Trusting Your Gut: How to Live from the Soulful Self Vs. Personality Self
By Dr. Sue Morter
Have you ever struggled to make a decision, your mind spinning constantly as it vacillates between options yet can never find a solution? This confusion or lack of true knowing comes from the mind, or what I like to call the “Personality Self.”
On the other hand, have you ever had a “gut” feeling about a situation in your life? In a particular moment, you simply “knew” what to do without knowing why or how you knew it? This “knowing” is the wisdom that comes from the True you, or your Soulful Self.
Both the Soulful Self and the Protective Self exist, yet only one contains the truth of who we are and what we’re meant to do in our life. Our task is to learn to live from the Soulful Self, and have constant access to that deep wisdom within guiding our lives in the direction we’re meant to go. To do this, we have to start listening to the messages of our body.
Our Soulful Self speaks to us through our body and to learn how to hear the messages it sends, our mind, or Protective Self, needs to learn how to trust the body because the body doesn’t lie. It is constantly revealing truths to us, yet the mind can’t perceive these messages because it’s so distracted keeping itself busy with questions of what we should do next.
The minute we can bring the mind’s attention onto the body, the mind can begin to filter information more accurately. Once we do, we have access to deep wisdom and we begin to cultivate the power to do something about what we know to be true.
How the Body Speaks to the Mind
Have you ever felt a knot in the pit of your stomach? Maybe you assumed it was indigestion, or that the burning in your belly had something to do with you needing to take some kind of antacid to cover up the discomfort that you’re feeling.
When there’s a knot in your stomach, there’s a reason for it. It’s not something to cover up or to try to push away or to try to get away from. Rather, it is an attempt of energy trying to rise all the way up to your consciousness that allows you to know that what you’re doing is working for you or is not working for you.
This feeling allows you to know the contract you’re about to sign is the right thing to do or not. It allows you to know if you should accept the invitation or you should decline in grace. It allows you to know that yes in fact, you do need to speak in to what you’re feeling and not let it go untapped. That wisdom rising is a deep truth and that deep truth will set you free.
Energetic Blocks Create the Knot
The reason you feel a knot in your stomach is because there isn’t enough circuitry, or energetic connectivity in your system in place for that energy or truth to rise up and make it all the way to your awareness. Instead, it hits upon a wall in your gut and the energy starts to build. That building of the wall is what we perceive as the knot in the stomach.
The lack of circuitry which creates the knot may be something that started many years ago perhaps as early as three years old. Something as old as that can start a pattern in your life and keeps you not accessing this deep truth.
For example, imagine you’re three years old, exploring your independence and you want to run across the street to play with the kids and the bright, shiny objects. You step into the street to get over to them, and suddenly your mom screams from the front porch and you get in trouble for accessing your independence for exploring your own individual personhood. In that moment, something gets registered in the subconscious level that says every time you start to step into your own personhood, your own individuality, you’re likely to get in trouble.
This information is recorded at the subconscious level and so from then on, every time you begin to step into such things, you abort the mission. You step aside or shut down, because subconsciously you don’t want to get in trouble again.
It’s hard to believe that 30 years later something like that can be having such an impact in our lives. However, if we never built the circuitry for it to be safe, then the subconscious whose job it is to keep us safe will automatically assume uncharted territory and stay behind so the circuits never get built to move that deep desire all the way up there. We end up with a knot in our stomach because energy is blocked there and it is no longer flowing.
How to Dissolve the Knot
To dissolve the knot, we must learn to let that energy flow again. We have to bring our attention to the knot and squeeze it back and let it know that contact has been made and that the mind is finally paying attention to the deep wisdom the body is attempting to reveal. When the mind and the knotted area come together, squeeze that place and take a breath up through the central channel of your body. In that moment, what begins to happen is the energy begins to break free that was once knotted up.
As you do, bring your attention to your core, this time saying, “I’m having it all and this time, I’m not going to sidestep my personal power. This time I’m going to let the adventure of life run through me instead of bypass me. This time I’m going to allow myself to be free.”
This is the focus of the mind while you’re doing this breath up and down through the central channel and what happens is, the energy begins to build a circuitry. The nervous system begins to support what the energy is doing.
By doing this, you begin to build the circuits that never got built, even 30 years ago. As we build that circuitry, our deep wisdom, our deep power, starts to rise. With it comes all the fears and concerns and hesitations we’ve built up for those 30 years and they too are just set free.
This is what we do with The Energy Codes coursework I teach at the Morter Institute and it is why people are changing their lives all the time, everyday. Simply by leaning in to the very parts of their own system instead of trying to push them away or take something such as a medicine to cover up a signal that the deep wisdom is trying to reveal to the mind. As they do this, they begin to live from the Soulful Self rather than letting the mind, and the Protective Self rule their life. When the Soulful Self is leading the way, we begin to live our lives guided by our Truth and deepest wisdom.