We all know that having a connection to our intuition is a good thing. It can help us differentiate a good friend from someone who is trying to take advantage of us. It can help us move toward what we want even when other people might disagree with our choices. It can help us know whether we should go up or down, right or left. Or can it?

Intuition is, essentially, our sixth sense. It’s a feeling of knowing beneath our cognitive understanding. It’s knowing without being able to explain how we know. But what if our intuition is broken? What if what we’ve been feeling all along is actually something else, like fear?

We are living in an era when pagan religions and personal spirituality are having something of a revival. Organized religion is still very powerful, but many people have been turning away from an official hierarchical religious structure and exploring spirituality on their own terms.

For some of us, this means cultivating certain powers we didn’t know we had—listening to our bodies, intuiting other people’s emotions, hearing the voice of gods (or goddesses) through meditation or plant journeys, and sometimes even having access to our spirit guides or ancestors who have passed over to the other side. These experiences are powerful and fascinating—and a little confusing.

Ever caught yourself waiting before making a decision, but not knowing why? Explore how hesitation can be a meaningful manifestation of intuition.

You’ve thought about it, you’ve weighed the pros and cons, you’ve made your decision and then…you hesitate. Your mouse hovers over the “purchase now” button, you’ve written the text but can’t quite bring yourself to press “send,” or you put your key in the ignition but can’t quite seem to start the car. You hesitate.

I first learned about the term process-focused or process-oriented Tarot reading from Jessica Dore, a Tarot reader and teacher whose first book, Tarot for Change, just hit the shelves. Her approach is so much more intuitive than I had often seen when I was trying to leaf through guidebooks and memorize the meaning of each card. She offers Tarot the way I had already been reading it: by observing the images of each card and noticing what comes up.