Intuition (Part 5 of 5)

Qualitative aspects of intuitive perceptions

In intuitive health assessments, intuition may speak through any of our senses. Some healers access intuitive information through the aura – as described above. Others may hear words that alert them to explore particular aspects of the assessment; or sometimes the name of a condition may be heard on the inner hotline. Healers have told me that they recognize certain diseases by a smell or taste that they perceive when particular diseases are present. Others have reported they resonate with the symptoms of healees, sensing pains in their own stomach or other parts of the body that identify for the healers where the pains are in the healees. These have been termed telesomatic reactions (Schwarz 1967).

Intuition may appear as mental imagery. This could be a direct picture that points to the problem, such as seeing a blocked artery to the heart that explains chest pains. It may be a “snapshot” or “film clip” of past trauma that uncovers emotional difficulties, such as sexual abuse that leaves a woman with severe menstrual pains – relieved when she is helped to release the fear, hurt, shame, anger and other buried feelings associated with her traumatic memories.

Sometimes the intuitive impression rises through the unconscious mind much like a dream image, appearing to the conscious mind as a metaphoric explanation for a problem. My fist experience of this sort was at a healing workshop, where I was paired with a nurse for bioenergy sensing exercises. I got a mental image of someone riding piggy-back on her, whipping her unreasonably to move faster. I had the feeling that she ought to tell this person to get off. Hesitantly, I shared this image with her. She burst into tears, saying, “You’re absolutely right!” Perplexed, I asked her to explain. She clarified, “I’ve been working on this pediatric unit at the hospital for a year. Lately I’ve felt miserable. I just got a new boss who is younger than me, and because she feels insecure, she’s cracking the whip and insisting that I do things her way. She actually doesn’t know the routines for many of the special care children we treat, and I’ve hesitated to assert myself because I don’t want to get on the her wrong side. But it’s not good for the children, and I really do need to tell her to get off my back!”

As with dream interpretations, it is best for the healee to make her own interpretations of the intuitive imagery that relates to her problems – even when it arises in the mind of the intuitive counsellor.

Developing the gift of intuition

Intuition is a gift, much like drawing or playing the piano. Some can take a pencil and – as if by magic – produce accurate reproductions on paper of anything they see. Some sit down at a piano with no lessons or practice, and can tickle heavenly music out of the keys. Most of us can develop our drawing or piano playing abilities, and with diligent practice may become quite proficient. Some are better off not bothering with these arts, sparing themselves and others a lot of frustration. Similarly, to some people intuition comes naturally, easily, unbidden, and can be tapped fairly regularly at will. Most of us have a small to modest measure of intuitive abilities, which we can develop through various practices. Some have no conscious awareness of intuition in their lives, and may never be able to understand the word or the concept.

Gifted natural intuitives are able to sense what others are thinking and feeling, to perceive bioenergy imbalances or blocks, to identify illnesses, to see human and nature spirits and angels, and to look into the past and future of a situation.

For most of us with lesser gifts, it may take a while to discover and develop confidence in intuitive perceptions, especially if we open to these awarenesses after years of focusing primarily on outer world perceptions.

Quieting and focusing the mind through imagery or meditation are common ways of shutting off outer distractions and increasing inner focus, facilitating greater access to intuition. You might picture a blank screen in your mind, inviting intuitive images to appear on the screen, in answer to questions that you focus on. You might enter a quiet meditation after pondering a question, inviting images or ideas to surface during or after the meditation. Sleeping on a problem, after programming your mind to search for ideas can produce dramatic results.

Kinesiology is another aid to accessing intuition. It is estimated that only 5% of the capacity of the mind is within conscious awareness. Your body can help you access the other 95% through communication with your unconscious mind. Here is an experiential exercise that illustrates this process.

Rub your first finger across the thumbnail of the same hand (like a bow across the strings of a violin), as you ask yourself, “What does YES feel like?” Repeat this, asking, “What does NO feel like?”

Play with your intuition, make it your friend. Use it to help you solve problems small and large. Stay open to let it speak even when it is uninvited. Those may be the most important times for it to help you.

We must be cautious, however, in using these methods – remembering that our expectations, wishes and fears may influence the answers that our unconscious mind brings forth. These will introduce errors. The degree to which we achieve correct answers is a reflection of the degree to which we are able to stay centered and clear of all anticipations for outcomes.

Spiritual healing and intuition

Healers often have well developed intuitive abilities. They may know intuitively what the problems are, physical and psychological factors that contributed to the development of the problems, where to put their hands and how long to hold them there during healings, what resistances in the healee may block the progress of healings, and whether various treatments are likely to be helpful.

“Charlotte,” a gifted healer, can hold a medicine or vibrational remedy in her hand and know whether it is right for a given healee. She can scan a shelf full of remedies and her eye or hand will be guided to the ones that are appropriate for a healee. (She also finds this gift helpful in scanning menus in restaurants for the tastiest and nutritionally best options.)

Ethics of intuitive assessments

People worry that intuitives may be able to read their minds like a book, with a potential for invading their privacy. Intuition simply doesn’t work that way. When intuitives do readings on a person, they may get some specific information relating to the questions the person being read is wanting to have answered. As we have found through surveys and laboratory studies, the information often arrives in imagery that is meaningless to the intuitive but highly meaningful to the person.

Having said this, there remain instances in which detailed information can be read by intuitives. This would seem to be the stuff that spy stories are made of, and indeed there is evidence that the US has explored psychic spying (Targ and Harrary 1984).

Ethical intuitives and healers never use their psychic abilities without the full permission of the persons being read.

This article appeared as the editorial in The International Journal of Healing and Caring – On line May, 2002, Volume 2, No. 2