On Intuition

Nature is the silent witness to intuition.
Malidoma Patrice Some (missing the accents...sorry) (from  InnSaie: the Sea Within documentary) 

I watched an amazing video last evening on Netflix entitled, InnSaie: The Sea Within.  It addressed the fascinating topic of intuition.  I was  enthralled by the video but also by this man who they interviewed during the video, Malidoma Patrice Some and his take on intuition.

What is intuition?

I think of intuition as the inner knowing that goes beyond thought.  Say what crazy lady?

Intuition according to  the Cambridge on line dictionary is "(Knowledge of) ability to understand something immediately based on feeling rather than fact. " 

So it is  knowing something that doesn't come from factual knowledge but from feeling.  There is that "feeling" word again and when we think of feeling we think of "being" rather than doing.  In order to tap into our intuition we need to be comfortable with being.

Intuition is that "in your gut knowing".  It is the ability to interpret the messages we get from the world within and the world without through the five senses without having to  go to the information sorting center  of the brain, the thalamus, first where they would get delayed by the extra step of thought formation.  I guess, it is like a knee jerk reflex of the mind/body and soul.

Intuition is natural and inherent in all of us.  It is also the thing most of us are losing because we are too wrapped up in thinking and doing. ...we are pulling away from our natural connection to nature and to Self.  We are too concerned with understanding what is going on around us through our rational mind instead of our inner mind.  We are thus pulling a way from spirit...and our intuition is simply the voice of spirit guiding us in a better direction, according to Some (Miller, 1995).

Some 's spirit guided purpose in life is to educate westerns about the importance of things like intuition,  connection to nature and knowing who they really are.  He believes we have strayed so far from understanding what the West African Dagara tribe accepts as basic knowledge and that impinges on our ability to know from a deeper level  who we are which is the basis of our intuition. :

Nature is like a canvas, a painting of countless options and possibilities. It is the total of all the interwoven connections between these possibilities that makes up spirit. Or, you might say that spirit paints the canvas of nature. You don’t really worship spirit, because you are also spirit, and spirits don’t worship one another. What makes you different from spirit overall is that you are locked into temporality. You have a body, like a piece of cloth that is decayable. While you stay in it, it’s hard for you to have the same abilities that spirit has without a body. It is also easy to make mistakes about what is real, and how to go about things effectively. (Miller, 1995, par 12)

 

This inner knowing that is not dependent on thought but that comes from spirit is understood by us through nature (both the nature around us and the bodily  antennas  nature offers us through the five senses.) In order to tap back into it we must become more mindful, more aware of nature's rhythm and more in tune with our sensual perception of it.

Well that is something to think about!

All is well in my world.

References

Cambridge On line dictionary

Miller, P. (1995) Visions: Malidoma Some. Mother Jones. Retrieved from http://www.motherjones.com/politics/1995/03/visions-malidoma-some/

Olafdottir, K. & Gunnsteindottir, H. (producer/directors) (2016)  Inn Saie: The Sea Within. Netflix