I admit my Tale of Three Trapped Mice has a ring of folklore about it.
It is not, however, a newly discovered Aesop’s Fable, but rather an extension of a phenomenon I’ve seen frequently, more often with humans.
Namely, three different responses to the same set of circumstances.
Most importantly, it nudged me along the path I’m exploring this month — new May Meditation HERE — Connecting with Your Intuition.
It’s been a moment, but after noticing some suspicious droppings this week, it was time to bring out the humane mousetraps.
I awoke to find that we’d caught three very cute country mice (above).
Releasing them, the first needed no encouragement.
As soon as the gate was opened, he was off in a flash, quickly lost in the field at the back of the property.
The second, however, froze inside the cage, long enough for me to recall the immortal line of Rumi:
“Why do you stay in prison
when the door is so wide open?”
This guy had to have the trap tipped so he could be dropped to the ground.
Once freed, though, he was also immediately off into the wild.
The third mouse, though, was an entirely different story.
Also frozen, the same eviction process left him on the ground, but alas, unwilling to move.
It must have been a full ten seconds before he overcame whatever paralyzing fear he had before he bolted off.
I couldn’t help but wonder — given that there were no huge variables in their upbringing or socioeconomic background — how differently each mouse responded to the opportunity in front of them and why.
For the past few days, I’d been thinking about a passage from Nero Knowledge’s Outsmarting Reality — last month’s book club selection — on intuition.
The topic had come up in our meeting and I’d also listened to Nero offer the same insight in his podcast.
He writes that:
The mental nudges that you receive that compel you to take specific action is directly reflective of your intuition.
Yet here’s where it gets more complicated — and more interesting.
If intuition is what we download, then every download has a source, and that source is frequency.
Your frequency will determine the download you extract.
As with most things in the material world — airport lounges immediately come to mind — when it comes to spiritual insights, there are apparently different levels of access.
There are countless inspirational quotes encouraging us to trust our intuition.
For example, there’s Steve Jobs’ 2005 Stanford commencement speech where he encouraged graduates to:
“Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.
They somehow already know what you truly want to become.”
There are also many quotes from Oprah about trusting your “inner GPS” (as she puts it), such as:
“I’ve trusted the still, small voice of intuition my entire life.
And the only time I’ve made mistakes is when I didn’t listen.”
Given its massive endorsement by successful individuals across many fields, I don’t think we need to question the value of trusting our inner guidance.
What exactly intuition is, however, remains a bit more of a mystery.
Some definitions tend toward the cosmic.
Take Paulo Coelho’s declaration that:
“Intuition is really a sudden immersion of the soul
into the universal current of life.”
I’m willing to buy into this grand definition, but I’m also intrigued by more neuroscience-inspired possibilities.
I’ve written recently about the Reticular Activating System (RAS), a network in the brainstem that helps regulate attention, arousal, and what reaches conscious awareness.
The RAS works with other brain systems (especially the cortex) to filter the millions of bits of information our senses are taking in each second.
Its job is basically to filter every piece of data through “What matters right now?” and “How is this relevant to me?”
That’s why you can hear your name across a noisy room.
And it’s also why — as I wrote about HERE — people counting basketball passes fail to see a person in a gorilla suitwalking through the scene.
It’s our brain — like a world-weary waitress at an all-night diner — insisting she will give us whatever we asked for, but we better not try to order off the menu.
Again, Nero’s sense of intuition is the opposite of Coelho’s, Oprah’s, Jobs’, and perhaps even Einstein’s.
He writes quite forcefully that:
Taking action to become wealthy while being in the frequency of poverty will only lead to a reality of poverty.
No action from poverty will ever bring wealth.
Like trying to get into a first-class airport lounge without a Platinum Card, the reality is that you simply don’t have a way to gain access.
If someone is tuned into a frequency of poverty, that will determine their intuition, meaning they can only download information from a source of poverty. This leads to mental nudges that reflect poverty, causing action towards poverty, ultimately creating a reality reflective of poverty.
He goes on to say the same is true in other areas, like health or relationships.
He’s perhaps not disagreeing with all the other inspirational quotes so much as refining the information.
After all, your GPS — inner or outer — is only as good as the accuracy of your coordinates.
By the way, the first module of my course — Rapid Reinvention HERE — is entitled Know Your Coordinates and it deals with that exactly.
In fact, this is how I begin working with anyone I’m coaching, whether that’s on a creative project or a life transition.
This is also essential because everyone’s journey is unique.
I was reminded of this with a quote from this month’s Transformation Book Club selection, Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse:
Wisdom which a wise man tries to pass on to someone always sounds like foolishness.
Our journeys are both universal and extremely specific, and to plug into your own best intuition, you really need great clarity on where you are and where you’re headed.
Learn more about Rapid Reinvention — the whole course can be done in an afternoon — HERE.
Returning to my Tale of the Three Trapped Mice, that Rumi poem — translated by Coleman Barks — is always worth repeating:
Be empty of worrying.
Think of who created thought!
Why do you stay in prison when the door is so wide open?
Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking.
Live in silence.
Flow down and down in always widening rings of being.
Yes, those three mice were all traumatized by my humane trap but the same wide-open escape was offered to each of them.
They had exactly the same information but their intuitive response to the situation was completely different.
They varied only by how willing they were to “move outside the tangle of fear-thinking.”
Hesse writes in Siddhartha that:
The true profession of a man
is to find his way to himself.
Intuition may be our best guide for the journey — but only if we’re aware of our coordinates and have clarified our frequency first.
Tell A New Story. Transform Your Life.