Psychics!! Fortune-Telling!! It’s everywhere these days – the lure of the psychic and the pursuit of the otherworldly: promises to change your life, find that right person, win the lottery!
Is there any truth behind all this hype? What’s all this business about intuition? Is it “out there” and beyond the pale? Or is it a misunderstood – and very normal – part of life?
Let me start off by sharing three things with you: The first is that I am an intuitive consultant. The second is that I never saw myself as such. And the third is that:
You are probably intuitive yourself – more so than you may realize.
Does this seem to be a startling revelation?
Before you start to turn the page, please bear with me.
I have learned that what we call intuition is a very complex – and misunderstood – phenomenon, and that we all, myself included, have some misperceptions about it.
So let’s start off by defining our terms. The word “intuition” is the noun form of the verb “to intuit,” which comes from Latin, meaning “to look in” or “to look on.”
Intuition is defined by Webster’s as “the immediate knowing or learning of something without the conscious use of reasoning; instantaneous apprehension.”
A lot of times we tend to use the word “intuitive” interchangeably with “psychic.” I don’t use the term “psychic” to refer to myself because of all the negative and strange connotations associated with the term – several of them coming from associations with 900 lines and fortune-telling. However, for the sake of this article, let’s assume that the terms intuition and psychic can be used interchangeably.
Intuition is simply a form of knowing things without using our left-brain analytical reasoning faculties. Period. It is really not that arcane or esoteric.
So, let’s delve into it more. Allow me to take you by the hand and share some fascinating things with you about intuition.
First of all, intuition is real. It is not fantasy. It is not necessarily spooky and otherworldly. It is quite real and exists in our normal everyday reality.
Intuition is simply a mental faculty, another form of intelligence. It’s another way of knowing things. For anyone who enjoys using his or her mind and mental abilities, learning to use your intuition is de rigueur. If we have only developed our left-brain intelligence, we are incomplete in our intelligence capabilities. We may not be as “smart” and cognitively developed as we could be. In order to be truly high-functioning, we must incorporate all our possible faculties, including the intuitive.
You don’t have to choose between being logical and intuitive. These faculties can work together, rather than being “either/or” modes. Indeed, some of the truly high-functioning minds among us are those that are whole-brain (logical, creative, and intuitive), including some of our greatest historical geniuses: inventors, scientists, thinkers, etc.
You also don’t have to be weird or “out there” or wear a turban to be intuitive – or even necessarily see yourself as a “psychic.” As I mentioned, I never saw myself as an intuitive. I had a very normal upbringing. I had a rigorous academic background, including graduate work. So my left brain was strongly developed. I also had a strong spiritual orientation from birth. I pursued acting and singing as well, as two ongoing loves, so I was also incorporating a form of creativity into my life. And I had an abiding interest in metaphysics, ESP, and “psychic phenomena,” and read everything I could get my hands on on these subjects. Still I never saw myself as “psychic.” I was, instead, a fairly normal, if well-rounded and also somewhat independent, product of growing up in the 50’s.
I attended Duke University as an undergraduate and went to Dr. Rhine’s lab one day. (Dr. J. B. Rhine was a pioneer in this country in researching ESP.) When I stopped in to visit one day out of curiosity, the staff there were very nice. One person insisted on informally testing me, which I resisted because I thought it would be a waste of time.
I did well.
And I also considered it a fluke.
I simply did not consider myself psychic
And yet here I am now, an intuitive consultant.
So, what happened?
Quite simply, I developed my latent abilities and figured out how my intuition worked. And I accepted that I really was intuitive.
And you can, too – if you are so inclined.
One of the first steps toward developing your intuition is simply to acknowledge that the ability is there and that you can develop it. Until you make that acknowledgment to yourself, you will find yourself stymied. Our own self-doubt gets in the way of accomplishing things. Self-doubt booby-traps us.
When I first started doing intuitive sessions for others, my doubt that I could really do what I was doing kept interfering with my doing the best I could. I had to work on developing my intuition and then I had to work on accepting that I was intuitive.
So, let me say that you are more likely than not quite intuitive.
