My views regarding intuition

First of all, let me state this: what I wrote below is by no means a final summary of all my ideas regarding intuition. First, because I still do not have scientific knowledge enough to be sure of anything I am saying, you could say that it all came from my own "intuition". Second, I reserve the right to change my mind, as I gain more knowledge, experience and wisdom. ;-)

So this is, at best, a sketch of my thoughts, right in this moment of my journey. I do believe intuition exists, I have seen it work and I have experienced it myself. The difference in my approach lies in its origin. Differently from some I do not think it's a 'psychic' ability, nor that it comes from any divine source. I believe intuition is one of the greatest evolutionary gifts nature - and our ancestors - have given us.

 

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For me, intuition is an optimised form of knowledge. It's something so ingrained in your mind that you no longer need to consciously access this knowledge - it simply comes to you, when you need it. That's why it appears to be sudden, to bypass all conscious reasoning, simply because you cannot perceive the process behind it - it's so fast! But it comes from somewhere, yes - from you. From your mind, your thoughts, your memories, your knowledge.

That's why everyone has intuition, there's nothing psychic about it, in my opinion. When a doctor looks at a patient and somehow already knows what he has, without any further examination - that's intuition. When an engineer looks at a building and just by looking sees that something isn't right about it's structure - that's intuition. When a card reader lays the cards in front of him and immediately perceives the atmosphere of that reading, and makes connections between the cards without having to remember their meanings - that's intuition.

When you learn something and it becomes easy, it becomes 'intuitive'. But you need to learn it first.

What do I mean by all this? That to me, before you can use your intuition, you need to have some solid knowledge of what you are doing. Or maybe just the basics, if you are specially talented. I do not mean to make intuition and imagination slaves of knowledge and reason - not at all. I think they all function better when working together, not separately.

What I am trying to oppose here is that common notion that intuition and imagination are opposed to reasoning and knowledge.

It does not make sense to me the idea of a "divided mind". Intellect vs. Intuition. It's not how it works for me, I believe that knowledge and imagination work together... actually, the best they work together, the stronger they are. You never met a creative genius like Da Vinci or Einstein or Newton who were a complete idiots. They had imagination and intuition, but they also had a hell-load of knowledge. They literally stood on the shoulders of giants, but used their own intuition and imagination to fly, to go beyond.

Knowledge, all by itself, without any imagination to make it grow or any intuition to make it flow... is just a bunch of stuff. Like old dusty book on a shelf. Intuition, all by itself with no intellectual knowledge, is just emotional-guessing.

What does it have to do with divination? Well, I've been playing and analysing some 'intuitive tools', like the Oracle-X lately, and I realised it's very hard for me to use intuition right out of the box. Perhaps some fellow cartomancers will find this preposterous, after all, intuition seems to be the main tool of any card-reader. But... not for me. Sorry folks.

For me, a deck only becomes intuitive when I know it very well. To know it very well, I must first study it and use it. That is my process - I embrace the tool logically first, and when my logic is comfortable with it, then my intuition comes into play. I cannot get something from nowhere, and for me knowledge and intuition walk hand-in-hand. Hence my belief:"Intuition needs knowledge to function. Knowledge needs intuition to flow."

So a good divination method is one that has a special balance. It gives you a logic, solid method to work with, and at the same time, allows you to grow from there and make the oracle yours.