By Rebecca King-Crews, special to SurvivorNet
"In all thy ways acknowledge Him and He will direct thy paths…"
Read MoreWe can't quite place it in the realm of identifiable insight. Sometimes it is the effect of memory… knowing that a certain person has let us down before. Or of intelligent fact checking. But…THIS is something different.
A sense that we know something, without knowing how we know it!
THIS is what I call spiritual attentiveness.
I believe that we are not simply an organism of flesh, bone and blood. People who have attended to the dying will tell you that they have witnessed their patients speaking to people who have been long gone, and seeing and saying things that are "outside this realm of understanding.”
Even in our day, many will attest to what they will call serendipity or coincidences where "something told them" not to go down that street that day, or to take another way to work. Or to call a friend they haven't talked to in a long time, only to find that that friend is going through something hard, or tragic, and needs support.
This same inner knowing has been responsible for many wonderful and advantageous opportunities in life as well. Business people will tell how they knew in their gut that they were supposed to make a certain decision, even though everything statistical said it was a bad idea. I watched an amazing documentary about the CEO of Starbucks, as he described the way he felt when he launched their first store outside of North America in 1996. They had done five years of market research, and everything they found said that Japan was a tea drinking country and that coffee would never succeed there. He shared the story of how everything in his gut told him to open in Tokyo. And they did – with lines around the block on their first day. Today, Tokyo is their fourth largest market, with its own headquarters and CEO.
Why did this man go against everything that intellect told him?
He was listening to his heart, or what we call our spirit. It's the part of us that is connected to the greater mind of the universe and an awareness that we can't put our finger on. But time and time again we are told that if we listen to it, it will guide us. The majority of our great scientific and medical advances began with a thought – a hypothesis – that came into the heart and mind of the individual seeking knowledge. "Seek and you shall find, knock and the door will be open, ask and it shall be given." It seems that the only prerequisite for receiving, is asking. But how many of us have been told not to listen to that part of ourselves, relegating it to a realm of emotion, daydream, or flights of fancy.
But it is THIS same Voice that told me to "go check yourself.” Had I ignored, or procrastinated with that urging, I don't know that I would've had the kind of outcome I did with my cancer diagnosis. I was fortunate to be diagnosed at stage one, and I'm now 2 1/2 years cancer free. There was no cancer spread to the lymph nodes, or to the skin, and my prognosis is a 95% recovery rate.
Knowing that early detection saves lives, far too many of us neglect our health. It happened to me. I'm typically very diligent to do my full physical exam every year. For some reason in 2019, I had travelled during the time I usually schedule everything and with procrastination and a full schedule, I had missed my physical.
There was no lump in my breast that I could detect, and there was no history of breast cancer except for the fact that my mother in her late 70s had a small tumor in her right breast. No one before her in the family line had had it, and I was in the lowest risk factors for people who get it. However, back in 2009, I had a benign lump removed. And, though it was not cancer, it was a type of tissue known as a radial scar. It has a one in four chance of becoming cancer. Because of this I was required to have an ultrasound with every mammogram, and it was almost forgotten by my technician. I insisted that she do it, and we found the growth.
After my diagnosis, I, yet again, relied on that gentle voice in my heart to make my decision to have a double mastectomy as a safeguard. Lo and behold, after surgery I was informed that the left breast, though clear on ultrasound and mammogram, had radial scars inside the ducts. My surgeon told me I had made the right move, and I knew it.
The science behind intuition isn't entirely clear. The religious will tell you that God is speaking, and that all who will listen will benefit. If you are not religious, it is called following your gut. I prefer to believe since I am an intelligent being, that someone or something much more intelligent and evolved than me came before me and is my progenitor. Thus, following this inward knowing, or still small voice, has resulted for me, in many miraculous and unexplainable coincidences. And I am thankful.
Take a shot and ask yourself, "what harm could come from trying?" The next time you have an intuition that you are tempted to ignore, try following it – as long as it is safe and not just some whim or fancy – or the result of too much alcohol, or not enough sleep.
Listening to it has benefitted me, and sad to say, ignoring it has taught me some hard lessons.
"He was not in the wind, and He was not in the earthquake….but He was in the still, small voice."
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