Intuition Development

The goal of individual intuition development is to expand one's innate intuitive ability into a refined and workable skill. The task is not that different from the development of any skill, such as swimming, speaking French or riding a bicycle, except that intuition, being less tangible, is also less amenable to traditional teaching methods. It calls for more purely internal effort. One's progress is not necessarily visible to others, sometimes not even to oneself. Also similar, the development of one's intuition cannot take place unless there is a sincere desire for it, and once this motivation is in place the learning proceeds rapidly.

The expansion of one's native intuitive ability has been well explored and reported in several readily available books, and taught extensively in workshops and classes in the U.S., Europe and elsewhere. (See Resources for a listing of some of these opportunities.) While no cookbook formulas or standard curricula are available for magically enhancing your intuition, there are still a few ground rules that may enable you to get started properly and guide you along the path toward success.

First, intuition development is a solo, highly personal process, since the learning barriers that block intuition's' natural unfoldment are themselves highly personal. Each person's obstacles are unique. Strengthening your intuition involves mainly the removal of the blocks to the natural emergence of an already existing faculty. The main effort required is therefore to abandon or circumvent certain acquired beliefs, mental habits or emotional conditioning that may be standing in the way. In other words, it requires more unlearning than learning. This is the key personal process needed to open your intuitive gate.

Second, the student needs to enhance his sensitivity to the part of his inner mind that is the source from which intuitive knowledge flows. To communicate with your inner mind you must learn its subtle, internal, non-verbal "language." This effort, similar to working with dreams, involves your feelings more than your reasoning, your heart more than your brain. You must learn how to distinguish genuine feelings, arising from your deeper mind and heart, from those that are emotional reactions or intellectual intrusions from your subconscious mind. As you practice this work conscientiously you will begin to form a fine cooperative partnership with your inner mind.

Third, and most important from a practical point of view, highly skilled intuitives testify that there is nothing to be feared in the learning process. The student may proceed confidently, and with full assurance, that there is nothing in this new domain that is inherently malicious or stronger than his own intention (will, desire) and his capacity to deal with it. You are never a victim of any dark, mysterious forces in your unconscious—unless you believe yourself to be, out of a self-created fear of what you imagine lies buried in those hidden depths of your mind.

Typical approaches to intuition development embody meditation or a similar daily practice, participation in a psychic development or similar class, much reading and perhaps a disciplined program of a spiritual study. Testimonies from competent intuitives show, however, that you may capitalize on your intuitive ability completely on your own. The learning process does not appear to depend significantly, if at all, upon personality type, profession, education, gender, cultural background, other interests, intelligence, or family or childhood background. Intuition is open to all.

The Western mind is so dominated by the rational, intellectual, scientific approach to life that it often fails to come to terms with the intuitive 'events' that just happen, quite irrationally, as a result of the spontaneous exposure of some facet of the unconscious mind. ... The Western mind tends to shut out intuitive prompts because it falls under the domination of that tyrant, the intellect: it becomes stagnant and inwardly insensitive. In the extreme, some persons become neurotic as a result of a personal incapacity to cope with intuitive, irrational events arising from the unconscious. [Carl Gustav Jung]