One of the most common questions I had on my own spiritual journey, and one I see all the time now in helping others develop their own intuition, is whether the information coming up is actually from intuition or from the imagination? In other words, if we want to trust our intuition, how can we know for sure if it's real, or if we're just making it up?

I think this has become such a repeated question, at least in part because we're so used to living in a masculine-dominated society, where so much of our sense of our own value and worthiness comes from being "right," and from applying logical reasoning that collects evidence, keeps what is proven and throws out what is impossible to know for sure.

BUT…the thing about intuition and imagination is that they both operate from the right side of the brain, which is typically associated with the more feminine characteristics of creativity, flow and collaboration.

So if you're driving yourself crazy, like I once was, trying to strengthen your intuition by proving that it's not just your imagination and that it's always right 100% of the time, let's maybe try looking at it in a different way.

The Importance of Imagination

First of all, let's get one thing straight. Your imagination is NOT useless - it's a SUPER important tool to help you strengthen your intuition and to help you create and manifest your dreams into reality.

Most of us start to block out our imagining power once we hit a certain age because we're told by society that we need to "grow up" and start living in the "Real World". We throw out our daydreams and fantasies, because we're told that if we're always living with our heads up in the clouds, we're not grounded in reality and we'll never make it. And not only are we taught to stop imagining, but we start believing that even when we sometimes do let our minds wander with imagination, that those thoughts are useless because they're impossible and could never actually happen. We lose trust in our imagination and we lose our willingness to imagine, which ends up severely impacting our intuitive perception and trust as well.

So one of the first steps in determining whether we're using imagination or intuition is, ironically, to rewire our limiting beliefs about our imagination. If you've ever doubted yourself and worried, 'what if it's just my imagination?' then you probably have some work to do here to start remembering the true value and power of your imagination.

Imagination and intuition are like two sides of your co-creation coin with the Universe - they help you create and receive the building blocks you need to dream up and manifest limitless possibilities for your life.

Let me give an example of how powerful the imagination can be. This is going to get pretty 'woo-woo,' so if that's not your thing, skip on ahead (or you could, you know, use your imagination and just go with it 😜). I once attended an event with a psychic medium in Atlanta, Jamie Butler, who wanted to show us all the impact our imagination can have on physical reality. Jamie called up a volunteer from our group of about 30 people, and she set the intention out loud for her dowsing rods (if you're not familiar with what dowsing rods are, here's a good intro explanation) to move apart once she came upon the woman's aura. As Jamie got about 4-5 feet away from her, the rods started to move apart - great, aura detected.

Then, Jamie instructed the woman to close her eyes and imagine herself as a huge, giant whale, in as much detail as her imagination would allow. We all watched as the dowsing rods - still programmed to detect the woman's aura - stayed close together and only moved back apart from one another once Jamie had moved to the other side of the room, across from our volunteer. Her aura had grown to envelop the whole room, just based on her imagination! And for the final part of the experiment, Jamie had the woman imagine herself as a tiny ladybug on the floor of the room - and yet, again, the dowsing rods proved the point, not even moving apart once Jamie was standing right next to her, because she had shrunk her aura down to the size of a ladybug using her imagination.

Even if you don't believe in dowsing rods or auras though, you've probably still used your imagination to create something in physical reality before. For some reason, the term 'visualization' seems much more socially accepted by us adults, but imagination and visualization are essentially the same thing. In my own practice, I tend to view visualization as a more formal, sit-down meditative process where I intentionally think about what I want to happen and create in my own future, whereas imagining feels a bit more free to explore possibilities that may never happen in this reality and can be done anywhere, anytime. In either case though, there are plenty of inspiring stories of people who have healed their ailments, won insane amounts of money, scored the winning championship goal, etc. by first visualizing it and believing it was possible.

So, hopefully now you understand - or better yet, remember from your childhood - how powerful and amazing imagination is. If you still need help re-framing some of your attitudes and beliefs around it, here are some affirmations that I like to choose to believe in and remind myself of:

· My imagination is limitless and helps me come up with new, amazing ideas for what I want to create in life.

