Intuition is the gateway to your vast and unlimited self, and all the wisdom and guidance you need to create a prosperous life.  It serves as your inner compass aligning you and guiding to your highest path and potential, and opens you to realms of awareness beyond five-sensory perception.

Although intuition is an inherent ability that we all possess and can tap into for guidance, creativity, problem solving, and new discoveries, many people do not believe in it, do not understand it, nor do they act on it.  This ability is not a rare gift, but it is something that comes to everyone.  Most people have had the experience where they sense information that seems to come spontaneously from nowhere or have heard of people who had experiences such as:

• The telephone rings and you reach out to answer it. As you do, the image of someone flashes in your consciousness. You pick up the telephone, and the person whose image flashed in your mind is at the other end of the telephone.
• You get a feeling you should not accept a job offer that is paying significantly more than you are currently earning. Months later, you discover that the company has filed for bankruptcy and is laying off it workforce. Because you listened to your gut feeling, you avoided being financially impacted by the actions of the new company.
• A woman suddenly senses that her young daughter has fallen off a swing in the schoolyard. Moments later she receives a telephone call from the school confirming her feelings.
• A scientist is working on a cure for a medical problem. While sleeping, the scientist receives a message while dreaming. The message was the missing link the scientist needed to complete the cure.

These are just a few examples of this phenomenon called intuition.  People often describe these and similar experiences as psychic impressions, gut feelings, hunches, inspiration, revelations, premonitions, insight, inner voice, or vibes.  No matter how we describe these experiences, they all have one thing in common-they all come from the small voice within us.  I called this small voice the Higher Self which is the aspect of your consciousness closest to Source (God).  It is your divine essence; the fully realized eternal being that you are.

Although intuition is a highly effective human ability and perhaps the most universal natural ability we possess, there remains considerable skepticism in western cultures about it.  Unlike the non-western cultures which associates intuition with a way to discern the Divine or the true nature of all realities, western cultures tend to emphasize intellect, logical thinking, reason, rationality, and objectivity.   As a result, many people in western cultures denigrate its legitimacy and reject its efficaciousness. 

However, there are many people who have readily accepted the validity of intuition and acknowledged that they have used their intuitive power in their lives.  These people include scientists, philosophers, musicians, artists, and business people such as Albert Einstein, Dr. Jonas Salk, Philosopher Karl Popper, Ray Kroc (founder of McDonalds) , and Morris Kline (mathematician) .

Albert Einstein, who was one of the most notable scientists in the 20th century, was an ardent believer in man’s intuitive abilities.  He said that “man’s conquest over his own ignorance must rest on intuition and “the intellect has little to do on the road to discovery.  There comes a leap in consciousness, call it intuition or what you will, the solution comes to you and you don’t know how or why.”

Intuition is derived from Latin term intuire, which translates as “to look upon attentively, to contemplate, or to consider”.  The word intuition is used as a noun to describe a faculty of mind, a state or a mode of consciousness, a specific kind of knowledge, and a process in arriving at general knowledge or meaning. 

To intuit is the verb form of this noun and intuitive is the adjective that conveys the same meaning.

intuition is that unerring and inexplicable knowing beyond logical thought and volition.  Yet it possesses a flowing logic all its own.  It is a powerful ability that manifests itself in the hunches and inspirations that lead again and again to added insight or new direction, creative breakthrough, or the ability to be in the right place at the right time.  In a typical intuitive experience, there is a sense of being a recipient as opposed to an initiator.  It is the “Aha” which comes spontaneously, a sudden dawning, or total shock.  Intuition is holistic to the extent that it is a flash containing an extraordinary amount of information worth a thousand pictures, yet not necessarily focused on any details - the whole rather than the parts.

An important first step in becoming aware of our intuitive messages is paying attention to how it comes to us.  We each have a dominate mode or combination of ways we receive intuitive impressions (messages or revelations), and understanding what works for us is the key to opening up your intuitive insight.  There are four basic modes that we can receive intuitive impressions from our inner voice.   These four basic modes include:

1. Receiving inner or outer visions or dreams (clairvoyance).
2. Receiving inner or outer sounds or messages in words (clairaudience).
3. Receiving feelings through inner sensing or bodily sensations (clairsentience).
4. The inner knowing and epiphanies of awareness at higher levels. (Claircognizance)

All four modes reveal insights and information beyond our five-sensory sources, sight, sound, touch, and smell.   You may naturally resonate with or be more dominant in one or more of these inner senses; however, you can work to awaken and strengthen each one of them.

