22C+: Practical Tools For Using Intuition

For those of you who have enjoyed reading 22c+, I have a new book coming out soon which includes many of the articles and themes addressed here. It's called Extraordinary Mind: Integrated Intelligence into the Future. Here's one of the segments from the book. Those who have read Sage of Synchronicity will recognise these tools. If you are keen to develop some of the skills that I outline here regularly, these will get you started.

One of the reasons I developed the theory of Integrated Intelligence was because I felt that much of the writing on ideas like intuition and spiritual intelligence was too vague. So I came up with not only the core operations and end states of INI, I also developed some practical ways to develop and implement the intelligence. Here I am going to outline the main ones in brief. For a more detailed and compressive outline, see my book Sage of Synchronicity, which goes into more detail about how to apply INI.

The tools do require practice and commitment if you are serious about using them. Remember, I learned much from other teachers. But I also innovated, and invented things for myself. You can do the same. Because integrated intelligence is everywhere, all the time, there are innumerable possibilities. Don’t let my tool kit limit your thinking, and your practice.

Five Breaths. This is a presence technique, and it will help bring your mind fully into the present moment. In presence it is much easier to read energy, and the ego quiets down. I recommend that you use these presence techniques before doing the divination methods such as the Quick Check and using The Feeling Sense, because you will be more centered and present.

The Process is as follows. Simply stop whatever you are doing, take a deep breath, and bring your attention to your breath moving in and out. Take a second breath, this time just a normal one, but still paying careful but relaxed attention to the feeling of the air moving through your respiratory system. As you notice your thoughts, just gently acknowledge them, and return your attention to your breath (remember, you are not your thoughts). Do this for about five breaths. It will bring you into presence.

The Oneness Technique. This allows you to become present with something nearby. For example, you can allow yourself to silently connect with a flower, a tree, a baby, a cup and so on. Simply bring your mind into relaxed focus on the thing. If thoughts or judgments come into your mind, just observe them and let them go. You can do the Oneness technique for a minute or so, or you can prolong it if you want to turn it into a meditation. The Field exercise, mentioned in section three of this book, is a special form of this technique.

Non-judgmental Re-framing

This is another process which will help centre you before you use the other INI Tools. The goal here is to assign non-judgmental and positive meanings to events, people and things, with the aim of maintaining a relaxed, compassionate and loving relationship with the world.

What happens to you is not as important as the meanings you assign to things, and the subsequent state of mind you create. Most suffering occurs not because of what happens, but because of the judgments we assign to events. This includes the meanings of what we think might happen.

At one time I was to travel by ferry to a nearby seaport near Hong Kong with a friend. As it happens, there was a great deal of congestion because it was a public holiday, so we missed our boat. There was a two hour wait for the next ferry, and I was quite happy to chill out at Starbucks while waiting for it. However my friend became incredibly flustered, and began to go into blame and anger. He blamed me and said the whole day was “a nightmare”, and stormed off. The truth is that there was no “nightmare”. He turned it into one.

A better way to deal with the same event would be to avoid judgment, blame or self-persecution. By relaxing for a few hours, the reasons for the undesired outcome could have been digested calmly, and all parties would have been wiser for the error. Such a response would also affirm that one is an empowered human being, not like a toy sailboat easily blown of course by the slightest wind of misfortune.

The victim blames, while the empowered person takes responsibility for the actions, results and meanings he assigns, and for his emotions. When you find yourself in the victim state, you can also stop and bring yourself into the here and now with either of the presence techniques. That will shut the inner victim up real fast. As with any form of meditation, simply witness thoughts and let them pass. Don’t struggle with them. It’s about developing the right relationship with your mind, and your ego.

Using an Intuitive Diary

This is a diary where you record your intuitive feelings, images, prompts, synchronicities and so on. Keeping such a diary will help connect your left and right-brain thinking, and get you in touch with the subtleties of the intuitive mind.

Use a good-sized hard-cover diary. If you use your computer, make sure you have at least one backup file saved elsewhere.

Use your Intuitive Diary to record your dreams, intuitions, synchronicities, impressions from meditations, and any auditory, visual or feeling impressions that come to you. Of course, you can write your interpretations of these also. Use it daily if possible.

Active Dreaming. This is where you record your dreams, and learn to decipher and intuit their meanings. Use your Intuitive Diary to record dreams. Active Dreaming will help you to do a number of things.

1. Learning to distinguish the many voices of the psyche. The different types of dreams are quite similar to the various sources of intuition.

