“The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.” —Joseph Campbell

That way of life, that destination, that skill you desire to acquire, that keeps returning to your thoughts and tickling your mind, asking you to figure out a way to make it a reality … its unrelenting persistence to hold your attention is an exercise in encouraging you to grow and step into what you are capable of being, doing, discovering. 

The cave analogy can be misleading as it can, to some, signify a scary place – dark, eerie, and a trap limiting our freedom. But what Joseph Campbell alludes to is that where we find our treasure is often in the places we want to go, but are fearful to enter because there are so many unknowns of what we will find and how it will all unfold.

During times of struggle, whether directly affecting our own life or we are aware of difficulty being experienced by the world at large, the prudent decision may appear to be one of conservation rather than expansion or growth. Apply the concept to any array of arenas – spending, dreams, business, family, any investment – it is understandable why we might default to respecting what our fear is telling us to do. However, opportunity, and to use Campbell’s term, treasures, ask us to reexamine exactly why we fear if it is unceasing in its urging for us to explore. 

“Everything you’ve ever wanted is on the other side of fear.” —George Addair

Let’s take investing in the stock market as an example. The best time to invest is when the market is down. In doing so, we accumulate more shares for our money. The caveat that must not be overlooked, however, is that we must wisely invest. 

Often, intuition is talked about too simply. As someone who wholeheartedly trusts my intuition, we have explored here on the blog that we must first become students of our intuition and then consciously choose to tone it so that we can indeed trust it. Once we have done that, then we marry our intuition with logic, or as Jonas Salk, the American medical researcher who developed the first successful polio vaccine and then chose not to patent it in order to maximize the benefit to the global community, said, “Intuition will tell the thinking mind where to look next.” Or as writer John Kord Lagemann reassures, “intuition isn’t the enemy, but the ally, of reason.”

Working in tandem for maximum benefit and the likelihood of a desirable outcome — that is the formula for when to trust our intuition, when it allies with reason. We wouldn’t start sprinting without stretching our bodies first. We wouldn’t just arrive at the airport for an international trip without the required documents. All of the preparation we need that is available for us to acquire, we must take the time to do so. That is how we marry logic with intuition. In so doing, we eliminate unnecessary stress, headaches, and setbacks or roadblocks to reaching the outcome we have set our sails toward. 

We know that our intuition is wise and worth heeding any time we choose to begin our journey toward our dream, start a project without the promise of its imagined (and hoped-for) outcome, or say yes without knowing how it will all come together, and following stepping forward, the pieces fall into place without our cajoling. Action on our part without a promise demonstrates trust in the inner compass, our intuition, that somehow knows it will all work out and that indeed, this is the direction, this is the project, the skill, the steps to take even though we have never done it before. 

Let me share with you a small example of knowing when to trust our intuition that happened recently here in my garden at Le Papillon. 

Having gardened in this space for now six years, there is an area, what I call the West Garden, that is landscaped entirely with river rocks (see photos here). Each year, I would weed in between these rocks, and each time, my hands ached following this lengthy task. While it did take me six years to finally come up with a solution, my solution didn’t have a promise or guarantee that it would come together as I envisioned. But I did envision it all of a sudden this past month, and had to resist the urge to let my self-critic berate me for not having thought of this idea sooner. The solution: why not remove all the small river rock and create a brand-new flower border to play with successional plantings? Already irrigated, this west-facing sloping flower bed would be perfect for spring bulbs (good drainage), summer-time annuals, including sunflowers, and become an inviting garden I would be able to see each time I arrived or left home, as it is situated next to my garage. 

But here is where I had to let go and step forward. Trusting my intuition, I began to educate myself on how and where to deposit the rock once I had removed it, and I learned it would be incredibly expensive. My best solution was to cross my fingers and toes that someone wanted it AND would be able to pick it up (as I don’t have a vehicle to do this). 

Having a small area near my garage where I could place the rock and let it sit for some time without getting in my way, I began my removal project. Over the course of about 10 days or so, and concluding this past Saturday, I had hand-removed all of the rock in buckets. And here is what I could not have known when I began this project. I still cannot believe it. Within two hours of my completing on Saturday, my neighbor, with the help of his family (he’s in his 80s) had taken all of my rock and added to his landscape. It was as if the rock had been his all along. 

To say I was tickled is an understatement (and oh so very much relieved). While my neighbor had inquired about the rock initially and expressed interest in it, I didn’t realize he wanted all of it, but I insisted that it was all his if he wanted it (there was quite a lot). 

Now my new garden area is mine to play in – adding fresh compost, sowing seeds, and adding an herbaceous perennial hedge to prevent the soil from sliding onto the edge of the path. 

My intuition knew things I couldn’t know for sure. The seed of the idea was planted for a reason, and I continue to be overjoyed in ‘having come up with it’, but I know I cannot take the full credit. Well, my conscious self can’t take all the credit. My subconscious knew I had the time to tend to the project, had the ideas and know-how, and even knew neighbors who would be interested in my rocks.

“Trust your hunches. They’re usually based on facts filed away just below the conscious level.” —Joyce Brothers

Once we have the idea, an idea that keeps inviting us to accept what it has to offer, even though the details aren’t made clear up-front, and we know we are as prepared as we can be, we then need to step into “the cave”. It is the action we take, knowing that there are details we cannot know, that sets into motion what Ralph Waldo Emerson describes as “the huge world [coming] round to [her].”

“If the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and there abide, the huge world will come round to him.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson

If we are looking for direction in our life, if we are looking for what will fulfill us, what will sing and we will recognize the tune as having been written for us, then remember the wisdom of our intuition.

“Instinct is the nose of the mind.”
—Madame De Girardin, 19th-century French author and journalist who wrote under the pseudonym of Vicomte Charles de Launay

If you have ever been drawn to an idea – about what to do, where to go, how to live, what to learn – anything that is persistent and comes innately to mind without influence to gain approval or applause, and if this idea doesn’t seem to be rooted in anything you can explain logically (for me that would be my yearning to travel and spend time in France), your intuition knows something you haven’t realized yet, although you soon will if you respect that this idea is a unique invitation tailored to you and step toward it.

“The intellect has little to do on the road to discovery. There comes a leap in consciousness, call it intuition or what you will, and the solution comes to you and you don’t know why or how.” —Albert Einstein 

Over the years, I have been privileged to hear from many TSLL readers, readers who, when they first emailed me, were trying to figure out their journey, trying to make sense of the struggles that were happening, and now today, those same people are living lives they love and treasure deeply. Each is unique to them. A photographer and artist living in Paris, a conductor living in Paris, a widow living in a picturesque village in England with her new love, a military veteran living in Texas working in a career that honors her strengths, skills, and compensates her handsomely. These are just a sampling of the readers and members of TSLL community courageously living their unique simply luxurious lives, and I am humbled and grateful to be given a glimpse into their journey, journeys they chose and engaged in consciously, but none of them were promised. They had to trust that something within them that kept encouraging them to step forward without knowing for certain. 

Is there something that continues to grab your attention and you haven’t yet accepted? Today, begin by exploring what the first steps would entail to begin walking into the cave of discovery. Your treasures await. 

Have a most wonderful start to this first week in May and bonne journée !

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