Elizabeth Warnock

Mundic Creek SA, Australia

Monica

CA, USA

Nick G

Boynton Beach, FL, USA

Imelda

Dublin, Ireland

Bethany Dearborn Hiser

North Augusta, SC, USA

Reclaim your self-trust by distinguishing between anxious thoughts and the calm, grounded voice of intuition.

Recovery & Healing

Healing

Religion

Contemplative Prayer

Christianity

Visualization

English

Jeremiah 17:9 is typically translated, "The heart is deceitful and desperately wicked, who can know it?" This meditation shares an alternative translation and affirms your goodness. It helps you to discern between anxiety and intuition so you remember to trust yourself because you know what to do.

You Know What To Do

 Close your eyes if that feels okay for you. Breathe in. Breathe out. Start to set your intention for this time. As you inhale, intentionally release the tension from your forehead. You can scrunch your eyebrows down and then release, letting them come to a natural relaxed state. Release any pressure around your eyes, maybe even massaging the bone right below your eyebrows. Breathe in and experience the relief of fully focusing inward, giving space to your internal self, free from performance, free from requirement. Unclench your teeth and move your jaw around a few times and then let it come to a natural resting place. Breathe in your nose and out your nose. Scan your body for any other tense places, maybe shoulders, hips, maybe toes. Be here and bring peace to this moment. Breathe in. You know what to do. What comes up when you hear those words? You know what to do. Do you feel a sense of relief, a sense of being seen, or maybe you immediately feel a sense of distrust? Maybe a tricky situation comes to mind and you let yourself admit that actually yes, you know what to do in that situation. A Bible verse that comes from the hall of fame of verses that used to haunt me is Jeremiah 17 9. It is traditionally translated as saying, the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can understand it? Do you believe that? Do you believe that your heart is deceitful, desperately wicked? I don't. Not anymore. The word used for deceitful here is the Hebrew word, akayav. It comes from the root word we get the name Jacob from, which means to grab the heel. This is after the story in Genesis of Jacob deceiving his brother. And we think that this word automatically means to deceive because of this biblical story. And many biblical translations do use that word, deceit. But akayav literally means heal. And this word in this form is only used three times in the Hebrew scriptures. So once in this Jeremiah verse, and then in the two other places that it's used, it's translated as steep or hilly, like a difficult terrain. The earliest Greek translation of the Old Testament from the original Hebrew language is called the Septuagint. Completed in the second century, this Greek translation is what most of the New Testament authors knew and referenced, and also the version, the translation that Jesus and the apostles knew. The Septuagint reads Jeremiah 17, 9 differently. It says, the heart is deep beyond all things, and it is the man and who can know him? So the Septuagint used this Greek word, bathuno, when translating this Hebrew word, akayav. Rather than meaning something willfully concealed and deceptive, it's the idea of things that may seem hidden because they run deep. So instead of the heart is deceitful, the heart is deep. This Greek word was often used to describe the depths of the sea. And then the next verse in Jeremiah 17, 10, explains that God tests the heart. Essentially, it's humanly impossible to plumb the depths of the heart, but God can and does know us. And I have a hunch that God is not sitting around thinking about how deceitful and wicked we all are. I want to talk a moment about anxiety. One of the reasons I think that we have anxiety is because we've been taught to ignore our intuition and our body's struggle against that silence. I can speak from my own experience that throughout my life, at different times, I was told to adhere to an external source of authority, whether that was conscious for me or not. I made choices against my intuition because that was the expected thing for me to do. And do you know the verse that I internalized so that I would follow along and go against my inner wisdom? Yes, this very verse, the heart is deceitful and wicked. So I believed that I can't trust my intuition because of my sin nature. Even super recently, I saw a viral tweet that said that people deconstruct their faith because they want to justify sin. So it's the same idea that I can't trust my intuition. I can't trust what I believe to be the Spirit of God speaking to me. Even now, that is the message that is being told and I find it to be so damaging. I think for most of us who have gone through deconstruction, we did it because we felt that we were being compelled in this direction. It was not something that we asked for. It was not something that we were doing to be able to just sin freely. That was just a recent reminder for me of how prevalent this mindset is to not trust yourself because you are going to lead yourself into sin. As I've grown in my meditation and mindfulness practice, I've gotten better at cutting through my anxiety and getting to my center. I've noticed that anxiety keeps me in my head. It's constantly fluttering around, distracting me, trying to convince me, making me feel uncentered, making me feel afraid. Intuitionality floats above the ground, mostly trying to get me to focus on the future. For me, I've found intuition to be this firm, calm knowing that kind of just lands. It grounds me in my center and it doesn't need to convince me of anything. It brings me down to earth here and now. So yes, of course you know what to do. I've realized as I've reconnected to my intuition that I can remember far back feeling certain ways about certain things, about certain Bible verses, and that got covered over by years of conditioning, other people's voices, external pressure. And I want to say of course, knowing what to do and acting on it are two very different things. It takes courage to change course and to stand up when you've backed down for so long. So I want to say to you, if you know what to do and you still don't do it, don't beat yourself up over that. It's very hard to make changes. It's scary. But I do want you to focus on that self trust, that inner knowing. You know what to do. I believe that this intuition is God given. Jesus says in John 16, you know the way to the place where I am going. And later in the New Testament in 1st John 2, that whole chapter speaks about this indwelling knowledge saying, you have been anointed by the Holy One and you know all things. I write to you, not because you do not know the truth, but because you know it. The anointing that you received from God abides in you. And so you do not need anyone to teach you. It's not a prideful thing. It's a secure confidence that our hearts will steer us in the right direction. You know what to do. As we come close to ending our time in meditation, I want to provide you with a quiet, safe space to let your heart speak to you. If you're willing, bring to mind a situation that is causing you anxiety that feels difficult, complicated or stressful. Now before you start to follow your fear, stress or anxiety, take a breath. It might help if you place your hand on your heart and repeat after me, you know what to do. I found that often if I provide myself just a little bit of space and quiet, my intuition quickly speaks. Sometimes that also helps for me to put pen to paper and get some of those anxious thoughts out so that they can start to release their grip on me. So however you want to engage in this, I'm going to stop talking now, provide a little bit of space and then I will finish this meditation time with a bell. But feel free to take as much time as you need. I'll see you in the next one.