2 THE PATH OF INTUITION

By Linda Vera Roethlisberger

In the Trilogos Beacon series, author Linda Vera Roethlisberger takes a nuanced look at individual aspects of the core competencies of being human.

In this second booklet of our series »TRILOGOS Wegweiser« the author gives us an insight of:

- What exactly is intuition?
- Where and why do I need intuition in my everyday life?
- How do I live intuition?

This booklet offers some explanations and thoughts on these topics as well as exercises that might prove helpful.

• Language: English
• Publisher: tredition
• Release date: Sep 2, 2021
• ISBN: 9783347323209

Book preview

Introduction

Human consciousness has continuously shifted over the past centuries, away from the world as it is and towards the world as we have created it with the help of modern-day technologies. We are increasingly inundated with data, so much that about 11 million sensory impressions are transmitted from the nerve cells to our brain – per second! In that context, silence has long been a luxury. Our brain does in fact have sufficient storage capacity to receive and identify such quantities of data. However, the processing of data is a different story. According to current scientific research, we are only able to consciously perceive 40 to 60 impressions per second. Our consciousness filters out what it considers important. The majority of our perceptions are captured by our unconscious – for self-protection, so that we do not become overwhelmed and maintain our ability to find our way around the world.

Again and again we experience how impulses from the unconscious seep into our daily consciousness, namely, when an unerring feeling strikes us, guides us, encourages or warns us – our intuition. Intuition is commonly defined as a sudden inspiration, a type of cognition that is neither suspecting nor based on reflection or mediumistic capability. As such, intuition is not necessarily popular with rationalists proper, who tend to relegate this type of unconscious intelligence as belonging to the realms of artists and fantasists.

In reality, however, intuition is not mystical at all, instead being based on a synthesis of conscious and unconscious knowledge, perceptions and experiences. Like a compass, it guides us through life, empowering us to clearly assess people and issues in a matter of seconds and to make decisions that demand more than pure logic.

Those who always understand what

they are doing remain below their level.

Martin Walser

Like a whistleblower, our unconscious has inside information that sheds new light on all sorts of things. In other words, it is a light that our logical thinking alone cannot produce. As such, intuition is at play in a broad range of phenomena and processes, from whether we invest successfully in the financial market, find our partner for life in speed dating, buy a car or purchase a new frying pan. Or, further, when a mountain guide senses a storm coming despite blue skies or when a doctor decides to perform a biopsy although everything looks fine.

Therefore, brain and consciousness researchers advise: The more complex a decision, the more we should rely on our intuition and the unconscious.

Yet while that is easily said, how does it work? How might we make a deliberate use of intuition? How do we know what wishful thinking and intuitions are? And what to do when rational objections push away or drown out our gut feelings?

The mere task of trying to locate or describe said gut feeling is complex enough. One person might feel an unclear pull in the solar plexus, the other person might feel a tingle in the back, and yet another person might feel an unmistakable clarity. Still others do not experience intuitive impulses as feelings but rather as inner knowledge, inner images or by hearing an inner voice or perceiving an unconsciously imagined smell. For the ways in which intuitive impulses express themselves are as manifold as we ourselves are.

This is exactly where the Trilogos Method comes in: it helps to explore the triad of imagination-intuition-inspiration, acquaints us with our inner senses and stimulates the work with the unconscious through its holistic practices. In addition, it strives for a synthesis of feeling and trust (see Chapter 3).

The benefit of intuition extends to all areas of life, with the exception of purely logical actions, which appear to be exempt from its reach. In other words, when I visit a museum, I do not need my intuition to pay the entrance fee.

However, when I let myself drift through the exhibition rooms and find myself riveted by certain paintings or exhibits, it is my intuition, which is connected to my unconscious, that is active. My interior resonates with what I see. I let the picture, the exhibit, speak to me – because my intuition knows that it has something to say to me, that it touches me.

Intuition also comes into play in the area of judgment and decision-making – a fact that today, in particular, has captured the interest of management executives. In most cases, intuition allows decisions to be approximated, questioned and substantiated at a conscious level and the mind to create elaborate pros-and-cons lists within seconds, even though these are essentially more rational processes.

Researchers have even discovered that we essentially make decisions prior to the ostensibly rational act of decision-making, with the help of the unconscious and our personal experience. It is a bit like tossing a coin if you cannot decide: at the latest when the coin lands, one knows exactly which result one would have preferred just a tad more.

However, not everything that comes from the realm of intuition automatically leads us in the right direction. The quality of felt knowledge is always dependent on input and experience. The intuition researcher and author Gary Klein compares intuition very aptly with the immune system, insofar as the latter must decide within fractions of a second whether an immune response has been triggered or not. This is exactly where experience comes into play: our immune system is capable of learning; it evolves. Everyone who has a kindergarten-age