April 11, 2014   Edward Viljoen , external perception , internal perception , Intuition , Just because , things haven't changed , When I was a child

Just Because - Intuition and Why It's Important

When I was a child I used to make up elaborate games with very complicated rules.  If I successfully managed to convince an adult or fr...

When I was a child I used to make up elaborate games with very complicated rules.  If I successfully managed to convince an adult or friend to play my game with me, I would take care to explain the detailed rules carefully so that they would make as much sense to them as they did to me.  Inevitably one of my careful explanations would be met with the question "why?"  It was exasperating to me because I didn't know the answer most of the time, I only knew that when I made the game rules they all fit together perfectly well.  So I would simply answer, "just because!" which turned out to be equally exasperating to my would be playmate.

It turns out that "just because" was an answer I would use to explain a lot of thing I knew, but didn't know why I knew them, or didn't understand how I came to be so certain about them.  For example if asked "why do you like your brother?" a perfectly complete and proper answer would be "just because."  My mother used a similar technique when I asked her why I could or couldn't do a thing and would answer "just because" or the more frightening version "because I said so!"

Things haven't changed that much.  

I still find myself in situations where I just know something to be so, or I have a feeling that convinces me about something, or I have a sense that I ought to do this or that and I don't rightly know why it is I know so definitely why I should follow that sense.  Today if I am challenged with "why?" I don't answer like I did as a child with "just because" although I want to.  Now I have to have a careful and proper explanation for my choices and decisions.  I have to come up with a well thought out reason for whatever it is.  So I've learned to refer to the authority of what is going on around me more and more, and less to what I sense.  The up side of doing so is that people around me feel more confident with an externally verified reason for doing something, but the down side is that my sensitivity to my felt experience of knowing began to decrease as I started to down play its role in my thinking.

Now and then I would get that uneasy feeling about a decision that prompted me to do, say or think something that seemed out of step with conventional wisdom and I would carefully suppress it and go with the popular choice.  I've talked to dozens of people who have noticed the same tendency and have bottled-up their messy intuitive nudges for fear of a wrinkled up nose response of "why would you do that?"

Human beings, it seems, have an external and an internal sense perception.  

Externally we navigate thanks to the brilliance of our sense perceptions and how the world appears to us.  Internally our navigation system depends on something abstract and elusive, a felt sensation some call intuition.  The emphasis appears to be on external information for plotting a course through this life and guidance through our intuitive nature, whatever it is understood to be, is rarely taught or explored as a viable way of evaluating one path over the other.

But who hasn’t had an idea in the middle of the night to make a specific and major course correction whether that is in a relationship or in a career or something else?  It might be one of those absolutely illogical choices that everyone would say "you're crazy" to with substantial logical reasons to back up their outrage.  And, when you take a moment to think about it, their reasonable counters to your idea seem solid and right and spell out exactly why you should not make the change you are flirting with.  And yet, you can't shake the feeling of rightness about making the change and you don't know the answer to the question 'why?' other than to say sheepishly, 'just because.'

We feel things and we know things intuitively.

It's a difficult thing to measure and test something that cannot be seen, recorded and counted

.  And there is much to us which is in that realm of the invisible.  We feel things and we know things intuitively, in ways that we cannot define or explain.  Those inner prompts cannot be measured or explained completely and they leave much to be desired when it comes to clarity and reliability, but they are there, in us as sure as the intelligence to grow our fingernails is in us.  This felt reality inside of us is where I believe we intersect with that "intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection," that Albert Einstein talked of.

Hans Selye, the Austrian-Canadian endocrinologist who is considered by some to be the first scientist to demonstrate the existence of biological stress said that "the fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true science. He who knows it not, and can no longer wonder, no longer feel amazement, is as good as dead. We all had this priceless talent when we were young. But as time goes by, many of us lose it. The true scientist never loses the faculty of amazement. It is the essence of his being." (Today in Science History, todayinsci.com)   

We have to develop resistance and even defiance.

There is so much that we don’t understand, like for example, our intuition, our ability to know without the process of reasoning.  It is such a rich source of great ideas for our lives that get us excited and charged up to go ahead and do great things that no amount of careful planning and analysis can achieve.  And to develop sensitivity to that intuitive faculty takes resilience because there is a strong cultural voice of suspicion about its accuracy and rightly so -- because it is difficult to sort through and know the difference between intuition, fantasy, cultural messages and everything else floating around inside.  Nevertheless, even with all known issues and shortcomings, whatever the reason for disconnecting from our intuition, my opinion is that we have to stop depriving ourselves of one of the greatest and most beautiful navigation assistance systems that is part of being a human being.  

I think we have to develop a resistance to the trend to minimize or ridicule our intuition, even defiance and to take on an adventurer's attitude for trying and testing what we are prompted to do from within.  Personally I don't think intuition will ever prompt you or anyone else to do something dangerous to self or others, and if you are prompted from within to do something inadvisable, that isn't intuition and ought not to be followed.  That's not to say intuition will not nudge you out onto the skinny branch, or whisper in your ear about the precise action you are nervous to take, it probably will.  But it doesn't, in my opinion, recommend reckless, dangerous, and irresponsible actions.

Sometimes it produces a grand idea about your life, or even a weird idea about your current line of action and you may have a healthy dose of second guessing yourself to go through.  You may also find tremendous resistance from those around you and a sense that no one understands you.  There is a story of the famous chemist and inventor of Vaseline, Sir Robert Augustus Chesebrough could not get anyone to take his new product seriously.  He had to literally burn himself and apply the salve on his own wounds in front of audiences to demonstrate what Vaseline was capable of.  Sometimes you have to be your own authority and move on your good ideas even if no one readily accepts them.  Sometimes the experts are the ones who will be the voice of negation.  Thomas Edison, who gave the world so much through his genius is said to have commented that the talking picture would never supplant the regular silent motion pictures of his time, and that the phonograph had no commercial value and that the radio craze will soon die out.

Part of the problem is that when the respected experts and trusted friends tell us something, being the believing creatures that we are, we think about what they say seriously and sometimes take their opinion for truth, not listening equally to the countless prompts from inside to the contrary. 

Ordinary Awareness is a Mysterious Affair.

The world out there is not black and white and not set in concrete, even though reality seems to be something fixed and solid.  It is not.  In a very real sense, what we regard as ordinary consciousness is a great and mysterious affair; some would say even an illusion.  

But that is the world out there; there IS something that is permanent, unchanging, constant, regular, and dependable.  I call it reality, and to me this reality remains a vastly unexplored territory in which so much is possible that is not obvious. We have to look inside to find it.  We can practice cultivating it, or listening to it and drawing up on it to bring light into the world.  We are already uncannily aware of what is going on around us, but may have fallen into a dream in which we think only what appears before us concretely is real.  We already have a vast capacity to absorb and understand by means of both logical and sensed knowing, but may have forgotten or abandoned the powerful awareness that come from the subtle blend of inner and outer knowing. 

I am willing to risk admitting that I do not absolutely understand the process of calling upon this inner something, yet that does not seem to matter in the slightest, because I intuitively sense the unseen, I intuitively feel the unknown, I am more than somewhat inclined to believe that there is a presence that many call God, that I call Reality, and I trust that in It is our hope and salvation.

You may also enjoy reading:

• Conduct
• To Risk, To Release, To Follow Through, To Trust
• How Sitting Still Reveals A World Within