CHAPTER FOUR: Intuition, the Sixth Sense

Before the start of this chapter, here's a note for my students and colleagues that I am undergoing surgery on July 29. I hope to be back teaching October 1.

Now here is one thing that has changed for me, since I realized the world is all of mind. (No, I don’t see dead people, if you’re a fan of M. Night Shyamalan’s 1999 film, THE SIXTH SENSE. Well, I have, but not usually!) No, I’m referring to the importance of relying on the sixth sense, intuition, instead of just the five physical senses (sight, sound, touch, smell and taste).

Actually, it hasn’t changed for me; that’s not the right way to word it. I’ve always instinctively known that intuition and feelings were extremely important. But the family and society I was born into didn’t validate that inner knowing.

I was born into a long line of white male patriarchs and women who love them. Feelings weren’t exactly embraced as something to discuss in my family of origin. In fact, I recall my dear father (Dad passed just under a year ago as I’m writing this chapter) becoming angry when I asked him how he felt about something. He sputtered and spit as his voice became louder, “It is what it is; there’s no feeling to be done about it!” Which is probably exactly what he heard from his father and his father heard from his father before him. AND is the complete opposite of intuition, or IVIN, the Inner Voice/Intuitive Nature.

Intuition is feeling. Understanding or guidance. There’s no “doing” to be done to get to your intuition. You can’t take your intuition shopping with you, for example, and buy it a new dress. I mean, you can take your intuition shopping with you – it will tell you by that weird feeling in your gut that the sales person is lying to you when she says that shade of cerise is just exactly your color. Or, on the other hand, that your husband really does mean it when he says that one pair of jeans looks terrific on you.

But intuition isn’t a physical thing you can dress up or touch; it’s something you feel. Or sense. Or even just understand or know.  

Here’s a good example. While launching my Wishweavers business in Salem, Oregon, I worked one or two days a week to supplement income at a lovely gift and antique shop close to my home. I was the only person in the store one day when a young man walked in. He seemed cagey, excitable, and the hair on my body stood on end in his presence. He stayed in the store looking haphazardly at things until all the other customers in the store had left. He then engaged me in conversation. A voice inside my head seemed to scream, “He’s going to steal your purse!”

He spoke mostly in monolog about a number of things, and I became more and more uncomfortable with each word he said. Finally, he said he wanted to buy an antique kerosene lamp to ship to his grandmother who collected them on the east coast, and asked me if we had a box in which to ship it. I later learned this is one of the oldest tricks in the book for stealing from a retail store. I hesitated for a moment before going into the back room, that voice still in my head. I looked down at my purse behind the counter, made direct eye contact with the guy, and left the purse there rather than taking it with me into the back, not wanting to offend him should he turn out to be a legitimate paying customer.

I’d never moved as hastily as I did grabbing that box. The man was standing by the front door as I came out, easily less than three seconds later. He said, “I need to go to my car to get my wallet,” walked out the door and bolted down the sidewalk. I quickly glanced behind the counter. My purse was still there, but when I looked inside it, my billfold was missing. I raced out the door and he was already long gone.

I searched, notified the owners of the other businesses in the strip mall, called the police, filed a report—the usual things people do when they’ve been robbed. The thief had left a plastic soda pop bottle on the counter, which was dusted for fingerprints to no avail. My billfold was later found in a hobby shop not far from the store, completely intact except for the one dollar bill and change (I told you I needed to supplement my income!) I had in it. The billfold was also dusted for fingerprints and none were found on it, either.

The message from my IVIN was absolutely clear, yet I didn’t heed it out of fear of offending someone. I learned a big lesson that day! Listen to your IVIN! It won’t lead you astray, even if you can’t always interpret the message right away. I didn’t even need to interpret that one; the words and accompanying feelings which came were so strong, I simply knew this person’s intention was to steal from me. Not that he had a gun and was going to demand I empty the cash register to rob the store, but that he intended to steal from me personally.

