Intuition's Benefits

Intuition involves developing an acuity of perception. It engages creative thinking with hunches and possibilities. A special sense activates grasp of the invisible and provides insight. Flashes of thrill and understanding result without barriers of perceived notions. 

David G. Myers, psychologist, defines intuition as, "The capacity for direct knowledge and immediate insight, without any observation or reason." Malcolm Gladwell describes intuition as the "power of thinking without thinking."

Both encourage us to cultivate this underusing way of grasping our raw experiences.

Myers also warns of the perils involved with intuition. If kept untempered by logic and analysis, it can lead us down rabbit holes where we lose track of the difference between our fantasies and the real world. It can cause us to mistake our fears for accurate ESP or we can get lost in a maze of self-fulfilling prophesies.

Do you find benefits from intuition? How does it affect your life? 

The Write Practice

 

Following the routine of a writing practice assists to shape thoughts, feelings, and adjust behaviors in all aspects of our lives. After a period of time and word enthusiasm, we learn about ourselves and how to excavate ways into challenges with words.  This takes advantage of the brain's ability to form new habits. 

Scientists used to believe that after childhood development, the brain remained fixed. Nothing replaced brain cells as they aged or became damaged by substances. 

Now we know from PET and MRI technology, that the brain can add neurons as a result of our activities.

It can reshape itself throughout life.  As we increase an activity, the more connections the neurons discover. The wiring strengthens.

Yogis have experienced this neuroplasticity in their practices. In the Yoga Sutra, Patanjali explains how steady practice without interruption builds habits over long periods of time.  

Even though the way to remove bad habits by replacing them with good ones sounds too easy, the discipline of writing works to enable neural links.

As writing practice increases over time, it becomes a new habit that competes with old ways of thinking, doing, and problem solving. It systematically energizes the ability to feel what's happening in mind, body and emotions. When writing probes into the psyche, it guides many areas of life.  

Writing with the senses, we become involved with awareness and even taste food in a different way.  Touch, scents, and hearing heighten along with sight and perception.  We learn what provides a thrill and what it takes to remove angst and frustration as we write from mood to mood.

If we reach for a pen when frustrations or other emotions set in, we will return to that habit rather than worry. 

Writing just 15 minutes a day will energize the brain into new wiring. Focus on a writing meditation today. Begin with a concern and write until it deepens your awareness or another idea emerges.

Try the Write Practice.

A Pleasure Interlude

 

Robert Louis Stephenson wrote, "There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy. Happiness does not need to become the goal. We need a variety of experiences and moods to write about."

In the 1980’s  Martin E.P. Seligman adopted the term, “positive psychology.”  After years of studying the “learned helplessness” that characterized depression, he began to study how individuals could learn optimism. Seligman felt a search for “authentic happiness” made more sense than  relying on psychology’s one-sided focus on illness and disorders.

Choose to focus on optimism, courage and perseverance rooted in social and civil well-being. Consider how to gather simple pleasures. The process itself will attract feelings of exultation.

When nature provides a feast, take time to savor all the flavors. Everyone needs to awaken to the positivity that explodes in blossom and sky. Take a pleasure interlude from your busy life to revel in the marvelous around you. Squeeze out joy and appreciation for the living, growing creatures, plants and trees.

 Write about  "learned helplessness," optimism or courage. Move through a variety of moods.

Seek the Unknown

 

Anne Lamott writes, "If there is one door in the castle you have been told not to go through, you must. Otherwise you'll just rearrange furniture in rooms you've already been in."


What does it mean to break into the unknown in writing? Consider the biggest risk you can take and possibility of losing a fear to which you've grown accustomed.


Seek and capture the unknown today.

Go with the Flow

"The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by waters." - Norman Maclean

A river tumbles and teems with life to reveal the search for simplicity and unity. Waters weave their magical powers. Swift-surging rivers change with the light during the day. They merge with wonder in darkness. The flow provides opportunities for meditation and reflection. The river reveals a symbol of constancy within change.

Norman Maclean wrote, "Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it." The Indian word, 'hassayampah' means, the river that loses itself underground. It is like intuition.

Recall a river or body of water that affected your life.

We experience others' lives. They move on, flow through other landscapes and merge with different lives. Consider those who came before you. How, like a river do you carry them with you?

A Run by the Sea

A run by the sea 

       attracts the nurture of cloud shapes 

              a sparrow sings as waves

                      lift spindrift with the breeze

White egrets love to toddle.

Clouds play with sprinkles and arrange colors into a rainbow.

Be Yourself

"Be yourself.  No one can tell you you're doing it wrong." - Snoopy

Socrates focused on a process of, "know thyself." How does that differ from what it means to "be yourself"?

Socrates questioned students to lead them to arrive at the truth themselves. He challenged individuals to reconsider their own prejudices and ideas.By urging them to think for themselves, they could evaluate truth from different angles.

His method of conversation and inquiry irritated his students as it revealed limitations of their thinking. Yet, Socratic method never directly told people their inadequacies. They realized inadequacies themselves.

Socrates questioned everything and decided independently what would become worth pursuing. Studying issues from both perspectives, he did allow religious, political, or social conventions to affect him. With the fires of conformity in Greek society,  this independence of thought and mind became a powerful way of thinking.

What does it really mean to "be yourself?"

Respond to questions today to combine a Snoopy-Socratic was into self-discovery.

Who are you?  Why?

What do you like about yourself?  Examine your talents.

What would you change?

Keep exploring.

Let Humor Out to Play

 

Creativity requires change; the need to move and discover.
                                                         

Play with a cell phone camera.
    Take it and swirl it.
            Snap amidst twirl. 

