Today, anyone wishing to develop his or her intuition has an interesting problem. The problem is not lack of materials, but rather the nature of the information available. Much of this material seems to follow the same pattern. That is, do this exercise, take that class and presto you're intuitive. Unfortunately, what generally happens is that someone takes the class, reads the books, or listens to the tapes and then promptly forgets or can't find a way to apply what has been learned. This may explain why individuals often seem to be on a never ending program of learning how to be intuitive without ever arriving at the point where they are intuitive. Looking at this situation can bring some interesting insights. To see these, we need to back up a little and look at the situation as a whole.
To begin with, most people interested in learning intuitive skills fail to make two very important distinctions. These are (1) Knowing "that" and knowing "how" are two different things and (2) Just because one knows "that" does not mean they know "how". Actually, these two points are two sides of the same coin.
Philosophers have built careers on the subtle arguments of knowing that something is the case. While the delicate logic of proving that humans basically don't know anything can get you a tenured job, it's not much real use outside the ivory towers. Still, the basic division between "that" and "how" is important. The point is simply this: my being able to tell you that you need training is not the same as my knowing how to train you. Put in the simple language of rustic Sufism, "Telling you your pipes are leaking is not the same as knowing how to fix them." In the case of pipes and leaks, the distinction is clear; in intuitive training, that is not always so.
There seems to be a general opinion that if someone can do something, then they should be able to teach whatever that something is. Thus, if someone performs an intuitive feat (such as solving a criminal case) or performs well under lab conditions, it is generally assumed that he can explain how he did it. Thus the ever popular, "How did you know that?" Intuitives hear this all the time. The underlying assumption is that the intuitive can (1) Tell you how they knew and (2) You will understand the answer. Number (1) has led to some often humorous results. Number (2) often gets used against the questioner. Both deserve separate treatment.
To listen to some intuitives explain how they know whatever their intuition tells them can be amusing. Answers can range from "My spirit guide told me." to "My sixth chakra is spinning." Problem is, do these answers tell us anything? Well, they tell us that some intuitives believe in spirit guides and chakras. However, they probably don't tell us about what's really going on. That is, the intuitives know "that" certain things they do give results. However, the actual operations of "how" it works escapes them. Thus, a never ending stream of books, tapes and seminars that promise to make you intuitive while doing little more than spreading confusing. If confusion were all this situation created, then it probably would not be worth writing about. After all, there are entire industries (like the popular press) that live to create confusion. However, the second point about "How did you know" has a darker side.
This darker side has to do with power. The power play is simply this. I come up with a piece of information through intuitive means. Surprised, you ask how I could have known. Now, obviously, I have to know how what I did works, so I give you whatever explanation suits me for today. Then (and here's the rub) you have the audacity to say you don't understand. Now, what am I going to do? Come up with another story? What if that story doesn't work? No, it's far easier to simply declare that, "You, little one, are not 'evolved enough',or 'advanced enough' to understand." Then I can be secure in the knowledge that at least I understand what is so obvious.
If this scene sounds familiar, then let's see it for what it really is. First, let's grant that I have intuitive skills that I can occasionally call upon. Second, every now and then the skills let me show off. Third, although I can sometimes get the skills to work, they are not at all reliable. Conclusion: I know that doing something makes my intuition work but I have no idea how it works. In the sense of my individual use of my intuition, this distinction is important only in the sense that if I don't know how the process works, I'll continue to occasionally impress my friends and never really gain control over the process. In terms of my efforts to teach, the distinction is of critical importance.
To this, let's look at a teaching situation where incomplete learning has taken place. For this story, let's assume that the teacher knows both the "that" and "how" of the subject. The student enters into his training and along the way, the teacher says things like "This is how you do it.", "This is how it's done.", and "This is a very old technique." The student, being a good student, notes all this down. Then comes a day when the teacher and the student part company and unfortunately, the teacher has not had time to teach the student how to teach. So, what happens? The student goes out, collects some students and begins saying things like, "This is how you do it.", etc.etc. Problem is, what he says is exactly what his teacher said to him. In today's intellectual climate, it is often hard to see how this would be a problem but it is. In fact it is such a problem that if this is the way a subject like intuitive skills are taught, there's a case that NO teaching is taking place. This is a strong claim and requires some defense.
