What is Intuition Learn More  

What is Intuition?
How do you learn to listen to it and especially how do you trust it?

Intuition is a direct perception of a truth or fact that is independent of any reasoning process. It is the quality or ability of having keen and quick insight or immediate apprehension.  Intuition is easily defined, what most of you have difficulty with is how to listen to your intuition and then trust it completely.

Everyone is intuitive, some people are born with this quality more developed than others, and some others were supported in their younger years to pay attention to those gut feelings and or the subtle signs that exist all around them.  Most people were conditioned to ignore it, yet you as well as all others can develop a strong intuitive nature with understanding of how it works and practicing what you learn.  You can become adept at listening to and trusting in the subtle inner voice that can help you make any decision in an absolute instant.

The voice I am speaking of is not a booming voice out of the sky nor will it necessarily sound like someone else speaking to you. It is far more subtle than that and this is the very reason you may not realize you have heard your intuition all along, but have chosen to ignore it because you don't recognize how it speaks to you.

In all the years I have been working with individuals and or groups, I have come to realize we are too busy being busy ignoring our more subtle senses that communicate with us through our feelings. If you are not in touch with your feelings due to too much mental or physical activity or are engaged in things that numb your senses like drugs or alcohol, it is very difficult to hear your intuition never mind attaining peace of mind by trusting it.  
 
Society and school systems have dictated each of us spend endless energy exercising our brains attempting to develop our logical minds so we can figure everything out, rather than encouraging us to pay attention to and trust our feelings. As a result most of us are in fear of making the wrong choice regardless of all the mental gymnastics applied to assure a certain outcome or absolute guarantee.

Schools offering courses on how to listen to and trust our intuition are only recently cropping up, and so most have lived their lives by default only occasionally realizing through 20/20 hindsight that they were indeed being guided by their intuition; but because they didn't understand how it speaks to them, they turned a deaf ear ignoring both the inner feelings as well as the supportive outer signs only to find out after the fact they should have followed that subtle gut feeling all along.

Not many even know they have the authority or inherent ability to choose to begin with. Almost everyone has have been conditioned to believe some other person or thing knows better than they. This only leaves each of us dependent upon everything outside of ourselves rather than trusting in our inner guidance speaking to us through intuition. We have become so adept at our attempts to gain a guarantee, we rarely take any action and thusly our lives become stagnant and we pass away unfulfilled, mostly regretting not what we did but what we did not do!

How Intuition Speaks:

You can be independent and empower yourself to make the choices that are right for you by learning the language of your inner voice. Once you understand the language you take time to practice in your everyday life and eventually you will trust completely in this guidance. In order to listen to your intuition you must know how to recognize it, as the subtle voice speaks in many ways through various signs.

Your mental, physical and emotional bodies play a tremendous role in assisting you in listening to your intuition. Intuition will begin its dialogue with an inspirational thought. That thought will generate a feeling that will be sensed as either a feel good, like excitement, enthusiasm, a warm peaceful sensation or it can be a feel bad. Either feeling will then be accompanied by and confirmed with multiple outer signs to assure you are moving in the right direction or to stop your motion. 

Know and trust your body, as it is your friend because it can feel the emotions that are generated by your thoughts. Your emotions are your inner navigational system that allow you to choose correctly regarding any decision. The outer supportive signs as to whether you listened to your intuition will come immediately. These signs will arrive as many different vehicles and will be dropped right in front of your nose suggesting you move forward or to stop right where you are.

When you are on the track that is right for you, you will continue to feel excited and enthusiastic as you follow the outer signs. You will be in awe while experiencing one miracle after another traveling the road of following your intuition. Things will simply appear to fall into place, the right people show up out of the blue as well as what ever else it is you need to support what you desire.

When we are on the wrong track because you opted to ignore those initial warnings of slight discomfort, regardless of whether the nagging sensation is in your  gut, your head, chest, or else where, your intuition will simply resort to raising the volume of its voice. Turning our attention away from what is best for us only causes the messenger to get louder and the slight discomfort can move quickly to an actual pain and the pain if not acknowledged can escalate into a disease. So it is important for you to recognize which part of your body is being the messenger for your intuition so you need not be stopped dead in your tracks because you resist following the very advice you asked for and your intuition is responding to.

You probably have already developed great hindsight; meaning you are learning to listen to your intuition by actually going against its advice. How often have you had a feeling that strongly suggests a choice and you did not follow through because immediately following the sensation you engaged in a million and one thoughts that brought up fear of a negative result if you dared to follow the directions of the feelings.

