
It's a very small book,
And I didn't want to read it for a long time,
Because it's his story of his time in the concentration camps.
He was in Auschwitz and Dachau.
And so I didn't want to read that,
Right?
I didn't want to read that story.
And then luckily,
I was guided to read it.
And it's not about,
It is about that,
But it's not about that.
So before he,
He was an Austrian Jewish psychologist.
And he was writing a thesis,
He was writing a book before he was captured,
All about what gave life meaning.
And that actually that manuscript was the number one thing he wanted to preserve,
He was so worried that it would be lost.
So here he ends up,
Captured in the concentration camps.
And he has all these people around him.
Everyone is stripped of everything we ever imagined gave us meaning.
They were stripped of their families.
They were stripped of their love,
Their partner,
They were stripped of their money,
Success,
Prestige,
Business,
Future,
Everything.
So you had this strange leveling of humanity.
Humanities on the same level,
Right?
What made each person different now?
And he was amazed.
And these are just a few of the stories I remember from the books.
I think I read this book like 20 years ago.
But one story,
He said,
You know,
People were always dying in the camp.
And every person was given a bit of soup,
And a bit of bread every day.
And he said,
What amazed him was how one person would give their soup and bread to a dying person,
Because they needed it.
And another person would steal the bread and soup from the dying person,
Because they believe they needed it,
Because they needed to go off to work.
And Victor would look at this and go,
What makes that one person do this and one person choose that?
Then one day,
They were walking out to the railway,
I think they were building tracks or something.
And of course,
Their shoes didn't fit,
They were walking in snow,
They were ragged,
They were cold.
It was awful.
And they're walking kind of single file in the early morning towards the work area.
And all of a sudden,
The person behind him taps him on the shoulder.
And Victor kind of looks and the guy says,
Look up.
And Victor looked up and there was the most beautiful sunrise.
And again,
He thought,
What makes a man notice that within all of this suffering?
So his premise,
He even he lived,
Obviously,
And he ironically escaped about two hours before they were freed.
But he decided or what he came to was that the number one thing that brings us meaning in life is our ability to choose,
That we get to choose no matter what,
In every single moment,
We get to choose our perception,
We get to choose our reaction,
We get to choose our path.
This is what brings us meaning in life.
And you can imagine this.
Imagine the difference in your life when you feel that you have choice and you feel that I can make choices in my life,
You feel very alive.
It's very exciting.
And then imagine,
You know,
Even let's say you're in a marriage or like you're in an abusive marriage or something.
And you don't feel like you can leave,
And there's nothing you can do.
You kind of just die inside.
And you just survive.
You just live as a ghost until the end.
This ability to choose,
And especially when that choice is guided from our inner truth from our satya.
That's when life becomes an adventure.
That's when we actually,
We listen within,
And we know,
We say,
It's the only truth that's in there.
I have to do it.
It's the only thing.
This is Gandhi saying,
I don't know why,
I don't know what the repercussions are,
I don't understand,
But I know this is my truth.
I must have faith and step forward.
This is Ramanujan saying,
No,
You don't understand.
These are real.
And I was actually just researching Ramanujan last night,
And because I was curious,
As to what was going on,
And bit by bit,
Mathematicians and physicists all over the world are just trying to understand these beautiful nuggets that he gave to us a hundred years ago.
And they're still sorting through the notebooks,
Trying to understand.
This is Viktor Frankl knowing that when I have choice,
I define the world I live in.
And so this was a huge turning point for me because suddenly it really mattered.
Choosing satya,
Choosing truth,
Living according to my intuition,
Listening to that actually was almost equivalent to me being alive.
This was me.
This is why I'm here.
Right?
So now I just want to talk about how do we hear that voice,
Because it's wonderful to talk about it.
But in our world,
We're very,
Very intellectually based.
So one of the challenges I had when I was sick and I was trying to listen so desperately was there's just so many voices up there.
There's so many.
You know,
You could ask a single question.
In my own mind,
You'll get twelve answers.
And then they're going to argue with each other.
I remember there was a book I read once called,
I think it was called Taming Your Gremlins,
Or something like that.
And he basically talked about how our brain was like this board of directors and there were all the characters.
There was the commandant who was like,
You're not good enough,
You're not worthy.
And then there's this guy over here,
No,
You have to do the nice thing.
