IT’S INTUITION MONDAY!

On Mondays I focus on discussing the subject and practice of intuition. I share one quote that encourages us to use it more readily in our daily grind and I muse and talk about my own experiences with this vital life force.

#intuitionmonday No.1
Pieter-Dirk Uys is a South African satirist, active as a performer, author, and social activist. He was born in September 1945 in Cape Town and is widely known as his alter ego, Tannie Evita Bezuidenhout. She is stalwart and has wittily lampooned statesmen and politicians during and since Apartheid days.

“...there were plays that didn’t work and I still think about them 40 years later and it’s usually because I listened to advice, and I took shortcuts and that I did not follow my instinct. I now blindly follow my instinct, knowing I won’t understand it but it will always be right.” - Pieter-Dirk Uys (interview with Alec Hogg for The Rational Perspective on BIZ NEWS)

Intuition is shunned by some as airy fairy fiction, yet to the majority of the most successful people on planet Earth it forms a critical element of their ability to make sound decisions. Throughout the ages there have been those significant characters who have shaped the human experience through their words and actions. Nearly all of these men and women (in Evita’s case both in one person), upon deeper inspection, credit intuition as a major and vital part of their success.

intuition
ɪntjʊˈɪʃ(ə)n/
noun

1. the ability to understand something instinctively, without the need for conscious reasoning. "we shall allow our intuition to guide us”
   Synonyms: hunch, feeling, feeling in one's bones, gut feeling, funny feeling, inkling, sneaking suspicion, suspicion, impression

Through various times in my life I have danced with Intuition. Realising early on that it is a relationship and not a guaranteed state, I took effort to follow the guidance of my inner voice, observing keenly and without judgement what comes as result. It was always interesting how it worked out wonderfully, offering me guidance to know that which I could not have known.

But still I doubted. My western trained mind felt that I was gambling somewhat, yet my earthly body resonated with the innate wisdom that it gave. Years went by with me yinging and yanging through life, sometimes ebbing and sometimes flowing, until I decided (quite intuitively) to get a dog, a female Siberian Husky. I took the job of being pack leader very seriously thanks to avid studying of the famous Mexican-American human-trainer, dog-rehabilitator, Cesar Milan. I began keeping an active lifestyle and led the way for my pack of two to new experiences. I had to stay fresh in my mind, and I quickly noticed that veering off into the future or the past caused Music (her name I instinctively chose) to get agitated. It was strange for her, foreign even, to feel my energy slip from the present moment into rehashing of memories of earlier, or imagining and planning future events. This realisation spurred me on to keep more present. And in so doing I entered a whole new phase of awareness and intuitive living.

Two years on, the pack has grown. Momma Music had 6 puppies with a Siberian Husky cross Wolf as the father. I kept one, the most easy going girl, of the near exact same colour as mom, and named her Deuntjie. Music and Deuntjie teach me more about intuition than any guidance I could find in the world around me. Since dogs, and huskies in particular, are very instinctive animals, they have become my life coaches, offering me fun correction to my human erring.

Intuition, it seems, is not something that is very commonly revered. Yet the majority of people who have been wildly succesful in their lives and careers credit intuition for their success. Steve Jobs said intuition is “more powerful than intellect”, Albert Einstein called the intuitive or metaphorical mind a sacred gift. An endless list of incredibly successful individuals, from Rene Descartes, Edgar Cayce, Deepak Chopra, to Richard Branson, Oprah Winfrey, and Aristotle, name intuition as vitally important to a life well lived.

So push aside your own doubt, and start to take your own inner guidance, the tuition within, more seriously. It is (like any relationship) something you nurture. And as you begin to recognise its soft but firm prodding, and trust and follow its lead, you will begin to see that it offers a great relief from the super-analytical overthinking mind that so often leads us on paths of defeat and disappointment.