Intuition remains always awake. We only need to awaken from our automatic mechanical existence and make a conscious attempt to access this inner intuitive guidance.

What is Intuition?

The word ‘intuition’ originated from the Latin word ‘intueri’ meaning ‘in to you’ or ‘to look inside.’ People understand intuition in different ways depending on their worldviews. Rationalists often think that ‘intuition’ means ‘common sense’ as in the usage ‘counterintuitive.’ It is an erroneous assumption because intuition is not just commonsense or accumulated experience though intuition can access those levels also. Some scientists consider the right hemisphere of the brain as the seat of intuition. However, intuition is not merely a product of the brain. The human mind/body system acts as a conduit for intuition to manifest.

Intuition is a multidimensional and integral resource with many interconnected levels. Intuition has unconscious, subliminal, personal, transpersonal, telepathic, conscious, psychic, individual, collective, superconscious, spiritual and transcendental dimensions. It involves immediate knowing without using linear analytical reasoning. Unlike logical analysis that works from the part to the whole, intuition directly apprehends the totality of a given situation or aspect holistically. Intuition can manifest independent of time and space while rationality operates within the limits of the three-dimensional reality. Intuition is not opposed to reason. Reason, within its limitations, can serve to implement the wisdom of intuition, if properly applied.

Predictions and prophecies are only two aspects of what intuition can do. Predictions often come from subliminal and psychic intuition, while prophecies and channellings with spiritual implications could arise from superconscious levels of intuition. Great art and scientific theories are often expressions of intuitive awareness. Ultimately, intuition helps us to create our individual and collective destiny in tune with integral evolution rather than making only predictions or prophecies.

All the myriad manifestations and levels of intuitive, telepathic and instinctive knowing, integrated as one multidimensional integral whole, can be called integral intuition. Integral intuition plays a crucial role in Integral Gaia Yoga, which I am evolving.

Benefits of Intuition

Intuition can

1. Act as an inner guide in everyday life.
2. Deepen meaningful interpersonal interaction, dialogue, conflict resolution and understanding for manifesting the awareness of Communion in humanity.
3. Help to find one’s unique calling and spiritual purpose and shape a livelihood based on that.
4. Sharpen your ability to sense the signals from the mind/body system and access the inner healing capacities to prevent illness, cure diseases and attain health.
5. Enhance problem solving, creativity, artistic pursuits and innovation.
6. Help decision making in personal, professional and social/collective life.
7. Help to find one’s life partner.
8. Create a future generation with expanded consciousness and integral awareness, if intuitive methods are incorporated into the educational system.
9. Address the social, economic and ecological challenges.
10. Anticipate natural disasters and social or economic upheavals.
11. Play a part in preventing and investigating crime.
12. Help to evolve and manifest visions of alternative futures that ensure the well being of humanity and Earth.
13. Guide us on the path of individual and collective Enlightenment.
14. Intensify the manifestation of an integral planetary Gaia consciousness.

Ways to access Intuition

The intuitive potential is latent in all human beings. It is not necessary to be a professional intuitive to notice intuitive signals. Professional intuitives and psychics differ from most people only in the sense that they train their intuitive abilities well through spiritual and shamanic practices. They also use divination tools at times though there are some intuitives who rely on direct intuitive sensing without tools. Not all intuitives and psychics can access all levels of intuition integrally. It depends on whether they have an integral awareness or are operating from only some dimensions of consciousness.

Intuitive impressions appear in various ways in different individuals. The main receptive modes are

Clairvoyance (clear vision): Clairvoyants see visions and images of objects, people and situations with their inner eye.

Clairaudience (clear hearing): Clairaudient people receive intuition as an inner voice in the form of thoughts, sounds or music.

Clairsentience (clear sensing): This involves hunches, sensing, inner knowing and gut feelings. Clairsentience is often accompanied by body sensations.

There is also an active mode of projecting intuition through speech to transform the consciousness of others. It is called clairparlance (clear speech).

People should identify and pay attention to their dominant sense modality through which intuition expresses itself. Usually, it will be a combination of different senses with one sense being dominant. Spiritual practices like meditation will help to experience integral intuition through all the sense modalities simultaneously and also the knowing that comes from beyond the senses.

