I was thrilled to be invited over to Melanie’s blog at Leaving The Door Open. After Melanie had read my article I’d written on Intuition for Sally Cronin’s Smorgasbord Blog Magazine in my #Spiritual Awareness column, Melanie emailed me and asked if I’d come over to her blog for a little Q and A to learn more about intuition.
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Talking Intuition with D.G. Kaye
I just finished a book where one detective asks another about a suspect. “What does your gut tell you?”
A few days later, I watched a show where a woman is upset when she hears her friend’s boyfriend stole some jewelry. “I knew something was off with him all along.”
They are both referring to intuition and it’s very real; even if people don’t always recognize it.
I recently read a thought-provoking post on this topic written by D.G. Kaye. She is the author of seven books and is also a popular blogger. Her biography and links are at the end of the post. I encourage you to check them out.
I knew that I wanted to explore this topic further with her and reached out. She graciously agreed.
Hi Debby! Thanks for sharing your wisdom here today.
Hi Melanie. Thanks so much for inviting me over to talk about intuition. I hope I can help.
How do you define intuition?
Intuition is an inner knowing. It’s like a nudge from within, like not knowing how you know something, but you do. Inner guidance from within, a pang, a gut feeling. It’s the ability to know something without proof. It can be referred to as a gut feeling, instinct or a sixth sense. Intuition is connected to our soul, which is connected to a higher intelligence. Our egos come from the brain, where intuition comes through our heart center. Hence, the old saying – follow your heart, not your head.
Do you think that there are intuitive and non-intuitive people?
I’d classify intuition as a sixth sense. We all have the ability to recognize our intuition, but we all haven’t learned to develop it. Meditation can help if you ground yourself and clear and quiet your mind to get in tune with your inner calm. Be more aware of people and circumstances around you, a higher sense of awareness will open up within when we clear and calm the ‘white noise’ within.
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Can you explain a bit about the “brain-gut” connection as it relates to intuition?
I’m glad you mentioned the ‘brain-gut’ relationship. In my article you read a few months ago for my bi-monthly Spiritual Awareness series at Sally Cronin’s Smorgasbord Blog Magazine, there is a gut reaction dubbed, the little brain (in the stomach) that sends signal to the big brain, the enteric nervous system (ENS) communicates with our brains. I shared the link about this discussion in a Johns Hopkins article by Dr. Jay Pasricha, neuro-gastroenterologist.
Did you know that the gut and the brain have a direct relation to stress and worry? It’s not a myth that emotions we experience are linked to the stomach – hence, that butterfly feeling we get in our stomachs when we feel scared, worried, or excited. These are good indicators of the ‘gut instincts’ we receive when something is off or in contrast, when something feels great. When things are feeling off it’s a warning sign to investigate our feelings to help us decide whether they are temporary moments or warning signals.
As I was reading your information on intuition, it clarified something for me. There are two categories of intuition. There is the application of it in the everyday, in making decisions. There is also the feeling of immediate apprehension, a warning like the prickly feeling at the back of your neck which is often labeled a “sixth sense.”
Do you have a personal example of either (or both) type of intuition when “listening to your gut” was extremely helpful?
My alert system seems to be finely tuned. Let me just preface this and say that when I get the warning feeling, I may not always know where the trouble is, but often I do, and even when I don’t, I’ll still feel there’s trouble somewhere. Like the time I was putting on my makeup getting ready for work when I was in my early twenties, when suddenly, a sadness came over me and tears welled up in my eyes and a feeling came over me that something happened to my father. I couldn’t shake the feeling. Within minutes, my sister called me to let me know my father had a heart attack and she was one her way to pick me up on the way down to the hospital. Some things just stick.
In other more everyday living, when something bad is coming, a cold chill runs through my body, to the extent that my teeth start chattering, despite warm surroundings. I don’t necessarily know what it portends, but it’s never steered me wrong, so I get feeling quite uncomfortable when that happens.