If you think about it, you’ve probably had a spontaneous intuitive experience. For example, you think of someone you haven’t seen in a long time and then you hear from or run into this person. Or you think of a song and turn on the radio and it’s playing. Most people have had experiences like this and thought nothing of them. They are, however, spontaneous expressions of intuition – very common, ordinary occurrences that we give no second thought to. Intuitive occurrences.
For some of us, intuition may be closer to the surface than for others. I’ve always felt that there was a strong link between intuitive ability and creative/artistic ability – and also between creativity and spirituality (even if it’s repressed).
So the more creative and spiritual among us may also be more consciously intuitive.
Those of us who are most intuition-accessible and creative may be more “thin-boundaried.” The theory of thin and thick boundaries has been formulated by Dr. Ernest Hartmann, a psychiatrist and sleep researcher at Lemuel Shattuck Hospital in Boston, in the context of his research into sleep and nightmares, and the boundaries referred to represent boundaries between the conscious and unconscious mind, as well as between us and others (thin-boundaried people being more empathic). I would also extend this idea to a boundary between our normal three-dimensional reality and other, more spiritual realms. The thin-boundary theory feels like a correlate to or another way of expressing my sense of a connection between and among intuitive ability, creativity/artistic ability, and spirituality. (And, again, there is no antithesis or mutual exclusivity between being creative/intuitive and logical or analytical!)
So, some people may be more easily prone to accessing intuition
People who are more naturally intuitive may also just pay more attention to subtleties.
And this brings us to one lesser-known attribute of intuition, and that is that intuition is receptive. In other words, it is a receptive mode by which we receive information. It is in stark contrast to our left-brain logical and analytical mode which is active and seeks and probes. The active left-brain mode is the mental mode that we are normally in in our culture; it is the mode that we are trained to use and that is encouraged.
Intuition, however, operates differently. When I have taught people how to access their intuition, they will often engage in left-brain guessing games as they’re initially trying to use their intuition, because they’re not used to being in a receptive mental mode. (Indeed many were trained out of being in this mode and were, instead, accused of “day-dreaming,” etc.)
There are other attributes of intuition. True intuition is clear and not colored by our emotional needs and wants or fears, or by our preconceived mind-sets. This is why it is so important for practicing intuitives to have worked on clearing their own personal emotional issues and mental prejudices – or at least to bypass them in their work – so that the information they get for others will be clear and true information, and not coming from their own fears or ego needs
Different intuitives may have different ways of working to get clear information, and anyone wishing to develop and work with his or her intuition will also want to do this. I “tune in” to get information, going to a deeper level of consciousness so as to receive pure information uncontaminated by any of my own “stuff.”
Although there is a link between strong intuitive ability and spirituality, in some people spirituality may be repressed. In other words, some people who are intuitive may not necessarily be empathetic, altruistic, or ethical. We have all heard stories of psychics (often a “Sister this or that” or “Madame somebody or other” or “Lady thingamabob”) who prey on their customers’ vulnerability by telling them that they have a “curse” on them that can be removed for $1000. If it sounds like a scam, it probably is a scam!) Then there are the stories of the spiritual leaders (often male) gifted in psychic abilities, who continually seduce their female followers, again by preying on their vulnerability and convincing them that such sexual contact is necessary for their spiritual advancement.(!) Just because we’ve developed our intuitive ability does not mean that we have suddenly become a spiritual adept!
One fascinating thing that I’ve learned about intuition is that there are so many different forms and types of it. I always used to feel that if a person was “psychic,” he or she always did the same thing, got information in the same way, and it was usually the same type or genre of information. I continued to labor under this misconception even after I started working as an intuitive. I kept trying to put myself into a preconceived mold, trying to be the “psychic” I thought I was supposed to be or that others expected me to be.
Well, I’m here to tell you that it just ain’t so.
If you’re psychic, you get sudden flashes of information and usually about the future, right?
Wrong!! It ain’t necessarily so!
Intuition can be so variable from one person to another that I’m reminded of Baskin-Robbins: intuition can come in many different flavors. And these variations can come both in the form of intuition and in the type of information received.
