Podcast - Episode 0215 - Stages Of An Intuitive Awakening

40 comments

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  • ANNE HAWLEY
  • April 24, 2018 at 5:42 pm

  A bit late to the party here, but I just discovered PH and listened to this episode of the podcast. As an INTJ girl in an artistic, emotional family, I had the hardest time coming to terms not with the intuitive aspect of myself, but with the thinking part. I was the family intellectual, the Brain, and in my Mid Century Modern childhood there just wasn’t much of a model for being both.

  I was so unclear on who I was or should be that even when I came to the MBTI (for work, in my 30s), I tested as INFP. At that time in my life, I was very woo-woo, exploring metaphysics and mysticism (it was the 80s).

  A rigorously rational, materialist, atheist phase followed, during which I embraced that cold intellectual. THEN when I’d take an online test, I started coming out as INTP.

  Clearly, the MBTI was bullshit. I couldn’t make the profile description fit the person I felt myself t be.

  For my 60th birthday I got a tattoo saying “I am not done with my changes”. Materialism was depressing. I came back home to the metaphysical. I became a novelist and a fiction editor. A few weeks ago, in working on some business branding, I came across Craig Filek’s Purpose Mapping, and he asked for my MBTI before our consultation.

  Sigh. Okay. But since I never did figure out whether I was INTP or INFP, I took the damn test again. I came out INTJ.

  I swear to God it was like angels singing. Really brainy angels. With books. Singing Renaissance polyphony. Precisely on-key, dammit.

  So there was my intuition all along, telling me to keep searching, keep being an intuitive, reconcile spirit and science, make logical sense of my woo-woo self. And I finally did. Thanks, you guys.

  By the way, my three-word Purpose Mapping statement from Craig Filek came out as “Connecting Anomalous Insights.”

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  • Lisa
  • April 11, 2018 at 12:43 pm

  Greta, I’m an INFJ but I resonate with everything you have said. I"m currently in the growth pains of learning to incorporate my whole self and focus on soul as I visualize who I want to be and the impact I want to have in the world. I hope to soon have the peace with self that you appear to have. It sounds like I could learn a lot from your experience and insight!

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  • Greta
  • March 26, 2018 at 5:12 pm

  47 yr old INTJ female here.

  I realized I was INTJ about 20 years ago and it helped. But, like you said, it did give me a sense of superiority. Now I know that was a defensive mechanism for the “aloneness” I felt. I call it the invincible cover persona. We’re all so complex I don’t think everyone of the same type shares an identical growth pattern, necessarily, but your podcast about “Type Advice: Vulnerability” struck a chord. I struggled with vulnerability for years. My family of origin was full of narcissists – did that make me a self-protective introvert? It certainly caused me to develop a hard outer-shell, but which came first? It’s a chicken and egg debate.

  Regardless of a person’s origin and all the “whys” that make us who we are, we are each responsible for the full development of our Selves. I think INTJs, more than others, have an advantage of being able to watch our minds as an observer and even call ourselves out on crazy behavior or ineffectual thought patterns. We have that inner censor. We can call BS on ourselves and that can lead to some amazing growth, if we have the gumption to do it. That’s what you’re calling Intellectual Integrity. Searching for truth – however uncomfortable. Too often we turn it outward and pick others apart (we’re expert at that!). We profit more, though, when we analyze ourselves – not too critically, but with loving acceptance and a good sense of humor!

  What’s helped me most is visualizing how I want my future life and then taking steps to get there. Sounds simple enough, right? But I’m talking about SOUL, not just tangible acquisitions. I ask “Who am I fundamentally created to be?” (realizing my Self) and then take steps to develop in that direction. Jung would call it self-actualization. I feel deep down that I have a responsibility to do this. For instance, I was already cerebral (that came naturally). I had to find and face what was missing: patience, kindness, effectiveness. Twenty years ago I developed panic attacks (severe). I think the source of my anxiety was that my life was so far from the path destined for me, and I had no idea how to reconcile the two. In tarot, Knowledge is represented by the High Priestess; Action by the Magician. The whole person (the fool’s journey, or Hero’s Journey, as Joseph Campbell would say) is a reconciliation of the two. You know what you know, but how the hell do you put it into practice in the real world? A world that doesn’t even seem to value what you know? That’s been my primary frustration. I’m guessing a lot of INTJs feel this.

