All Metaphysics

Intuition, our gut language has unfortunately been left behind. We have developed a world in which we disregard and often even discredit and condemn intuition. How so? Lets take a little walk into our biology of intuition to see just what I mean. According to Psychology Today, intuition can be explained by that gut feeling generated by our subconscious mind through an accumulation of past experiences. So depending on your beliefs, this could mean in this life and/or past lives combined, explaining maybe why young children have very good intuition with little current life experience. Science can only say it’s a “feeling” so is it legitimate?

This natural ability to “know” or “feel’ what is good or bad is a precious gift we have been given for our preservation, our safety and our longevity. Why is it then being ignored, downplayed and even scorned? If you say “I have a bad feeling” about something, be prepared to be roasted! We have been taught to keep our emotions out of things such as our work environment and even our relationships. We find ourselves saying things like “I’m just over reacting” or ” Don’t be silly, that will never happen”. In actuality, when people have thought these very things and are later interviewed about their thoughts before an incident, they almost all say that they “had a feeling this was going to happen” or something like it.

I worked very closely with crime victims for many years and can tell you with definite clarity that I seldom worked with a victim or their families without hearing those words, “I had a feeling this was going to be bad”. If you were to ask them why they chose not to listen to that intuition then you instantly became a victim blamer, the worst kind of offender! You could be in for it just for asking why they chose not to indulge their intuition even though it is a perfectly legitimate question. Knowing very well that blaming a victim is obviously not ok, I was inspired to educate and encourage people to once again hear and listen to that voice inside them.

Think about a time you poo poo’d your intuition. We have all done it and we have all encouraged others to do it. Have you ever said to a kid or a friend that they were being silly or ridiculous etc., for being concerned about or not wanting to do something? We are asking them to ignore their intuition when we do this. If a child doesn’t want to give someone kisses and hugs to say goodbye then we need to respect that and never force them to “un-listen” to their intuition. If we feel uncomfortable being in a car with someone or partaking in an activity, it’s more than ok to respect our intuition and not disregard it.

Why is our intuition being criticized? In our world now where we are all so suddenly offensive and offended, our intuition is often called something ugly. I’ve heard it called profiling, discriminating and just plain wrong to have certain feelings. For example if I feel uncomfortable getting on an elevator with a man that I don’t know but that gives me bad vibes, then I am guilty of something, discriminating or judging on the basis of gender, color, race, poor, rich or whatever….this list is unstoppable. So we either make an excuse and hop off the elevator or we suck it up and tell ourselves not to be silly. We either ride the elevator tensely to our floor or we regret that choice entirely due to bad outcomes. It really doesn’t matter when or how we decided listening to our guts voice was a bad thing, but it would be great to bring it back as a positive thing in our lives.

We don’t need to be hurtful or become a target or even verbalize our intuition at the elevator, “hey you’re creeping me out so I’ma gunna just take these stairs”, really isn’t necessary! However, if someone asks you why you didn’t take the elevator we could be more open to saying “I just had a gut feeling I should take the stairs”, normalizing our intuitional dialogue. Respecting other peoples intuition is a big step in also respecting and accepting our own. Anytime someone verbalizes it to us we could easily say that we respect their intuition rather than chastising them for being “silly” or “over reacting”.

What does your intuition tell you? Are you listening? Are you paying attention? We may need some time for opening up those channels again. Once we stop listening to our gut reaction we often need some practice getting that skill back. Do a check in with your intuition today and explore this gift that was specifically designed for your preservation!