And then there's a guy over here who goes,
We have to be responsible.
You don't need all these.
And of course they're all beautifully created,
Like these horrible gremlins in your brain.
And I really thought about that and I thought,
Wow,
I really do have all these personalities in my head.
Maybe they're the voices of our parents and society and teachers and I don't know,
Who knows who's up there.
But there's lots of people up there.
And I remember Jim,
When I was sick,
He said to me,
He said,
You have to understand.
He said,
The smarter you are,
The more impossible it is for your brain to make a decision.
He said,
Because if you are intelligent,
You will always be able to see all sides.
You will always be able to see one,
Two,
Three,
Four,
Five sides of a possibility.
And you will end up in analysis paralysis and you will sit there and you won't even know what your truth is anymore.
Well,
That was like basically my life.
I lived in analysis paralysis,
Never knowing what to do next,
Because it's almost like you could imagine every possible idea.
It's like,
I think it was Mark Twain that said,
I've been through some horrible things in my life and some of them actually happened.
This is like analysis paralysis,
When you sit there and you imagine every possible thing that can go wrong.
And they're all just in our brains and then you just don't know what to do.
Right?
So for me,
Imagine this board of directors in my head.
Right?
So the question comes,
Someone just asks me something simple like this would be like back when I was,
When this was all happening.
So here I am,
I'm head of the parent teacher association and I've got little kids and you know,
All these kinds of things and a farm and in-laws living next door and you know,
A very different life that I'm living right now.
And so the questions would be things like the phone would ring and it's so funny,
I'm saying this is how long ago it was,
The phone was hanging on the wall.
I picked the phone up and they would say Katrina,
Would you like to bring two dozen something to the baked goods sale or something?
And of course my first answer,
Because I'm superwoman and everyone can depend on me is,
Of course I will.
What's your favorite flavor?
I hate banking.
I don't want to bring anything to the bake sale,
But I'm going to say,
Yes,
What's your favorite flavor?
And I actually,
He said I had to put a little note above my phone that said,
Let me think about it,
I'll call you back.
I actually had to give myself some time to actually think about it.
I think that's a bit of a blessing with texting today.
You can actually give yourself time to think about your answer.
So anyway,
So I would fall into this analysis paralysis,
My persona,
The expectations,
Oh my gosh,
The voices in my head.
So someone would ask me a very simple question because life is generally filled with very simple questions.
And in my mind,
I would close my eyes and I would see all these people in there,
But there was this one guy,
I call him the little guy in the corner,
Because in my brain,
He's like,
You know,
Like when really tall people sit on a child's chair and their knees come up to their head like that.
So in my brain,
There's this little guy in the corner with his knees up to his head and he's just sitting there,
Right?
And everybody's fighting about the question.
Of course you should take that.
What are you thinking?
What are people going to think?
Blah,
Blah,
Blah,
Blah,
Blah,
Blah,
You're an excellent baker.
You know,
It's just like,
Da,
Da,
Da,
Da,
Da,
About this absolutely nonsensical question,
Right?
And then I look at the dude in the corner and I say,
Yes or no?
And he goes,
No.
And then that goes into the fury and everyone starts arguing about it and da,
Da,
Da,
Da,
Da,
Da,
And everyone's arguing.
And all of a sudden I turn back to the guy and I go,
Like,
Now what do you think?
And he goes,
No.
And he always just speaks the truth.
And so no matter what's going on,
I can always depend on my little dude in the corner to say yes or no,
Or this or that.
Because I think one of the challenges with listening for truth is sometimes we don't like the answer.
I remember when I read a book by Carolyn Mace once and she was talking about Dark Nights of the Soul.
And she was saying that oftentimes we have a dark night of the soul not because we don't know what the answer is,
It's because we've heard the answer and we didn't like it.
So we end up in limbo waiting for a second answer.
But that's not how truth works.
You know,
They say truth is razor sharp,
Or your yeses be yeses and your noses be noses.
And that's very interesting,
Right?
Because my dude in the corner,
He just repeats the same thing over and over and over again.
There's no argument.
That's how I always know what the truth is,
Because the truth doesn't argue.
It just repeats the first thing.
So one of the things that Jim taught me,
He said,
Katrina,
He said,
We are walking,
Human beings are walking lit mistrips.
