Nature Intuition: Insight & Guidance from the Natural World

Light through the trees in a forest can prompt nature intuition or a mystical experience.

Source: Pixabay

When I was a child, we lived on a farm and I played in the woods, creeks, ponds and fields—usually alone. The natural world was my companion. When I needed comfort or to make sense of things, sitting by the creek or in a tree helped. Insights came to me a lot. Occasionally I felt enfolded, like being wrapped in a big warm blanket. Whatever this was, it was natural and familiar, but unnamed. What gave me that feeling? Where did those insights come from?

I never heard anyone talk about this kind of experience. I never asked anybody about it either. Christianity was part of my day-to-day world, so at about age 9 or 10, I thought maybe this living presence was God. I tried to test that idea by going to any churches I could get to—to see if I felt the presence there. I never came to a conclusion about what that sense is, even after a lot of psychological and spiritual exploring as a young adult. Over time though, I began calling the experience itself nature intuition.

Now, after decades of occasional intuitive connections with nature, I’m wondering again what that presence is and how nature intuition works.

Nature Walks and Nature Intuition

Many studies show nature’s de-stressing effects on people. Contact with the natural world can help people be more resilient. It can make us calmer, more accepting of others and open us to a broader perspective on life. What a fabulous medicine! And it’s free. Usually.

But, is nature intuition part of this? I don’t usually hear anyone mention it. In 2019, at a forest bathing conference, Dr. Mark Ellison of Hiking Research talked about the effects of nature on people. He said Moses went to the mountain, Jesus to the desert, the Buddha to the Bodhi Tree and Mohammed to a cave. Wow! That gave me goosebumps—telling me in a bodily way to pay attention. This matters. Certainly, those guys got insight and inspiration in their natural world retreat!

In secular society too, Ellison pointed out, there’s DaVinci, Darwin, Lewis & Clark, Thoreau, Carson, Edison and Muir. Poets, painters, scientists and all sorts of people go to nature to think, question, reflect and be inspired.

It’s difficult to know what another person’s inner experience is like, so I don’t know if their insights and inspiration from the rivers and woods was directly intuitive or reflective or what.

Nature Mysticism

Anglican Bishop John Edward Mercer (1857-1922), in his 1913 book Nature Mysticism, uses the phrase “nature intuitions.” He said “mystic intuition and mystic emotion is dependent on sensory impression” (p. 3) while not being scornful of reason. Our physical senses are the substrate for this way of knowing. These experiences happen when there’s “contact between the inner and outer—a unio mystica—a communion between the soul of a man and the soul of the things he saw.” (p. 6)

Mercer saw insights from nature as direct experience, not tied to metaphysics or theology. He described it as “actual living communion with the Real, in and through its sensuous manifestations.” I still don’t know about the “Real” (which is a question of metaphysics) but I do see nature intuition as direct experience. No need for interpretation unless you’re trying to explain it to someone. This capacity is shared to some degree by all humans, yet even in Mercer’s day he says this ability was neglected or disparaged. “Rightly developed, the capacity for entering into communion with nature is not only a source of purest pleasure, but a subtle and powerful agent in aiding men to realise some of the noblest potentialities of their being.” (p. 4)

Sensing a Deeper Reality in Nature

What is it we’re tapping into with nature intuition?  What is that presence I felt as a child?

From Mercer’s nature mystic view, it’s “a deeper reality behind the world of phenomena.” He refers to it as the “Absolute, the “Ground of Being,” the “Ground of Existence” and “Reality” or the “Real.”

It’s a world of “spiritual facts.” A fundamental substrate of which humans’ inner world and the natural world are both manifestations. That’s why we’re so touched by nature. We spring from the same source. We carry the same life force.

We can’t get to the Ground of Being through the rational mind though. “Mystical intuition,” as Mercer calls it, lets us see through the veil. It’s “a passing of the mind, without reasoned process, behind the world of phenomena into a more central sphere of reality.” It may begin with sensory awareness or emotion, even beauty.

As one way to describe it, he quotes the English nature mystic poet Wordsworth:

“that serene and blessed mood

In which the affections gently lead us on—

Until the breath of this corporeal flame,

And even the motion of our human blood

Almost suspended, we are laid asleep

In body, and become a living soul;

While with an eye made quiet by the power

Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,

We see into the life of things.”

How Does Nature Intuition Work?

According to Mercer, humans and the natural world are “sharers in the same kind of Being, and therefore livingly related.” Nature’s consciousness differs from our own though. “A tree, a cloud, a mountain, a wave—these cannot enter into what we call ‘personal’ relations with each other or with human beings.” (p. 25) Yet nature mystics commune with the natural world. But how?

Mercer said through the opening of our intuitive faculties and the stirring of our soul. When our inner receptors sense nature’s power and being in its own right, we are moved. It may be desire, sympathy, appreciation, joy or other emotions. We’re then receptive to nature’s influence which, like us, is anchored in the Ground of Being or the ultimate Reality. But there’s also activity within us–not just receptivity–a contemplation or reflection like a waking dream. Mercer says a deep consciousness plays gently “over the material which nature so spontaneously supplies.” (p. 15) It’s a state Wordsworth called a “wise passiveness.”

