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By Rachel Lang
Magic rule number one: trust yourself.
It was as if a spiritual force took over my hand when I wrote those words in my journal the fateful afternoon, I started a magic journal that would inspire my book. Trust yourself. How many of us are quick to ignore our inner voice to avoid conflict or out of a habit of prioritizing external things like work or family? In writing this chapter, I became aware of how self-doubt led to self-defeat. To honor magic rule #1, we must attune ourselves to our inner voice and let our intuition be our guiding light. Because I have made it my life’s work to teach others how to develop their spiritual gifts, I’m excited to share an intuition-building exercise with you.
We aren’t always aware of how self-doubt plays a role in our lives because its influence can be subtle. Many of us learn to question ourselves more than the authority figures in our lives. As a child, if you defied a teacher, you risked scoring poor grades. If you argued with your caregivers, you were punished. When we add in factors like childhood trauma, including the trauma of microaggressions, we can see an interplay between power and self-trust.
We don’t fully trust ourselves if we ignore our intuition, which sometimes seems as subtle as an inner whisper. We might tune out that voice if we don’t have facts to validate our feelings. Every psychic medium learns to turn up the volume on that inner voice, and therefore, deepening self-trust is a gateway to opening our spiritual gifts.
When I took my first development course at a Spiritualist church in my late teens, I realized that mastering body awareness was crucial to my success. Our bodies send signals to us all the time, and they come in the form of a tight muscle, butterflies in our stomach, or a deep sigh in a moment of relief. Every sensation we feel lets us know about the larger storyline unfolding in our lives.
Reading this, you are probably aware of an area of tension in your body right now! That’s your body’s way of saying you feel stressed about something. Even the words we use about our body’s sensations can have meaning for associated emotions we might not realize we have going on beneath the surface.
To fine-tune your intuition, embrace your sensitivities, learn your body’s signals, and fall in love with the sensations you feel, even pain. Love is a force for transformation, after all. This practice can be a source of healing for those who have lived through trauma because trauma often disconnects us from our bodies in ways that we can’t access sensation as other people can.
Intuition works through body sensations—a gut feeling, for example. We don’t always have context for those feelings, but they signal us to pay attention and be open to guiding messages in our lives.
One of the best exercises I began to do as I was learning to develop my psychic skills is to feel my inner yes and no. Our inner yes is a resonance of truth. Our no means something is not aligned. We feel slightly uncomfortable when we’re not aligned or when something is inauthentic. It’s what happens when we hear that no. I experienced yes in a similar way each time. My chest lifted, my stomach relaxed, and my body leaned slightly forward. When I experienced no, my chest felt tight, and my body shifted backward.
With a visceral experience of truth in my body, I could answer almost any question in my life. Is it in my best interest to attend this workshop? Would this vitamin support my health? Is it in my highest good to be in this relationship? Mastering this exercise helped me become more clairsentient, a gift I use in my work today.
Let’s try this together. Read this series of yes or no questions aloud to yourself. Gently tap your chest under the sternum and above your heart. Bring all your awareness into the core of your body– that center line from your throat to your navel. When you read these questions, feel what happens to your stomach and chest with each one. What do you sense for, yes? What do you sense for no? Does your body lean one way? What happens to your throat? Take your time with this. Intuition rises from within, and it can be slow if you don’t have practice paying more attention to your body than to your thoughts. Even if you know the answer, assess the signals your body sends.
Is the sky green?
Am I reading Watkins Mind Body Spirit?
Have I read The Untethered Soul?
Have I visited Antarctica?
Do I have a dog?
Is my name Jim?
Keep practicing with questions like this, and soon you will be able to ask more complex questions. If you receive mixed signals, you can ask follow-up questions. Perhaps the timing is off, and the answer is not yet. Or maybe there’s a better path that you might be resistant to seeing. In my experience, we tend to know what we know – whether we want to or not.
How does this relate to magic? I think of our bodies as walking, breathing magic wands. Magic is an embodied source of supernatural power. The more we integrate spirit and body, the more effective we are in our rituals, practices, and everyday lives. Loving our humanness, trusting our body’s signals, and paying attention to our intuition also help us feel connected to the forces of nature and the cosmos that participate in our lives.
MEET THE AUTHOR
RACHEL LANG is a professional astrologer, healer, and psychic medium who has worked for the past 15 years with businesses and individuals, including A-list celebrities, tech startup entrepreneurs, bestselling authors, activists, and students. Rachel holds a master’s degree in theology from Loyola Marymount University and as an internationally recognized speaker, she offers classes, lectures, and workshops on a variety of topics to her clientele. Some of her business collaborations have included workshops on Goddess asteroids, Solar Returns, Money and Love, Astrology 101, among other topics. She serves as the Vice President of the Los Angeles chapter of the National Council for Geocosmic Research (NCGR), is the Outreach Director for the international board of the NCGR, and is also a member of the International Society for Astrological Research. Additionally, Rachel writes a monthly horoscope column for the Omega Institute’s Omega News, as well as LVBX Magazine and she has contributed to publications such as Bustle, Well+Good, and Romper.
Photo Credit – Shawn Blair
On the web
rachellangastrologer.com
Bookshelf
MODERN DAY MAGIC: 8 SIMPLE RULES – REALIZE YOUR POWER AND SHAPE YOUR LIFE BY RACHEL LANG, published by Hardie Grant Books, illustrated hardback (240 pages).