We literally,
We know the answer yes or no,
Almost before the questions finished asking.
So someone calls and they say,
Hey,
Katrina,
Can you do this?
Or do you want to do this or whatever?
And this can be positive or negative,
Right?
Let's say a girlfriend called at that time and said,
Hey,
Do you want to go away for the weekend for a girl's weekend?
My heart,
What does my heart say?
My heart goes,
Yes.
And then my brain comes in and says,
But who's going to take care of the children?
And it's hang season.
And there's going to be all these extra men on the,
On the yard and you've got to feed them.
And what about this?
And what about that?
And what about this?
You know?
And so my brain's actually going to get rid of the yes.
Or someone calls and says,
Hey,
Katrina,
Do you want to do this thing that you definitely don't want to do?
And I go,
Right.
And now I have to actually say,
Yeah,
That would be great.
But the truth was my heart dropped.
So this was a very visceral way to hear yes or no.
If at the thought of it,
Does your heart go,
Or does it go,
How do I get out of this?
That is,
I swear,
I think almost the number one way I could hear yes or no.
But then of course my brain still would get in every so often.
So that's me.
So it's like the little dude in the corner,
The heart rising,
Yes or no.
The third one I would do is I would actually play this kind of opposite game in my head because I still do go into analysis paralysis.
Like today,
Oh,
You know,
I do it.
It still happens because we have new challenges.
And sometimes it takes some time to listen within and hear the truth.
Right?
So the other game I would play with myself is I would imagine,
Let's say I was supposed to go to some event and I couldn't even decide whether I wanted to go anymore.
I thought about it so much.
I'd had so much input from other people.
I couldn't even think straight.
So then I would think to myself,
What if it was canceled?
Would I be relieved?
And that was the other way.
That's the other big way that I,
To this day,
Try to hear my truth.
If for some reason that other person canceled,
Would I be happy?
Or would I be disappointed?
And that's a huge piece,
A huge way that I get out of my own way.
The other big thing I had to learn was listening and honoring my emotions.
Because again,
Because I had a persona that said,
No,
No,
No,
Nothing bothers you.
You are so easy going.
Yeah.
Oh,
Katrina,
She just,
Nothing seems to bother her.
Like she just rolls with everything.
This is who I wanted to be.
Well,
That's not true.
There's lots of things that bother me and there's lots of things that I wish were different and there's lots of things that I really wanted to be changed.
But I was so wanting to be easy going.
I would never be honest.
And again,
So our emotions,
This,
First of all,
It's that.
Jim was interesting.
He used to say that we only actually had two primary emotions,
Happy and sad.
And that every other emotion we experienced was a secondary emotion.
It was sort of our brain has now taken that happiness and created elation or created something else,
Or it's taken that sadness and it's taken it into suffering or it's taken into frustration or anger or something.
But that yes,
No is the primary emotion.
But it is really important to listen to our emotions.
That if we're sad,
We have to listen to that.
And it doesn't necessarily mean that this has to change and that has to change.
But the fact that whatever's going on is making us sad is very important to know.
If we find ourselves angry all the time,
This is a very important piece that will take us on a journey inside to say,
Where is this coming from?
Maybe it's something simple that someone's simply stepping over their boundaries and you need to,
You need some anger to push them back.
Or maybe it's deeper.
Maybe it goes way back into your childhood,
Something that happened there that needs to be unearthed.
So listening to our emotions is also because sometimes by the time we're an age,
We're quite a patchwork quilt of a million experiences.
It's not that easy to just sort of,
Ah yes,
It's very simple.
This is my truth.
It's not that simple.
We've had very,
Very interesting lives.
So when we have an emotion that keeps rising,
Something,
A pattern that keeps repeating and it's emotionally charged,
This is so important to listen to.
This is an important clue to start going,
What's going on here?
What's,
You know,
And the beautiful thing about the world is that as soon as we start asking the question,
Answers start appearing.
People come out of the woodwork and just start telling you weird stories about their childhood or they start telling you stories about your childhood that they remember and you go,
Well that's enlightening.
It's that beautiful idea that once we start asking questions the universe does conspire to help us find the answers.
The other piece that's really been helpful for me in my life is journaling.
Some of it's just,
You know,
Ah,
Just writing up my frustration.