By way of example, Mercer uses an anecdote about a man lying on a creek bank on a sunny afternoon watching the water pour over the edge of a low dam. In that relaxed, lazy state, he felt “a sense of this deeper reality about to reveal itself in his mind,” a great mystery about to emerge (p. 5). But someone interrupted it by calling his name. Too bad, the example would have been more interesting if we got to know the mystery!

Anyway, in my experience, those kinds of momentous, earth-shaking revelations rising up have been rare. More commonly my intuitions are practical or philosophical guidance or insights about myself, relationships or society.

For example, at a time of major change in my life, when the direction was unclear and I was getting impatient, wanting the situation resolved, I was out riding my bike past wild blackberry bushes and I stopped to pick a few. The black ones, the ripe ones, were soft and fell easily into my hand. They tasted sweet. Picking a couple of red ones, the stem broke. And they were sour and hard. They weren’t ready yet.

I thought I was just picking blackberries. But a subtle sense of metaphor arose in me. The blackberries reminded my Type A personality who wants to bear down and get on with things that I needed instead to stay open and wait. The time wasn’t ripe. Forcing it, well…it doesn’t work.

For me, this was a nature intuition. Guidance from the natural world. The same experience may mean something different or nothing to someone else. But that subtle resonant sensing that accompanied the physical reality is a signal for me. Staying open to it is a way of being alive to the world, of letting the world, especially the natural world, guide me.

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Christina Leimer, aka The Intuitive Sociologist

Looking Out & Looking In: Can We Operate in More than One State of Consciousness Simultaneously?

Walking a labyrinth might be a way to induce simultaneous states of consciousness

Photo Source: Ashley Batz on Unsplash

In short, the answer is yes, I think. Here’s why.

I’ve had enough intuitive flashes of insight while just doing ordinary daily activities that I’ve wondered how this happens. I don’t yet know if this is the answer but it struck me as a strong possibility when I was reading former Yale psychologist Jerome Singer’s studies of daydreaming.

Singer began his research in the 1950s, long before neuroscience with its EEGs and fMRIs for experimenting. What he noticed over more than 50 years of study is that we constantly decide “how much attention to give to self-generated thought and how much to information from the external social or physical environment.” When we daydream, the bulk of our attention is on our inner world. But, if someone comes into the room or calls our name, our attention quickly shifts to that person. Clearly some portion of our awareness is monitoring the world outside of us even while it’s focused inside.

Immordino-Yang, Christodoulou and Singh (2012) call these two modes of attention “looking in” and looking out.” Most often, we’re focused on one or the other. We process internal and external information serially. But, Singer said, when conditions are right, as with repetitive or overlearned tasks or in familiar settings, the processing can happen in parallel. We have enough mental capacity to look out and in at the same time. I see this as functioning in two states of consciousness simultaneously.

The Default Mode Network Looks In

Neuroscience attributes “looking in” processing to the brain’s “default mode network” (DM). Even when we’re not performing a task, our brain is far from idle. Some neuroscience studies say our brain uses as much energy when its focused internally—seemingly at rest—as when we’re working on a complex problem. This is the activity of the DM, the free-form thought flow that kicks in during rest, daydreaming, reflection, self-awareness, “recalling memories, imagining the future, feeling emotions about the psychological impact of social situations on generalized others and constructing moral judgments” (2012, p. 353).

We need both the “looking in” and “looking out” networks of our brain, of course. They’re interdependent. For example, switching from task-oriented attention to DM mode may be necessary for emotional health and harmony in relationships. But, that’s switching or serial processing.

Some studies show that people whose DM network coordinates its activity well when needed but loosens when outward attention is required score higher on divergent thinking, reading comprehension and memory. To me, that suggests parallel processing can happen and be beneficial.

On the other hand, failure to deactivate some DM activity during an outwardly focused task is associated with memory decline in older adults. This suggests that “looking in” and “looking out” at the same time can interfere with each other, to the person’s detriment.

I don’t know yet if any neuroscientists are studying emotionally and cognitively well-adjusted people who simultaneously look in and out. Singer noticed this, and he saw some forms of daydreaming as positive, so there must be some well-functioning people who parallel process. It seems like that’s what’s happening when I’m riding my bike or working out, not focused or thinking about anything specific, and intuitive flashes happen. But where do the flashes come from?

REM Sleep Dreaming & Intuitive Insight

Dream research now shows that the default mode network operates in both daydreaming and REM sleep—the sleep stage that produces our most bizarre, creative, memorable, narrative-type dreams. According to Antonio Zadra and Robert Stickgold in their book When Brains Dream, we process memories and information differently in REM sleep than in waking life.

In Stickgold’s study using semantic priming, research participants were asked to identify related words quickly. Most selected “right” to go with “wrong” rather than the word “thief” which was also an option. The relationship between “right” and “wrong” is a strong association, one that’s logical, conventional and commonly made.

