Mindfully intuitive

Talk given during “Deepening your mindfulness”-workshop at MSTDA, Roosevelt Island, March 6, 2019

Tonight I’d like to focus on intuition and its connection to practicing mindfulness and meditation. I do so on account of the New Moon, which always asks for leaping into the unknown, getting back in touch with our intuition and taking life step by step through presence. 

I.              So what is intuition?

As per definition, intuition is: “The ability to understand something immediately, without the need for conscious reasoning”, or “a thing that one knows or considers likely from instinctive feeling rather than conscious reasoning.

As per Albert Einstein: “The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.”

Increasingly though, intuition is researched as a powerful, scientifically-backed skill and by far no esoteric, hard-to-grasp concept anymore. 

It means, trusting the collection of all your subconscious experiences (which means it is constantly growing), and instinctively understanding which information is important and which is not in situations that require decision-making. 

Often times referred to as the “gut feeling”, scientists make a neurological case for our intuition: They call the “gut” the second brain as it contains a vast neural network of 100 million neurons, more than our spiral cord. 

II.             Understanding intuition and its connection to mindfulness

We’ve been told that we need to focus on rational judgements instead of our own inner feelings. The first has its place and both are not mutually exclusive. But it’s time to bring some balance back. 

To refine your sensitivity to gut instincts and intuitive nudges, it’s critical to make space for intuition to grow and to practice techniques to pay more attention to it. 

First learning, to differentiate between the voices of stress and the voice of intuition by noticing volume and force: Stress is usually pushy and loud and dominant, whereas the intuition may just be a whisper or a hint. But then the more you cut through the dominant voices of your head, the stronger the whisper gets because you’re starting to notice it more and quicker. 

Through meditation, you give your mind clarity and therewith allow your intuition to be heard.  

III.           Mindfully intuitive

According to my experiences, especially pronounced in the last few months, a more refined intuition is a natural byproduct of living mindfully.

Here is where I see the connection between practicing mindfulness and meditation and honing my intuition:

·     Mindfulness slows you down: When we’re in a rush, we are in our heads and vice versa. There is little leeway of tapping into our intuition. In slowing down, which naturally happens, when you bring mindfulness into your life, we give ourselves the space and time to receive the information our intuition is trying to send us. 

·     Be in the state of being:We live in a culture of doing, benchmarking ourselves against other doers, and feel good when we have done and achieved something (rightly so! Activity and achievement have their place in our human experience). But this constant activity leaves little room for hearing this small and soft voice of guidance that our intuition sends us and so it is worthwhile spending parts of your day simply being (that is noticing, observing, gewähren lassen), to be able to re-connect with intuition. 

·     Mindfulness increases self-awareness & the ability to notice: Spending time with yourself, your experience and slowing down, automatically leads to more self-awareness. Awareness of your thoughts, feelings, and responses and then noticing when these patterns are changing. Maybe you notice a sudden thought or a sudden sentiment that is just different from your usual pattern and you can perceive this as an intuitive message to follow. This will increase and become louder the more you focus on a mindful and meditative state of being (and doing). 

·     Declutter mind, heart, soul and let go: I hate to break it to you, but you (luckily!) will never stop thinking because that is what your mind is there for. But the more you practice mindfulness, the more your mind will be de-cluttered as you consciously choose which thoughts to engage with and which not. Letting go of unwholesome thoughts and emotions is not the same as pushing them away. Rather noticing and watching them until they evaporate will slowly clear the space and heighten your energy level so you’ll be more able to connect with your intuition. 

We owe it to our intuition (as much as to our emotions and our body) to be heard.

As always: Mindfulness is a practice and therefore takes practice. Be patient and try and error hearing and following your intuition (which often runs counter to the data-collecting intellect…but that’s the entire point).