How To Improve Your Sixth Sense

When I first met my wife, it wasn't "love at first sight" but I knew with a kind of knowing that we were kindred spirits, that we could grow to love one another. I had an instinct that wouldn't waver. (I confess it took me a bit of time to convince her of my "wisdom" but after three decades together it's become one of my big "I told you so's.")

There are some things you just know. That's intuition, knowing something directly without using our rational thought processes to figure it out. We use our intuitive instincts in many of our relationships with other people, in our work, in our personal decision-making. Often we are deaf to it, or we deny using it because it's too "illogical." Psychological testing confirms that intuitive people (those with a high "I" on the Myers-Briggs, for example), tend to be independent, self-confident, flexible, adaptable and not afraid of risk. As Einstein and Salk confirm, intuition opens a door to our native and deeper sources of knowing, a wisdom tree growing inside us.

Intuition can be cultivated, notes Francis Vaughn, a Mill Valley, California psychologist who has studied intuition for more than a decade, and the author of Awakening Intuition. "We can't make it happen, but we can allow it to happen. Attention itself tends to give it more energy." Ask yourself what you need to know, allow quiet time for processing and listening. When the channel opens, you receive the information you seek without asking. Really.

Actor-writer Alan Alda said it best for me: "You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you'll discover will be wonderful. What you'll discover is yourself."

I have had to learn to trust my intuitive edge, the wisdom of surrendering control over my instinct to decide and instead, to slow down and listen. I tended for years to edit out the "sounds" of my intuition. I sought logical explanations and a reasoned model for decisions. Over the years I learned to relax into my decision-making, to listen to a still voice that, when I get out of the way, almost yells at me. As I learned to trust the "voice" I began to recognize its signals and signs. My intuitive sense has a gentle urgency about it, if I allow myself to surrender to it. Under stress, I shut it down. It is silent. And I am usually "wrong."

In our culture, men tend to repress their feelings. This socialized control can inhibit the role intuition can play. Men tend to dismiss their intuitive thoughts and repress them. It is assumed that women seem better at processing emotional information. Brain research suggests that brain lateralization, the way the two hemispheres of the brain are connected--may provide another explanation, says Dr. Jerre Levy, a University of Chicago neuropsychologist. In his studies, Levy discovered that women's brains are less lateralized than men's, allowing more closely connected hemispheres of the brain to communicate more efficiently enabling women to assess and incorporate more details and nuances than men.

TIPS ON ADDING TO YOUR SIXTH SENSE:

-Give yourself a moment, a deep breath, before leaping to a decision. Suspend your sense of urgency, your judgment, and listen to your inner voice. (It's your own voice)

-If time permits, walk away from your question/problem. Ideally, sleep on it.

-Write down what enters your mind. (I keep a pad by my bedside, for example)

-Try learning and practicing daily meditation. It tunes your "receptors"

-Keep a journal.

Listen, trust, test and explore the wisdom and wildness within.

Comments

[MissingAmerica]

Great information, and so true. Personally, I still have a long way to go, but I've also come a long way. At the very least, it leads one out of destructive behavior and into a more positive sense of being. "This too shall pass" has become a mantra, and stress has been invited to leave. One thing not mentioned is the positive affect this has on your body and your health. Try it, you'll like it!

[amoment]

J. Krishnamurti says the answer is in the question.

[mamacat]

Good advice. I have the feeling that very few young people are interested in being told to "sleep on it." Oh well.

When I first read the title, I thought it was going to be an article on ESP. Not to go all weird, but in a subdued, quiet sort of way, I am interested in that sort of thing.

I have a thought regarding ESP, or whatever one wants to call that stuff. It seems to me that we as a species have not gotten to the point where we know how to ask appropriate questions, or know how to run tests, regarding things like pre-cognition. It is not that various people, even scientists, haven't tried. Rather, I think, we have not yet come up with tests that can quantify, qualify, or demonstrate the existence of sensual experiences beyond what are in the here and now.

