Intuition

We all want to know what’s going to happen in our future. Most humans like knowing, not wondering. Wondering causes anxiety, stresses, and often confusion. I will admit, I often read the last paragraph of a book before starting it, to see how the book ends. (Thanks Harry! IYKYK) I don’t like surprises. I like knowing what’s going to happen. However, so much of life is unknown. Sometimes, we feel lost, and we don’t know which way to turn.

Often, people will reach out to mentors, friends, family, etc. to ask for advice. But, we don’t look to our best source of advice: ourselves. What if the answer is within you? It is. We all have intuition, or “the power or faculty of attaining to direct knowledge or cognition without evident rational thought and inference” (encyclopedia.com). To decide, we need to use that intuition to guide us. We need to depend on ourselves rather than other people. We need to look within instead of without. Intuition happens in our subconscious or unconscious.

Psychologists believe our intuition relies on powers of pattern-matching, as the mind searches for experience stored in long-term memory or similar situations and presents in-the-moment judgments based on them (Psychology Today). Intuition has been called our “gut feeling.” intuition tends to arise holistically and quickly, without awareness of the underlying mental processing of information. We need to be mindful of our gut feelings. Although these feelings do not actually come from our guts, they do come from deep inside us, and they can help us have the emotional clarity we all seek. Intuition allows us to just get it, just know, or feel it. We can’t always explain those feelings, but we don’t need to because we know those feelings. For example, “I know he’s, my soulmate. I don’t know why, but I just feel it.”

Intuition is similar to a first impression. Our intuition serves as our brain’s need to predict and prepare for what’s coming next. Our intuition, like our first impressions, relies on automatic systems and rapid evaluation systems. Both are prone to errors as they are formed by our previous experiences/biases. Our gut feelings are often correct, but we tend to attach certainty to them, they do not always merit. While these feelings are important in our decision-making, we cannot solely rely on them.

Our intuition is highly effective—if we don’t think about it too much. When we feel intuition, we often get deeply attached to those feelings.  Psychologist Sascha Topolinski of the University of Cologne in Germany said, “intuition is something emotional that makes you confident in an idea.” However, we have the tendency to rationalize our gut feelings. We use our heads to fight with our hearts.

We can improve our intuition. We need to quiet our minds, and we need to listen—whether it’s a quiet walk in nature, meditation—the key is quiet and focus. We can use focused thinking to train our intuitive expertise over time, but we can also invite or avoid intuitions in the moment. I have been working on being more intuitive in my own life. Part of increasing our intuition is not to ignore it. If we continually ignore our gut feelings, we will lose our ability to recognize them at all. It’s important to note: sometimes intuition requires reflection. Just because we feel it doesn’t mean we should act on it immediately.

As part of my improvement of intuition, I have a set of oracle cards that I use whenever I am unsure of a situation. Being formerly religious, I was skeptical when someone suggested I get tarot/oracle cards (they are different) because religion teaches you to go to God for answers. Seeking answers from tarot/oracle cards was evil because it was seeking the answers outside of God. Reading the Bible is relying on someone’s interpretation to tell you what God wants to do. The Bible was interpreted by people, and it gets further interpreted by man. Or you, if you study it on your own. How is that different than if I pull a tarot/oracle card and interpret it on my own?

Early on in my journey away from religion, I knew I had the answers within me. I needed to stop seeking the answers from other people’s interpretations and rely on my own feelings. People fear what they don’t know or understand. They see tarot/oracle cards as people trying to influence you/take advantage of your confusion. I am sure there are people who use the cards for that. However, the cards only have the power you give them. Every time I feel lost/confused about a decision, I pull 3 cards, and I use them to help me understand how I feel about the situation. Understanding my feelings, and how I can better understand them, helps me navigate tough situations in life. They aren’t magic. My cards help me explore various perspectives, and sometimes, unearth hidden thoughts/feelings. I use them for clarity and understanding.

I am not a fan of tarot cards. I think they are darker than oracle cards. Taror cards are also more structured. They can be used as a psychological tool to tap into the unconscious mind.  While Tarot relies on 78 cards that use specific symbolism to tell a story, Oracle cards have varied meanings and uses—all depending on the deck. Tarot cards have suits and are used for divination. They follow astrology and zodiac signs, while each deck of oracle cards are unique. Tarot cards translate historical symbolism, while Oracle cards allow the user to interpret the meaning based on their intuition. I had a set of each type of cards; but I used my intuition to choose the oracle cards. I felt they were right for me.

Intuition and insight are not the same. Intuition is sensing. Insight is seeing. According to MacroCognition’s Gary Klein, “Intuition is how we use our experience to know how to act. Insight runs in the opposite direction. It’s not just drawing on what you know. It’s changing what you know.” Intuition and insight have a complex relationship, and they need to be used together to understand the other.

Some people are more intuitive than others. While I believe listening to our intuition is somewhat innate, I know that it’s a skill you can increase. It takes practice. Slow down. Listen. Follow through. If you feel your “gut” telling you something, then do it. If you don’t, you might regret it. There is a Faith in Intuition (FI) scale, which is an established psychological measure that assesses how much people trust their intuition and instincts. The FI scale is part of a broader effort to understand how intuition aids the decision-making process and cognitive processes (Elizabethtown College).

Our intuition even sways our morality. Some of our deepest-held beliefs involve morality: how we feel people should behave toward one another. For us, these beliefs may seem as rock-solid as fact–they’re guided by intuition. Morality topics either feel right or wrong to us: we can’t explain why; they just do, and there is no justification as to why. Moral intuitions are unavoidable and valuable, says psychologist Matthew Feinberg, “They drive kindness as well as social justice movements. But moral intuitions are also at the heart of many, many problems in society. Impassioned gut reactions can derail rational discussion, as opponents are labeled evil.” The truth is: thinking differently than you doesn’t make someone evil, it makes them different. (I won’t get into politics, but this is currently a prevailing thought in America and calling people names and evil because they think differently than someone else I just wrong.)

Our intuition helps us have discernment about others. When we meet them, or how they present themselves on social media, in a text, in public, factors in how we form relationships. Personality judgments come on thin margins. We like someone’s eyes or their smile. We swipe right based on how they look, or how they make us feel.

Our intuition may be what we really know, or what we know without knowing. That may cause us to be nervous about our intuition. We are not afraid of our intuition, but we are afraid to use it—to trust it. Trusting our intuition isn’t logical, and for many of us, we are taught to value our logic above all else. Over time, continually trusting our intuition lessens our conflict of head vs. heart, and moves us to “acceptance,” which, by nature, is not fear-based, but faith-based.

Writing is intuitive. I write what I feel; what the characters would do/how they would act. Poetry is inherently intuitive. It’s a feeling that I put into words. Which is difficult. Intuitive thinking is non-linguistic, and it is difficult to communicate such thinking to others, to open up personal understanding for public discussion and exploration. That’s why I don’t believe poetry is written to be interpreted. How do you interpret someone’s feelings? You can’t. Sometimes, we can’t interpret our own. Intuition can be considered, sensual (sensory) thinking. We can express it through dance, through songs, and sense-impressions.

Reasoning is not the opposite of intuition. In fact, we often use our intuition while we are reasoning. Indeed, it’s essential in life to use both in tandem to answer questions and move forward. If we don’t, we can find ourselves stuck, and no one wants to be stuck. We need to balance our use of reasoning with our intuition to make the decisions that are the best for us. So, use your intuition to know when to use your intuition and when to use your reasoning. Intuition is our inner guidance, after all. Intuition is the whispers of our soul.