Intuitions and gut feelings.
Many of us have had one or more.
Some of us trust them. Others run from them and hope for something ‘scientific’ and straightforward without the guess work.

For myself, i embrace them. It would be quite difficult to count how many times i’ve been in a situation where my ‘gut’ helped me to solve a problem or remember how to do something. Yes at times i get INTO trouble because of it.

How much of this so called intuition, if any, comes from the ether and how much from my previous experiences, directly or indirectly. My ‘gut instinct’ tells me that this intuition is the culmination of the clues that my brain has pieced together enough to tell me something or hint at something i can not (or do not) consciously perceive.

My subconscious seems to be constantly trolling my mind, sifting through the signals being passed within, looking for those connections that lead to an inductive leap. The brainstormed idea from left field and the astonished glances of others at a remarkable idea. The linear thinker probably can’t understand this or is also astonished at the moment they have a great idea they never saw coming. It’s the box they are trapped in that others think outside of.

I appreciate the seemingly random connections that my mind makes at times to come up with new ideas and thoughts. I’ve been asked how i choose topics to write about and usually it’s something that struck me. Someone talked about ‘d’ which made me think about ‘z’ which led me to read up on ‘3’ which then led to write about… this. What seems like a random idea many times has an actual pathway, just sometimes really really hard to track backwards. It’s the same force of nature that prompts me to read for several hours on a topic only to be bumped to a difference realm by something i had just read. The force of nature prompted by, “i wonder…” or “huh? i don’t understand…”. Many people would probably just end with that thought. Not for those of us that want to know more.

Getting back on task. The science part of intuition. I mentioned the inductive leap. It’s coming up with a conclusion based on, I’ll say, tangential evidence. Not a deduction which is what some would think of as a conclusion based on direct facts. As I pondered this notion I believe that for some people the inductive leap might be based on facts but processed and patterned and understood in a manner the linear thinkers just don’t and maybe can’t fathom. Essentially the same process that leads to a brainstormed idea. The person who came up with it might be able to say where it came from but it’s also possible ‘it just struck me’ is the reason. If that person was able to track their thoughts, maybe they would see the tangential thoughts that leaped from one to another to come up with the idea. Even events that you may not have an experiential base for can be handled in this manner. That is what we do to make it from day to day. You come across something new and you use what you know to figure out what to do.

The tricky part in this though are those idea or events that seem so far away from anything else that i would have a hard time figuring out what experience led to my action or idea. Those might only be a small fraction of my gut feelings but when the happen they sure make my brain twist around real hard trying to figure things out. I look forward to those events. It keeps me pondering and wondering about something else out there. Maybe something that will become ‘scientific’ once it’s realized but for now it’s magical.

I feel like now’s a good stopping place.

-Santa’s Fallen Angel