Although we all have intuitive abilities, no one can more force or command intuition than grow one inch in height.  You can prepare for it by being open and receptive, but you can not say here it is and have it appear.  It comes suddenly as a burst of wind on a still day, or like shooting star illuminating the night sky.  When it does appear, it usually appears with the information that you need at the time.  It may contain a solution for some problem you have been working on, information as a warning to protect you, or contain symbols that leads to some new discovery or new invention.    

Intuition can come as a bolt from no where.  It can be as weak as a slight gut feeling.  It can be a feeling in your heart, a sensation in your head, a ringing in your ear, a whispering voice in your head, an answer to a nagging question, insight and information of a future event, or a complete story in symbols in the mind.    

However, you can initiate guidance from your Higher Self by using intentions and asking for help and insight.  From that point, your Higher Self will respond via one or more mode for receiving intuitive messages. 

But there is two major problems for most people….

Firstly, many people dismiss these experiences (messages) off as coincidence or ignore them because they are reluctant to listen or trust to their inner voice.  As children, many of us were not trained to connect with or trust our intuition.   When I was in grammar school, I did arithmetic with intuition and allowed the answer to compute automatically.  But my junior high school math teacher threatened to flunk me for getting the right answers without being able to show steps by which I arrived at them.  Many schools have scolded children for daydreaming, doodling or looking out of the window which often suppress creativity. 

Furthermore, western cultures does not encourage the reflective receptive attitude necessary to expand consciousness or to access knowledge within.  Albert Einstein said “the intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant.  We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.”

I believe this mistrust of our intuitive abilities is due to fear.  This fear is the fear of the unknown, fear of loss of control, fear of unalterable life changes, fear of psychic ability, fear of confusion about reality and fantasy, or fear of making a mistake.  This fear sends a message to other levels of consciousness that they are not to permit full expression.

Secondly, many people who accepts the concept of intuition, believe that it speaks to us in complete, grammatically correct sentences or in vivid, color images.  However, intuition communicates indirectly, in fragments and through symbols and is never forceful or loud.  It is rare to find a high degree of correspondence between intuitive impressions and what actually occurs. 

For example, perhaps your inner voice tells you to eat avocados.  You are willing to eat them, but you wonder “why avocados?”  You may even explore the Internet to read up on the nutritional value of avocados.  But the reason you were given the message to eat avocados did not have anything to do with nutrition.  It was to nudge you to go to the market that day.  While there, you run into a friend from your old neighborhood who introduces you to the person who is to become your spouse.   You discover the intuitive message was not about eating avocados after all; it was nudging you to go to the market so you could meet the person you would ultimately marry.

If you truly desire to become come receptive for intuitive guidance, you must connect to your Higher Self remove the blocks to intuition.  These blocks are the inability or unwillingness to surrender in a detached way from the capricious, neurotic ego.  The ego is our conscious identity of who we believe we are, and it keeps us externally focused.  When we detach from the ego’s control, we can have transpersonal experiences which always involve an expansion of consciousness.  The reality of these experiences is apprehended intuitively.  When our consciousness expands, it allows the deepest wisdom and truth to come forth.

To move pass the ego, you must pierce the illusion of the neurotic ego and enhance one’s intuitive abilities.   This can be accomplished by listening to your heart.  The heart is the seat of the soul, and the place where your Higher Self can be heard when your mind is still.  The incessant chatter of your ego mind battles clear communication with the small voice within.   

To quiet the mind, you can use any technique that will still the ego mind and to draw its attention from the outer world to the realm of inner realities.  This has a positive effect on awakening the sensitivity to intuition.  The intention of quieting the mind is to produce a shift to an inward receptive state and to diminish the intensity of ordinary consciousness so that the small inner voice can be heard.  Personally, I recommend the metaphysical practice of meditation which prepares the mind for the experience of intuition. 

Meditation is an emphasis on turning within and connecting to the depths of one’s Higher Self; the point where God is manifesting as you.  In Matthew 6:6, Jesus states “Go into your room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in the secret place; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly. “  This means to go inside your mind and close off the outer senses and seek a connection to your Higher Self.  In a meditative state, the full power of your intuitive insight can be accessed.  In this state, your intuition senses the whole reality of the situation and delivers information which would be unobtainable by any other means. The deeper the meditative state, the clearer it becomes as to what the best solution can be.

Although meditation is by far the best transpersonal activity a you can use for becoming receptive to intuition, there are additional consciousness expanding activities that can be practiced.  Some of these activities include visualization, yoga, mind mapping, and work with dreams.  These activities are designed to sensitize their innate imaging capability of the unconscious mind and to give the mind practice in integrating the imaging capacity of the right hemisphere with the language capacity of the left hemisphere.   While intuition may emerge spontaneously, when you make an intentional decision to participate in these activities, your innate intuitive ability is awakened more quickly and usually more powerfully.

Namaste,

RC

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