What about intuition?

Can intuition be a useful extension or complement to rational thought? Many think so. Others caution it can be uncertain and misleading.

Author and coach Tama J. Kieves notes we may block intuitive understanding because “It’s hard to let insights in, if we’ve dead bolted the doors.

“Sometimes we are begging for clarity, just as long as it’s a nice, tidy, respectable answer and preferably one that doesn’t really require us to change much at all.

“Secretly, I’m looking for guidance that tells me that nothing has to change and I will get everything I want. I really don’t want to hear anything else. I certainly don’t want to hear how I might have to grow or do something different or open my mind to a new possibility.”

Tama J. Kieves is author of This Time I Dance!: Creating the Work You Love.

In her article The Value of Intuition, Laura Silva Quesada expresses the idea that it has helped many people achieve. “Have you ever wondered why some people seem to be so successful in life?,” she writes. “Everything flows just right for them. Whatever they touch turns to gold.

“One reason for success is the ability to make correct choices, and decisions. Successful people do that consistently. They make the kind of choices and decisions that lead to positive outcomes. It is based on information that goes far beyond what is learned and involves accessing accurate information from seemingly nowhere.

“This ability is intuition and highly successful people enjoy a higher degree of intuition than the average person.

“Where most people base their decision making only on their accumulated knowledge, successful people combine all they have learned together with what they sense with their intuition. Their ability to gather information is way ahead of the rest.”

Quesada quotes Albert Einstein: “The intellect has little to do on the road to discovery. There comes a leap in consciousness, call it intuition or what you will, and the solution comes to you and you don’t know how or why.”

But it isn’t infallible. In his book Secrets of the Superyoung, neuropsychologist David Weeks says, “83 percent of Nobel Prize-winning scientists claim frequent or occasional assistance from unconscious intuitions, but only 7 percent say that such hunches were always correct… Albert Einstein once said he lost two years on an erroneous intuition.”

Image from book: Intuition: Its Powers and Perils.

Related pages:
Intuition / instinct
Intuition / instinct: pg 2: articles sites books

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Douglas Eby (M.A./Psychology) is author of the Creative Mind series of sites which provide “Information and inspiration to enhance creativity and personal development.”

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