Intuition is Knowledge

Intuition is knowledge.

It’s not a hunch, or a feeling, or even a sense we have about something. It’s a source of knowledge as valid as a google search, or history books, or chemistry equations.

To harness its power, one has to be aware and open to the whispering sound of the guidance. Which means creating spaces with silence and time for reflection so that one can hear, and have time to interpret.

You can’t learn what’s going on with someone else’s life unless you sit down with them and hear what they have to say about it. If you don’t make space for dialogue/ transmission of information, you won’t know anything.

Intuition is the same. If you don’t quiet your mind and listen, an entire resource for understanding the world is lost in the fray and distractions of day to day life.

I’ve been in Costa Rica all week. It’s a place I’ve been a few times before and it’s particularly special for me because I went there with my mom towards the end of her life and we returned as a family shortly after she died, spending some time healing from our grief .

This time we spent in amazing time at a beautiful house on the beach, but my heart is always yearning for a walk through the jungle and a swim in a pool beneath a waterfall. I also really wanted to visit a natural hot springs that are famous in Costa Rica for healing, and restoration.

Yesterday was our last day in the country. My friend Oneil and I had all day to drive back to the capital and we really wanted to visit Hot Springs and a waterfall on the way. That morning, we had a major problem with our rental car and by the time we got it resolved it was too late to make the side excursions.

I was pretty crestfallen but decided it was what it was.

Then , on the road back to San Jose, I felt a pull to turn off the highway onto a side road, as if my mom was up ahead, beckoning us to turn down that road.

I followed the instinct and turned , through the road was in very bad conditions and apparently going nowhere except very far off the beaten path .

We kept following the road, despite having no idea of where it led, simply because I felt her guiding us. We drove for miles, winding up and then down a mountain . They conditions of the road were terrible and the sun was going to be setting soon, so it wasn’t the best idea to be going down this uncertain path with no apparent destination.

But the magnetic pull continued, so we kept going .

Finally I felt it was time to stop- we had arrived wherever we were supposed to be .

We looked around. What were we stopping for?

Just to the side of our car, hidden behind some shrubbery, and vines, we found a small homemade sign hand painted on a rustic piece of wood: “termales” (hot springs). so we turned down an even more narrow and winding road. We weren’t entirely sure if there were, indeed, hot springs, so we asked a few country folk, on our way down the road, who kept encouraging us to continue.

Finally, we came to the end of the road and found ourselves in a clearing inside the forest - the home of a local family who had Hot Springs on their property. In their backyard, right next to a river, they had constructed handmade pools of stone, where the Hot Springs ran into pools of slightly different temperatures.

It was clear we had arrived where mom wanted us to be. We spent a magical time there relaxing, meditating and connecting with nature and saying prayers .

All the pain in my body vanished. All my anxiety vanished. I felt united, in complete dignity and freedom, with all on earth.

As we drove away with the sun going down, I remembered that it was my mom’s birthday, and realized that this experience at the hot springs was her gift to me.