Learning to trust your intuition ('soul whispers')

On intuitive knowing and how to tell when it's telling the truth

Hi friends,

How do you know if you are on the ‘right’ path?

Many people I meet in my work look ‘impressive’ on the outside, are on paths that are comfortable and make sense on paper but inwardly, many confide in me that they feel incomplete. Like they are not quite where they should be, and they have a persistent feeling that there is another knowing they have failed to honour.

If you’ve ever felt nudged towards something, and that nudge keeps returning again and again, there may be something you’re designed to do that you need to pay better attention to — and trust.

I’ve found this to be true in my own life, especially over this past year or so after leaving the stability of a conventional job and stepping into the unknown. There has been a clear pull towards a becoming that, if I’m honest, had always been there. I had become good at explaining it away instead of listening to it and trusting it. As I have allowed myself to go further and further into this trusting relationship, the more in flow I find myself, the greater joy and ease tasks and activities become, and the deeper my gratitude for having the blessings of this understanding and this becoming unfolding before me.

There were always good reasons to ignore it, by the way. Practical, responsible reasons. Reasons you would describe as ‘wisdom’. But they were, in hindsight, reasons that were really just comfort dressed up as discernment. The pull didn’t disappear, despite my efforts to hide, and like a faithful companion, wouldn’t let me go until I could not longer pretend I hadn’t heard it.

As I have allowed myself to move deeper into a trusting relationship with that inner guidance, I have noticed something: the work I do now is not necessarily easier, but it feels more true and more alive. Tasks are no longer heavy, but they require energy. Writing is a service. Speaking is meaningful. And the unknown remains, but it is no longer scary and rather anticipatory: what will be revealed to me next?

One sign of true intuition is that it will not always remove fear, but it will bring life.

Photo by Jr Korpa

This is to say, intuition is not clear-cut. It’s not a mental frame and it’s not a physical act. It may emerge in one’s thoughts, or show up in one’s body (that gut feeling, etc), but it’s not always the case. So what is it?

The science of intuition

Science gives us some language for intuitive knowing but it’s also incomplete. We know that the body and mind often process information before we can consciously explain what we know. What it means is that we are not only thinking with our conscious, verbal mind. Our bodies and nervous systems are also gathering information, recognising patterns, and sending signals.

This does not mean the body is always right. A traumatised nervous system can mistake safety for danger. A stressed body can turn everything into a threat. A lonely heart can mistake attention for love. But it does suggest that human knowing is deeper than analysis alone.

We are not machines making decisions from spreadsheets. We are embodied, spiritual, relational beings. We know through thought, yes. But also through conscience, peace, repeated patterns, the contraction or expansion of the heart, and the fruit our choices produce over time.

This is why intuition cannot be reduced to a “gut feeling,” even though it sometimes shows up that way.

Intuition may emerge as a thought that keeps returning. It may show up as a bodily sense of “no” when everything looks fine on the surface. It may come as a strange peace around a difficult decision. It may appear as a sudden clarity after prayer, or as a persistent discomfort when you are betraying yourself. It may look like joy. It may look like grief. It may look like being unable to keep lying to yourself.

For me, intuition often feels less like a dramatic revelation and more like a quiet insistence.

Photo by Jr Korpa

Five foundational truths about intuition

There are a few foundational truths I have had to learn, and continue to learn, as I try to understand intuitive knowing in a more grounded and spiritually serious way.

1. Who you really are

The first is that what makes you “you” is not your résumé, your productivity, your public identity, or even your personality. What makes you “you” is your soul.

Your soul is not something you can see, but it is what you truly are. It is the part of you capable of love, truthfulness, courage, humility, beauty, sacrifice, and service. It is the part of you that longs not only to succeed, but to become. Not only to be admired, but to be aligned.

When we speak about intuition, I think we are often speaking about the soul’s capacity to recognise what leads us towards or away from that becoming.

But this is where it becomes important to distinguish intuition from preference. Preference says, “I want this.” Fear says, “I must avoid that.” Ego says, “This will make me look important.” Intuition says: “Pay attention. There is truth here.”

2. You need a clear channel

The second truth is that intuition requires a clear channel.

I do not mean purity in the narrow or harmful sense often imposed on people, especially women. I am not talking about purity culture. I am talking about the condition of one’s heart: the sincerity of one’s intentions, the honesty of one’s conduct, and the degree to which we are willing to tell the truth about ourselves.

A clouded heart struggles to hear clearly. If I am attached to being seen a certain way, my intuition will be distorted by image. If I am desperate for approval, my intuition will be distorted by people-pleasing. If I am resentful, my intuition will be distorted by injury. If I am ambitious in a way that is hungry for status rather than service, my intuition will be distorted by ego.

