Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Understanding Intuitiveness

As I mentioned yesterday we are going to talk about coping with intuitiveness, and bringing your inner knowledge into a relationship effectively, we have to start by understanding intuition, while we all have the undeniable knowledge that it exists, we should understand what it is in order to learn to trust, or rely on it.

The Law of Attraction and the Ultradian Rest Response

You see, there is a great difference between ‘thinking’ and ‘knowing’. Thinking is a purely intellectual activity. It mainly takes place as electrochemical processes in your body and brain.

‘Knowing’ on the other hand, transcends intellect. It is what is often called ‘intuition’. Intuition is often defined as ‘immediate knowing’, without the conscious use of reasoning. There is no sequence of thoughts following up on each other leading to an outcome. It’s just there, instantly. Bang! You suddenly get it. “Aha!” It appears to be stemming from a whole different source of awareness compared to the ‘rational mind’ or intellect that we tend to use so much in our lives.

There are five basic senses that we acknowledge which are what we hear, see, smell, taste and touch; we know that they exist because we rely on them every second of everyday.

Intuition, could be said to be part of another set of senses, that exist in every human being, some are just more apt to rely on intuitiveness than others. A sub-sense so to speak that also exists is what’s known as the flight or fight response, understand that this is called a response because although it begins from a place of inner knowing or sensing an uncomfortable or dangerous situation it evokes a physical effect in your body beyond knowing, the physical response includes an increased heart rate, and preparation for all muscle groups that would literally be needed to “flee” to physically prepare to meet an increased demand.

There is a lot more to that but that is the simplified explanation. My point is that this begins with intuitiveness or inner knowing that is strong enough to create a physical response in your body.

This would also explain why when you have an unusually stressful day you experience a stiff neck or other achy muscles, you can’t argue with science, but you can understand it, and understand it in a way that allows you to use it to your benefit. One thing that is important to note is while science agrees that the body changes physically as a result of the fight or flight syndrome they do support the presence of intuitive, even though we see the connection science will never endorse what is not measurable.

In our modern societies, we find ourselves under so much pressure to ignore intuition and to rationalize everything that happens. We’d rather go with our ‘heads’ than go with our ‘hearts’. We learn that from an early age in our education system, which puts the main focus on the left part of the brain, the intellectual and analytical part. As a consequence, if you’re like most people, you tend to ‘over-rationalize’ everything. You regularly get the feeling that you want to do something, and it really makes your heart sing. But then your intellect rears its ugly head, and suppresses the ‘intuitive knowing’ you just experienced by using the limiting thoughts and emotions that have been dominating your being and thinking for long. You start to think and feel things like: “Oh dear, who am I to think I can do that?”“Oh my, what will my mother say?”“Goodness, what will the boys at the bar think if I do that?”“Dear me, my parents will get angry for not doing something with my education…”“That can’t be right.

Scientists say that this is not true. Who am I to think otherwise?” Thoughts like this have ruled most people for all their lives and forced them into submission. The repetition that has been going on for years has created ‘habits’ to go with the ‘head’ all the time instead of the ‘heart’. The moment you have intuitive knowing and your heart starts to sing, you immediately begin to doubt it and you’re pulled back into line. “I can’t do that, it’s not responsible. What about my job?”“I’d love to do this, but…”“If I could ever do this… Nah, I can’t do that. I must have gone mad.”“What will the neighbors think?” You’re systematically pulled in line, back to the image of artificially imposed norms of what ‘society’ or others think you are supposed to be. It is ignoring the deepest core of yourself, and the intelligence of the magnitude that you are deep inside.

When you look at it this way, it’s not a surprise that your intuition is often at odds with what you think. The intuitive knowing stems from a source that has a much greater overview, the bigger picture. It sees what the ‘knowing’ and associated action will lead to. The rational intellect always has a limited perspective that is quite likely even colored by societal and religious ‘norms’, or ‘bad memories’ of certain events, which itself are often limited interpretations of what were actually stepping stones into a whole new reality.

Ernest Rossi, Ph.D., is an internationally renowned psychotherapist, teacher, and pioneer in the field of mind/body healing. In his book The Psychobiology of Mind/Body Healing, he describes how during an ultradian rest response your body goes into a mode that makes you more receptive to the unconscious parts of your being: “This is the time when it is easiest to access our own intuition, your own internal imagery. Thoughts are most likely to be closer to the unconscious. This is a time when the unconscious wants all the energy it can get. If you train yourself to just watch and observe and not intrude, you are going to fall into what is called ‘reverie’ or ‘hypnagogic state’, what I call its more naturally intuitive state.

”So when do you ‘know’ instead of just ‘think’? How can you distinguish? Well, it’s largely a feeling, but Dr. Laurie Nadel gives you some hints in her book Sixth Sense: Unlocking Your Ultimate Mind Power: “Do you find yourself losing concentration during certain times of the day? Perhaps it comes as a sudden touch of fatigue, or a subtle mental fuzziness. All of a sudden, you feel droopy. Your eyes may tear. You can’t stop yawning, or you sigh. Maybe you find yourself staring out the window, your mind far away from the tasks at hand. If somebody speaks to you, you find yourself startled by the sound of a voice. Or you don’t understand what was said the first time and ask the speaker to repeat himself.

