image from intuition.byu.edu
What is intuition? For long years it was ridiculed as the fevered imagination of bored housewives with nothing better to do than dream up fanciful reasons for something they couldn’t logically explain. Much has changed since then, much study has been done and there are still people unconvinced intuition is real. All we need to do is remember back to the Salem witch trials, or the witch trials in England to recall the documented evidence of women burned at the stake, tortured and left to starve in cages, all because they “knew” something but could not explain how they knew.
However, ask people if they believe they get a ‘gut instinct‘ or a strange feeling like their hair standing on end on the back of their necks and you will probably get them to agree they have. Strange what a difference terminology makes. One of my favourite characters on TV, Mark Harmon, playing Jethro Gibbs in NCIS has made his “gut” famous when solving cases. “Trust the Gut”. It always makes me smile. I suppose it sounds a little more manly than saying he has an intuition about a person or event.
Intuition has saved more lives than we have an accurate count for. There are recorded instances of people deciding not to catch a train, take a bus, catch their flight and there has been a disaster of some kind. They had no reason to change their plans at the last moment, yet in every case it has invariably saved their lives. There are numerous documented instances of people who worked in the Twin Towers who decided for no known reason not to go to work on 9/11 as well as people who were unaccountably detained from getting to work that day. These sudden, unplanned, and unaccountable decisions saved numerous lives that day.
image from kineticsmag.com
The ironical part of this is that intuition or gut instinct, sixth sense, knowing or just a feeling, can and does happen to anyone. Acting on these ‘hunches’ is a different matter. If those people had failed to listen to this intuition or sixth sense they would not be here today.
Intuition is not only found in the province of New Age Spirituality or TV shows. It has been suggested that intuition may be the ingredient which separates successful business people from the rest. It was described by Dr Gerald Hodgkinson of the Leeds University, in the UK as “the brain processing previous experiences and other cues to help it make a decision, a process which takes place on a subconscious level”.
This goes part way to explaining the intuitive response and no doubt more will be acknowledged as time passes. If I hadn’t listened to my intuition or sixth sense many things would have been different in my own life, especially when I was a serving police officer, but also where my children are concerned. Arriving at school minutes after an accident and before the school had time to call me is one simple example. Deciding to move to one side as a drunk, out of my line of sight, suddenly swung a four by two piece of timber moments before it would have taken my head off if I had remained where I was is another.
There are many tomes written on the subject and there will always be the nay sayers and that is fine. Yet I truly believe that we are guided by intuition, sixth sense, gut instinct, a knowing or feeling when we need a little help. I, for one, will gladly accept whatever help I am given if it means I or anyone else will be safe as a result of my hunch.
The final word on intuition goes to Albert Einstein.
image from http://www.psychicwilliamconstantine.com
“At times you have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you’ll discover will be wonderful. What you’ll discover is yourself.”
― Alan Alda
May you find your feet always guided in your best interests.
Ciao, Susan x
