How to Develop Your Intuition

Life can be overwhelming! Each year, society seems more and more to revolve around technology, screens, and stress. It’s far too easy to get caught up comparing ourselves to the perfectly curated lives and images we see on social media and television. Negative cycles of anxiety, fear, and stress are fueled by the never-ending 24-hour news cycle. It’s no wonder we find ourselves caught in negative cycles of anxiety, fear, and stress.

Thankfully, everyone is born with an ability to access a tool that can help us overcome today’s modern emotional and menal struggle. A tool that can help guide us through life and stay on the right path. It is our one true superpower, an ancient wisdom buried within each of us; it’s our intuition!

The definition of intuition is, “the ability to understand something immediately, without the need for conscious reasoning.” In other words, it is knowing something without knowing why or how you know it --- you just know. Intuition bridges the gap between our conscious and unconscious minds. For example, have you ever had an unexplainable feeling in your gut that instinctively told you when something you were doing was right or wrong? That was your intuition speaking. Imagine what your life would be like if you were able to access that inner guidance system whenever you needed it. That sounds amazing, right? Who wouldn’t want more of that?

Listening to and trusting that little voice is a marvelous thing on its own but working to develop that little voice can make it even more powerful. We all have the sacred ability to grow and strengthen our intuition. The more we use it, the more it can expand and evolve. Think of your intuition as a muscle that needs exercise and nourishment to flourish. Let’s look at five ways to get in tune with and develop your intuition.

1. Meditate: Unless you have been living under a rock for the past several years, you know that you should be meditating. We hear about it everywhere. We all know that we should meditate more. Meditation helps us to tune into and grow our intuition. For most people, intuition has a very soft voice. If our minds are busy with the stresses of daily life, it can be very hard to hear that little voice. Meditation is a great way to clear the mind, quiet the constant inner dialogue, and make room for our intuition to come through. For a supported meditation, try Reiki help you listen and tune in to your inner spirit. Click here to schedule a hands-on or distance session with one of our certified Practitioners. Also, join our Founder, Rhonda Kuykendall-Jabari, for a guided meditation on Zoom every Wednesday from 1:00 to 1:30 PM Pacific. These sessions are sponsored by the Black Visions of Wellness program at UMMA Community Clinic. They are free and open to the public. Check our Events tab for details.

2. Dreams: During our waking hours, our cognitive brain is in control. It uses logic and reasoning to override our subconscious mind. However, during sleep, that conscious mind rests, allowing our inner subconscious to shine through. We can learn a lot about overcoming issues or problems by listening to this inner consciousness. Keep a dream journal. Keep a notebook and pen right next to your bed and immediately upon waking, try to record everything you remember about your dreams. Dreams begin to fade from memory immediately upon waking, so grab your dream journal before you do anything else. Like most things, this takes practice. Over time, you will get better at interpreting and recording your dreams. You will begin to see patterns and occasions where your inner consciousness is trying to help you solve problems or guide you in the right direction. Before going to bed, visualize yourself remembering your dreams. Picture yourself waking up and recording these dreams in your journal. Hold this thought in your head as you fall asleep. This will help imprint the practice in your mind and make it easier the next morning.

3. More nature: Spending time in nature, away from technology, is one of the best ways to quiet the mind. Nature is a great way for us to get in tune with our ancestral self and our celestial intuition. This is where we come from. Our ancestors relied on their intuition for everything from finding food, to avoiding predators, to finding the right path in life. Any time we immerse ourselves in nature’s beauty, we have an opportunity to dip our toe in another world, a world where intuition rules.

4. Get creative: Do something creative! Paint, draw, build, sketch --- anything that elevates your creative mind. When we are young, our inner voice is loud and not hesitant to shine through. As we get older, that inner voice is pushed down with responsibilities and the stresses of life. Tapping into this creative part of our brain can help re-ignite those pathways and amplify intuition.

5. Think less, feel more: Our cognitive brain thinks, our intuition feels. Our minds are always reasoning, questioning, and thinking their way through the day. After so many years of this, we don’t even realize it’s happening. If people could hear all the questions being asked by our cognitive brain all day, they would think us crazy. Try to slow down and “feel” more. Feelings that are grounded in the body are also grounded in truth. These feelings will never lie. Learn to listen to them more. Pay attention to those little signals that our body gives us like the heart beating faster, a knot in the pit of the stomach, feeling hot, cold, or a tingling sensation. You know the situation – like when you meet someone and immediately something is off about them; you can just feel it. Maybe they are lying to you or treating someone poorly. Your physical body can feel that and alert you. If you pay more attention to these physical cues, you can avoid many uncomfortable, painful, or awkward situations. This is your intuition speaking, and it’s trying to guide you in the right direction.

