My entire religious life, I was taught to listen to people outside of me — pastors, leaders, family, authority figures — and to shut down my own intuition, shut down my own body, shut down my own knowing. And it led to so many problems when I didn’t listen to myself.
The command says to love the Lord your God with your whole heart, mind, soul, and strength. But where is God? God is within you. So every time you ignore what is happening inside of you and blindly follow what someone outside of you is telling you to do, you’re actually living out of order — even by the very religious standard they claim to defend. That’s the irony.
What I learned over time is that I would share what I was feeling — even in relationships — and instead of being listened to, I would be told the opposite of what my intuition was saying. It was always a tug-of-war. Guilt would be used. Emotions would be weaponized. And the whole point was to push me into a performance mentality so I would do what someone else wanted me to do.
And I did that most of my life. I became a yes-man. Not just in the church — in my family, in relationships, in friendships. Everybody else’s opinions mattered more than what was happening inside of me. I had no voice. No backbone. I was tossed to and fro by what people wanted from me and by my own need to be accepted. I didn’t have strength. I didn’t have confidence in who I was in God. All I knew was that I was a “sinner.”
And living from that separation mindset produces zero confidence. You can’t have dominion when you think you’re fundamentally broken.
So now that I live from union, some people call it pride. But it isn’t pride — it’s the result of spending 39 years of my life doing what everybody else told me to do instead of what the Spirit was telling me to do. Now when I listen to the Holy Spirit, even when it’s hard, even when it’s painful, it is always the right move. Always.
And this is the shift:
I can listen to you — but you are not my counselor.
You are not my leader.
You are not my authority.
You are not my conscience.
The Spirit is.
And that is actually what the Bible teaches.
Even Jesus was not recognized by the religious system of His day. Let’s remember that. They called Him a glutton. A drunk. A demon-possessed man. A blasphemer. A lawbreaker. The synagogue rejected Him. The religious leaders accused Him constantly. The same people who now praise His name completely misread Him when He stood right in front of them.
Why?
Because they were living in the outer court — the realm of appearances, rules, and performance. They could quote scripture but they could not recognize the heart standing in front of them.
And the same thing happens today.
Those who have walked through purification…
Those who have laid down performance…
Those who have allowed the inner work to happen…
They often aren’t recognized either. Because the system still looks with the same lens. It still evaluates by externals. It still cannot see the heart.
And when you don’t see the heart, you separate.
You judge.
You accuse.
You scatter.
You never gather.
Listening to your body — your intuition, your nervous system, your inner witness — is not rebellion. It’s actually how Jesus lived. He only did what He saw the Father doing. He only spoke what He heard the Father speaking. That is embodied awareness. That is union. That is alignment.
And when you realize that everyone carries a piece of the Divine, you stop policing each other’s behavior and start honoring each other’s becoming.
“You were never meant to live by borrowed voices.
My voice has always lived inside your breath,
inside your gut,
inside your knowing.
Return to the place where I placed My law —
not on stone,
but in your living heart.”
By Keith Brown