“Spiritual hunger is common to all; but tastes differ.
 There are different forms of God to suit all tastes.”
Swami Yogaswarupananda, of the Divine Life Society,
 a Vedanta-based foundation in Rishikesh,

Exploring the Intuitive Power

Sandhya Pathania

Intuition is a way of knowing. Although everyone has intuition, it is more highly developed and more available to some people than others. It is, however, possible for everyone to awaken his or her own intuition and to use it both helpfully and profitably in everyday life.

Learning to quiet the mind is essential to awakening intuition and also has many immediate benefits. Not only does it improve your ability to concentrate, it also allows you to feel more calm and relaxed in any situation and to remain centered amidst any internal or external turmoil. A non-interfering alert awareness, maintained in the midst of the inner world of sensations, emotions, and ideas, is the key to expanding intuition. Ultimately intuitive knowing transcends distinctions between subject and object, knower and known. The process of awakening this non-dual awareness, however, involves disidentifying from internal states and observing them. Self-observation or self-awareness implies the possibility of self-mastery and the voluntary control of internal states. For this one must learn to observe without interference, maintaining an attitude of letting be, accepting whatever is going on without judging it or trying to change it. Intuition on the emotional level can function fully only when you are aware of feelings, without judging them as good or bad, and without assuming that you have to act on them or do anything about them. There is no need to justify or rationalize a feeling.

As you develop the capacity for an expanded awareness of feelings in which you try neither to hold on to positive emotions, nor to get rid of negative ones, you will realize that all emotions are transitory. Even deep depressions, which sometimes seem interminable, can and do change. Nor do highs last for ever. Yet both are clearly part of the human experience, and to the degree that you are willing to expand your range of experience, you also expand your capacity for perceiving, understanding, and knowing more. It is the attachment to emotional states that interferes with the awakening of intuition, not the emotions themselves.

Awakening intuition is inseparable from the development of self-awareness. Knowing oneself is essential to knowing anything about reality. Much of our energy is usually directed toward manipulation and control of the external environment and of other people. If you withdraw that energy from the external world and turn it inward to self-observation, you can discover how to transform your experience by changing not your external circumstances, but your state of consciousness. It is possible for human beings to create the type of environment they would like to live in. It is possible for you to design your life in such a way that stress is minimized and a sense of balance and harmony is maintained.

Life itself can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Your thoughts are continually creating the world of your experience. Only when you are willing to be wide-awake to the reality of who you are, to confront your fears and see the truth of yourself, can you be truly open to the many levels of intuitive experience.

Previous Column:

Gita's Analysis of Anger

The Karma Doctrine

The Power of Mantra Chanting  

Pride Ego and Arrogance: How to keep them at bay?

Jealousy: an unnecessary evil

Why and how to pray?

Ten Commandments for Peace of Mind

Other Columns

Going Beyond Images - SK Vasudeva

Your Happiness, Your Life - SK Vasudeva 

Spiritual thoughts from Taoism - Sandhya Pathania

Demystifying the Sovereign Secret of the Soul - SK Vasudeva 

Hinduism – A Brief Sketch - Swami Vivekananda Part I  II  III