  Appreciating my intuitive side was the beginning of my awakening. Being INTJ (cerebral) combined with my learned-terror of vulnerability made me shun everything soft, feminine and gentle. Sure, I looked ultra-feminine from the outside, but inside prided myself on being smart, capable. Invincible. But it wasn’t really leading to happiness. I just kept finding myself in situations that required me to be “tough”. I got exactly what I expected to get. I was a self-fulfilling prophesy. I was imbalanced. I was rejecting my anima (feminine side) and overvaluing my animus (masculine side), as Jung would say.

  No surprise, my relationships sucked. Common denominator: me. Not that everything was my fault, but I was the one choosing my partners, choosing my jobs, choosing, well, everything. The good news is that I also had the power to choose differently. But I had to retrain my brain and also start to incorporate my whole Self in my choices – not just my brain. We INTJs live upstairs in our heads, but our whole Self is so much more. “Eastern Body, Western Mind” helped me tremendously to incorporate my feminine side and find balance.

  The more my feminine side (my intuition) has grown, the more difficult I find it to be around others, however. My life-long studies in psychology and philosophy, combined with my strong intuitive sense, allow me to understand the motivations and behavioral patterns of others very quickly. This isn’t always fun. It can feel overpowering. During this period of my development, I worked in an open-office environment. Are you cringing, INTJs? I was, too. In fact, I believe once we start to heal and understand ourselves, we do develop a greater understanding and, hopefully, compassion for others. For very intuitive types, however, you can also sense more than you care to know about folks. The heightened awareness increases the potential sensory overload experience – especially an open office environment! Agh!!

  So, like a typical system builder, I had to ask myself how to make this special skill I have (intuition) work for me. How do I build a system (my life) in a sustainable way that utilizes my natural abilities and contributes to the greater good? By the way, the “greater good” seems to be part of the awakening process. What good is being effectual unless it makes the world better and/or helps others?

  My life, which will be unlike anyone else’s in detail, although perhaps of similar pattern, seems to have unfolded almost magically once I began to open to all sides of my development. I let go of all my “shoulds” and embraced who I am. I’m an artist. I work all day alone in a quiet studio overlooking the river. I translate the knowledge I have accumulated into symbols in my art ( www.glatchford.com ). In this way, I am communicating concepts which are not usually discussed in a way that seems to reach people on a subconscious level. This fulfills my need to be effectual and put my concepts into practice. It also helps me to relate to others. In fact, the more detailed and personal my artwork, the more universal it seems to be. I can be introverted, spend time researching and studying abstractions and yet not feel guilty that I’m wasting my time!

  I have a social life of a few great friends who come over for dinner parties occasionally (yes, it helps to be the host). More importantly, I have a wonderful partner (ISTJ) who “gets me” and I totally admire and respect him. I practice Reiki which allows me to use my intuitive sense to help cancer patients manage their pain (it’s like counselling but without all the talking!). Bottom-line, it’s a full life and I wish I had known 20 years ago how good it was going to get.

  Being INTJ can feel lonely, but only if you compare yourself to what you think you’re “supposed to be doing”. Trust your gut, aim for integrity and know yourself fully (the good, the bad and the ugly). In knowing yourself, you may find you have more in common with others than you think.

• 

  • Lisa
  • March 21, 2018 at 4:55 pm

  As an INFJ, I can relate to each of these steps and find them to be quite accurate, though I’m still working on integrating Ni. In addition to these stages, I’ve spent the last 13 years in almost perpetual unhealthy conflict with others who have Ni and Fe in their stack in professional settings, and who outrank me in job position. I feel threatened by them, interpreting their actions as their inability to see my “brilliance” (ha ha). Each of these individuals have pushed me to the sidelines, not allowing me to participate in discussions and decisions except at a very minimal level, if at all, even though I’m a subject matter expert and the decisions affect me significantly. I’m trying to figure out why this is, how I’m contributing to these situations, and how much I need to assert myself and hold them accountable for their actions. These conflicts are especially painful because these individuals often understand me more than most, so when they refuse to acknowledge my contribution, it is especially degrading. Maybe there is another stage of conflict that happens with other intuitives. Are we threatened by each other, especially when we have different ranks within an organzation?

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  • Dimitris Hall
  • March 20, 2018 at 12:28 pm

  Thank you for another great podcast guys. I have neglected to join the Intuitive Awakening community until now. This is soon to change!

  I’m a 29 year-old INFP male, a child of two pre-awareness intuitives (an INFJ and an INTP, to the best I’ve managed to type them), so for the longest time I felt as if I just didn’t fit in, just like my parents stick out in their environments in their own ways.

