What is Intuition, And Can You Cultivate it ? Part One

What is Intuition, and can you cultivate it? Part One

The subject of these articles will be “intuition”. So first let’s look at a definition of intuition: Intuition definition: 1- immediate apprehension by the mind without reasoning, 2- immediate apprehension by a sense.

Now if we examine these two definitions we can see that they are self-contradictory. The first says intuition occurs “without reasoning” yet the second definition says “by a sense”.

So, which is it? Because if intuition begins with a (sense) as in the # 2 definition, then the assertion here is that we have some ’sensory capacity’ to be ‘intuitive’.

However, sensory data needs processing to be used.

Hence, that processing is ‘reasoning’ on some level (even if it is on a sub-conscious level). So we have the apparent contradiction between definition #2 and definition #1. Because definition # 1 says intuition is “without reason”.

It seems that intuition is inherently hard to define. But consider what a Chief Justice of the Supreme Court said about what was legally ‘pornography’. The judge said, “I can’t define it, but I know it when I see it”.

So, in regard to our intuition, do we know it when we have experienced it? Do we recognize when “intuition” has been a factor in our behaviors, our choices or our actions?

Let me relate a personal experience here that helps expand on this thought.

About 16 years ago I was teaching a RMCAT style, scenario based self-defense class with the armored assailants at a martial arts school in Nevada. We stayed at the school owner’s house. It was almost time to turn in for the night and I saw as inviting place for meditation.

It was outside on a square tatami mat on a wooden deck. I sat down to relax and clear my mind from the day’s instructional activity. It soon was totally dark outside and I could see nothing as I sat and began to let go of all thought. Which also means that whatever thought enters my mind, to not fight it either. Well, I guess productive meditation is hard to define too

I was absorbed in this meditation when I felt a ’spiritual presence”. I casually raised my right hand to ‘block’ my ‘right high gate’. My wrist then intercepted a kick to my head (at the ‘high right gate’). I did not experience much surprise at this either.

But the person throwing the kick in the darkness was totally amazed. He knew that it was totally dark, and for me especially, as he knew me to be rather ‘night blind’. He had also moved into position very carefully, very slowly and with all his stealth.

I used the ‘immovable arm” technique from the Aikido to intercept his kick but I knew by the ‘feel’ when I caught it that it was not meant to hit me, but only to come close, but with focus and power.

I will acknowledge though that when I did this there was a small amount of surprise for me. But this was primarily at how perfectly the kick had been intercepted.

As some of you may know,’ blocking’ or arresting the enemy’s strike and absorbing its impact is not my way or style. This would be to “contest the enemy’s power”. To “contest the enemy’s power” is something to be tactically avoided as a more powerful enemy will simply defeat you.

But there is a more subtle form of ‘blocking’ a strike that arrests the forward motion and inertia (impact) of the enemy’s strike, but without your hand or wrist absorbing much of that impact. Though I had practiced it, this was the first time I had experienced it truly and ideally ‘working’ so well.

Now, the guy throwing the kick was a good friend, co-instructor and he was given to such antics as this. He was a good martial artist too. In fact, like myself he had been a ‘bouncer’ and in a very large establishment despite his being just 5 ft 5″ in stature. To him my catching his kick in the dark seemed like I had mastered some ‘mystical technique’.

Now of course I knew better than that. But I amused myself by allowing him to wonder a bit about it. We tended to play such mind games with each other from time to time.

But let’s examine this incident objectively. How did I do it? How did I intercept the kick in total darkness and silence?

I explain it to myself through the following definition of intuition # 2, “immediate apprehension by a sense”.

Therefore, the question is what ’sense’ did I employ as apparently I heard nothing and I saw nothing?

We are ‘cutting to the chase’ now on what I feel ‘intuition’ really is and how it works.

But please understand that I am not pretending to fully understand this phenomenon. I just have a working theory as to how it might operate. In the ‘Philosophy of Science’ my theory has significance because it has some ‘predictive value’.

Most importantly here, I am convinced by experience and actually beyond any question that one’s powers of intuition can be cultivated and made more powerful.

Let’s look at another intriguing definition of intuition, which, while I cannot fully agree with it, I still see some value and information in: ‘Intuition can be said to be a comprehensive grip of the principles of universality. A person who develops intuition can know anything, without the barriers of time, space and any other obstructions’.

It’s the “can know anything without the barriers of time, space and any other obstructions” that I have trouble with here. It sounds too much like “magic” to me.

So how might we define what is ‘magic”? I define magic as “events that occur in and of themselves with no antecedent cause”.

I am not convinced that magic like that exists either. And I surely do not see my intercepting the kick in the dark as ‘that kind of magic’.

Here is my theory on intuition as applied to my ‘blocking the kick’ incident, and I think it can be generalized to all forms of intuition.

