“We only believe in those thoughts which have been conceived not in the brain but in the whole body.”

W.B. Yeats, Essays and Introductions

Intuition is one of the most powerful faculties for gaining knowledge about the world. Along with reason, science, and imagination, it is one of the primary means by which we discover truth. The great psychologist William James went so far as to suggest that intuition is “the deep thing in us, the reasoned argument is but a surface exhibition.” (William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience)

In this video, we explore how we can tap into our intuition to answer life’s big questions – questions such as: What is my purpose? How do I find a meaning in my existence? Should I make a major career change? Should I end a relationship?

“Asking the proper question is the central action of transformation …The key question causes germination of consciousness. The properly shaped question always emanates from an essential curiosity about what stands behind. Questions are the keys that cause the secret doors of the psyche to swing open.”

Clarissa Estés, Women Who Run With the Wolves

Intuition is a process that works below the threshold of conscious awareness. Tapping into the innate wisdom of the psyche, the embodied wisdom of the physical self, and a lifetime of experience, our intuition utilizes these sources of knowledge to yield insights that are beyond the reach of conscious thought. How it does this is not well understood, or as Carl Jung wrote:

“I say intuition is a sort of perception which does not go exactly by the senses, but goes via the unconscious, and at that I leave it and say “I don’t know how it works.”

Carl Jung, Collected Works Volume 18

While intuition is a mysterious phenomenon, there are steps we can take to help us generate the intuitive insights that can answer life’s big questions.

The first step is to clearly formulate the question. Our question should not be trivial in nature, but transformational. It should be one that if answered will have a lasting impact on the course of our life. This step is simple, but many people never take it. They don’t consciously formulate the big questions of life that beg for answers, and as Bernardo Kastrup writes in More Than Allegory, “For as long as the right questions aren’t asked by the intellect, the ultimate answers of life and reality will remain elusive.”

To put the intuitive mind to work in finding the answers we seek, it is best to get our self-reflective, reasoning mind out of the way after it has done its job of formulating the question. For just as a wise sage spends much time in meditative silence, so too the intuitive mind works best when not interfered with by too much conscious thinking. Or as Kastrup writes:

“The intellect self-reflectively contemplates its circumstances and asks progressively more refined questions, while the [unconscious] mind—nudged along by these questions—reacts intuitively with symbolic answers. As a matter of fact, this is how every creative person ordinarily operates in any area of intellectual activity, from science to business: first, the intellect contemplates the problem and iterates upon the right questions to ask. Then, you must stop thinking, so the questions have a chance to sink into the [unconscious] mind. Once they do, inspiration suddenly strikes, as if out of nowhere.”

Bernardo Kastrup, More Than Allegory

Silencing the mind, however, is the opposite of what many people do when attempting to answer the big questions of life. Due to the misconception that conscious reasoning is our most powerful cognitive tool, many of us endlessly ruminate on these questions and hope that the more we think about them, the more likely we are to discover a solution. Often, however, all we do is spin ourselves in circles of thought and we never arrive at satisfactory answers.

In her book Extraordinary Knowing, the psychoanalyst Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer suggests that the phenomenon of having something on the tip of the tongue, is a simple example that shows how intuition works best when we stop trying to consciously find an answer to a question or problem. Or as she writes:

“. . .if you think of a time when you tried hard to remember something, you know the more you tried to remember it, the more you pushed it down within you. However, when you relaxed and allowed it to emerge, it bubbled right up. You accomplished that with no effort. That’s how intuition works. Effortlessness. It’s easier than you think.”

Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer, Extraordinary Knowing

The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer also emphasized how the wisdom that emanates from the intuitive mind is most forthcoming when we diminish the rumination of the conscious mind. Or as he writes:

“I have familiarized myself with the factual data of a theoretical and practical problem; I do not think about it again, yet often a few days later the answer to the problem will come into my mind from its own accord; the operation which has produced it, however, remains … a mystery to me …”

Arthur Schopenhauer, Parerga and Paralipomena

Quieting the mind can be encouraged through activities such as relaxation techniques, meditation, napping, listening to music, or walking in nature. We just need to do something that distracts us from the problem at hand. The moments just prior to sleep, or just prior to awakening are also well-known to be ripe for intuitive insights as these are times when our conscious thought is at a minimum.

Along with quieting the mind we should strive to connect to the body, for intuitive insights present themselves both as bodily experiences and as conscious thoughts. Our ability to detect intuitions, therefore, is promoted by exercises that ground us in the physical body. Or as Iain McGilchrist writes:

“Even if [intuitive insights] manifest as cognitive, they are embodied, in the sense that they are both informed by and inform the motion of our limbs, our breathing and pulse, the emotion of our heart and gut and mind. . .”

Iain McGilchrist, The Matter With Things

Gut feelings are one of the primary forms of intuitive communication. In his book Intelligence in the Flesh, Guy Claxton notes that “If you are told, ‘The best way to do this task is to go with your gut feeling’, you do better. Just this simple suggestion is enough to redirect your attention from more rational to more intuitive strategies.” (Guy Claxton, Intelligence in the Flesh)

In addition to being integral to our intuitive capacities, the gut also plays a prominent role in our emotional experience, or as McGilchrist writes:

“The gut and the psyche have close connexions. Anxiety, depression, and other disorders have characteristic expressions in gut behaviour – and the associations work both ways: diseases of the gut affect mind and mood.”

Iain McGilchrist, The Matter With Things

Recognizing the role that the gut plays in emotional processing, it will not be surprising to learn that chronically suppressing emotions impedes our intuitive abilities. When we sever our connection to the emotional signals that emanate from the gut, we also sever our connection to an important source of intuitive communication. Or as McGilchrist writes: “lack of awareness of emotions negatively affects intuitive decision-making.” (Iain McGilchrist, The Matter With Things)

Asking questions, quieting the mind, connecting to the body, and being more emotionally aware, are steps we can take to increase the chance of having an intuitive insight that can transform our life.

In her book Extraordinary Knowing, Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer interviews many individuals who display remarkable intuitive abilities. One of her interviewees was a woman named Helen Palmer, who as Mayer notes, “has written extensively about intuition and travels all over the world through her school, which teaches people to develop intuitive abilities”. To conclude this video, we will turn to Palmer’s insights for some practical advice on how to strengthen our intuitive capabilities.

“[Intuition] is a very different variety of knowing than the knowing we call rational. It’s different in kind. And you cannot, simply cannot, engage in both kinds of knowing at the same time. This degree of intuitive knowing relies on different, subtler signals than rational knowing. Those signals only become perceptible with a shift in consciousness, a shift out of rational thinking. That’s a jolt for intellectually trained people to realize. But as you learn to shift back and forth, you learn to trust it. And the shift gets easier—quicker and more automatic… Our minds resist intuitive knowing. Once you learn to relax that resistance, you can start to reclaim intuition from its suppression by the rational mind. The more you work with it, the more remarkable your knowing becomes. You free the receptive state from its armoring by the ego. You learn to live closer to receptivity.”

Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer, Extraordinary Knowing

EDITORS NOTE: This Academy of Ideas video is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.