· My guides, my angels and Source [God/Spirit/the Universe/whatever you'd like to call it] lead me and speak to me directly through the inspiration of my imagination.

· I trust my imagination to lead me to new frontiers of what is possible for my life.

· I imagine the wildest, most soul-fulfilling and awe-inspiring situations for my life and the Universe helps me bring them to life.

How Imagination and Intuition Can Work Together

Cool. So now that we're all back on speaking terms with our imaginations, let's see how it can help us strengthen our intuition! I like to think of imagination and intuition as receiving and creating energies playing off of each other to help inspire and inform us toward positive new realities.

Try starting with one and then inviting the other in. For example, you could start by imagining the next place you want go to on vacation. Close your eyes and picture this place in your mind's eye - imagine the smells, the sounds, the temperature on your skin, the details of what you're looking at. And then you can start to leave some space in your imagining to ask your intuition a question about this scene and stay open to receiving anything that comes up. What month is it in this scene you've set up for yourself? Feel into it as if you're really there and see if you're pulled in a certain direction. Who are you with? What experiences are you having?

Or you could start first with your intuition and use your imagination to expand on it. If you've been feeling stuck in your career, for example, ask your intuition what alternative job or career path might be expanding for you. Let's say the image of someone opening a salon pops into your head first, even though you know that's definitely not something you want to do. Instead of shutting it down right away and claiming your intuition as useless, just go with it and use your imagination to see where it leads you anyway. Just because something comes up from your intuition doesn't always mean that it is THE final answer and THE absolute right path that the Universe wants you take - sometimes our intuition provides us with a breadcrumb that we need our imaginations to expand upon to get to the real message we needed to hear. Or maybe your intuition just popped up with something completely random that doesn't lead you anywhere useful and you just daydreamed unproductively about owning a salon you don't actually want for 3 minutes - that's totally ok too…and maybe that was the point - that your brain needed a break from the 'productive,' logical thinking for 3 minutes. 🙃

Your imagination and your intuition will often play off of each other, and you might not always know exactly which one is leading you. But instead of shutting down that whole creative side of your brain and doubting the validity of the whole experience when you fear it's 'just your imagination,' try to value yourself and the message that wants to come through in that.

Let's say you're trying out a guided past life meditation and you start to see or feel or sense something that suggests ancient Egypt. Maybe you see in your mind's eye the Great Pyramid, but then you start wondering if you're just making it up because practically everyone thinks they had a past life in ancient Egypt, so it can't be right, right? Here's what I say to that: So what if your imagination is making it up? That doesn't mean there's not a message or a lesson for you there, in whatever you're sensing or feeling. Keep going with it; ask questions and see what comes up.

Get more curious and less attached to getting the "right" information - this isn't a test that you're going to be graded on. Eventually, as you strengthen your imagination and your intuition, you will start to get validations of your intuition, but you can't build yourself up to that point if you constantly shut yourself down at the first sign of doubt.

“Yes, And” Your Imagination

A common practice in creative brainstorming meetings is to employ the "Yes, AND" rule, where teammates build off of each other's ideas with an expansive "Yes, AND…" instead of shutting down ideas with an all too common "Yea (or No), but…". No ideas in these types of meetings are off limits or cast aside, because the most genius idea can be born from a pile of seemingly unrelated and uninspiring ideas that come before it.

The same principle applies to your imagination. As soon as you respond to your imagination with a "Yea, but…" you stop its momentum, and you potentially close the door to the intuitive hits that could have come along with it. So instead of pitting your imagination and your intuition against each other in your quest for the "right" information, try to take a "Yes, and" perspective and let them both get stronger and more practiced together.

As you start to allow more of your imagination back in and value its role in your life and in your spiritual development, your intuition will start to get stronger alongside it, and you'll start trusting both of them to work together to lead you.