How many times have you followed the thinking pattern instead of the feeling simply because it was based in rational and as a result you ended up with exactly the opposite of what you wanted or expected. Ignoring your feelings is the adverse way of learning how intuition works, yet nonetheless there is value in those experiences as well, for how would you learn to go with the flow of that inner voice if you had not the experience of going against it. The trick is to not stay on that track for too much longer, as it is the difficult way to what ever it is you are intending to accomplish. When you surrender to following the intuitive feel good or bad rather than what thinks rationally, you will find a much easier and quicker path to your desired outcome.

Your intuition will use more than just feelings of good or bad to properly and safely navigate your way; it will use dreams, as well as outer signs that will come to you through the various forms of music, books, photos, anything and everything in nature, as well as other people to get the message across to you and you can still use your feelings to confirm the validity of the outer sign.  If you insist on watching TV all the time, it will use this vehicle as well.

For example, you may be wondering if it would be better for you to live somewhere other than where you are presently residing. Then out of the blue you  are inspired by a photo of a particular place and you feel enthusiastic wondering what it would be like to live there. During the course of your day someone will mention the same place or you may find that you just purchased an item that comes from that place. This is your intuition directing your focus to a particular place for a specific reason. It may be about living there or it may be the first step to accomplishing some other desire. You will never know at the onset and you will may miss your opportunity if hesitate.

 Then in an instant of feeling the enthusiasm the rational sets in and you are consumed with one rapid thought after another like, it is too far away, what would I do for work, would my partner or family be happy there and on and on.  Before long you have dismissed the excitement you felt when you first laid your eyes on the image because it has been over laid with fearfully focusing on all the ifs, ands or butts that may get in the way because you are stubbornly demanding a certain guaranteed outcome.

Once the excited feeling dissipates you quickly shelf the idea and begin to mentally move on engaging in the logic of figuring out how another place may be more suitable for you, as in another place there may be more obvious choices of employment for you or your partner, or a better school system for your children, safer neighborhoods, whatever.

Once you think you have it all logically figured out and have falsely convinced yourself it feels right because it makes sense, you may go to the location and during your visit you end up feeling nauseas or dizzy or get a headache or some other physical pain or emotional discomfort. Or better still you ignore some nagging feeling upon your departure and proceed only to find the road is blocked due to heavy traffic or an accident or the weather does not permit passage or some blatant sign may appears along your journey, like a natural or manmade disaster occurs just before you leave or during your stay. But of course you can easily just get angry, frustrated or disappointed instead of realizing these are the outer signs attempting to sway you from your determination to ignore your inner feeling.

You can choose instead to know the feelings are your intuition telling you this particular place or choice of direction is not right for you; yet how many times have you blamed the sick or uncomfortable feelings on something outside of yourself; spending more of your precious time attempting once again to figure it all out by tracking what you ate or who you might have encountered that was ill already or whatever and whomever might be accountable for you feeling so crummy. All the while this is your intuition telling you that the place you believed was the logical choice to move to is really not suitable for your highest and best good.

Your intuition will assist you through your feelings in making the correct decisions quickly and then help you stick with those choices by giving you the outer signs of confirmation. Too often we do not trust in what we are sensing or feeling, because often times when intuition is speaking to us there appears to be no logic or rational. This causes us to revisit each decision numerous times with ongoing mental gymnastics due to the self-doubt that arises in an instant after making a choice. At some time or another you will find yourself in a situation that does not warrant time to figure it all out before making a move and this is when it will be imperative to trust your feelings.

Intuition has many faces as seen in the multiple small stories related to those who survived the tragic events of 9/11 and also prove the many different ways intuition uses signs to get its message across to you. Some of the people below may have been feeling they didn't want to or shouldn't go to work that day, yet they did not understand why because their feelings didn't make any sense and were most likely engaged in the rational thinking process that convinced them they had to get to work. Yet each of them experienced small interruptions that caused them not to be there, thusly saving their lives.

One man is alive because his wife insisted he keep a medical appointment she set for him even though he strongly resisted in his thinking he had to be at the Twin Towers to conduct his daily morning business of renting office space.

One woman was late because her alarm clock didn't go off in time.

One was late because of being stuck on the New Jersey Turnpike because of an auto accident.

One of them missed his bus.

One spilled food on her clothes and had to take time to change.

One's car wouldn't start.

One couldn't get a taxi.

One put on a new pair of shoes that morning, took the various means to get to work but before he got there, he developed a blister on his foot. He stopped at a drugstore to buy a Band-Aid.

All of these so called coincidences, even though most of the individuals were probably annoyed by whatever was causing their delay, were signs of intuition speaking to keep each of them from harm.

Please understand this is not to say that those who perished in this terribly tragedy did something wrong and my heart and prayers go out to all of them and their friends and family.

