Intuition is an inner knowing that does not come from an outside source. In a single flash of intuitive thought you can understand more about life than a whole year of reading books or listening to people. While there will always be a place for education in the world, we can do ourselves an enormous favor by learning how to get in contact with and listen to this part of our self that knows without being told.
Intuition is cultivated by contemplating the inter-connectedness of all things, That is to say, to recognize that everything in the universe, including us, is connected with everything else in the universe. The fully realized awareness of this ultimate Truth has been called Enlightenment or Awakening. It is the felt reality of this interconnectedness. You don't just think it, you feel that it is true, know it at a deep level.
But you do not need to have achieved Buddha-like Enlightenment for Intuition to be a fact in your life. You can start right this minute by consciously looking at the world as an interconnected whole, rather than a big chaotic assembly of unconnected parts, and yourself separate from it all. Look for the connections that surely exist behind the appearance of separateness. Start doing this now, and practice it everyday for the rest of your life and you will be amazed at how it transforms your life for the better.
In Evolutionary Psychology terms, our ego is a survival mechanism that has allowed our species to survive and thrive in a hostile environment. It likes to categorize everything it encounters as being either good for us or bad for us. It creates a world of dualities, full of drama and conflict where none need exist. We all know people whose lives seem to be one drama after another. They are locked in egoic thinking.
But as humanity evolves to a higher level of consciousness, we begin to see that having solved or elimated most of the problems and dangers that threatened our ancestors, egoic thinking is no longer as helpful as it once was. A good analogy is our instinct to eat salty/fatty/sweet foods in order to store away fat to sustain us the next time food was scarce. In our evolutionary past it was impossible to find so much salty/fatty/sweet food that it would harm you, so we are programmed to eat as much of it as we can find. In today's world though, we have to curb this tendancy if we are not going to become obese. We need to recognize that seeing the world through the eyes of our primitive ancestors, with danger behind every bush, is no longer helpful to our well-being, living as we do in a much safer more abundant world.
To cultivate Intuition, we must learn to put our egos back in their proper place and see the world as an interconnected whole, rather than a disconnected and dangerous place. The ego is a practical aspect of ourselves, useful at times, but not the totality of who were are. If we don't, the ego takes over and soon we define ourselves in terms of our ego. Who are you? Most would say, "my name is ... and these are the events of my life". That is the ego talking. The fear of death is your ego worrying that it will one day cease to exist. When you cultivate an awareness of your Higher Self, the fear of death recedes because you realize that your essential nature is unchanged by death.
One way that you will know that progress is being made towards felt interconnectedness with all things is when apparent coincidences come to your notice. It could be something very ordinary, like hearing a particular word on the radio or TV, and just as you hear it, you see the same word on a sign, or see the object itself. It could be anything that appears connected to some other causally unrelated thing.
The great Swiss Psychologist Carl Jung called this 'synchronicity'. Its a good sign that you are becoming aware of the interconnections around you that always existed but were previously unnoticed.
The awareness of the interconnectedness of all things means you have raised your own awareness to a higher plane. You are on the path to realizing your Higher Self. It is a state of mind that we are capable of, but for most people, this capability is unknown. One of the objectives of this article is to bring this fact to your attention, to make you aware of it.
By becoming aware of your Higher Self, you are merging your mind with the larger mind of the universe, and therefore you begin to have access to the knowledge contained in that larger mind -- the source of Intuition.
This larger mind of the universe has been called many things; Cosmic Mind, Universal Mind, God, Nature, Life Force. You can think of this intelligence as a kind of Informing Principle that underlies and permeates the entire universe and brings forth Life. It informs the universe in the way that DNA informs our bodies. It is the blue-print that defines the way our bodies grow and operate, how our physical nature is expressed.
One way to describe the purpose of human life is to become progressively more aware of your Higher Self. To identify with your Higher Self rather than any of the the lower states of mind that we humans all too often manifest.
The Higher Self embodied in each of us is a small but perfectly formed microcosmic representation of the outer macrocosmic universe. Each of us has a tiny representation of the universe within ourselves. The ancient Greeks believed knowing this microcosm is the only way a person can know the macrocosm. They summed it up as "Know Thyself". Inspiration and genius
Great artists, philosophers, scientists, anyone whose ideas change the world have found a way to access their own Intuition. They go beyond mundane reality and experience the wonderment of a higher reality, then bring some of it back with them and share it with the world. They mediate between this world and some larger reality that lies beyond it. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say they interpret the higher reality into terms accessible to people.
Science and technology have delivered so many benefits to human-kind. I would not want to give the impression that we should forget science and rely on intuition alone. As an academic, I (that's the egoic me) believe in and practice empirical (objective evidence-based) research. Its a method that has worked well since the classical period of ancient Greece to bring new ideas into the world and find ways of applying those ideas for the benefit of human-kind.
Where does Intuition fit in the rational world of science? It fits nicely as the starting point in the scientific process. A scientist has a brilliant idea (intuitively derived), Then they test it and publish the results and allow others to build upon the original bright idea. With collective effort based on the scientific method, our knowledge of the world advances. Intuition is a valuable part of this process.
Einstein and others from the world of science who have changed the world have observed that their best ideas have come from this source. If its good enough for them, its good enough for me (and maybe you too).
David Tuffley