If I were to hand you a book and say "Here, take this" you reach out to receive it. If I say "Here's some coffee for you, take a sip" you pick up the cup.
You successfully perform these actions automatically, without thinking about how you accomplish them. You don't think about the complex neurology, brain chemistry, and muscle responses that make it possible for to reach out and to receive or to grasp. You don't identify that the thumb and index finger did most of the hard labor, that the pinky finger just kind of went along for the ride. You are not required to understand or to intellectually process the miraculous anatomy of your body in order to function.
Your intuitive channels function in a comparable automatic state -- somewhere in between, or encompassing, the miraculous and the mundane.
You don't have to understand how or why your intuition works in order to work it.
I receive innumerable questions from clients and students about the difference between imagination and intuition, about the relationship between the Thinking Mind and the Heart or the Spirit…
Intuition, instinct, impulse, inspiration, and imagination are like individual fingers on the same hand.
Intellectually understanding the mechanics involved, or the relationship between the individual parts, may be complex, confusing, mind-boggling, mysterious, miraculous… automatically using the synergistic Whole in a practical synthesis is also common place.
In other words, if your goal is to use your intuition… Well, thoughts are things, and these things have handles -- words, images, feelings -- if you can reach out and grab, if you can pick up and apply, if you can hold and manage, isn't that really the bottom line? Isn't that enough?
I'm more guilty than most of contributing to the over-analysis, of complicating the issue, navel-gazing and philosophizing and zooming in far deeper than is necessary or practical. I can claim that it's my job to understand it and explain it, but outside this classroom, I simply want to use my intuitive abilities to enhance my life, just like anybody.
I can assure that it works, but intellectually knowing how or why may not necessarily contribute much to practice -- that understanding may be an entirely tangential, meandering adventure, a path followed for the sheer joy of exploration. This may or may not put a paved, straight-shot commuter highway on the map anytime soon...
If you can grasp the tool, what can you build with it? If you can pick up the key, what door might it unlock? If you can pluck out a piece of the puzzle, where does it fit into your bigger picture? If you can receive a brilliant idea, who can you share it with? If you can hold power, how can you wield it?
image credit -- dhammza via Creative Commons on Flickr