My Love Language is Intuition

Thanks to a recent bout with the COVID Omicron Variant, I've had plenty of time to self-analyze and reconnect with my higher intuition. Severe dizziness, fever, headaches, and debilitating fatigue rendered me motionless for several days. That's the bad news. The good news is I had plenty of time to focus on and practice mindful, purposeful, selfless, self-care --- genuine self-care. I did Reiki self-treatments three times daily. I drank at least 99 ounces of 9.5+ alkaline water each day. I religiously boosted my immune system with andrographis, Lypo-Spheric vitamin C, a calcium, magnesium, zinc supplement, apple cider vinegar, and vitamin D. When I felt unable to perform Reiki on myself, I sought support from other Practitioners in my circle. I spent hours in Q and A with my body; asking, "What do you need from me right now?" and listening intently for responses. Contrary to the popular adage, our bodies do come with an instruction manual, it's called "intuition."

We live at a time when the capacity to hear Spirit’s voice speaking within heart and mind has become greater, due to the intensification of light within the physical plane. As a result, even for those who have wandered far away from a spiritual path, the way back is more possible than ever before. All you need is a wish to return and give time and attention to the voice of inner knowing that you may have previously rejected.

This inner knowing is what we call intuition. It takes place in silence and in the presence of inspiration that arrives from another level, often by asking and waiting. Though some intuitive perceptions are primarily focused within the human plane, for example, knowing someone so well that we can anticipate how they might react to something or what they might do, the kind of intuition that may be called ‘higher intuition’ comes from a different place. It is the voice of understanding that translates messages from the level of the soul where Divine truth, light, and wisdom can be heard.

There doesn’t have to be a great difference between human intuition and higher intuition. And yet, for many there still remains a large gap – a space that makes it more difficult to hear the words that are being whispered to and from the soul. In order to bridge this gap, mind and heart have to be willing and there needs to be at least the beginning of trust in one’s capacity ‘to know’.

Intuition does not need to be taught; it needs to be allowed. It is a capacity that has always been within us in a dormant state, waiting for us to turn towards it, as a flower turns to the sun. We can start with a small willingness to 'know’ more of truth, light, and wisdom as it applies to our own life and to the lives of those we love. We can begin to pray to have the obstacles removed that cloud understanding or diminish our perception of what this truth might be.

A desire to make contact with higher truth begins to open the doors to inner knowing, especially when such desire is accompanied by a willingness to receive and to pay attention to what has been heard or sensed. There are people who ‘know’ things who do not believe what their inner senses tell them. They invalidate and reject what they feel or believe. This choice begins to close the doors to higher perception as it gives more power to fear; fear of being wrong, fear of being different, fear of needing to change one’s life based on what is heard. In order to open the doors to intuition and to keep them open, we need to be willing to hear and know, and we need to be willing to trust.

Trust is not a simple thing, for it often involves a reevaluation of how we have lived our lives. It may be that life has compelled us to be more practical, more focused on the daily tasks of living and providing for others. Or, it may be that we have made mistakes in the past concerning who or what to trust. It also may be that we have forgotten that we have the capacity to feel more, to sense more, or to be more open to life on all levels. Trust involves not only a willingness to receive something from another level of our being. It also involves a willingness to believe in our own capacity to flow with life and to change what needs to be changed on the outside or on the inside in order to do so.

There are many who know a great deal but who are afraid to let themselves recognize this because of where it might take them. This fear must be let go of in order to open the doors further to intuition and to the greater perception of light and truth.

Especially today, when there are so many great issues before us as a collective humanity, and so many actions taken that can have a profound effect on all of humankind, it is especially important that we reclaim our ability to know and to trust, that gives rise to intuition. To do otherwise leaves us in the precarious position of not knowing what or who to believe, not knowing which direction to go in, in terms of making the world a better place and relieving the immense suffering that currently exists. Without access to the deeper intuitive sense that is part of us, we live at the mercy of public opinion rather than in the presence of truth.

For reasons that are both personal and are simply part of being human, it is essential, now, for us to open to the light that is present so that we can participate more fully in the collective life of humanity, as well as, in the circumstances of our own lives. It is time to allow our inner senses to awaken and to become the light-filled beings that we are. The time we are in asks this of us, and for each of us, our hearts ask this of us so that we can begin to solve the problems and challenges that are immediately before us.

We can begin with a prayer or meditation; we can follow that with a period of silence and emptiness in which we do not know and wait to be shown; we can make ourselves ready to become vessels of truth and light. The recognition of intuition’s gifts may not happen immediately, but it will happen, and all of life celebrates when one who has left the path of recognizing their Divine self begins to tread the path of return.