I am fairly assured that those who did survive due to some perceived annoying interruption may not have initially realized the reasoning of why they were being detained, as intuition does not always have the luxury of time to debate with your rational. Some decisions both large and small have to be chosen in an instant, unfortunately too many of us argue with our inner voice wanting an explanation, an outcome or a guarantee as to why we need heed that subtle voice only to find out the time we took to resist caused us to be in a situation that may not be changed.


Rarely do any of you simply ask a question and then be still and quiet long enough to feel what is right or wrong for you. When you go within, you can feel, thusly you will know immediately which choice to make; regardless of what the choice is about.
 
Once you discern the feeling you then ask for confirmation. Then you pay attention to the supportive signs validating your feelings that will come in multiple forms.
 
Until such time you are in full trust where the answer simply comes as a thought accompanied by a feel good or feel bad, your intuition will use multiple tools to help you practice listening to it. Regardless of whether you choose to listen or ignore, there will be many apparent road signs to keep you on a path that is right for you. So pose the question, whatever the question is and pay attention to whether you are feeling good or bad and then choose your choice.

You can even train yourself to get a quick yes or no from your feelings by simply asking your body to show you what a no feels like, as well as what a yes feels like. Normally a yes will feel very good and a no will be just the opposite. Keeping it simple is very valuable in navigating your way. You can also ask multiple questions that only require a yes or no answer so you can be gracefully guided through the most complex situations.

This is a practice technique and can be used in any decision making process. You can use it to decide what to wear, what to eat, where to go, whom to be with and the more you use it the more adept you become at trusting that feeling so in any given moment even and especially if there is any type of havoc about. Sit still, close your eyes and continue to present mental questions or speak them out loud to your self until such time you are adept at posing the question and feeling the answer in an instant. 
 
If you insist on engaging in rational rather than following your feelings, you will find yourself pacing, not  able to sleep, running yourself ragged with “have to” activity or you will disengage completely by numbing out one way or the other. All of those activities make it very difficult to hear, see, sense or feel the answer that is right for you.
 
It is you who has the authority to choose what to follow and how loud the messenger need be, based on whether you are willing to accept the answer given unto you.
 
Be aware that sometimes although you feel the correct choice you still continue to deny the response because you have already mentally decided what you want the answer to be. You are engaged in expectation demanding a guaranteed outcome of what you think it all should look like, rather than listening and following the feeling directing you to what is right for you and away from what is wrong for you.
 
Be kind to yourself and especially be patient, as it takes some time to free yourself from the captivity of the rational mind. For the most part we all have been conditioned and or taught to not put a lot of credibility on our feelings, especially when it comes to making choices about anything or everything.

Remember in the movie “City of Angels”, the angel Seth was trying to get Maggie to trust in her feelings. She didn’t believe in feelings because they could not necessarily be figured out. She had spent her life training her mind, yet her mind could not produce a logical answer to what she was observing in this strange person before her. 
 
He asked her to close her eyes and then he ran his finger across her hand.

He then asked her what he was doing and she responded, you are touching my hand.

He then said…"How do you know I am touching your hand, you can’t see me doing it…your eyes are closed."

She responded…"Because I feel it!"
 
He was teaching her how to pay attention to her inner voice spoken as the feeling of a warm, gentle, nurturing touch, even though her head was filled with figuring out why this guy was so weird.
 
Imagine having an angel holding your hand and guiding your way and even though it feels wonderful you can't trust him because you are too busy trying to figure out why this guy doesn't change his clothes once in awhile;  rather than just enjoying the feeling of his presence.

Your intuition is like your own personal angel. Your feelings are your truth; the more you follow your feelings the more you learn to trust your intuition. The reason, logic or proof will be revealed to you in the long run and in the meantime you will enjoy peace along your journey.
 
Be disciplined in being willing to do what it takes to be still in order to feel. Yes, this is discipline, yet discipline is not an action imposed on you by another; discipline really means the protection of your own interest!

Intuition stems from the higher authority within you and is also helping you with trust and faith in self.  Intuition is independent of ego reasoning demands, because it is based in feeling, not thinking. 

As you surrender to the subtle feelings and are willing to look for the outer signs of confirmation of intuition taking one small step at a time it will always take you in the direction that is for best for you.

Learn how to listen to your inner voice and trust your intuition.

It is my heartfelt intent to assist you in realizing you are always receiving the answer, all you need do is be willing to be aware of your feelings.

This is yet another way to realize Heaven on Earth by trusting in the very profound yet very subtle answers stemming from the feelings generated by your inner voice. The more you practice listening to the inner voice, the more trusting you become of your intuition and the more life gets better for ever. So be still to listen to your intuition that is guiding you to the answer of any and all of your questions!

Read another article "Shut Up, God's Talking"
Personal guidance to learn how to listen to your inner voice and trust your intuition.

Copyright 2011