Have you ever had a feeling about something that was about to happen, and had it confirmed? Have you ever had a thought that felt like it did not come from you? These phenomena are more common than we might realize, especially since most people don’t know how to openly discuss them. We fear that others will think us strange for believing in such nonsense. Or, we ourselves so thoroughly doubt such things that we dismiss them and rationalize them away as flukes, coincidence or tricks of the mind.
They are quite real, and they have names. One is a facet of what we call intuition. The other is known as inspiration. Let’s break these two concepts down to better understand them.
What is Intuition?
The experience of intuition feels like a subtle thought, feeling or idea that originates outside of our conscious activation. Put simpler, it feels like a thought entered our mind from somewhere else. Some consider the experience to be a metaphysical, spiritual, psychic or religious experience. For if I didn’t decide to think this thought, then who did?
Without any desire to dismiss the mysterious or theological considerations that might have us interacting with unknown external forces, I would like to explore the implications of autonomous, non-conscious activation of thought.
Without the aid of scientific study of neurobiology, for millennia humankind has observed phenomena like intuition and tried to guess at its source. As with many other observable phenomena that falls outside of our amassed race knowledge, people ascribe the unexplained to the domain of the ultimate mystery: spirit. Again, this s temptation to oversimplify does not make the assumption wrong; only a useful placeholder until our race expertise matures to better integrate the phenomena with provable fact. Perhaps someday, we will prove and understand a field of knowledge that turns out to resemble the spiritual domain. To assume otherwise would demonstrate prejudice (the enemy of science).
With the inflammatory disclaimers out of the way, I can now freely contemplate the implications of intuition on a secular basis.
So, if intuition is experienced as an internal activation of awareness that has little or no observable origin, what biological process in a network go neurons could possibly represent this experience? First, let’s start by acknowledging that the nervous system of all creatures performs thousands to millions of simultaneous transactions of information flow and processing. Subsystems within the nervous system specialize to process different aspects of information gathering, processing and decision to take action. The vast majority of these activities occur outside of what we call consciousness or awareness. Unless we focus awareness on it, breathing occurs without conscious orchestration. Hearing the words from our dinner partner at a loud and crowded restaurant occurs automatically. Healing a cut on our leg occurs without thought or even understanding of the process.
So, why does the experience of a thought or feeling that originates inside of us that did not get our permission or decision to think that thought baffle is so? Is it not entirely reasonable to postulate that intuition is the most natural process given our biology, and that it would be even more shocking for it not to occur? Any part of our nervous system that is already constantly acting autonomously, can trigger a flow of information that may surface to the level of our conscious awareness.
Having observed my own experiences of intuition, I think these experiences fall into several categories. The categories I’ve come to observe include:
- Triggered / reactive (why)
- Unknown trigger (why)
- Unfamiliar content (how)
- Familiar content (how)
In the first case, when I’ve experienced an intuitive thought or feeling, once I inspect for its source I can guess at a likely recent set of experiences or circumstances that my being took in as a trigger to dredge up to produce an intuition for my conscious awareness to consider. It could be that I’ve been thinking about a specific subject for days, or had a particular dream, and after working on processing that subject for a time, my hidden cognitive subsystems have something interesting to point out to me, so they gently surface their executive summary for my consideration. Or, I may recognize a set of circumstances in the leading few seconds that most likely gave my mental minions enough clues for them to conclude some important warning or clarity that required my attention. In each such case I am able to look back in the preceding moments or days to see the raw materials of data that my mind most likely processed behind the scenes and only told me about it when a sufficient conclusion was reached or when the urgency of threat avoidance was upon me. This is why I call this category the triggered or reactive category. It appears that the intuitive event was triggered or reacting to my experience and perception.
