I had the honor and privilege of being interviewed twice this week on the topic of spirituality.

One of the conversations was about EFT, meditation and prayer, and was called “How to Let Your Fingers Do the Talking” I loved the host of the show, Rev. Paulette Pipe, who is a Unity minister and is the voice of Unity Online Radio. Her show is called “Touching the Stillness.” Our conversation (including some tapping) is here if you want to listen:
Touching the Stillness: Interview with Rue Hass

The other interview was part of a summit on finding inner peace. It will be aired soon, and I will let you know when my segment will be featured. This interviewer was also quite lovely. She seemed particularly taken with my answer to this question of hers:

“How can we connect with our higher self and strengthen our own intuition?”

I think this is such an important question. And… my answer is maybe a little unusual.

We think of intuition as coming from some powerful agent of wisdom that is “out there,” outside of us, better than us, our soul or our “higher self.”

Or, maybe we think that intuition is more like guidance from the angels, or God (whatever you mean when you say God, I’m not ascribing any particular religion or spirituality to that).

We have been raised to think of “God” as God the Father, the all-knowing, the authority, God who tells me what to do because “he” knows better than I what is right for me.

Putting it that way, the concept of guidance, or God’s will, implies that there is a path that is laid out for us. It’s specific, God wants us to follow it, and we’re only good as long as we keep to that path.

I think that approach makes us over responsive to authority. Or maybe it comes from our tendency to bow before authority, and so we think of God like a rule-making parent or law-giver.

I want to offer a very different perspective— what if we thought of God as a partner?

As sensitive people particularly, we often find ourselves wondering, What is God’s will for me? Another variation of this is our thought, “Whatever happened, it must have been meant to be.” Or— “I have to just accept what comes.” Or, “It is what it is.” These last three can be useful and even true thoughts, in certain contexts. Definitely, whatever happens did happen, and we all must deal with the way things show up.

What’s really important is our RESPONSE to how things show up. But for a lot of people saying “It was meant to be” can come from a certain lack of will. It emerges from not knowing that we are so powerful that our thoughts and actions change the world. Our wanting changes the world. We have a right to change the world. We are here for the purpose of changing the world to something better, through wanting something different from what we have. That is how change happens.

Acceptance and allowing are good—but only if we have a place to Stand in ourselves. I think of the word Stand in this context as being capitalized. We are standing in the power and sacred sovereignty of our presence.

“I want to manifest what God’s will is for me. I surrender to God’s will.”

How can we reframe this thought to empower us?

Years ago, I went through a long process of working with the concept of surrender. I was a pretty feisty person, and I knew surrender was not for me. But it sounded like such a good spiritual concept!

I had to come to understand it from a different perspective. What if we thought of God as a partner? Partnership with God! What a thought!

What would God’s Will be then?

Think of will as a capacity… not a rule, not a law, not an authority, but a capacity. Think of will as a universal capacity that creates a holding space for something. When it creates that holding space, it can then add energy to what it holds, making it possible for the contents to become fully what they are.

A wonderful metaphor for God’s will, or for will in general, is a crockpot cooker that you plug in. You pour your ingredients in, you plug the crockpot in, and the electricity adds energy. The pot becomes a holding space to create something new out of the cooking and blending of the ingredients, and it keeps the whole process optimally warm.

In a sense, I think that this is the way that God holds the universe, and each of us. There is nothing passive about it, and there is nothing commanding about it. It’s not just a passive holding or a directive to you.

God’s will is really a function:

It is the function of empowering of all life, of all existence, of all beingness.  If God wants us to succeed, God’s will wants everything to unfold its potential and fulfill what it is meant to be.

Thinking of it this way, “God’s will” is a vast energy field that is actively holding us in existence, in a way that allows us to be nurtured. Whatever seeds of being that are planted in us have an opportunity to grow and flourish and produce our fruit.

So, the way I align myself with God’s will is by learning, for myself, how to hold myself, how to be a field or source of nourishment and empowerment for myself, and for what’s around me.

You have probably heard people say that there are two basic energies in the universe: Expansiveness and constriction. Both are necessary, but there can be imbalance.

Love is the energy of expansiveness. Fear is an emotional expression of contraction.

We are taught not to be selfish. But I like to encourage people to go ahead and be selfish… I spell it with a capital S: Self-ish. The capital S stands for the soul.

I think our selves are distilled soul. So if our soul is our self, that means that caring for our self is caring for our soul.

If we don’t care for our soul, no one else will. Being Self-ish, I think, is the most profound, spiritual practice of all.

So here is the bottom line about intuition—our bodies are embodied intuition. Our bodies are our own personal GPS.

Go toward what makes you feel expansion, love.

Choose happiness in the moment.

Life comes down to yum and yuck.
Say yes to your yum. Trust your self.