Good morning… I’m back to the newsletter after an unplanned hiatus of a few weeks. One of my coaching clients experienced a tsunami of personal and professional challenges and asked me to step in and help manage his company through a transition phase.
At the same time, two new coaching clients started three-month programs, and I like to give extra time in the first month. So time for the newsletter disappeared! My schedule has now stabilized and I have ten drafts in progress, so I am back to regular postings.
Today, I’ll re-start with a short post I wrote a few weeks ago, on the power of intuition, a misunderstood and disrespected (because that’s what we do when we don’t understand something) faculty.
I have two open slots for coaching, so if you want to explore a relationship, please sign up for a free Discovery Session, and we’ll see if there is a fit. I am now working in flexible modes, from once a month for baseline spiritual-professional counsel and guidance, to once a week to help you through an especially challenging period. I have a three-month program that guides you through the four phases of Review, Reclaim, Inspire and Explore which will bring you to a completely new place in your life.
cheers,
Paul
Intuition is Real
I’m continually amazed at the many phenomena that humanity has long and intimate experience of, yet which are denied or stigmatized by our dominant rationalist mindset.
Intuition is one of these. It is something that many of us pay lip service to (at best), but is not given the full respect it deserves. Our rationalist cultural mindset diminishes intuition, because it can’t fully explain it.
That in itself is pretty interesting. If we have evidence for something that we don’t understand — and we have ample evidence for the reality of intuition if not in our own life than in the experience of countless others including artists, scientists, entrepreneurs, and philosophers — shouldn’t we be more curious about it? If understanding something is truly to “stand under” that thing, that implies a relationship of respect and even deference.
Yesterday, Aria and I went out on our regular walk. We were headed to one of our preferred coffee shops in North Boulder, about a mile away, for a planned day of writing. A few yards from our front door, we turned to see our cat Lupe following us. There was nothing unusual in this; we go for walks three to five times a week and Lupe almost always follows us for a few hundred yards, before peeling off on her own adventure.
But yesterday, Aria sensed something different. She watched Lupe for only a few seconds before saying, “she needs something from us.” Sure enough, when Lu caught up to us, Aria noticed a large abscess on her side. It was quite serious, and we ended up in the emergency vet clinic for half the day, getting her patched up.
I can say definitively that I noticed nothing different about Lu’s behavior as she ambled behind us. She was following us just as she has been doing for 12 years. Upon reflection, Aria felt the same. She could not put her finger on anything that prompted her thought, “she needs something from us.” It came to her in a flash, without any cognitive process, a direct knowing.
This happens all the time with Aria, who is extremely sensitive to invisible forces and subtle energies. It undoubtedly happens to all of us. Whatever the mechanism of consciousness is — however it might connected to the gut biome and heart neurons — we all have the potential to tune in to subtle sources of information that are often more accurate and meaningful than our conceptual minds can register.
Our intuitions are also usually directed toward things that matter. Problems and situations that are subject to a computational or analytical resolution don’t engage our emotions. (Much of engineering work falls into this category, alas.)
It is the deeper, more intimate, more human questions that engage our imaginations, fears and dreams. This is where we must listen to our intuition in order to resolve ourselves in the most wholesome and inspirational way.
In a work context, these are questions of what job to take, what company to work for, who to work with, and how to engage with our work and others. Listening to our inner voice, the way our own energetic field shifts when we enter (or imagine entering) another field, the subtle signals that are conveyed by other hearts, bodies and minds, we navigate a richer and more direct path of actualizing our own soul’s work.
I can’t overestimate how important it is to listen to our intuition, and also how much faster it is to resolve issues or decide on a course of action when we do. The analytical process is orders of magnitude slower, and can also get bogged down in endless and meaningless side issues.
Unfortunately, at some level the “functional freeze” of analysis paralysis is the default operating mode of many people and institutions. If you find yourself up in your head a lot spinning over perceived issues and solutions, you may be experiencing this functional freeze.
Whatever our native talents, everyone can cultivate a deepening of their intuitive capabilities over time. (For Zen practitioners, koan practice is a rigorous formal training in learning to tune into and trust your intuitive consciousness.)
But we have to, first, respect the reality of our intuitive power, then pay close attention to the internal signals we are receiving from the universe.
These signals propagate through time and space differently than the way described by classical physics. Which means we have to attune ourselves a bit differently than we are used to.
I’ve been on my own path of developing my intuition for decades. And while I can’t say I am especially sensitive (as Aria is), I can say that if I can do it, anyone can. I’ll talk more in future posts about the “hows”.
For now, you might I’d like to leave you with this path of inquiry:
Might your allegiance to conceptual coherence and logic be limiting what you are allowing into your awareness? Might you only allow in that which is conceptually coherent and logical according to your subconscious paradigm? And resist, diminish, forget, what doesn’t “make sense”. The way we forget dreams simply because we don’t have a coherent internal context for them.
Everything about what we have learned of the mind assures us that we filter things this way.
If this is true, then might you be missing something?
Are you curious about what you’re missing?
Photo of a recovering Lupe by Bear Bear Del Duca
I appreciate your post so much. Intuition is powerful and sometimes life-saving, the result of factors you describe so beautifully. I suspect one reason for the down-grading of intuition is that it is associated with the female, heaven forbid. In addition, we often confuse deep intuition with the unconsidered impulse to take ill-advised actions, when we might better be with our experience and see what arises in a settled state. (Perhaps an explanation for my use of Amazon Prime the moment I decide I "need" something, despite my negative feelings about under-regulated corporations.)
The crazy thing is that we often use our "rational" minds to overrule our felt sense, much to our detriment. Or we have a strong feeling (e.g., anger, greed) and then go to great lengths to justify hurtful actions with rational argument, conveniently failing to acknowledge what drove us to tirelessly marshal all the "facts" we put forth to justify ourselves. Given the state of our world, I definitely believe that we humans do not always benefit from our overgrown prefrontal cortex!
I'm meandering here, a sure sign I have important tasks I'm avoiding! Thanks again.