2. It will help your learn the language of the psyche – its symbols and intuitive prompts.

3. It will help you identify your Soul Issues. The narrative of many dreams involves issues that are crucial to your spiritual journey.

4. It will improve the connection between the logical and intuitive parts of your mind.

5. It will get you in touch with your spiritual guidance.

Embracing Synchronicity.

Some things which happen to you are the universe’s way of telling you something, or just helping you along your way. These are synchronicities, or meaningful coincidences. Life presents ‘clues’ in the dance of creation. You can learn to notice synchronicities as they occur, and intuit their meaning.

Approaching life with a lighthearted, serendipitous and adventurous spirit facilitates synchronicities. To appreciate their meaning, it is best that the mind be fully present. The act of presence seems to imbue the world with mystical fervor. The deeper meaning and purpose of experience is revealed, as if the psyche and cosmos are in open dialogue.

Synchronicity is a little like water in the hand – as soon as you try to grab at it, it falls away. You can’t force meaning to make itself known, you can only allow it; embrace it.[1]

The Quick Check

This is a simple tool, where you take a reading of the ‘energy’ of an intended decision. This is done by drawing a line across a page and quickly running your finger from left to right (or right to left- it doesn’t make any difference) to take a percentage measurement. One end of the line represents zero percent, and the other end 100 percent. When I do this I feel an invisible ‘wall’ at a certain point, and my finger won’t go any further. You might also feel a tingling feeling in your finger.

You can also do a Quick Check by running the same finger across the palm of your dominant hand. Hold the non-dominant hand sideways in front of you (i.e. your fingers will be pointing sideways, not upwards). In this case the length of your palm replaces the line on the paper, with the tip of your index finger representing ‘zero’, and the other end of your hand representing 100 percent.

As with any form of divination, make sure the question is simple and clear. A good way to phrase the question is, “What is the energy on my…?” For example, “What is the energy on my taking this job?”; and “What is the energy on my going to the seaside for my holiday this year?”

The Quick Check requires practice, and a little faith, as at first it may seem like you are wasting your time. Persist with it, as it takes time to begin to feel the energy. Use the Quick Check every day for a month, testing the energy on small decisions you are making. After a while it will become second nature.

That does not mean that the readings will be perfect. This is an approximation process, and is open to distortion from the ego, external influences, and plain bad execution. Use it cautiously.

Free-form Writing

This is stream of consciousness writing used to enhance your creativity, insight and wisdom.

Free-form writing is sometimes called automatic writing. It involves taking a theme, problem or question, writing it down, then just letting go and beginning to write whatever comes to mind. It is a bit like jumping into a car’s passenger seat and being driven off. You lose control, but you can just relax and enjoy the ride.

Free-Form Wring can be used to address just about any issue or problem: for inspirational ideas, for personal business problems, for spiritual guidance and so on. It can also be used by researchers. I used Free-Form Writing extensively throughout the writing of my doctoral thesis, but particularly in the first two years of enrollment.

One way to develop this channeling process is using it for writing, at least five minutes every day, no matter what.

Free-form Writing involves asking a question, then writing whatever comes to you, and without editing, proof-reading or censoring yourself. There is no going back, not even for typos! Whatever idea comes into your mind about the topic – connections, distinctions, hypotheses, questions, guesses, confusions, whatever - you write it down during your daily writing time.

minutes was just not enough. I adapted the system so that I set myself a goal of writing five hundred words a day, every day, first thing in the morning.

The Feeling Sense

This is the ability to feel the energy within people, things, and situations, including the outcomes of intended actions.

The Feeling Sense employs the subtle feelings of intuition. The Feeling Sense is innate, and although it is latent in most of us, anybody can learn to use it.

The more you become comfortable with looking within yourself, the easier it will become to distinguish amongst your many subtle feelings. You have to learn the difference between a genuine intuitive pull and the other competing voices of the psyche – the ego, desire, wishful thinking, fear of the unknown, and so on. This is something you learn by trial and error.

You can use the Feeling Sense to pull data from people, objects, places, futures and pasts. Here are a few possible applications.

People. Imagine reaching out with your hand and into the body of the person you wish to “read”. Then just let go and allow that person’s thoughts and feelings to move through you. Alternatively you can imagine your body merging with theirs, and repeating the same process. Always let go of the person as you finish. Otherwise you may find your energy entangled with theirs.

