August 3rd, 2009
Do You Use Your Intuition?
Imagine having your own personal mentor/guide that was with you all the time, telling you what decision to make, when to turn left and not right, when to go ahead and when to hold back. And was correct every time! People who have developed their intuition and follow it have just that.
Intuition is that gut feeling, that non-rational thought process that can help you overcome the challenges of fear, find your life’s purpose, make decisions, trust yourself, and so much more.
Many people believe that intuition is something that you are born with – either you have it or you don’t. Recent studies have shown, however, that everyone is intuitive to a greater or lesser degree and that even if you haven’t consciously used your intuition you can still develop it – just like any skill can be developed over time.
Intuition tends to be more of a ‘right-brained’ function, aligned with creativity and artistic ability so has tended to be associated with creative and artistic people. In fact, creative and artistic people tend to be more naturally intuitive and can develop their intuition more easily than predominately left-brained, or more rational individuals tend to. However, since everyone uses both sides of their brain, intuition can be developed and accessed by everyone.
So, how do you know it is your intuition that is ’speaking’ to you, and not one of your other internal ‘voices’ ?
Shakti Gawain, in her book Developing Intuition: Practical Guidance for Daily Life, talks about a number of energies that reside in each of us. These energies are paired with their opposite energy with one from each pair being the dominate energy, and other from the pair tending to be a bit more submissive. The pairs identified by Shakti Gawain include:
The Rational Mind ………………………. Intuition
The Responsible Self ……………………. The Free Spirit
The Caretaker ……………………………… The Perfectionist
The Vulnerable Child ……………………. The Playful Child
The Doer or Pusher ……………………… Being
The Rule Maker …………………………… The Rebel
Self Acceptance ……………………………. The Critic
The Straight Talker …………………….. The Pleaser
Shakti Gawain states that from all of these you can tell it’s you intuition speaking to you because “Intuition never guides us with an authoritarian or critical edge. It doesn’t impose rules, it never feels heavy handed or burdensome, it doesn’t push us to anything that we-re really not ready to do, and it never makes us feel guilty about anything. It’s also not self-indulgent or rebellious, and never leads us to do something that isn’t good for us physically or emotionally.”
If we are feeling any of these, then the voice is not that of our intuition.
Intuition, on the other hand “…brings a feeling of enlivenment, openness, even sometimes relief and release. It feels good in our hearts and soul. It feels like exactly the right step to take in the moment.“
Sounds good, but how do we develop our intuition?
Shakti Gawain’s book also provides a number of exercises that can be used to begin to develop your intuition. The one that I really like involves journaling.
For this exercise you need a small notebook that you can carry with you wherever you go, and a pen.
For a period of a week or so, every time you experience a hunch, have an intuitive impulse, notice that something feels right or doesn’t feel right, etc., write this experience down in your journal. Keep a record of what the feeling is. The ‘feeling’ doesn’t need to be just a voice in your mind (in fact, intuition often appears as something other than a voice in your mind) but is likely to be a reaction in your body like a tingling or tightening in your gut or a numbness or sensation in your arm.
For those who are more rational-minded, you could also keep track of the outcomes of these feelings.
The more you practice noticing and identifying these feelings of intuition as intuition, the more you will be able to follow your intuition on a daily basis.
Do you follow your intuition? If so, how does your intuition present itself to you? What feeling do you receive from your intuition when it is asking you to notice it?
TTFN
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