This love is the essential key to finding the happiness that we are convinced lies outside of ourselves but that spiritual texts remind us is only fo… - Caroline Myss

Intuition, like all meditative disciplines, can be enormously effective if and only if, one has the courage and personal power to follow through on the guidance it provides. Guidance requires action, but it does not guarantee safety. While we measure our own success in terms of our personal comfort and security, the universe measures our success by how much we have learned. So long as we use comfort and security as our criteria of success, we will fear our own intuitive guidance because by its very nature it directs us into new cycles of learning that are sometimes uncomfortable.

The grace of Endurance is often required to cope with ourselves. Sometimes the most challenging obstacle we have to deal with is our own nature, including our contradictory behavior, our weaknesses, and the dilemmas they lead to. We would like to blame others for our faults. But at the end of the day, we are the only inhabitants of our body. We are the only ones making our choices. We are far too old to blame our parents for our adult behavior. The grace of Endurance brings a big sigh. It fills us with the sense of relaxation and the knowledge that we will “get through” the difficulty we are in. Endurance communicates that there are challenges in life that we simply must, well, endure. And yet, at the same time, that all troubles eventually and inevitably pass.

Questions for Self-Examination 1. How do you define creativity? Do you consider yourself a creative person? Do you follow through on your creative ideas? 2. How often do you direct your creative energies into negative paths of expression? Do you exaggerate or embellish “facts” to support your point of view? 3. Are you comfortable with your sexuality? If not, are you able to work toward healing your sexual imbalances? Do you use people for sexual pleasure, or have you felt used? Are you strong enough to honor your sexual boundaries? 4. Do you keep your word? What is your personal code of honor? of ethics? Do you negotiate your ethics depending upon your circumstances? 5. Do you have an impression of God as a force that exerts justice in your life? 6. Are you a controlling person? Do you engage in power plays in your relationships? Are you able to see yourself clearly in circumstances related to power and money? 7. Does money have authority over you? Do you make compromises that violate your inner self for the sake of financial security? 8. How often do survival fears dictate your choices? 9. Are you strong enough to master your fears concerning finances and physical survival, or do they control you and your attitudes? 10. What goals do you have for yourself that you have yet to pursue? What stands in the way of your acting upon those goals?