What Is Intuition?
(This is an excerpt from a University Of Metaphysical Sciences course at www.umsonline.org, please feel free to visit the school website)
One might ask what the difference is between intuition and psychic abilities. Actually, there is no difference. The word psychic seems weird and “far out” to some people, whereas intuition is a word that is more acceptable in conservative circles. The words psychic and intuition are used interchangeably and synonymously. However, one might say that intuition is a precursor to having psychic abilities, or becoming a psychic. Developed intuition leads to psychic abilities. Intuition comes from the right hemisphere of the brain, the “primary brain.” According to Enid Hoffman in Develop Your Psychic Skills (1981), the right brain “knows,” and the left brain “guesses” and theorizes.
Shakti Gawain says in her book Developing Intuition: Practical Guidance For Daily Life (2000), “Intuition is a natural thing. We are all born with it. Young children are very intuitive, although in our culture they are often trained out of it early in life… some of us consciously developed this ability, while a majority of us learn to disregard and deny it… Fortunately, with some practice most of us can reclaim and develop our natural intuitive abilities. We can learn to be in touch with our intuition, to follow it, and to allow it to become a powerful guide in our lives… the intuitive mind… [has] access to an infinite supply of information, including information that we have not gathered directly through personal experience. It appears to be able to tap into a deep storehouse of knowledge and wisdom—the universal mind.”
These three types of psychic skills are involved with intuition:
Clairvoyance: clear seeing, usually having to do with images, pictures, symbols.
Clairsentience: having to do with sensing, or feelings, knowing.
Clairaudience: having to do with hearing, actual words that you literally hear, also celestial
music or whooshing sounds.
Intuition Defined
1. Intuition is a nonlinear process.
This means that intuition does not reason and it doesn't need to. It simply knows, instantly. Reasoning goes through a process of analysis and deduction, and then draws conclusions. Intuition does not follow these steps. It gets glimpses of bits and pieces in the form of symbols.
2. Intuition gathers information through a non-empirical process.
Empirical means: based on experience or experiment, and sensory information through your five senses of taste, touch, hearing, society, and smell. The empirical process of gathering information is based on what has already happened. This has to do with past experiences, facts of reality, and other concrete parameters. Intuition, being non-empirical, does not perceive information through your senses. However, information received through the intuition becomes empirical, and can be used by the reasoning mind as such.
3. Intuition is interpreting information.
Intuitive impressions must be interpreted if they are to be useful. The information received through intuition is symbolic rather than literal. Intuition works with internal language. Very rarely does intuition speak with the spoken language. The symbols come in detail, more economically come words. We all know the saying, “A picture says 1,000 words.” This is true with the language of symbols.
4. Intuition responds to questions
Intuition must be set in motion by a question. The question focuses intuition in the same way that a captain or pilot needs the longitude and latitude in order to pinpoint the location of a mayday call from a stranded boat. When using intuition one is tapping in to a vast array of information. Unless a question is asked, intuition does not know what to pull first, for in every human there are millions of questions every day. Intuition must be directed as to which one of these questions to answer. Laura Day says in her book Practical Intuition: How To Harness The Power Of Your Instincts And Make It Work For You (1996), “Intuition responds to questions, even the ones we haven’t consciously asked.”