What is Intuition?

Intuition is the acquiring of knowledge and the making of decisions through emotions. Emotions are feelings that go beyond our senses of touching, smelling, seeing, hearing and tasting. They indicate how we feel about intangibles such as concepts and personalities. For instance, if we like something, that is our emotions giving us knowledge.

Intuition is a process occurring primarily on a subconscious level. “Acquiring” and “making” indicate that process. Since all emotions begin in our subconscious and can often reside there forever without our conscious knowledge, intuition works in the subconscious to process what our emotions generate.

Intuition is the originator of virtually every decision we make, because everything we think, do or say begins on a subconscious level. In this way, intuition is the compass for our conscious similar to the way an introduction sets the tone for a meeting, a song or a play. Intuition is the deliverer of the raw ingredients for our decisions which our conscious refines and manifests so we can live in our world.

As an example of what intuition is, consider a messenger and the message. We can change how people interpret the message by changing the content of the message. However, we can also change how they interpret the message by changing the messenger. Witness the counter effect a repetitive commercial has when suddenly its celebrity messenger falls from grace. People’s interpretations change even though the message does not. That is intuition at work.