Our IVIN helps us connect with our authentic nature and realize our dreams just like it alerts us to potential danger. Pay attention, listen, and take action based on this guidance.

So...how do you cultivate your intuition?

Listen to people who are better at it than me!

Seriously, though, I have learned in bits and pieces over the years from some of the best. Virtually any author ever published by Hay House. Sonia Coquette has written wonderful books on cultivating intuition, like TRUST YOUR VIBES. So has Sara Wiseman. After reading Sara Wiseman’s amazing WRITING THE DIVINE, I first was introduced to my spirit guide, Cherijo.

Cherijo has become one of my most trusted intuitive sources, even though I don’t rely on his wisdom nearly as often as I probably “should.” He has been with me through two different past-life regression exercises and once popped into the passenger seat of my car when I was driving to Safeway to pick up a bottle of wine and a few groceries.

How did I know he popped into the car, you may ask?

Well, that’s the thing about intuition. You have to trust it. As a general rule, at least in my experience, the IVIN isn’t going to use the five senses in the way humans do – relying on what we can see, touch, taste, hear, smell. You might get a little bit of one or two of them, though; or at least I have. And nighttime dreams are also often intuitive messages.

The first time I remember being freaked out by an intuitive message was shortly after I graduated from high school. One of my high school friends, Pam, had allegedly committed suicide. Pam’s mother found her body in a car in the garage and the engine had been left running. It never struck me as a suicide, that Pam had shut the garage door with the car engine still running to intentionally end her life. I felt she was drunk, confused and hadn’t decided what she was going to do next when she fell asleep. Or passed out, however you want to word it.

All the same, weeks later, when I awoke in bed and saw what looked like the back of Pam in a long white gown (like a graduation gown) standing in front of the stereo in my bookcase...well...that was weird. She had cut her hair before graduation, but her hair was long in this vision. It looked like she was wanting to put a record (vinyl) on the stereo. I never saw her face; I just knew it was Pam. And I was really scared. I blinked. And again, more slowly. And finally a third time even more slowly – then the image was gone.

I didn’t mention this experience to anyone until probably a dozen years later when I started meeting with professional intuitives after moving away from South Dakota. One doesn’t exactly see signs for Spiritual Psychics on street corners anywhere in South Dakota. Maybe somewhere near Rapid City? Anyhoo, it’s not the kind of thing I would have felt comfortable discussing with anyone in my family, not even Mom.

And my mother had experiences of her own. At least one that I know of, anyway. Mom came from a family of nine siblings and one of them was already married and a mother when Mom was baby-sitting and a tragedy happened. I won’t mention the specifics, but Mom saw the image in her mind before she even walked upstairs to see what had happened. She only mentioned this to me one time, and said it was the mind’s way of preparing her.

I agree with her, and I think it was a lot more than that. I think it was clear intuition and connection with the higher realm in a way that was never discussed in our family. Not in my mother’s family before her, my father’s family before him, and certainly not in the family my parents created with me and my brother.

Just consider how different the world would be if every family in every society and culture put their IVIN and soul evolution BEFORE everything else. Before, say, what kind of vehicle to purchase next or whether to vacation in The Maldives or Iceland. Imagine what the world would be like if that is the kind of thing families discuss at the breakfast or dinner table, and in those conversations leading to college enrollment, or what kind of career family members might want to pursue. What their soul purpose is in this lifetime.

Wowee! How different everything would be, including – no doubt – with my physical health. We could have talked about what foods are more easily digestible and how unexpressed feelings get stuck in the body and cause dis-ease just like smoking cigarettes or drinking too much whiskey does. (I’m not a whiskey drinker, but I love the word. Whiskey. Isn’t that a great word?!)

Finally, I always suggest a Godwalk, for anyone wanting to deepen their relationship with the higher realm and their intuition. This video gives more details.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNSqwV7nBOI&list=PL93anMLotz3G_cGf1Asx0jBfF9dzM5J37&index=3