I do not want to get into esoteric conversations about anything and everything that could or could not be real. What I would like, some day, is for someone to come up with a test to demonstrate once and for all that something like pre-cognition is a possibility.

Which is what I originally, erroneously, thought this article was about.

[Ono4Hoopono]

I think pre-cognition is really an enhanced state of present-cognition. The awareness in the present that something is nearby, or heading toward you. I've had this happen a lot in the wilderness with wild animals. Suddenly I'll get a strong sense of an animal, and a few minutes later I'll encounter it. Some were large predators. In that case, it occurred to me it could be a leftover bit of survival intuition, an expression of "natural intelligence," one of the eight intelligences put forth by Harvard University's Howard Gardner, in his multiple intelligences theory of education. It led me to wonder whether animals have this kind of sixth or seventh sense of the presence of predators or prey. Dolphins and sharks can pick up on the presence of prey under the sand by picking up electrical impulses. It's not too far fetched an idea. I doubt they think too much about how they know the prey is under there.

Pre-cognition may be a connection with whatever is bringing it toward you, through a "collective unconscious," or it may be from subconscious cues we pick up from our surroundings. I've had experiences that I think are from both. It's like tapping into the present in a way that connects you with events unfolding, or other conscious beings, or greater consciousness, and what others are putting out their through the greater consciousness, through their own intuitive feelers.

Great post.

[mamacat]

I think I understand what you are saying. I have wondered what could possibly trigger pre-cognitive experiences. Picking up environmental cues subconsciously about things that will happen soon, makes sense. As you say, many animals use electrical impulses to find prey or to locate their position, and yet, we humans became aware of electricity fairly recently. So, the ability for us to understand the use of electromagnetism in animals was only possible after we discovered electromagnetism. A similar analogy, I think, will one day be possible for us to apply to things like short-term precognition.

However, how can we explain precognition that spans days, years, or even decades? Assuming that such phenomena occur, and assuming that humans someday come to an understanding of them, I wonder how similar the mechanism that explains it (if there ever is one) will be to near-term precognition.

I really think that someday a discovery will be made in what seems an unrelated field, that will then be found to shed light on this whole subject.

Thank you very much for your input.

[wordvarc]

.

w is an "ISFJ."

.

[wordvarc]

.

The Myers-Briggs letter for "intuitive" is 'N,' not 'I.' The 'I' is for "introvers­ion."

.

[bethinCary]

Reading Cayce now--a philosopher who mirrors my beliefs-but who is more succinct at putting into words what I try to..
He describes a everything as being 3-dimensional. Mind-body-physical, superconsc­ious-consc­ious,subco­nscious-Fa­ther, Son, Holy Spirit---yet we only look at things as one-dimensional or separate thoughts in unrelated areas. They are actually blueprints though, of our souls, in building something--into something 3-d.
So our conscious thoughts--or those things that we think in our waking hours--are actually not what is best for us..It's the things/thoughts in the superconscious passed down thru the subconscious in dreams/mediatative states--that are actually what our souls' blueprint is telling us to build..(an­d each of us has a diff. one). We must remove our own will/ego in the conscious--to be open to that of the subconscio­us/superco­nscious though.
Build is metaphoric for idealize, conceptialize, create..
So people who understand their dreams, trancestat­es..are able to access a higher dimension of consciousness--by being in tune with others, unconscious thoughts which filters in, and attuning to higher ones of the Super (which is being mirrored down to their subconscio­us)....
in this way you are building "up" at all times.
You must also set an ideal like "love"-to take conscious thought or will out--to turn that key to open the sub/super conscious and sustain that.

[wm1066]

Good advice.
Once I woke up to a fire alarm and the building I was in was filling with smoke. I felt the door to see if it was hot then I took stock and kinda projected myself to 'Feel' if I was in any danger, a part of my brain reassured me that I would be able to get out and I did. Taking a deap breath and assessing the situation really helps.

[bobbym]

Good article and so true.