Try a variety of venues.
     Click the unlikely. 
   Move way beyond unusual.
Catch the indescribable.

Shimmy.  Snap.  Try a variety of venues.

Look upside down for clouds in puddles and the extraordinary in gum ball machines.

Let humor out to play.

April Poetry Month

Necessity

If I’m hiding

search for me

in a spider’s dream

or web of twilight.

You might find me

in shadows gone

ladybug on a lemony

sway of eucalpytus.

Consider me in

the moon’s crackle

above the pines.

I’m there just before

stars prickle 

with the promise

of what we

need the most.

Concentrate on adding flavor  

to writing this month.

Fill your sentences with imagery. 

Take a raw experience and shape 

words into a rhythm with all 

the senses.

Explore a mystery. 

Bring in wild joy and ache of sorrow. 

Dabble in confusion and magic.


Let the reader realize a connection to
what we need the most.

A Day for Kindness

  " ... only kindness that raises its head from the crowd of the world to say It is I you have been looking for, and then goes with you everywhere like a shadow or a friend." 

- Naomi Shihab Nye

If you add your gem of grace

to the web of life

Positive energy causes

the series of strands

to vibrate and reflect sunlight.

Share kindness and discover its potential today.

Time to Tame Troubles

“I have heard there are troubles of more than one kind. 

Some come from ahead and some come from behind. But I've 

brought a big bat. I'm all ready you see. 

Now my troubles are going to have troubles

 with me!”  - Dr.  Seuss

What troubles will you knock down with words today?   

    Challenge your weaknesses; expand strengths. 

        Pick a fight with troubles. Spark, joust, wrangle with words. Jump into the fray.  


Become a cowboy, Ninja or Samauri. Move into action.

Tangle with troubles and downplay any weaknesses you feel. 


Engage with words and blow a few bubbles,

    Write until you have conquered your troubles.

         Smash 'em, slice and swarm until you agree,

When writing with vigor, troubles will flee. 

Take time to tame troubles.

There. Always There

 

They travel through you.

Some tease and tickle brain cells or trick you unaware.

A few move in and out of the mind's pocket.

Others paddle and float in the bloodstream

then vacation into the heart to stay.

A breath reveals those who flutter in the lungs.

Many from afar reside in hibiscus blossoms, a tulip or rose.

When a tree branch brushes a hand, you'll know who's there.

Trickle of water or wave roll calls them to mind.

Lemon's scent or a phantom hand on the shoulder brings a hug of breeze 

There. Always there.

As sun blends a spark of memory with tangerine sky,

a chuckle sounds into the sea with a flash of green.

Rustle of wings returns those elevated to another plane.

Still they remain. There. Always there.

The Tangerine Lady

 

Each evening, the Tangerine Lady appears. She sails the sky at sunset to notice those who need to discover their wings. 

Her first success began when she assisted a wounded sparrow to inflate his flight feathers. Since then she has helped many creatures and humans to rise in flight and wonder.

At sunset, she cruises, sharing her coral and blush colors with the sun. 

They collaborate to reveal those who need assistance.

Sing with the Birds

"It's probably that in the artistic hierarchy birds are the greatest musicians existing on our planet,"  -  Olivier Messiaen continued below:

" . . . birdsong has long been able to calm troublesome thoughts, evoke memories of carefree childhood days, and slow a racing heart. The trills, peeps, whistles, and fluty notes shared by robins, thrust, blackbirds, nightingales (to name but a few) drown out the world's woes. "                                                                                                 

Roman poet and philosopher Lucretius said, "Birds instructed man and taught him songs before his art began."

For Ludwig von Beethoven, the flute represented the nightingale. The oboe revealed the voice of the quail and the clarinet spoke for the cuckoos. He felt these birds composed along with him.

Many vocal artists say their songs arrives from the gifts of birds. Examples are: When Doves Cry by Prince, Dolly Parton's Little Sparrow, and Nelly Furtardo's I'm Like a Bird, to name a few.

The BBC network features Beatrice Harrison. It captures a moment when a nightingale accompanies a cello to create, Danny Boy 

Read more about birdsong and music:  http://www.colander.org/gallimaufry/Birdsong.html

In La Jolla, wild parrots populate palm trees. I hear them vocalize what sounds to me like, "figuero. figuero."  One morning during my run, a fellow flew near me and figuero'ed. As we floated together, I responded and we kept the duet going a couple of blocks. Then he flew up to greet his pals and the chorus began. I sang from below and passersby certainly believed in us for future performances.

I've sung with sparrows and taught the first line of the Oregon Fight Song to a mockingbird who reproduced it.

I always respond to tweets from morning friends who share muffins with me.

Find birdsong during spring days and vocalize with the birds.

Masquerade in White

 

 

A goblet of milk mantled in twilight.

In an instant a leg shifts to bent elbow post.

The other stretches without a riffle of water

as the egret bows to its reflection.

 

Immersed in the river’s scent of leather,

the white’s neck eases into a question mark,

or surges like a sprinter at the tape.

Alert to movements of cricket, frog or fin.

 

Once eyes capture a whisker of fish,

egret searches within a sunlight filament.

Beak arrows, dips beneath the river glitter,

tosses a nibble to the air and catches it.

 

Twirling from a cottonwood, a leaf engages

the river rustler who turns to statue.

A shift and wings rise in silk banners over rock pates

while feathers ruffle reflections into sequins.

 

The egret alights on a branch, shivers in spiral,

stretches to preen and fluff each plume.

On legs of silk, it wings toward 

a turret of branches to design the sky.