Gut Feelings

I just read an article about learning to be more intuitive. At first it seems counter-intuitive that you can learn intuition. I think this is because intuition has a connotation of being something that is ingrained. Something you either have or you don't have. Learning how to be intuitive rings of learning how to be smart. You either are smart or you aren't, right?

I vehemently disagree on both accounts. More later on the smarts.

Of course you can learn to be more intuitive. By the time people are teenagers, I believe they have had enough experiences in their lives that they can, by intuition, know a lot about most people and situations. The article I read suggests that, in order to be intuitive, you have "be in touch with yourself." It suggests meditation to achieve the inward stretch. Though I enjoy a good amount of yoga and love solitary, meditative activities, I believe there's more to intuition than occasionally slowing down to think.

Being intuitive, first of all, requires a lot of honesty. You cannot be intuitive by lying to yourself. In fact, a lot of times you can distinguish an intuition by asking yourself whether or not the feeling you are having feels like it's coming out of being honest with yourself. After all, if you are not honest with yourself, how do you know if you can trust yourself?

If you're going to be honest with yourself, sometimes you have to confront yourself. A lot of times, in the heat of passion, people feel or say things that they don't mean. After such a burst of anger, sadness, frustration or anxiety, they spend a lot of time convincing themselves that what they said of felt was the truth. Rather than listening to their intuitive side, which continuously posits that they were wrong, they find themselves continuously defensive against themselves.

There are ways that intuition can become muddled which make it difficult to decide if you can trust yourself. I think that being betrayed by someone you love results in a mistrust of yourself deep enough that finding your way back to inner focus can take a lot of healing time and patience. It doesn't hurt to find healing love, either. Just remember, if you try, you can trust yourself again.

Intuition is a powerful skill. It is not the kind of skill that has ever been taught in classrooms, and is probably one reason I eventually hated school. It is powerful enough that it must be used responsibly. It is inadvisable to challenge the limits of your intuition by continuously placing yourself in intuitively challenging situations, especially when your own emotions are involved. I say this from experience. But on this front, Susan King found a healthy outlet for her intuitive powers and I intend to find my own.