DEVELOPING INUITION SEEMS to be in the forefront of people’s minds these days. Everyone wants to be empowered, for being empowered means taking back that which is yours: power. It’s not the ego-based power that turns you into some sort of monster, but a love-based power that lets you love yourself and others unconditionally.
That brings me to my first tip on how to open and access your intuitive channel: Learn to love and accept yourself just as you are. When we aren’t heart-centered or operate from an ego and fear-based paradigm, information is filtered through a darkened lens and, therefore, isn’t a reliable source of intuition. When coming from a heart-based paradigm, we are able to see things through a pure perspective, because love that comes from the heart is the most pure form of energy. When we want to access our intuition, we want to have the intuitive “channel” as heart- and love-centered as possible.
My second tip for opening and accessing the intuitive channel is to quiet the mind to be able to hear and discern information coming through. How can we achieve this? There are several ways, such as meditation, frequent walks in nature, yoga, and reading books about intuition that give exercises to use to increase your ability to use your intuition. I know from my experience that meditation is the best (and hardest) way to quiet the mind and access intuition. Trying to lessen the mental chatter of this morning’s newscast, work deadlines and what you’re going to have for dinner can seem like a monumental task, but it becomes easier if you work at it and practice it regularly.
People new to the practice and technique of meditation find it hard to stay focused on emptying their mind of all mental fodder and eventually give up. The purpose of meditation isn’t to empty the mind. It is to become aware of the thoughts that you have and slow them down so you are able to separate your mind and your true self, which is pure, divine love and awareness. Relaxing music and chanting mantras also can be used in conjunction with meditation to help focus the mind and increase awareness.
Tip number three: Keep an open mind. As open and accepting as we feel we may be, sometimes there is resistance to ourselves as receivers of intuition and divine guidance. We may have doubts as to, “Who am I to be in touch with my intuition and receive divinely guided information?” We are all here as spiritual beings having a human experience, but our human mind cannot comprehend information that it doesn’t receive through the five senses. Our spirits are in touch with divinely guided information that comes from the source of all creation through our hearts and the unconditional love we have for ourselves and others. As we open the channel to our intuition, we may receive messages that don’t make sense, or if we have asked for intuitive guidance on a particular problem, we may get a response that has nothing to do with the question. When you are out and about doing your thing, you’ll come face-to-face with the answer you received. It will surprise and possibly make you laugh while you have your hands on your hips and an expression of exasperation.
Tip number four: Surround yourself with intuitive, supportive and positive people. Surrounding yourself with intuitive people who are supportive and positive will help you open up and access your intuition, because those individuals will know what it’s like to be able to receive and interpret information from an intuitive perspective. They may give you pointers on how to become more receptive to your own intuition and intuitive channel.
The fifth and final tip is have fun. Life is meant to be enjoyable and full of excitement. If learning how to to open and access your intuition leaves you feeling unfulfilled, ask yourself why you want to open and access your intuition in the first place. Also, ask yourself if this brings you joy. If not, find what does bring you joy and go do it!
Indeed good words, and I agree with much of this in general. The real devil is in the details of real change and development of a fear-based paradigm to a love-based paradigm, both individually and collectively. I have done research on use of “fear-based” and what I see as inadequate construction of its meaning. The article I just wrote on this is available in free pdf “The Problem of Defining the Concept of ‘Fear-based.'” (go to http://csiie.org/mod/page/view.php?id=3 and scroll down for document). I invite us to have further dialogues on this to improve our effectiveness in bringing about the changes we want. Here is the Abstract to that technical paper:
Abstract: Over the past 25 years of systematic research on fear and fearlessness, the author has found an ever-increasing use of the term “fear-based” by many and diverse authors, teachers, professionals and citizens-at-large. Particularly in the last decade the term, much like “culture of fear,” has become popular across disciplines and is reflective of an interest, by diverse peoples, in human motivation at this deepest core “emotional” level. Most every writer-critic, in a binary (polarized) way of thinking, believes (or argues) that “fear-based” is negative and destructive, if not the source of all conflict, evil, and pathology—it appears a universal knowledge and “truth” that this is so. Love-based is usually held up as the opposite (i.e., binary stance). Although the author (a fearologist) has also taken that binary positioning for many years, upon recent philosophical reflection and some research, this is less than a satisfactory position, especially without nuancing its validity more systematically and without having the critical dialogues required to ferret out what we are talking about. He concludes, typically, this increase of usage of the “fear-based” label, important as it is, has not been very enlightening but rather repetitive, moralistically judgmental and cliché, because of little to no conceptual defining, theoretical critiques, specific measurable assessments, or critical thinking of what to do with the term “fear-based” when it is opposed (for example) to “love-based” in real life situations, with real actors and organizations coming from either fear-based or love-based paradigms. The many (and increasing) critics of anything “fear-based” always implicitly or explicitly identify as not fear-based (i.e., more or less, love-based) and morally superior. Without more critical analysis of the concept and its uses, the author feels the labeling starts to become embedded in ideology, secular and religious, turning at worst into extreme violent ideologism—an oppressive way to think. This introductory paper, a philosophical reflection based on fearlessness (and a critical integral approach), offers an initial discussion of these problems of using the label “fear-based” and offers some recommendations of how to improve our methodologies, claims of truth, and teaching (i.e., education about, for example, fear and love as root motivational constructs).
-R. Michael Fisher, Ph.D.
Fearologist