Objects. Pyschometry occurs when you reach out with your mind to touch an object and feel the energy within it. Use the same process as for people, above. This is something that is relatively easy to do.

Places. Imagine moving out of your body and finding yourself in the place you want to know more about. Here you are looking for any feelings about the place. Of course you may get images of words coming to you. If so, take note of them.

Futures. The future is not set in stone, but you can get a sense of probable futures. The further away in time, and smaller scale the event, the less predictable it is. For major events, such as economic shifts or ethnic conflicts, the results are more reliable.

To sense a possible future, feel yourself moving into the future choice you are thinking of making (e.g. accepting that job). What does it feel like? You can use this to imagine the futures of career choices, products you buy, places you visit and so on.

Pasts. Generally speaking, the past is set, however the way that people relate to their past can have a great effect of the energy of the past as it is represented in the present. You can read another person’s past, in precisely the same way you read another person’s energy in the present (see above).

As you move your energy outwards and into theirs, you will pick up the emotional experience of the past event, rather than the literal event itself. Any emotional energy that is trapped in the psyche of a person is relatively easy to read, as emotional energy is ‘loud’.

The more you honour your intuitive feelings, the more they will speak to you.

Light Trances. This is where you put yourself into a drowsy, dream-like state, pose questions, and allow the answers to come in feelings, visions, inner voices etc. The sleepy state just before you sleep, and just after you wake up can also be harnessed for this same purpose. The process is to quiet the mind, put out questions, and wait for the answers to come in any sensory modality.

It is well appreciated by mystics and many parapsychologists that cultivating non-ordinary states of consciousness is invaluable in accessing intuitive and spiritual knowledge. Throughout my life after my mid twenties I used these states very deliberately to glean data from transpersonal sources, and my subconscious. Trance States are an intimate part of the development of Integrated Intelligence.

You can familiarise yourself with Trance States through deliberate meditation, or by taking advantage of the drowsy state between sleeping and waking – the hypnogogic state . This state occurs naturally when you are falling asleep and waking up. But you can enter it deliberately through meditation also.

To bring about the sleepy state, sit quietly in a chair (or wherever you feel comfortable), and relax. Focus on your breath, and breathe deeply in and out. As thoughts move into your mind, just allow them to pass. If you like, you can imagine them being placed inside balloons and floating away. A good time to do this is when you are actually feeling tired, such as in the middle of the afternoon or just before bed. This way you will naturally tend to drift towards sleep when you sit and relax deeply. After some practice, you will be able to do it more readily even when you are feeling alert.

Trance States are a little different from some other forms of meditation, in that you are deliberately trying to begin to fall to sleep. As you relax, you may find yourself becoming too drowsy or nodding off. If so, simply persist in bringing yourself awake – but not fully awake. When you find yourself just shy of sleep, put questions out to Spirit/the subconscious mind. Then observe what comes before your awareness.

Be patient. If you get no definite answers, simply repeat the questioning process every minute or so. Even if you get no answer during the entire meditation, one may spring into your mind at a later date, or during a dream. A synchronicity in your everyday life may answer the question for you. Regardless, your subconscious will go to work on the problem, and begin to pull information and data together, both from mundane and spiritual sources. Just trust that the answer is on its way.

I recommend you employ Trance States in short bursts. These could be as short as a minute or two for ‘lighter’ questions, or could be ten to fifteen minutes for more in depth issues. When you finish the meditation, record what you have experienced in your Intuitive Diary. If you want, you can later analyse the meaning of what you have “seen” or experienced. You will not be able to do this during the meditation, because the analytical mind cannot operate effectively while in deep states of relaxation, and vice versa.

Connecting with the Sage

This process is similar to Free-form writing, except that you are voicing the message, not writing it. Choose a private space where you are free to voice whatever comes to mind. Imagine yourself as a wised old man or woman. Feel that energy moving through you. You might ask Spirit for guidance if you like. Next, bring a problem or issue to mind, then pose a question. As soon as you have done so, feel and embody the answer. Act out the answer as if you are the Sage addressing ‘you’, the small self. Don’t feel shy to move around, orate, sing, or whatever you feel moved to do. The key is to let go and trust the process.

If you like, record the words, or write them down in your Intuitive Diary. Act upon the guidance the Sage brings to you, and observe the outcome.

All the tools and methods mentioned here are within ready grasp. Like all cognitive skills, practice is required. Use the ones that come naturally to you.

[1] See Rob and Trish MacGregor’s www.ofscarabs.blogspot.com for more on synchronicity.