”According to Dr. Nadel, these are signs that your body is entering the ultradian rest response. At times that this occurs, your body is most attuned to your intuition, as the four main regulatory systems of your body (endocrine system, autonomic nervous system, immune system and neuropeptides in your brain) align to the unconscious, greater or higher levels of yourself. This is not something uncommon. Everyone experiences this all the time, probably daily. The trick is to recognize it. Even some of the greatest minds in modern history accepted the importance of intuition: Albert Einstein said “The only real valuable thing is intuition.” Henri Poincare’ (one of France’s greatest mathematicians and theoretical physicists) said “It is by logic that we prove, but by intuition that we discover.

”According to Dr. Nagel, ignoring the signals of the ultradian rest response or trying to suppress them can cause you to become irritable, uncomfortable, and even depressed. However, she emphasizes that if you allow them and flow with them, they can be moments of great inspiration.

Here’s what she says: “This is the best time to take a break rather than forcing yourself to push through the fatigue. You can think of it as your intuition break, time to take a deep breath, close your eyes, and allow impressions from your intuitive right hemisphere [right brain] to flow through your mind. You are working on a project and would like help from your intuition, this is the time to ask for it. It is also a good time to meditate.” Meditation is not a must. All you need to do is trust your intuition and listen to your inspirations.

True enough, you are blessed with an intellectual mind too. But it shouldn’t dominate your intuitive knowing and suppress it.

The thing is that ‘attraction’ doesn’t happen like things just falling out of the sky right on your lap. It often works through inspirations to do something or go somewhere. Your inspirations and hunches point you towards things you can do to bring about the changes in your life that you desire. Ignore them, and you won’t ‘attract’ what you want. But follow along with them, and magic happens. And finally, always realize this… ‘Intuitive knowing’ can be unique to the knower, which is you. What may feel good for you, doesn’t have to feel good for others.

Everyone is unique. You will be inspired to do something that is best for you, and that matches what you want. That can be totally different from anyone else. Besides, not everyone wants the same thing, at least if everyone would follow their true ‘wants’, not the ‘wants’ imposed by the image of what others think you should want. No one should judge or ridicule what another feels is good for him or her, as long as the person never seeks to impose anything on anyone else. That is the freedom of life we need, that will change everyone’s life radically, and the whole world with it.

Although we should never be judged or ridiculed for what we feel, we will more often than not completely ignore that which comes intuitively because we feel we will be judged. The truth is in many cases you would be. There are times when we find it would be acceptable to allow intuitiveness into our conversations or relationships and we tend to identify those times by playing the woman’s intuition, or the mother’s intuition cards, why is it we feel the need to validate what we are feeling with these statements? Why is it not enough to just rely on our intuition without feeling the need to justify it by playing recognizable cards hoping for acceptance of that which is normal, natural, and everyone has it? Why don’t we just say…because I know that’s why?

I have always been much more intuitive than I wanted to be, there was a time when it worked for me, my children were young, and I could, and would say it’s mothers intuition that’s how I know. But as they became older it didn’t work so well they became aware that I couldn’t prove my feelings to be a fact, and although they too had periods of intuitiveness they knew in an argument or discussion feelings of knowing would not, could not ever incriminate them. Therefore they denied the accuracy of “I just know”, now something important happened in the mean time, as young adults they have validated mother’s intuition, they joke about it, how they got busted every time by Mother’s intuition, evil intuition, but when the intuition card comes into play they still rely heavily on the fact that it cannot be proven accurate. In other words they trust it when it’s working for them but will disprove it if it’s working against them.

So how do we learn to communicate in our relationships when we have periods of intuitiveness, in other words what would you do, or say if your child wanted to go out on a Friday night and for whatever reason you had an uneasy feeling about it?

Your left logical side of your Brain would say this is not intuition, it stems from fear based on knowledge of what could happen. Years ago my Son wanted to go cliff diving with some friends one Saturday afternoon, my intuition immediately told me that for whatever reason this was a very bad idea, so I said “no” my Son was 17 at the time, had a car had a license, and for all practical purposes I knew had he decided to go he could go. I used all the typical mother responses, because I said so, no, no, don’t ask me again, and it went on and on, until finally I decided to go with it, and said “look Son, I just don’t want you to go, I have an uneasy feeling about the whole thing, and I just do not want you to go” his face told me he accepted what I felt, and he did not go. It is true that it could have been fear based on the knowledge that it was dangerous, fear of what could happen, in the end it doesn’t matter, what matters is that I was able to sell him on my belief.

I have said before that above all else we have to trust and believe in ourselves in order to create in our lives. Is intuitiveness a universal response to what you want? Is this inner knowing a method of guiding you in the direction that you have chosen? I believe so, and if this is true, then we have to find away to incorporate our intuitive responses into our relationships with those who are co creating in our lives, and we have to rely on intuition to guide us in the right direction, first by acknowledgement that it exists, and is a valid decision making response. Second by calling a spade a spade, and avoid trying to sugar coat it by denying that what you are saying is based on a knowledge that you simply can’t explain.

The most effective delivery of intuitive thinking would be to say to your child, or your spouse, or whoever “look, I can’t explain it, but I just know this is a bad idea. Or Look, I can’t explain it but it feels like the right thing to do”. Like all other things, once you believe and trust yourself, when faced with a situation where you need to communicate with someone based on your intuition your conviction will show through. You have to do this in spite of the fact that technically science is not on your side, and technically it does not could not and will not hold water in a discussion. It is always what you believe that changes everything, when you trust yourself, trust your feelings, and your inner knowing, your conviction, your belief will be all the validation your knowing needs to be accepted in the co-creating process.

Never shy away from what you know…always validate that knowing with belief and conviction, the more you come to rely on your intuitiveness, the more intuitive you become, the more intuitive you become the more you are allowing your inner self to assist you in creating that which you desire most.

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