But some of it,
How I really see it and how I hear guidance through it,
Is much closer to Neil Donald Walsh's conversations with God,
That I would actually sit down with a journal and ask a question,
You know,
What's going on here?
What is my next step?
And then I listen and I write whatever comes.
And I think it's a beautiful way to hear guidance.
I think it's a beautiful way to explore what's possible.
The challenge there is,
It's a need to be able to be open to mystery,
To be open to something we've never heard before,
Which I think is also one of the great blocks to hearing our intuition and hearing our truth,
Is it's like we only want to hear something that fits in our mind,
That has made sense up until this point.
But the greatest inspired thought I've ever had has always been something I've never even heard before,
Or never fathomed,
Or perhaps goes against the grain.
You know,
That's when I,
I used to always joke that if my in-laws didn't approve of it,
I was probably on the right track.
So wrong,
But I really,
It's true.
But I think that's really interesting when our truth doesn't,
And again,
I don't,
I'm not a rebel.
That's not my,
I have no,
That's not part of my persona.
But it is interesting when a truth won't go away.
I even have it if I have to say something,
Like even speaking here or anytime,
If something starts to roll in my mind that I'm supposed to say it and I don't say it,
Oh,
It's like it just,
It just gets louder and louder and louder until finally I'm like,
Fine,
I'll say it,
I'll say it.
Then I say it and it works out great.
And I always laugh because the last thing I want to mention,
And then I'm just going to peek at the comments.
The last thing I want to mention is when I was with Jim,
He was to say that there were three parts of prayer.
The one was asking,
Figuring out what you actually want to ask for.
The second was listening.
And the third was doing.
And there's something really powerful about the doing.
Because when we hear something,
When we ask a question,
We have the courage to ask the question,
Then we have the courage to listen.
And then we have the courage to act.
Something happens inside of us.
Like we really meet ourselves.
We actually realize,
Oh,
I exist on this planet.
I'm actually bringing something into the world.
I matter here.
And then the most amazing things happen because when we make choices this way,
Our path changes and it changes for the better.
It changes for the miraculous.
Like it just,
It changes in the most incredible ways.
And that's when we re- it's almost like that's when the rubber hits the road.
That's where it's no longer a belief.
It's just what's real.
I don't listen to my truth because I think I should,
Or because I'm afraid of pain,
Or I'm not avoiding anything,
Or anything like that.
Or trying to be different,
Or all the things where we're told that that's why you're doing this.
I do it because I know it works.
Even that sounds so clinical.
I just,
I,
It's like you,
You say the words and something new happens.
And I'd rather live in that place.
I'd rather live in that mystery.
I'd rather live in that,
It's almost like if I only trust my brain and I only make decisions based on what I've ever known in the past,
Then the only things that can happen are things that I've known in the past.
If I actually want to have a brand new experience,
Then I have to be open to something I've never known.
In 2018,
I felt the call to give away everything I own and travel.
I was single,
My children were grown,
My daughter was living in Ireland,
My son was living in Northern Canada,
And I felt this strong call that I was meant to just hop on a plane with a backpack and see where I was called.
And that's how I lived up until recently.
But I would be in a place,
And I started off in Ireland where my daughter was,
And then I was asked to go to Portugal.
And then I was called to go to Italy.
And sometimes I would stay with people who wanted to learn English.
Sometimes students would message me saying,
Could you come and stay with us and teach in our community or whatever.
And I literally traveled having no idea what the next step was.
And the thing I want to say about that is,
It's not easy.
Living according to our truth,
Living according to our intuition,
Living according to our satya,
It's not always easy.
People don't understand.
Eventually it's fine.
But in the beginning,
My family was pretty upset that I was leaving for an indeterminate amount of time.
But it was really amazing.
And I had people,
Like complete strangers,
I was on Facebook then,
People would message me saying,
Oh my,
Your choice to do this made all these changes in my life.
And I'm like,
Wow,
I don't even know you.
That's amazing.
I didn't do that with that intention.
It's an interesting thing when we start making choices from this guided place,
From this deep truth place.
The world changes.
And now,
It's kind of hard for me not to live in that place.
It's hard to imagine if someone was to say,
Well,
Do you want to do this?
I'm not even sure I check with my brain.
Remember one time a friend of mine said to me,
She said,
You know,
The best thing to do with your brain is put it in a drawer and take it out when you need it.
