Insight: Intuition

"Modern man's besetting temptation is to sacrifice his direct perceptions and spontaneous feelings to his reasoned reflections; to prefer in all circumstances the verdict of his intellect to that of his immediate intuitions." -Aldous Huxley  

We return to our examination of Insight, the second step in the Cycle of Visionmaking after Reflection.

In previous posts, I outlined the seven portals of Insight: body wisdom, unfoldment, assumptions, intuition, atmosphere, synchronicity and signs. These portals enable a Visionmaker to see the invisible because they focus the heart on a set of distinctions that assist discernment. As every Visionmaker knows, the heart is an organ of vision.

The fourth portal that Visionmakers peer through is intuition. Intuition is defined as "a direct perception of truth, immediate apprehension, keen or quick insight." Who would not take the direct, immediate and fastest way to truth if they could manage it?

And yet, in the dominant culture, intuition is often demeaned as feminine and anti-logical, even occult. Those that require deductive reasoning or conventional proof before they will consider the validity of something dismiss it. As though reasoning were the only way to apprehend the world!

The legendary film director, Ingmar Bergman suggests that intuition and reason must work together: "I make all my decisions on intuition. I throw a spear into the darkness. That is intuition. Then I must send an army into the darkness to find the spear. That is intellect."

The Visionmaker sees intuition as the heart's direct experience of meaning, before it can be recognized by consciousness. Meaning is not simply a product of the intellect. Rather it forms and shapes the intellect by providing the content of consciousness. The heart is able to reach into that content and perceive truth immediately.

Open, clear, strong and full, the Four-Chambered Heart has the acuity of a precision lens. Scottish writer Thomas Carlyle put it elegantly:

"It is the heart that sees

Before the head can see."

© Patrick O’Neill 2008. All rights reserved.