Even without accessing supernormal and altered states of consciousness, we can sense messages from some levels of intuition. The Universe sends messages to us in several ways. We only need to become alert to be aware of these messages. The key is to consciously notice what captures your attention. You notice something out of the endless stimuli you face everyday, only because the omnipresent Spirit is conveying some relevant message to you through what you notice and where your attention goes during daily activities. Paying attention to what you experience will help you get intuitive insights.

Intuition operates through synchronicity. So, even a song you hear, the people you meet and the colours of the clothes you wear or the news that captures your attention on TV or newspaper are all signs from intuition conveying a meaning for you. These are not mere coincidences because nothing happens by chance and everything is interconnected. You can also watch your thoughts, feelings, daydreams and body sensations for intuitive messages. Usually the impressions that you notice first are more important because the critical mind would have had little time to judge and distort these early impressions. It is best to take a non-judgmental approach to the intuitive impressions. You can put all the impressions into paper through spontaneous writing and drawing to find meaningful patterns. To see what intuition is telling you, put all these external and internal intuitive impressions in the context of your current life situation or the questions you have asked your intuition.

Often people don’t notice the stream of intuitive messages appearing in many forms because they get lost in the internal mental dialogue. Anyway, we should not suppress the mind, but integrate it as an effective tool. When we are alert and aware, the mental chatter will lessen and we can notice intuition speaking through even the apparently random thoughts. Self-hypnosis methods are helpful in accessing the hypnagogic awareness between waking and sleep through which intuition often manifests.

Intuitive messages also appear through dreams. Before you sleep, ask your intuition to provide insights about any issue. This will trigger intuitive dreams. Giving an autosuggestion to remember dreams before falling asleep will help dream recall. On waking up, write down whatever you remember about the dreams. Remembering dreams and keeping a dream journal will help you notice intuitive dream patterns.

Spirituality and Intuition

Spiritual, yogic, meditative and shamanistic practices intensify the human potential to experience all levels of intuition including the mundane and the transcendental. The revelations of the great mystics and prophets are actually channellings from the Divine aspect of intuition.

Sri Aurobindo, integral yogi and philosopher, writes: “Intuition has a four-fold power. A power of revelatory truth-seeing, a power of inspiration or truth-hearing, a power of truth-touch or immediate seizing of significance…a power of automatic discrimination of the orderly and exact relation of truth to truth…Intuition can therefore perform all the action of reason including the function of logical intelligence…but by its own superior process and steps that do not fail or falter.”

Mudra yoga has mudras (sacred hand gestures), which can be used to enter a state of awareness where you are more conscious of intuitive cues. The Gyan mudra is an easy way to access such an alert state. In Gyan mudra, you touch the tips of the index finger and thumb while keeping the other fingers straight. The tongue position in which the tip of the tongue touches the area where the inside of the upper gums meets the inside of the upper teeth, helps to maintain a relaxed and alert awareness that enables you to sense intuitive signs.

Kundalini yoga enhances intuitive capacities. Kundalini yoga practice should be done with the guidance of a trained teacher. According to Kulwant Kaur (boulderkundalini@gmail.com), who teaches Kundalini Yoga in Boulder, CO and Los Angeles, CA, US, “Kundalini yoga is a very powerful technology that moves the Kundalini energy (which is coiled at the base of the spine) up to the higher centers. The third eye point is the center of intuition, and we keep our eyes closed and focused upon this point during the exercises in order to engage our intuitive sense. With practice, the third eye grows accustomed to staying open, and our connection grows stronger. In this practice, it is also encouraged to abstain from drinking alcohol because it closes down the third eye point.”

There are many other yogic and meditative practices that strengthen intuition. Integral Gaia Yoga, which I am evolving, aims for the widening, heightening and deepening of consciousness, resulting in access to integral intuition. Earth is a living organism with psycho-spiritual dimensions. This Earth consciousness is called Gaia. Gaia was the Greek Earth Goddess. Intuition can be accessed through this Gaia consciousness in which humanity and all creatures of Earth are immersed. The tribals of Andaman and Nicobar Islands, and birds and animals anticipated the deadly Tsunami and escaped to higher land by instinctively accessing this ‘Gaiafield.’

Modern humanity has lost this connection, but can regain it through integral consciousness evolution. Awareness of our intuitive connection and communion with the living Earth and all her beings, is necessary now to resolve the ecological crisis of global warming and create a world where peace and harmony prevail. Tuning into intuition in integral ways will help people to live and evolve intuitively to manifest the unique purpose of their life in tune with the collective evolution and manifest Heaven right here on Earth.