What is Intuition?

Gut Feeling. Inner Knowing. Higher Self. Premonition. That Little Voice. Innate Sense. Messages from Spirit. Yes! All of it! Whichever phrase resonates most with you - you know what we are talking about. You may use all of them synonymously to point at something that we have all felt, but can't fully describe.

Intuition is a feeling. We are all born being able to grok these feelings in our core. It's a feeling about something that isn't yet fully known or understood. We have a feeling about a person we just meet or we find our selves in a situation that we worry might become problematic. Once a person shows their true colors or the situation resolves itself we find ourselves saying, "I just knew that would happen!". But how did you know? Where did that knowing come from?

We get intuitive messages through both an inner knowing and by interpreting the messages from the world around us. The universal understanding we all have at our fingertips is amazing! The trick is twofold - remember how to listen and trust what you are hearing. The source of these messages seems to come from a place beyond ego and individual self. I like to think that they arise from the original source of creation from where we all came and back to where we all return. Like waves in the ocean. This source is clear, unbiased, and because we are a part of it and it is a part of us, it is always connected to us and ready to help. So if this source is like the sun and always shining, how did we obscure this radiance? Why do we stop listening and trusting this inner guidance?

I have a theory. As humans, we are taught to understand our world and experiences through the rational filter of our mind. One of the functions of mind is to categorize and make logical meaning of our surroundings. This is very helpful for survival and getting along within our community. However, our Western society has chosen to promote logic and tangible proof while lambasting feelings to be immaterial and unfounded.

For clarification, I am using the term "feeling" to encompass both intuition and the emotions, though the two are vastly different in nature. While intuition is clear and objective, the emotions are very subjective and personal. Intuition seems to originate from an unclouded source while emotions originate within our individual selves. In the Judeo-Christian model of society both intuition and emotions are generally considered, in their own ways, the work of the devil. Because society ignores and denigrates both intuition and emotion, I'm using the term "feeling" to indicate both.

The combination of philosophies like those of Aristotle, the Judeo-Christian societal model, and patriarchy in general helped build the foundation of our current society. This foundation has been laid upon the idea that reasoning brings about virtue and happiness while feelings, especially pleasure and pain, are base should be fought and overcome. This foundation relies on black and white thinking where things are categorized as good or bad, right or wrong.

When we fight a feeling we tend to stuff it away in our bodies, bury it in our mind, or pretend it doesn't exist. The idea is to get rid of it without having to actually feel the feeling. When we overcome a feeling we treat them the same as ideas or concepts by translating them with our logical minds. Through this translation we dilute the potency of the feeling and dissect an experience that is most useful in the original state. Once a feeling is broken down by logic, we can add in judgement from our social and religious filters to convince ourselves that our emotions and intuition are somewhere on the black and white spectrum and then personalize it - we are right or wrong, good or bad. And as Socrates proved back in the day, we can convince ourselves of anything using logic!

But again, intuition is a feeling. When we keep it whole and intact we can actually learn a lot. We walk into a house we've never been to before and we feel welcome and at home. It's our first feel of the situation. Then we start to realize it smells like our grandmother's house and we rationalize that we feel comfortable because it reminds us of a safe place in childhood. But our first feel of a situation is generally correct, regardless of how we choose to rationalize it.

Intuition can also express deeper and more complex feelings. I once had a lover who, despite our relations being completely consensual, several times I felt like I had just been raped. Logically, there was absolutely no reason for this feeling, so I stuffed it down and told only one person. His experience, on the other hand, was that he was being healed by us being together. What was really happening there, beyond the physical and rational? Given that the relationship did progress and became slowly more abusive, I feel like my intuition was giving me a heads up that this was a dangerous person. But of course, I rationalized the relationship saying that I was helping him and he needed me. Classic co-dependent! It took a couple years, but I did manage to literally escape the toxic web I chose to fall into.

Of course, the situation doesn't have to be disastrous when we don't follow our intuition, but imagine what our lives would look like if we always did. If we waited for the right thing to come to us, rather than jumping at what is presented because we think we may not get another chance. If we spent less time with people we have a bad feeling about, even if we feel obligated to them. If we chose to follow what naturally inspires us rather than following the status quo set by our family, society, etc. Our lives might look quite different!

Opening up to one's intuition is often done by unraveling our religious, familial and societal beliefs about ourselves and the world around us. These beliefs are what create our personal filters or lenses (sometimes called ego) through which we experience our world. Mostly, we can't see these filters and it takes some deep personal work to reveal them. Once we let go of enough filters that are obscuring our viewpoint, then we can begin to see our selves and the world more realistically and accurately. We see things as they truly are, not how we want or fear them to be. By seeing more clearly we can more easily hear and trust the communications we receive from our world.

For me, opening up took about 20 years off and on of intensive therapy, self-improvement courses, deep Buddhist and philosophical study, and a boat load of gruelingly honest personal reflection. And I'm still learning so much. So the road isn't easy, but once you are on it, you don't want to be anywhere else. Every insight and breakthrough leads you closer to knowing your true self and a path to genuinely helping others.