Do you trust your gut?

Intuition

“Intuition is the clear conception of the whole at once.”

                                                Johann Kaspar Lavater

Most of us discount our intuition. We perceive something that contradicts what is before our eyes and we say to ourselves, 'No...that can't be true.' We have a niggling feeling that tells us 'something is not right here' or 'I should not be here,' and we say, 'Don't be silly!” Intuition is direct perception of the truth of a situation via the unconscious, that by-passes the 'reasoning' parts of the brain. It arises from an older, more primitive area in our mid-brain.

Intuition is often just as accurate as reasoning—sometimes even more accurate. It comes not from a verbal center, but from a visual one and usually arises as a feeling rather than a thought. Intuition tells us whether someone is trustworthy, whether a situation is safe, whether what we see is truly what is there. We ignore it at our own peril.

Some of us are good at reading people and situations; we trust our intuitive information, and assume that it is true. We may sound flaky, and some people will call us unkind names—space cadet, for instance—because initially we cannot say why we feel the way we do. We just do! Some of us allow our 'rational mind' to over-ride our intuition because we want to see things a certain way. We want to believe a person or situation is what we see with our eyes, because it is in some manner advantageous to us. I don't know about you, but when I override my intuition, I always regret it. Down the road, I'm slapping my head and asking myself, “Why did I not see this coming!” The answer is always, “I did—I just didn't want to believe it.”

Intuition is what, in animals, we call 'instincts'. We respect it in birds or dogs or horses, but since we don't think of ourselves as animals, we don't place the same value on it in ourselves. We have evolved. We don't need 'instincts' because we have this big, thinking brain. And we do. Our thinking brain is a fine thing indeed, but we still need those insights that come like a bolt from the blue and reveal a truth that in our gut we know is right on target.

Trust yourself. Trust your gut as well as your thinking-brain. When you put the two together there is hardly anything we humans can't do.

                                             In the spirit,

                                              Jane