How to Develop Your Intuition
Divine Love Oracle Deck – “Intuition” card by Cindie Chavez
“Don’t try to comprehend with your mind. Your minds are very limited. Use your intuition.” – Madeleine L’Engle, A Wrinkle in Time
The dictionary defines Intuition as a direct perception of truth, fact, etc., independent of any reasoning process; immediate apprehension.
Trusting your intuition may not seem like the easiest thing, and that actually makes a lot of sense, because the logical part of our brain likes to, well, be logical! And intuition doesn’t really care too much about logic, it just knows.
In fact, one of the ways I sometimes recognized my intuition in the beginning was that my logical brain would nearly always argue with it.
But here is the thing that helped me so much – believing, even knowing, trusting, that my intuition is always working for my highest good. It is always acting in the service of Love. In fact, I often refer to intuition as “The Voice of Love”, because it is just that certain.
And this is helpful, because so many people tend to second guess their “gut feelings” about a thing because they are afraid of what might happen if they are wrong.
So, for those of you wanting to develop your intuition, wanting to trust your intuition, here are a few things you can begin to do right now that are neither difficult nor scary.
1. Make a habit of spending some extended time, 30 minutes or so, in quiet at least once a week and just listen to what your inner voice has to say. Pay attention to sensations in your body. Your feelings, emotions, ideas, and bodily sensations are how your inner voice speaks to you. Remember that this voice, the “Voice of Love” is always going to be speaking from a loving place.
2. Ask for guidance in areas that are not scary, so there won’t be any real issue one way or the other. This way it makes it easy for you to follow your inner guidance. An example I’ve used in classes where I’ve been teaching intuition development is the time I asked my intuition what grocery store I should run by to pick up a few items. Of course I had “my” grocery store that I always went to, I also had the grocery store that I stopped going to because there was never any good parking and the shopping carts were ancient and frustrating with their broken wobbly wheels that made the carts so hard to push. But…as an exercise in intuition development I asked. When I was first developing my intuition I would use questions like this because it would’t a life or death decision, nothing dramatic, just simple. It wasn’t scary. It was just running by the grocery for a few items. And…my inner voice said to go to the store I hated. I immediately started the inner argument. As soon as I recognized that I was creating a big laundry list of why I didn’t want to go there I started laughing. I was arguing with my intuition. So, I said yes to heading over to my most hated grocery store. When I got there I saw a repaved parking lot with lots of spots, and brand new carts all lined up outside.
3. Start a daily ritual of “hearing” from your inner self. Using oracle cards is a great way to do this. I believe that the power of using tarot or oracle cards comes from our visual brain connecting to our intuition. Personally I use cards as a way to tap into what’s going on within my own heart and mind. Pull a card and ask your inner self how the image and message of the card relates to you that day. What supportive message do you hear? How does it feel in your body?
Learn to follow your intuition in small ways until you become very comfortable with what your inner voice sounds like. Your intuition is always interested in serving your highest good.
And let me know how it goes, I’d love to hear your experience!
Love & Magic,
P.S. I’m so excited to recommend a wonderful collaborative deck that is being created for you right now! The image above is the Intuition card for the new Divine Love Oracle Deck, and I’m thrilled to be a contributor! The deck is being crowd-funded and I would love you to check it out!
Oh yeah. After it went Round 3 between my monkey mind vs. Intuition, I definitely got clocked. As a child I had the experience of knowing and yes, trusting, you know, when the adults are talking and things are being planned.. but you, the small thing in the corner just knows about x or z. Naturally, school, family and well, logical training tried to beat it out of me.
But you know what? Intuition fights back (thank God). Not in a mean and nasty way, but in that, sighing, “hmmm so you wanna learn this the hard way huh?” I call it the Voice of Angels, nothing to do with my name to be clear and more to do with how I view the protective function of those beings. I imagine mine dropping the knowing sublimely, in the same way there’s very little distance if any between how we know beauty, without words or expression. Ignore it enough times however, and those voices grow shrill till the knotted discomfort of willful disregard finds more painful ways for us to get back to ourselves.
I love Cindie’s tip about starting with small, less-charged events and calling it the Voice of Love is absolutely accurate. It’s important to be playful with it, because you’re basically having a conversation with your wiser and infinitely loving spirit and I would remind anyone that essentially, this being loves you no matter what. You already HAVE it and it only wants the best for you.
over the years I have noticed that if my intuition is going to speak in quiet time it will speak immediately. I have also observed if I am in I pain or have low physical energy or emotional vibrations it will be silent. reading up on some interesting studies by scientist who are comparing the voice of the non analytical side of the brain with the other inner voice from our higher self/ consciousness. Intuition, higher self / spirit & collective consciousness are all voices I have received excellent guidance & prophetic information from.
In my experience, Terri, sometimes when we are in pain it is our intuition speaking to us directly through the body – sometimes in a voice loud enough to get our attention!
So glad you shared your experience, I know that we all experience our intuitive voice in unique ways!