To understand this claim, the meaning history of the word teach has to be taken into account. According to modern usage, teaching implies conveying information. However, earlier usage implied teaching or showing someone how to do something. While you can go to the Oxford Dictionary and look it up, a simple reflection on history should be enough. A few hundred years ago, books were rare, hand written, expensive, and most people couldn't read anyway. Besides, the struggle to stay alive consumed most people's energy. Back then, the focus was not on passing or your MBA exams. Passing the tests of those times meant staying alive and staying alive is a "How To" skill. Thus, teaching a skill was originally a question of showing someone how they could do something. This has to be done on an individual basis with the skills matched carefully to the individual. After all, knowing that the wild pigs in the forest are dangerous tells you nothing about what to do when 'porkey with an attitude' crosses your path. This simple misunderstanding has led to some sad results. By mistaking a real teachers statement of "This is how you do it." (Meaning you; Mr. individual student in front of me right now), for "This is how everyone for the remaining history of the universe is to do this.", is to miss the original teacher's skill at matching the task to the student. To think that just because a technique is very old means that everyone needs it, or can even use it, is to overlook the critical element of the teacher's insight into the student's needs and his abilities. This type of faulty reasoning leads to people teaching the exact same things to everyone who crosses their path regardless of the student's natural talents and abilities. That is, they spend all their time conveying information (generally of a form of "this is what I learned") instead of showing how something is done. Frankly, there are not many situations in which such 'how to' teachers still operate. They are still out there and I would like to give an illustrative outline of how they might approach the difficult task of teaching one form of intuition. For my example I will use a Sufi tradition from Afghanistan. Since the men of that country lean towards action and away from idle speculation, their methods are still consistent with the earlier meaning of the word teach.
Before going into this explanation, a short statement about Sufism should be given. There are as many interpretations of Sufism as there are people claiming to follow its teachings. For the most part, activities that pass for Sufism are really activities that were intended for a different time and place. However a few things can be said about the less hide-bound Sufis. First, they are concerned with developing their perceptions. Second, there are various ways this can be done. Third, expanded awareness and intuition would include but not be totally be described by the following illustration. That is, the approach given is only one set of methods used and as such would be different from individual to individual.
If I were to try to reduce this approach to a simple equation (once again, only as an illustration), I would try something like, "Hold an image of your target steady while shutting off all internal noise and strike up an attitude of neutral expectation." Sounds simple enough until you realize each part is the result of a specifically directed training process. I'll break each down somewhat with the qualification that what I'm trying to put across is a living method that changes from individual to individual.
In order to make a method 'live' the order and type of experience can be mixed according to the needs of the learner. Thus, instead of starting with something as obvious as a meditation technique, the teaching may start out with a trip to another city or another country. Learning to hold one’s expectations in check can be difficult at best. This is even more the case if you don’t know what those expectations are. Traveling is a time worn and tested way to find these out. Of course, just any traveling won’t do. After all, if someone has spent his entire life being hyper-private, then sending him to (for example) Japan or Germany probably won’t do him much good. However, sending this same person to Spain or South America might work. The key ingredient here is the teacher’s experience with other cultures and his understanding of the student.
I should add that there is often more than these two basic elements involved. A few years ago I was out of the country and met people who had gone through the same training as I. One of them told me his story of approaching his teacher with the idea of traveling overseas. He was asked where he wanted to go. His answer was Turkey, Israel and Afghanistan. There was a long pause while the old teacher stared out into space. Finally, he recommended Turkey and Israel, but strongly advised against Afghanistan. Our soon to be traveler gave his thanks, took his leave and planned his trip along its original lines in spite of the warning. A little before his departure, it came time to go to the doctor’s office to receive the required shots for travel. Although he did not realize it ahead of time, the shots required for a trip to Afghanistan were different from those for Turkey and Israel. Still, being determined, he took the extra shots...and in a matter of hours was seriously ill from a reaction to the injections. Needless to say, once he got out of the hospital, he changed his plans.
As I mentioned earlier, learning about one’s expectations (and thus one’s conditioning) is a critical element in this type of training. Having a student read selected text, perform tasks, and take trips all can be used to unmask conditioning. There is one other method but it is prone to abuse. This technique involves the teacher doing something intentionally designed to shock the student out of their old patterns. Practitioners of Zen often use this tactic. The problem is, it’s easy for a teacher to 'slightly fudge' on this tactic and use it to exert power over their students. Teachers have been known to fake everything form personal illness, to direct callings 'from God' in order to extort money from their followers. Although this may look like a technique for exposing conditioning generally it is not.
For the record, using shock to rattle a student is neither new or Eastern. Aristotle is reported to have occasionally slapped a student right after making his point. Such 'markers' were used by him to embed the memory deep in the student’s consciousness. I doubt anyone today would get away with slapping his students around (no matter how tempting it may sometimes be). Still, Aristotle’s timing may prove an important hint into this technique (i.e. right after the point is delivered and before the student gets a chance to mix it with his already pre-established expectations and patterns).
From these examples, you may see that one of the elements in teaching working intuition is not always letting the student in on exactly what the point of a lesson is. At first this may sound slightly dishonest. After all, we are used to being given a summary of a course before signing up. However, misdirecting a student’s attention away from the real lesson has a straight forward purpose. It sidesteps the student’s efforts to 'figure out' exactly what’s going on (and therefore sabotaging the entire project). Thus, while it appears one set of lessons is taking place, an entirely different and unsuspected agenda is being carried out.
