By Azriel ReShel | Uplift Connect
How to awaken and deepen your Intuition
Intuition is as natural as breathing, sleeping or eating. All of us have intuition. Some of us are more open to this capacity, and connection to higher information, than others, but we can all deepen and develop our intuition with a few simple techniques and daily rituals.
Intuition is the spark, or gateway, to higher knowing and to living a fulfilled, flowing, effortless and peaceful life. Each day we are bombarded by an avalanche of information, demands and pressures, that squash our vastness into a tiny reality. This data smog and information overload swamp our intuition. Now more than ever, we need this innate capacity to guide us. The more lost we are in the pace of modern life, the more we need this anchor.
Our Sixth Sense
Intuition is very much a natural and inherent part of our natures. When you strip back all the learned stress behaviors, pressures, mental projections and layers of baggage, we find the radiance of our true self. This authentic nature is peaceful, blissful, and intuitive. Each one of us has this ability to know things, to sense things, to feel things, see things and hear things, beyond our conscious awareness. The origin of the word “intuition” is the Latin verb intueri, which is usually translated as to look inside or to contemplate.
There is a growing body of research suggesting there are underlying non-conscious aspects of intuition. Among these aspects of intuition involved in intuitive perception is implicit learning, or implicit knowledge. Science is now showing that the heart is involved in the processing and decoding of intuitive information. Emotion and intuition seem to be also rooted both in the heart and the second brain in the gut. This is where the term, your gut instincts, comes from.
Intuition is like a secret, an inner jetpack that helps you make quantum leaps in your life, a map that reveals the shortcuts, opens up the pathway and holds the keys to your happiness. Is this building up intuition too much? I don’t think so. Even the military is studying the secrets of intuition.
In the wake of snap intuitive judgments in the field of combat that saved many lives, US researchers are studying the power of intuition. Sensing impending danger, deciding whether objects are missiles or airliners, or detecting bombs, are a few situations where a snap judgment needs to be made and where lives are at stake. The US navy studies, with experts in neural, cognitive and behavioral science, were attempting to discover what gives rise to our so-called “sixth sense” and how they can train marines to use it. A former US navy seal has even written four books on the subject and he believes that tapping into our intuition helps us to excel at light speed. Understanding what intuition is, can help us to recognize it.
The basics of Intuition
Intuition is an instinctual awareness. Actually, intuition is a mysterious and curious thing a little beyond description. When you are in tune with your intuition, you have an unconscious understanding and a subtle knowing, and you are able to see the bigger picture or to see the meaning in things. It is sensory, not really a cognitive functioning. Intuition is sensing meaning in things, having an understanding of concepts and connections beyond everyday knowledge.
“Intuition is not a single way of knowing – it’s our ability to hold space for uncertainty and our willingness to trust the many ways we’ve developed knowledge and insight, including instinct, experience, faith, and reason.” Brene Brown
So much of intuition is innate that often we miss it. Or we doubt it. Many years ago, I used to feel intuitive nudges and ignore them, doubting their truth. I quickly discovered these nudges were always right. I started to experience them as coming physically into me, seemingly a part of me, but beyond me.
Initially, I projected intuition onto other “spiritual” people, or psychics, or masters. In projecting my intuition and psychic awareness on to other people, I lost sight of the intuitive awareness that had always been my second nature from so early on in life. After many years of using external methods for guidance, such as tarot or angel cards, pendulum, etc., I recognized that the quiet wave of energy that would come over me was my intuition.
I could feel the quality of the thoughts that popped into my head, coming from my left side, as something that was not generated from my own mind. I started to distinguish between me and my thoughts and something totally beyond my conscious awareness. It was a quieter, gentler, subtler, and highly refined energy. Truly a whisper, with a feeling of something so gracious, tender, and pure, it was unmistakably otherworldly.
Now I know this feeling instantly and follow it. It is never wrong. And it is precisely because it comes so naturally to me, that I missed it. I was looking for something more outrageous, a fanfare of guidance, a physical angel sitting on my couch. Once I accepted and trusted that intuition is as natural as breathing, my journey with intuition expanded and grew, and the whispers of intuition became a lot louder.
The Pillars of Intuition
There are five pillars of intuition: Trust, Connection, Acceptance, Integrity, and Innocence. These pillars are all interlinked and much like branches of a tree, come together as a whole to create the magic of intuition.
