After I was robbed, I decided never to ignore my intuition again.
Here’s what happened…
When friends suggested dining at a local restaurant, I felt uneasy.
Not wanting to be a party pooper I dismissed the rumble in my gut. Why feel uneasy about eating at a restaurant I’d never been to? I agreed to go.
This was my first mistake.
As we ate dinner, two men sat at the table next to ours. Glancing at them, a feeling washed over me like a wave. I thought to move my handbag to the floor instead of leaving it on the bench. I ignored the impulse.
This was my second mistake.
Midway through dinner, an energy shift caught my attention. Something had happened between the two men. One of them imperceptibly nodded to the other. My body tensed. I told myself that I wasn’t being rational.
This was my third mistake.
The evening progressed and the two men left the restaurant. My friends kindly paid for my dinner as a birthday treat. We hugged and parted ways.
Once home I realised that my purse had been stolen along with the usual credit cards, medical paraphernalia, driver’s license, five dollars in cash, and a bit of coinage.
My inner voice screamed, ‘I told you so!’
Credit card cancelling ensued while I berated myself for ignoring the signals my intuition had given me three times, no less.
Why hadn’t I trusted myself?
Why had logic prevailed?
Why not value this inner guidance and act on it straight away?
As it turned out there were plenty of reasons why this wasn’t easy. More about that in a minute.
I researched the subject, as per usual: ‘intuition’ from the Latin word, ‘intueri’ which means ‘to see within’, or ‘to consider or contemplate’. A dictionary definition defines intuition as ‘the act or faculty of knowing directly, without the use of rational processes.’
The word intuition implies spontaneity and immediacy, an experience that isn’t mediated by a conscious or deliberate rational process. Despite many different definitions of intuition it seems to be universally accepted that it isn’t rational, logical, or observable. Rational thought can be drawn out over time, taking a definable sequence of steps with a beginning, middle and end. Logic requires effort and deliberate intention. Intuition is experienced as non-sequential and is a single event. It’s inexplicable.
There are different types of intuition: clairvoyance (I see), claircognisance (I know), clairsentience (I feel), clairaudience (I hear), clairalience (I smell), clairgustance (I taste). I discovered there were nuances: expert intuition, creative intuition, social or relational intuition, and temporal, situational or experiential intuition. Some might call it dimensions of intuition: phenological, evolutionary, biological, epistemological, computational.
Osho (2001) examined intuition from the perspective of spirituality and mysticism. He thought intuition wasn’t scientific or rational and emphasised that it was ‘beyond intellect’ – ‘a different realm’ that had no intellectual cause. He called it a ‘felt leap of knowing’ that cannot be explained. We can only experience it or feel it. He thought intuition would always stay unknown because once known it would no longer be intuition. So from his perspective, intuition was inherently the Unknown.
Jung and Osho’s thoughts about intuition dovetail but Osho went further… by referring to intuition as an aspect of the ‘superconscious’, Osho differed from Jung’s ‘collective unconscious’. Osho’s ‘superconscious’ was more inclusive, meaning a universal consciousness or infinite consciousness, much grander than simply human possibility. Plus, Osho proposed that instinct, intellect and intuition were inborn. He thought of them as a form of hierarchy with instinct at the bottom, intellect in the middle, and intuition above intellect. Osho maintained that the higher realms of the hierarchy could penetrate the lower realms, but the lower realms couldn’t penetrate the higher; therefore, intuition could penetrate intellect, but intellect couldn’t penetrate intuition. This left someone with unexplainable intuitive experiences, which could lead to the intellect rejecting intuition. This was what happened in my robbery story.
Buddhism also has a view about intuition, seeing reason as limited and knowledge as transient and unreliable. The Buddha taught that intuition, not reason, is the source of ultimate truth and wisdom. In meditation, when the discriminating conscious mind is quieted, the intuitive mind is liberated.
Frances Vaughan (1979) contended that intuition is familiar to everyone, but is often repressed or underdeveloped. She suggested that intuition is a way of knowing. When one knows something intuitively there is a ring of truth to the knowing, yet also an experience of not knowing how one knows what one knows.
Vaughan claimed that learning to use one’s intuition is learning to be one’s own teacher or getting to know one’s ‘inner guru’ – learning to trust oneself versus being scared about the illogical or unusual experiences that verge on the paranormal.
In Vaughan’s book, Awakening Intuition (1979), she writes:
‘At any given moment one is conscious of only a small portion of what one knows. Intuition allows one to draw on that vast storehouse of unconscious knowledge that includes not only everything that one has experienced or learned, either consciously or subliminally, but also the infinite reservoir of the collective or universal unconscious, in which individual separateness and ego boundaries are transcended.’
Vaughan also gave credence to the usefulness of intuition in one’s life by pointing out that increased intuition can increase one’s choices and ultimately one’s freedom. She noted that in both Eastern and Western spiritual traditions, intuitive knowledge is recognised as the highest form of truth. She writes:
‘…intuition also takes you into those realms of experience that are ineffable… Mystical experiences which validate the underlying oneness of life and transpersonal experiences which dissolve ego boundaries and expand consciousness beyond the usual confines of the ordinary waking state, are all essentially intuition.’
Vaughan adds a word of caution, suggesting that intuition must be true, accurate, not a falsehood. If it’s not true then it’s a product of self-deception or wishful thinking.
Vaughan differentiated four levels of intuitive awareness: physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual. Strong bodily responses can come with physical awareness where there is no reason to think anything is wrong. She states that learning to trust the body’s responses is an important aspect to trusting intuition. On an emotional level, intuitive information can come in the form of feelings. The more one acts on one’s feelings and takes risks to check out the validity of the intuition, the more reliable one’s intuition can become. On a mental level, intuition comes into awareness through images or ‘inner visions’. New theories, new hypotheses, problem-solving, mathematics, and scientific inquiry can be formulated when mental intuition is operational. Spiritual intuition is associated with mystical experience, and is thought to be ‘pure’. It’s independent from sensations, feelings, and thoughts. It’s a holistic perception of reality transcending rationality and dualistic ways of knowing. It gives the individual a direct transpersonal experience of the underlying oneness of life and existence.
All levels of intuition will lead one into the unknown and the new, emphasising that no matter what level one is working on, intuition leads past the boundaries of what was once known and into areas of new discovery.
After the robbery, I paid closer attention to my intuitions, gut feelings, instincts, sixth sense, spidey senses. Countless times I asked my husband a random question and he’d say, ‘I was just thinking about that.’ Or, ‘How did you know to ask me that?’
Feeling braver, I also voiced my intuitions among close friends. And then, when it felt appropriate, with those who consulted with me.
I began to note different physical sensations: tingling, chills or goosebumps, vibrations around my legs, a tickling between my eyebrows, a sudden warmth infusing my entire body, an opening ‘swoosh’ at the crown of my head, a caress at the left side of my forehead as if to clear something away, a gut thud, hairs at the base of my neck standing up, shoulder tension.
I thought of intuition as playing or dancing with subtle energies that flowed from a timeless source into the physical universe.
In my next blog I’ll explore more of what I’ve learned about intuition and offer thoughts about how intuition may be enhanced or further developed. I’ll also tell you the rest of my thief story because there’s a wonderful ending not to be missed!
What do you think intuition is? What role does it play in your life? How has it been useful to you? What stories could you tell about intuition and have those experiences changed the trajectory of your life?
Tuning into Intuition (Part One)