And when having to make a decision about something, I’ll get a little caution pang in my stomach if I’m choosing wrong. To me those warnings feel like a little tug on my intestines. Alternatively, sweaty palms, heart racing and/or a ‘butterfly’ fluttering within are also common gut reaction signs.
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Do you have any thoughts regarding the term “female intuition?”
Both males and females undoubtedly can have fine tuned intuitions. However, typically women often have the innate ability to focus on tuning into self, because we are the nurturers and are well acquainted with tuning into the needs of our offspring. Women are said to possess a more intrinsic intuition and more in tune with their emotions. Experts say this is because women are stronger at reading body language and facial expressions.
A thought comes to mind here Debby. Almost 30 years ago, I was heading to a very large women’s formal lunch to kick-off the school year. My son was in kindergarten which meant he was home by lunch time.
I hired a sitter from a service because it was hard to find one as most sitters were in school. She arrived, we discussed necessary details and I left. I made it around the corner, turned into a drugstore parking lot and headed back home. My sixth sense was screaming not to leave him with her. Of course, she was very surprised. I paid her the full amount for the day and she left. I don’t regret that for a second. I “read” something about her I did not like.
Is Déjà vu connected to intuition?
Déjà vu comes from the French phrase – already seen.
Déjà vu is a triggered moment that reminds us of something we’ve already seen, done, or been, whereas intuition is an inner alert system that usually indicates something we feel should be done in the now or future. Déjà vu is a feeling of familiarity. It is said that those who’ve experienced déjà vu are intuitive. Experts have also said that déjà vu could mean a feeling of already lived the moment – possibly from another life. That explains when we meet someone we’ve never met, yet feel we’ve met before. Most likely because we knew them in a past life.
Your post on intuition is part of a broader Spirituality series. What draws you to this topic?
I have been fascinated by spirit, afterlife, psychic phenomena, and white witchcraft since as far back as I can remember. I began reading psychology, self-help, witchcraft, and spiritual books ever since my curiosities in those realms flourished in my late teens. My mother, one of her sisters, and my maternal grandmother all had strongly developed psychic intuitions. I had always felt I had a sense of inner knowing, but nobody in my family talked about it much, and definitely, never helped me develop mine. But it was when I was sixteen years old that I had my own first encounter with spirit that fueled my curiosity about there being more than just this physical world we live in.
I read a quote online which states “intuition is a wise part of you operating on your behalf.” It sounds so reassuring that we have this internal guidance system and yet, many of us don’t trust it or diminish it. You have said this is because our ego is getting in the way. What do you mean?
Ego is our fears, doubts, overriding our inner boss that directs us to do something, something like the devil in our ear telling us to do or say something that is done with impulse instead of stopping and questioning our soul for an intuitive response. Ego is self-talk. We tell ourselves something and we act on whatever we talked ourselves into. Whereas intuition is our inner guidance from a higher power where we know what we know, we don’t have to talk ourselves into making an ego decision.
The voices in our heads are ego, whereas intuition is our instinctual voice, more like an emotional intelligence. Intuition is our instinctual voice of reason, ego is the one that causes us to second-guess our decisions, which usually causes over analyzing and ultimately, creates the confusion in us when we are making decisions.
I just want to pause here because your comment about going to that place “where we know what we know” ties into a thought I had as I was thinking about the decision-making component of intuition. First, Steve Jobs shared how he often leaned on his intuition to get to that place of new ideas. Clearly, it served him well!
I also found a quote from famed scientist Jonas Salk who said “intuition will tell the thinking mind where to look next.” And that’s interesting because scientists live in a world of “proof”, but it took intuitive thinking to get there! I just thought that was an interesting dichotomy.
So, intuitive thinking is an incredible asset. Can you share any tips for strengthening someone’s intuition?
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We all have our ‘first instinct’ intuition, we just may not realize it. In order to get more in tune with our intuition, we have to learn to resist our own ego giving us sometimes conflicting information. Please visit Melanie’s blog for my tips on developing intuition.
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