This does not mean we have to be perfect before we can be guided. If that were true, none of us would ever move. But it does mean that inner guidance becomes clearer when we are actively trying to become truthful.

Prayer helps with this. Meditation helps. Bringing oneself to account each day helps. Sitting quietly before reacting helps. Asking, “What is my real motive here?” helps. Asking, “What would love require of me?” helps. Asking, “Is this leading me towards service, or towards self-importance?” helps.

There is also science behind the importance of stillness and self-awareness. Research on interoception — our ability to sense internal bodily states such as breath, tension, heartbeat, hunger, or unease — suggests that awareness of the body can support emotional regulation and a more integrated sense of self. In simpler terms: when we learn to notice what is happening inside us without immediately obeying it, we become less reactive. We can listen without being ruled.

Listening to your body is not the same as letting your nervous system run your life. Listening to your feelings is not the same as treating every emotion as truth. The point is not to become impulsive. The point is to become perceptive.

3. Give yourself grace to learn and discern patterns

The third truth is that intuition grows through experience, humility, and feedback.

There is a useful distinction in psychology between random feelings and trained intuition. Researchers Daniel Kahneman and Gary Klein, who have both studied decision-making, found some common ground on this: intuition is more trustworthy in environments where there are repeated patterns and clear feedback. A firefighter with years of experience may sense that a building is unsafe before he can explain why, because his mind has learned to recognise subtle cues. A doctor may notice something “off” in a patient before all the data is complete. A mother may sense a shift in her child because she has spent years learning the child’s rhythms, expressions, and silences.

In those cases, intuition is not magic in the simplistic sense. It is deep pattern recognition. It is knowledge that has become embodied.

But this also means intuition must be held with humility. In unfamiliar situations, or when we are emotionally activated, exhausted, infatuated, or afraid, our intuition may be less reliable. The inner voice may be mixed with bias, projection, or wishful thinking.

This is why I do not think intuition should be separated from consultation.

Sometimes the most intuitive thing we can do is ask wise people to help us see clearly. Sometimes guidance comes through the loving challenge of a friend. Sometimes the “sign” is not a sudden feeling, but the pattern that emerges after prayer, reflection, action, and consultation all point in the same direction.

I have learned to ask myself a few questions before trusting a nudge:

• Does this keep returning when I am calm, or only when I am distressed?

• Does this expand my capacity for love, courage, service, and truth?

• Does this require me to grow, or does it simply let me escape?

• Is there peace beneath the fear?

• Am I being asked to control an outcome, or to take the next faithful step?

• What fruit does this produce in me over time?

That last question has become especially important. Intuition can often be tested by its fruits. Does it make me more honest? More alive? More generous? More humble? More courageous? More connected to reality? Or does it make me more frantic, self-absorbed, secretive, superior, or avoidant?

A true intuition may be uncomfortable, but it rarely degrades the soul.

Fear, by contrast, often makes us smaller. It narrows the world. It makes us clutch, hide, perform, or retreat. Impulse demands urgency. Ego demands recognition. Intuition can be urgent, but it is rarely frantic. It can be disruptive, but it is not chaotic at its core.

4. There is a Divine Will unfolding for you

The fourth truth is that there is, at the deepest level, only one Will for us: a life that is happy, joyful, loving, service-oriented, truthful, and beautiful.

I do not mean a life without suffering. None of us are promised that. I do not mean a life where every dream comes true in the form we first imagined. Often, the very dreams that need to come true must first be purified of vanity, fear, or attachment.

But I do believe that we are created for a life of meaning. We are created to grow in love. We are created to contribute, to become more fully human, to use what we have been given — our gifts, wounds, intelligence, tenderness, history, and longings — in service to something larger than ourselves.

Our part of the contract is to honour that.

This is why ignoring intuition can feel so painful. It is not simply that we are missing an opportunity. It is that we are refusing an invitation into our own becoming.

I think many of us know, at some level, what we are being asked to pay attention to. What conversation we need to have, or what work keeps calling us, which patterns in relationships are costing us our peace, which gifts we keep minimising, and so on.

Our life is not a small thing when we have a soul inside it.

Photo by Jr Korpa

Please, pay attention. What keeps returning, what brings you peace, what makes you more truthful, what keeps calling you towards love, service, beauty, courage, and responsibility. Start there. And then, gently but seriously, begin to respond.

So friends, how has intuition come up for you? What have you learned about listening to it? How do you distinguish between intuitive knowing and something else, like fear, impulse, ego, or avoidance?

Thank you again for being here. If there are specific questions you are pondering, I would love to explore them with you. Let me know in the comments or reach out directly.

With care,
Kat