Wearing Moccasins

How to live intuitively

A recent journal entry…
Live by intuition and let discipline and systems fill in the gap. I’ve been doing the reverse.

What does it mean to “live by intuition”?

In pondering this question, I thought of an old acquaintance of my father’s. I haven’t spoken to him in many years and my memories of him are murky. But I do recall that he was a hunter and that he always hunted wearing hand-made moccasins. Regardless of the weather, he eschewed hiking boots for the suppleness of moccasins. Echoing the frontiersmen of times past, he said it helped him tune into to the earth. Because he could feel every stone and twig, it made him hyper-present.

So maybe it could be that living intuitively is simply “wearing moccasins” as we journey through life.

In a world that is full of clocks, money, calendars, endless to-do lists, and spreadsheets, living intuitively is such a foreign concept. But we used to live intuitively - with tasks and tools serving not as masters but as resources to live in the flow of seasons.

To live intuitively means living soul-first. Which means we have to change our relationship with what accomplishment and success is. The soul measures accomplishments and success in a way that’s wildly different from the instinctual mind. It cares little for tasks done, goals met, status level achieved, material gain, hierarchical power, etc. To the soul, the highest sense of accomplishment comes from having presence, centeredness, and intuition be the foundation of living.

What does it take to live like that?