This second agenda has everything to do with how practical the learned skills will become. Generally when we think of training in intuition, most of us think that means conscious intuition. In fact, conscious intuition would seem to be the only kind there is. That is a reasonable assumption ...reasonable but wrong. In fact, most of what we call perception takes place long before we are aware of it. This is also true of intuition which could be thought about as a type of perception. Now, if we will allow that perception is a process and some of that process takes place unconsciously, then the idea of training forms of unconscious intuition does not sound so strange. The idea only sounds strange when someone tries to develop it on his own. After all, since this type of training requires special settings and tasks, it only stands to reason that a group setting makes it easier. Earlier, I mentioned that there were three parts to this training. We have looked at pattern disruption, which is a part of preparing for intuitive information to get through more accurately. Now, I would like to say a word about meditations as used in this training system.
By itself, meditation will probably not cause a major shift in one’s overall ability to access their intuition. Generally, it has to be used in conjunction with other techniques. Still, mental exercises can be useful if handled in the proper fashion. In this example most of the longer meditative techniques used are visual in nature. Techniques using verbal formulas are generally used as a preparation for visualization. The operating assumption being that being able to clearly visualize a person, place, or event automatically sets up a channel for information to flow through. In order to do this effectively, it helps if the visualizations match the abilities and needs of the student. Thus, a visualization may be very simple and consist of little more than a two dimensional shape visualized on a flat background. Examples of this would be geometric shapes or letters. Another type of meditation consists of adding a third dimension and movement to the object visualized. An example would be a spinning white ball on a black background.
This process is known as the lataif. Lataif can also be used as a noun to mean something like 'organ of subtle perception'. In any case, the techniques associated with the lataif take on a bewildering variety as long as one looks at the surface. However, if you look at the actual operations being carried out, common ideas appear. Regardless of the system used, generally visualizations that are shifted are involved. That is, one may carry out a series of visualizations or one may use the same image and carry out a series of changes on it. In the first case, an example would be to visualize a shape or number on one side of the body and the shift and visualize different shape or number on the other side. This could be interspersed with visualizations of letters or colors depending on how complicated the teacher wants to make it. In the second case, an example would be visualizing a sphere clearly. Then the sphere could be changed in size, motion, color or even imagined to be outside (projected) out into the field of vision. In either case, the idea is to develop the ability to hold a visualization steady while manipulating it. In this way the intuitive can shift his focus of attention without losing the contact created by concentrating on the original target.
The last section of the three parts listed had to do with holding an attitude of neutral expectation. In some ways, this may be the most difficult skill of all. After all, it is the nature of the human mind to fill in blanks. The first time someone focuses intently on a target with the desire for information, the imagination takes that as an open invitation to create whatever data it sees fit - thus, the need to be able to shut down all the mental noise while holding something at the center of attention. To a certain extent, one pointed meditation as outlined earlier will help, but by itself, it is not enough. There are, of course, different exercises that can help. Working with dreams (and particularly lucid dreams) is one example. The balance between detachment and willing that one has to maintain in order to stay in a lucid dream is very close to the neutral expectation needed. There are many other methods but a continued list would belabor the point. It is enough to realize that methods need to be matched to individuals.
There is one last point that needs to brought up in this essay and that concerns the intention of the program outlined herein. Intuition can take many different forms. In the case of Sufism, the intuition developed is often a side effect of a larger training format. Thus, in addition to doing exercises like the one above, an individual might be given the task of building a successful business, working in a charity, or taking up art or music. A Sufi that cannot make his or her way in the world is almost a contradiction in terms. This may sound like a contradiction in a culture that equates poverty with spirituality. But then again, is that not just one more piece of conditioning?
Charles Daniel is a long-time student of the martial arts, and has developed a special interest in the training of "extended senses" more characteristic of the "old, traditional" martial arts. He additionally indicates that his interests lean toward the practical application of intuition and any systems used to develop it or any of its various forms.
His current rank in martial arts is hachidan in Bujinkan Ninpo from Massa K. Hatsumi. He has also studied Aikido and Kashima Shinto ryu under Yoshi Sugita.
He has published four books dealing with various aspects of the martial arts:
NINJUTSU NAHKAMPF (in German). Bad Hamburg, Germany:H. Velte, Sport-Buch Verlag; Postfach 2464, D-6380, Bad Hamburg, Germany, 1984.
TRADITIONAL NINJA WEAPONS. Unique Publications, 4201 Vanowen Place, Burbank, CA., 91505, 1985.
NINPO TAIJUTSU. Unique Publications, 4201 Vanowen Place, Burbank, CA., 91505, 1986.
JAPANESE SWORDSMANSHIP. Unique Publications, 4201 Vanowen Place, Burbank, CA., 91506, 1989.887 Embassy Ct.
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