First, I was meditating so my mind was sort of a ‘blank slate’. Consider the mathematical concept of “figure ground relationship”. If the ‘thing’ we are trying to perceive is in great contrast to the background it lies upon, then we perceive it much more easily.

Conversely, if the “thing” we are trying to perceive is against a background very similar to the thing itself, then it is hard to discriminate it from that background. Of course all camouflage, either by man or naturally occurring in the animal kingdom is based on this simple principle of ‘figure ground relationship’.

So since I was meditating I was in sort of a “blank slate background” mode. It was thus easier to discriminate the ‘thing”, that is the “presence” I felt and the kick.

But what was it that I perceived in that silent darkness? I do not look to the mystical here, but only to the ‘threshold subliminal’.

By this I mean while I wasn’t consciously cognizant of any noise, I think I must have subconsciously heard something at the threshold of hearing.

That morning I went out onto the deck in sunlight and walked about it normally and also in a fashion designed to make the least noise possible. I did not hear any ’squeaks’ in the deck either way.

But, when I walked on one part of the deck there was, though silent, a sight shifting between one deck board and the next. I believe this was one of the clues that I subconsciously perceived in the incident.

So I do not feel any need to attribute any ‘magical’ elements to explain this occurrence at all. I was actually using my five senses but at such a threshold level of their ability to perceive that this “perception” was occurring at a non self-aware level.

Please stay with me here as I am coming to my central point and the significance of all this in term of ‘cultivating our intuition’.

Have you ever been stopped at a traffic light and with another car beside you also waiting for the light to change?

Then, when the light turned green the car beside you ‘peeled out” rapidly with a display of ’speed and power”? Then you said to yourself “Dam, I knew that was going to happen”!

But before they actually ‘peeled out’ you were not aware that you were thinking about them “peeling out”. This mental processing of the ‘threshold of perception cues’ was occurring at the subconscious level of your mind. It only became ‘conscious’ when they did it!

My point here is that you can train yourself to consciously perceive what previously were subconscious “threshold perceptions” of your five senses.

This is one means of cultivating your intuition. This is not mystical, yet it can be developed to such a level that to others it might seem like clairvoyance.

In the next installment we will look further at the ways one cultivates intuition

It should be self-evident that developing intuition has a significant self-defense value. It would be quite an advantage to be able to perceive your enemy’s actions before he makes them.

But the strengthening of our intuition is of true value in any and every aspect of our lives.

“The Greatest excellence lies in defeating the enemy without ever having to fight him” Sun Tzu, Circa 1st century BC.

In a self-defense situation for example you might even use this foreknowledge,your intuition, to allow the enemy to realize that you perceive his intention. Thus avoiding his putting his plan into action, as his opportunity for the ambush is clearly gone. In which case ‘you win” as you saw to it that there was not a fight in the first place!.

This is not mystical either, and I can tell you for a fact it is possible because a few decades ago when I was a bouncer I did this exact thing several times. And often my communication to the ‘would be ambusher’ was done non-verbally.

This cultivation of intuition can be taken to a surprisingly high level in many arenas such that at the highest levels it can appear to be ‘mystical or clairvoyant’.

Consider the ubiquitous western movie scene where the “breed tracker” in the posse gets off his horse, looks at the tracks, picks some dirt up in his hand, smells it and then lets it fall from his hand and he observes carefully the way it falls to the ground.

Then the ‘Breed’ thinks a moment silently before he says something like:

” The tall man favors his right leg, they’re in no hurry, they think we lost them at the aurora.. they’re headed north now, but then they’ll be cutting south for Cheyenne Wells. We could go there now,… get them when they arrive at dusk tonight”.

The “breed” thus seems to have developed a ’sixth sense’. He might even appear as being in possession of mystical powers. But in reality he has only greatly cultivated his sense of intuition over the years. He has fully capitalized on all his life experience.

But there is something more. He also has confidence in his judgment, that is, in his intuition. You must develop a confidence in your intuition too, and a justified confidence for that intuition to actually serve you.

Like so many ‘great truths’ there is a cliche that sums up the fundamental idea. In this case it is “Trust your gut”.

I would add this parallel thought;”If there is any doubt, then there is no doubt, something is wrong”

In the next installment we will see why women have a naturally better sense of intuition than do men. And we will identify the tools and practices with which to cultivate your own intuition.

www www.rmcat.com� www.peytonquinn.com� Author: Freedom From Fear: Taking Back Control, Of Your Life and Dissolving Depression (ISBN-10: 0975999605, ISBN-13: 978-0975999608, The Science & Art of love & Romance: A Strategy for Success a Program For Healing ISBN 978-1442177482.Black Belt Hall of Fame