So that's really what I do.
I love my brain.
It does great things and all that.
But I,
It's pretty awesome at what it does,
But making decisions and guiding me on my path,
It's just not its job.
I'm just going to take a minute and look at your comments.
Not all of them,
Because there's lots.
I can't actually see them because I need my glasses.
I can just see them flying along.
How can we tell the difference between intuition and habitual defensive behavior?
It's almost like tuning in with how you feel,
Right?
When someone does something and we react and we just do that,
Like if you even think of the word react,
Like react,
That you're literally repeating what you've done before.
You're reacting.
This is not intuitive,
Right?
So you are at the whim of whatever is happening in the moment.
You are not,
You have no inner center.
You have no sense of self.
Instead,
When something happens and we actually take the time and we listen inside and we say,
Wait a minute,
What's my truth in this moment?
It's,
It's a great example because it's kind of the opposite,
Right?
Basically listening within and responding as opposed to just that primal reaction in the moment.
And often habitual defensive reaction,
It's a defense.
It's a defense against being hurt.
There's a fear inside,
Right?
Like you can even look at your emotions.
If you're reacting with emotions that are fearful or angry,
This isn't intuitive.
Intuition is just truth.
Intuition isn't,
There's no emotion with it.
It's just truth.
It's just,
You know,
The brain might get in there and have a fight with someone about it,
But it's just a,
It's just a truth.
The other,
I'll say one more thing,
Just one more thing,
Because I could really just talk and talk.
Truth is a very interesting thing that if you imagine resonance or frequency or a sound,
If someone is telling the truth,
If they're listening to their satya and they are simply speaking in their truth with no added anything,
It's almost like the world is still.
Like there is such a quiet in truth.
And as soon as someone is telling something that isn't quite right,
You can almost feel the wobble.
Oh,
Well then there's this,
You know,
And here's why,
And you know,
And then,
And here,
And you know what else?
And you know,
And it's sort of this whole emotionally loaded thing that's sort of all over the place.
Whereas if someone just says,
I can't explain it to you,
But this is what I hear inside.
You know,
I think that was one of the hardest passages for me in really learning to trust inside was that I could no longer explain myself to anyone.
That any explanation I gave you for my truth was a lie.
Right?
All I knew was this was the truth.
Well,
Why don't you want to do that?
I don't know.
Why do you want to do that?
I don't know.
Why do you think this?
I don't know.
Right.
But before that,
I would have given explanations.
I would have said,
I would have said,
I would have looked at the person,
Considered who they were,
And then told them a story that made sense to them so that they would agree with me.
It was completely fabricated.
All I was doing was telling a story,
And I would tell a different story to every person based on whatever I thought they expected or what their belief system was.
So it's a little uncomfortable sometimes to just say,
And again,
Truth isn't about you.
It's not about another person.
It's not like,
Here's my truth about you.
We don't have intuition for other people.
Like,
Very,
Very important.
This is not.
I remember I was teaching this in a class like 15 years ago or something.
I was teaching a series called the Quantum Life series with a friend,
And I was teaching this about intuition.
And afterwards,
This woman came up to me and she said,
I have to tell you,
I got an intuitive hit about you.
You're going to get cancer again.
I was like,
I thought,
Oh my god,
I've created a monster.
Your intuition's about you.
It's not about me.
And luckily,
I mean,
It was very serendipitous because it freaked me out,
Right?
It was only maybe four or five years after I was better,
Like after I'd had the healing.
And so it really freaked me out.
But it was just before I was writing my book.
And so the fact that she freaked me out so much actually helped to write an entire chapter of my book.
And I talked about,
In the last chapter,
I actually talked about it because I said,
You know,
I'm not afraid of ever getting cancer again.
But I am afraid at the time when I wrote the book in 2009,
I said,
What I am afraid of is that I'm still not being honest with myself.
And there might be deeper truths that I have to unravel.
And at that point,
I just don't really want to go there.
It's almost like,
Okay,
Whatever,
I don't want to say falsehoods or lies.
Whatever story I'm telling myself right now,
This is all I can handle.
I don't want to hear any more truths right now.
Give me a decade and then we'll dive deep again.
So thank you so much for joining.
This has been wonderful.
I'll see you soon.