  My parents split up when I was a toddler and I never got any siblings. In ‘90s Greece, that was still pretty unusual. In my own pre-awareness phase I would desparately try to be loved and accepted by my parents, friends, classmates etc in different ways. I would humiliate myself and not mind being made fun of as long as it would make me ’be part of the gang’. I would tell tales and lies to make myself sound interesting, or try to be a pet of virtually every teacher. I also really enjoyed learning from a very early age, so was great at school without really trying, which created resentment and alienation from my peers.

  As the years passed and I entered my teenage years, I continued having problems with bonding with sensor kids, who just wanted to play soccer or talk about girls. Approaching sensor girls was of course no less a project doomed with failure from the outset. I was pretty awkward, man. I still am. I retreated further into my own world of stuffed animals, exploration, video games and fantasy, which slowly morphed into a world of sad rock music, video games and science fiction. For many years it was chiefly video games all I would care about. I did find a group of ‘uncool, geeky’ friends, and that helped isolate myself from being ‘normal’ even further. At the time, I thought we were different and that we’d found one another: now, I can see we were losers sticking together and calling it a party.

  Not studying and still getting good marks also stopped working. I could never really see the point in studying —my ambitions, if any, weren’t in line with ‘get good grades so you can go to a good university and get a good job’, so I started failing classes, and I’m sure my parents were disappointed.

  I would still try to be accepted through my intuitive blending and receive love in a very unhealthy Enneagram 2ish kind of way (‘look at all the attention and love I’m giving you, please give me some back’), which was only making me miserable and very insecure.

  How confused I was: both feeling so special, yet trying to play it down as much as possible. Typical Enneagram type 4 behaviour, come to think of it. Unhealthy 4s go to 2, isn’t that right?

  Awakening:
  I started seeing that looking at the world differently had its perks when I was around 17-23 years old, when I left home and went to university in Mytilini, a different city in Greece. That’s where my feeling special turned from seeing myself as an outcast and alien to feeling somewhat elite and better than everyone else. It was my rather narcissistic, self-centered phase. I shifted my jealousy of ‘normal’ people to being envious and thirsty for the attention of ‘special’ people — those I deemed were even more special, creative, or interesting than I was.

  In this pursuit, I started really discovering my Ne and coming out of my shell by trying things I would be dead scared or would have zero interest to try out before, such as travelling alone, Couchsurfing, doing my Erasmus in Denmark, joining university groups and experimenting with certain substances, or even (casual) sex and different polyamorous arrangements that I look back to in shame.

  At the end of this period I really discovered how MBTI works and that I was an intuitive, and all the pieces finally fit together. I felt as if I had found my tribe, my ultimate definition, and that I would have to play on my individual strengths to bring my contribution to the world. That strength was precisely what I would think was my ultimate weakness when I was a kid: my rare/unique way of seeing the world.

  Consciously or not, I started dating another INFP for a couple of years. During this time, we would play with eachother’s Ne and created a very tender but ‘autistic’ relationship, building our own dictionary of cute animal sounds, inside jokes and multi-lingual puns.

  We went down this weird path of INFP self-indulgence where everything we would do was self-referential.

  Intuitive integration:
  I’m no longer with this INFP girlfriend. We both understood that being with each other was very comfortable, but not really contributing to our evolution in a meaningful way, and allowed our lives to take us away from one another.

  If I had to attribute this shift in direction to a specific thing, that would be the realisation that, after all the exploration and trying to find what I was missing, I realised that this could easily take up the rest of my life. I would never be interesting enough for every person in the world; never well-travelled enough, or knowledgeable enough. Getting over resistance to cliches was also part of it, so here it is: I discovered I was complete just the way I was. Not perfect, just wholesome. Personality Hacker helped with this realisation.

  I no longer think I can only really communicate with intuitives, though I do have a soft spot for them. I understand that every type has its purpose, like the parts of an ecosystem.

  I hope to think I’m less susceptible to envy of special people. Now I’m sort of ‘envious’ of balanced, conscientious, eloquent and calm people, but never to the point I would be jealous of others in the past.

  I realised early in life that my purpose in life would be hard to find. Now I understand that it will not be handed to me - I’ll have to create it for myself. Money, which I used to think was evil, will have to be part of it. Ideology will have to be part of it. My 10 and 3-year-old will have to be part of it. Sensing will have to be part of it.

  Perfectionism and elitism will not be part of it.

  I guess I’ve come into the interdependence phase of intuition, to use another system I’m very happy to have learned about through PH.

  I’m very excited about this journey!