What is essence and how does it relate to developing intuition?
Deeper than thought, deeper than ideas about ourselves, more fundamental than any repetitive self-told story is our spiritual essence. Essence makes us human and essence is a portal to intuition and to dimensions of ourselves we long for, but may have forgotten how to access.
We’re not used to opening ourselves to intuition, essence, or the mystery of being. Cultivating intuition through contacting our inner essence means letting go of what we think we know about what’s happening or about to happen. And instead tuning into reality emerging in the here and now.
We’re used to following the pattern of the days that came before: waking up and dressing in the same order, checking our device out of habit, making the coffee or the tea in the same way, wiping the counters with the same motions, seeing the view out the window as like a painting instead of as life unfolding freshly in each moment.
Of course, this predictability blocks the free flow of essence. And that’s important because our spiritual essence fuels intuition’s magic. The more essence has space and freedom to arise, the better my intuition seems to function.
I first heard the term essence in 1989 when I started to attend Diamond Approach® workshops in Vancouver and Seattle. Our teacher contrasted essence with ego to help us get the drift. Ego, or the rigid part of our personality, naturally reinforces familiar patterns—of thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations. Meanwhile, essence flows.
Ego gets scared, defensive, or puts on a false front, while essence is natural—even startling at times—and helps us act with spontaneity and wisdom. Essence is our true nature and directly taps us into intuition, our inner knowing.
We’ve all experienced essence though we might not have noticed its glimmers. Meditation practice helps us become more mindful. Meanwhile, heartfelt inquiry into our ego and essence gradually dissolves ego, while expanding our essential capacity. The responsive spontaneity of essence naturally nurtures our intuitive capacities. Inquiry, which I wrote about here, tends to soften ego’s rigidities granting us more essential and intuitive experiences.
Flavors of essence and inner sensing
Like a rainbow of light, essence comes in many flavors. In the Diamond Approach, we use a shorthand of colors—the colors most commonly seen by practitioners—to signify and talk about our essential experiences. But you don’t need to see colors to experience essence or to be intuitive. I tend to be more kinesthetic, sensing inner flow, temperature, or density. Some folks even pick up subtle scents with their inner senses. The most important thing is to notice the freedom, wisdom, and spontaneity of essence as contrasted with ego’s predictability.
As I’ve implied, ego blocks essence and inner knowing, but the story of recovering essence gets subtler. Different parts of our personality structure block different essential qualities. Fear and grasping block the yellow of joy and curiosity, while enmeshment and anger block the red of courage and autonomy.
Defensive structures need to fall away for essence to appear more fully and to powerfully deepen your intuition. But when ego defenses fall, we tend to feel yucky and deficient—like there’s a hole in our body. So, the hardest part of embodying essence is allowing the vulnerability of being unmasked.
When we do let our guard down, we feel the imposter syndrome our defenses were hiding, which naturally is not comfortable. But without allowing the emptiness of our psychic holes to surface, there’s nowhere for essence to flow.
As a psychological counselor, I regularly do inquiry for myself as part of self-care and professional development. I also hold a safe space for my clients to experience essence.
An example of essence arising with intuition
One day recently, I was inquiring with a partner. Something challenging for me is accepting a physical disability I have. When I am productive, my ego loves it. When I have a day where I need to rest, I might feel grumpy or judge myself rather worthless.
On this particular day, as I inquired into that pattern, I suddenly experienced a sense of caving in around my solar plexus and belly—a hole. I remarked on the somewhat uncomfortable emptiness, but I stayed with it, neutrally witnessing a part of myself crumble. Then, to my surprise, I began to feel an inner flowing sensation. A subtle amber honey infused my belly and solar plexus, then spread throughout my body. I felt myself relax as the amber essence soothed me and nourished me. I felt a sense of value for its own sake, without having to be productive.
What startled me the most about the experience was that I had been planning to write this post to give an overview of essence as support for developing intuition. I needed a fresh example and the experience of amber essence appeared spontaneously and without any planning on my part.
I was in denial about feeling devalued about my disability. Then I directly experienced the hole in my psyche from this lack of value. And value essence flowed in, without any effort on my part. The amber value infused me, not with ideas of value, but with actual warmth and calm for being just as I am. We are children of being. When we make that effort to stop and attend in the moment, we can recover our essence, eventually even becoming essence.
The next day I woke and instead of feeling grumpy I felt whole, infused with love, and open. My intuition told me now is the moment to write this post. As I did, the writing flowed.
With deep gratitude to the Diamond Approach teaching and the community I’ve been so fortunate to be a part of, this is the first of a series of posts about developing intuition through essence and essential qualities.
To read more about essence, I also recommend the book, Essence: the Diamond Approach to Inner Realization by A.H. Almaas.