Some intuitives do get strong, sudden flashes. Some people get impressions. Some people just have a knowing. Some people get images or see things, including those who have visions; others hear things. Some people are voice-sensitive. Some people are mediums and communicate with those who have passed on. Others “channel” or receive information directly from spirit guides or disembodied entities. Some people specialize in psychometry, a method of receiving impressions or information from holding objects. (Psychometrists often do police work, working with the personal objects of victims or perpetrators.) Some people receive information in dreams. Some people can actually see inside others’ bodies. Some people are gifted in psychokinesis, using their mental abilities to affect objects. Some people see and read auras (energy fields around people, animals, etc.) The list can go on and on.
Although I do sometimes get flashes, most of my information comes in the form of impressions. If only it were strong and easy! (This is another factor in working with intuitive information: if the information we get is not straight-forward or self-explanatory, then we need to interpret it. This can be somewhat tricky, but, like anything else, improves with practice.)
In developing your own intuition, you might find that it naturally comes in one form more than others – or it can also come in more than one form. Although I usually get a sense of things, at times I also get images or words or even colors, for example.
The type of information that we get can also vary. The traditional “psychic” usually focuses on events, what will happen – a wedding, an accident, a pregnancy, “coming into money,” etc. This is what we consider traditional “fortune-telling.” Some people mainly receive dramatic information about plane crashes, assassinations, natural disasters, etc. Some intuitives specialize in finding lost objects. Others specialize in health issues, working as medical intuitives. Some people have spiritual knowing, awareness of spiritual matters. Just as some intuitives focus on the mundane, others may focus more on the esoteric and spiritual.
The important thing to determine in developing your intuition (have I convinced you yet that it’s there?) is how your particular intuition expresses itself, what form it comes in, and what particular type of information you’re oriented toward.
It took me over four years to figure out what I was doing and how I was doing it. I thought I was supposed to do what I thought a “psychic” was supposed to do. Boy, if someone had only clued me in earlier!
I finally came to realize that my orientation was really toward personal and spiritual growth issues. I was not – nor could ever be – a typical “psychic” or fortune-teller, because that was not my orientation. My spiritual orientation and a priori underlying assumption that we are here to learn and grow serve as a focal point for my work.
I learned that I am very sensitive to energy, most notably people’s energy (but other types of energy as well), and that I have a particular gift for reading people, their essence and what is going on in them internally as a result of what they’re dealing with. Reading people and their energy, including their relationships and other people in their lives, including those who have passed on, is central to my work.
I also learned that, just as some might focus more on events, my true orientation was toward meaning, the underlying meaning of events, relationships, etc. and how they relate to where we are in our process.
Once I figured out what I was doing and how I was doing it, the picture became a lot clearer – and I also gained more confidence about what I was doing. So in developing and learning to work with your intuition, you should find over time that you’re gaining more and more of a clearer grasp of what it is that you’re doing and what your focus is.
One fascinating thing about intuition is that we tend to take our particular intuitive gifts for granted. I have heard people say over and over again that they just assumed that everyone could do what they could (for example see people’s organs). So, what you take for granted about yourself may be the particular gift you have. For instance, if you’ve always had a particular “feel” for people, that may be a key to your gift. Indeed that may be your gift.
There really are benefits of intuition. Many the stories of accidents averted because someone had a “gut feeling” to take a different route or do something different from their normal custom. And, conversely, many have found that a “hunch” has brought something good to their lives. However, there are other benefits as well.
As I have worked with my intuitive abilities, I have also coincidingly gained more knowing about things in general – and understanding. And this has strengthened me as a person – another very nice side-effect of developing your intuition: that of developing your inner voice and strengthening within yourself. This, in and of itself, can give us more confidence and bring a greater sense of satisfaction to us in our lives.
So, are you interested in using more of your mental potential, being able to know more, feeling stronger in yourself? Are you interested in having a sense of what the truth is, the real inner truth, rather than going by mere supposition or external appearances?
Then, again I ask you, how are you intuitive? What is your particular gift? How does your intuition express itself? You’ll notice I didn’t say, “Are you intuitive?!”
The question really isn’t “are you intuitive,” but “how are you intuitive?” What is your knowing?
Think about it….
Spirituality 
