What You Always Knew About Intuition.

"Thinking is not going to do it."

Carolyn Myss

Look at a time lapse film of a city sometime. Seemingly permanent structures pile up and wear down like sandcastles. So do we. We pile up. We wear down.

Aside from our senses, the two main aspects of our perception that remain functioning in a fairly constant way are our minds, which tells us what mushrooms are safe to eat, or what time we have to go to the dentist; and our intuition – our inner "voice of reason," which is our true connection to source intelligence. Our connection to the mind of the universe.

We never actually learn much from our own minds, we learn with them. Our minds are tools, usually busily running through random options and possibilities, assigning classifications and priorities. Working, wheedling, making associations, stacking them up and taking them apart. We can memorize facts using that power of mental repetition – or call them up by flicking an associative switch at the right moment. We can collect and categorize knowledge in the basket of our mind, but it's our intuition that confirms the truth of that knowledge, and can actually teach us that truth first. Often, our intuition has to wait awhile for our mind to catch up to it.

The mind can be like a leaf blower, noisily pushing up pieces of data, carrying them along in a measured swirl of sorts, keeping them aloft obsessively, or setting them back down behind us, right where we first saw them. How many times have you come to a conclusion, only to realize that deep down you knew the truth of it already? Yet you needed evidence to convince your mind it was true, even though you knew it all along. And what do you say when that happens? You say, "I knew it all along."

That can be the moment in which you become aware of your intuitive self-- the part of you that witnesses your own (sometimes crazy) thinking. in this sense, you are not the person who's doing the thinking. You, your true self, is observing the person doing the thinking.

Here's the certainty: Our bodies are impermanent (at best). Our minds are tools – largely defensive and survival-oriented in nature, that operate by producing thoughts sequentially moment by moment. Many of these thoughts are extraneous and unnecessary, even counter-productive. They can make us do great things, or terrible things. Crazy things. Or all of the above, as is the case for most of us. Many of the dumbest things I've ever done have been very well thought out.

Our intuitions are our true connections to source intelligence, the truth we may eventually learn with our minds. Nothing really great ever happens without intuitive knowledge. That source knowledge is always available to us, immediately and eternally. However, you can never know it by passing over it with your mind, like a leaf blower. You have to practice allowing your intuition to be, to hear it without the noise – without the mind interference. Purposely enter into the eternal moment that we are always actually living in, where your intuition can be heard. Forget about thinking. Try to consciously allow your intuition to do the thinking for you.

Learn to trust and identify with your calm, inner "voice of reason," what the Quakers call, "the still, small voice," as much as you possibly can. Practice consciously living from that Source Intelligence, and watch the results. This is best achieved through practicing meditation.

Listen to the way this great early twentieth century swami describes it (particularly the last sentence):

"Intuition has a fourfold power. [1] A power of revelatory truth-seeing,  [2] a power of inspiration or truth-hearing,  [3] a power of truth-touch or immediate seizing of significance, which is akin to the ordinary nature of it's intervention in our mental intelligence, [4] a power of true and automatic discrimination of the...exact relation of truth to truth. Intuition can therefore perform all the action of reason – including the function of logical intelligence...but by it's own superior process and with steps that do not fail or falter."

Sri Aurobindo

Aurobindo said that a long time ago. Some of those swamis really know their stuff...

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