At times, when I attempt to find the likely triggering circumstance or information source, I cannot seem to find any likely trigger. I don’t know why my mental minions decided to speak up and raise something to my awareness. The intuitive event is no less valuable just because I don’t know what (of anything) inside of me caused the event. For these events, I ascribe the label of Unknown Trigger. It does not mean that it must have been triggered from an external source or gifted to me from a mysterious outside force. It also doesn’t mean that it wasn’t. Until we have forged farther into the realms of mystery with scientific discovery, we cannot know for sure. I just know that when my intuition pops up, it doesn’t come with a note that explains itself. So what separates triggered from unknown trigger intuitive events is simply my ability to guess at the likely origin of the event.
For the last two categories I have found, the information payload of an intuitive event contains information that either feels familiar or entirely unfamiliar to me. If I do not recognize how any part of my life experience or knowledge base might have contained that information, I wonder where my mental minions obtained the information to share with me. So, it feels foreign. Whether or not I can see how the event was triggered (he why if the event), I do not recognize how I might have obtained the raw ingredients for the content of the awareness. On the other hand, I sometimes have a sense that my mental minions were able to cobble together the message from past thoughts, beliefs, knowledge and experiences over the course of my life. Hence, I call these two labels Familiar and Unfamiliar Content.
When combining labels of Unknown Trigger and Unfamiliar Content for certain intuitive events, I experience what I consider to be Spontaneous Inspiration. When combining labels of Known Trigger and Unfamiliar Content, I experience what I consider to be Sought Inspiration.
This raises an important and empowering idea. The idea that with practice and self reflection in the field of intuitive events, one can train oneself to intentionally trigger awareness of unfamiliar content to solve problems, induce creativity, leapfrog over a brute force process of conscious thought to arrive at a solution of novel idea. Developing this specialized skill can produce a source of knowledge and conscious advancement that is akin to teleportation of thought. Well, perhaps this metaphor dips into the melodramatic. However, the experience of practicing Sought Inspiration and becoming increasingly skilled at bringing about effortless clarity about new topics does feel quite like teleportation of thought. Stepping from one place without effort, journey, a map, or time investment to a desired destination very much describes the experience of this type of conscious skill.
I’ll explore more of the nature and training mechanisms of intuition later. For now, let us segue to the observable nature of inspiration.
What is Inspiration?
Breaking down the word to roots, we find that inspire combines “in” and “spire” which means the pressing in or ingress of spirit. An apt idea for the experience of being inspired. It is an experience of receiving a feeling or concept that originates from outside ones conscious mind.
A mundane type of inspiration is to feel motivated or uplifted by reading something or listening to an inspirational speech. A movie or song might feel inspiring. A sunset or tinkling laugh of a child might instill inspiration. These all come from our 5 senses and strike our consciousness in just such a way as to activate a feeling of uplift, joy, awe, excitement or motivation to take action.
However, the type of inspiration on which this article aims to focus is the type that comes with two payloads: (1) a clear understanding or message and (2) a feeling of motivation to do something about it. This “call to action” inspiration seems incredibly important.
I now circle back to my clustering of intuitive experiences labeled as Spontaneous Inspiration and Sought Inspiration to describe those intuitive events that cross the threshold into the domain of Inspiration. I will now add a few more labels to help categorize inspiration events:
- Call to action (instruction / do)
- Illumination (instruction / do)
- Guidance (utility)
- Instruction (utility)
- Consideration (utility)
- Clarity (utility)
- Thought (modality)
- Feeling (modality)
When an inspiration event occurs, I can usually sense or unpack some or all of these labels about the event, allowing me to interpret the purpose, urgency and value of the event. The simples labels to attach are the modality labels, since I directly experience the event payload as a thought or a feeling. Sometimes it comes with a collection of both thoughts and feelings, ascribing both modality labels.
The other labels feel more subtle and I have not yet developed to practiced skill of consistently discovering clear instruction and utility labels. Sometimes, I can get a clear sense of purpose (instruction for what to do with the information) do the inspiration event. While I use simple labels to categorize the instructional elements of an event, they feel more like an array or spectrum of purpose or clarity on what I should do with the information. Is the information merely for my enlightenment, to enrich my awareness or to give me new conscious seeds for contemplation, perspective or ingredients for further events? Is the information asking to be applied more specifically to a set of actions like sharing with others, induction to further research, or some other physical action I should take?