However, participants awakened from REM sleep and asked the same questions, gave unusual, unexpected answers. Rather than selecting “right” to go with “wrong,” they were more likely to choose “thief.” Still under the influence of REM sleep, they were associating words that are weakly related. That’s what happens in REM sleep. Like with divergent thinking, seemingly unrelated memories get brought together, juxtaposed, sliced and diced, and we get weird dreams. Or, new possibilities can emerge.

And, those possibilities can show up in a flash while we’re awake–maybe when daydreaming. In an experiment sleep researcher Matthew Walker recounted in his book, Why We Sleep, people wakened from non-REM sleep and asked to solve anagrams tried logical, methodical strategies as they’d do during ordinary waking life. They didn’t do as well as those wakened from REM sleep though. The awakened REM sleepers not only got more of the answers correct, they answered immediately—as if relying on intuition.

This combination of research findings suggests to me that we can function in at least two modes of consciousness at once and one of those states—operating in the default mode network—can produce flashes of insight. Which doesn’t mean we’re all equally good at it, or that it works for us all the time, or that everyone can do it. But it does happen.

If you’ve experienced simultaneous states of consciousness in any form, drop me a note. I’d like to hear about them. If you’re interested in another post about dual states of consciousness, here’s one on lucid dreamers communicating with researchers while dreaming.

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Christina Leimer, aka The Intuitive Sociologist

A Neuroscientist & a Buddhist Discuss Meditation & Unconscious Mind

They wrote a book together and they’re friends. But when it comes

meditating on an ocean pier

Source: Creative Commons Pixabay

to the workings of the unconscious mind, neuroscientist Wolf Singer and molecular biology-trained Buddhist Matthieu Ricard don’t see eye to eye.

In an excerpt from their book in the MIT Press Reader, Singer sees meditation as an attempt to escape problems. Ricard takes Singer’s view of the unconscious as giving solidity to a mirage. At times they seem to be talking past each other. Here are a few of my takeaways from their exchange of scientific and contemplative worldviews.

What is the Unconscious?

For Singer, the unconscious is the many bodily, sensory, psychological, conceptual and learned routines that operate without us controlling them or even being aware of them. He even says we can’t be aware of some of these signals. For example, we respond to pheromones, yet we can’t smell them. Others may be accessible, but our conscious processing capacity is limited. It can deal with no more than four to seven items at a time.

Ricard thinks believing that this messy inner world is our bedrock is a mistake. Instead, he calls it “the outer layers of clouds formed by mental confusion that temporarily prevent one from experiencing the most fundamental nature of mind.” That nature is pure awareness. It’s a center of calm clarity.

Attention and Awareness

Meditation, Ricard says, brings us to that clear place where we can watch, detached, when habitual emotions and thoughts arise. We don’t need to be driven by them. Instead, we can observe them—pay attention to them–then let them dissipate.

Attention is important in Singer’s view too. He says where we place our attention is the key to becoming aware of any of the unconscious stimuli and processes that we can access. For example, our heart is always beating, but we only notice it when we pay attention to it. It’s an active, intentional directing.

However, he also says our attention “is often directed by processes we’re not aware of.” That view seems to align with meditation. After all, we’re not intentionally calling up those thoughts and feelings that arise when we’re meditating. Yet there they are.

Suffering and Problem-Solving

Buddhists have been observing the mind for thousands of years in order to understand it as a way to alleviate suffering. Meditation is their primary method. In Ricard and Singer’s conversation, Singer challenges meditation’s effectiveness. What good does it do to feel better for the duration of the meditation yet resume conflict with others, he asks.

Ricard counters, saying essentially if you’re only getting temporary emotional relief from meditation, and not carrying an inner calm into the world and relationships, then you’ve not been meditating long enough or deeply enough. When people meditate, over time, habitual, conflicting thoughts are less likely to arise. Experienced meditators cultivate an inner freedom that changes the way they experience and act with others.

Singer talks about the unconscious as a highly effective problem-solver—under certain conditions. He says, for complex problems where many variables aren’t well-defined and there’s time pressure for a solution, the unconscious produces better results than the slow, deliberate approach to problem-solving. That’s because the unconscious has a vast store of implicit knowledge, heuristics, motives and drives and operates using parallel processing. It can quickly make multiple comparisons and discard the least appropriate possibilities. A linear, logical rules-based method takes more time with less information.

In Singer’s explanation of the unconscious, Ricard sees author Daniel Kahneman’s thinking (Thinking, Fast and Slow). My first thought was, Singer and Kahneman may describe the mind’s mechanics similarly, but Singer comes to a different conclusion about the value of the unconscious than Kahneman (who thinks this fast mode of thinking is error-prone). I’ve talked about Kahneman’s view in a previous post on intuition.

Read More

If you’re interested in more of what Singer and Ricard have to say, read their full exchange or their book Beyond the Self: Conversations Between Buddhism and Neuroscience.

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Christina Leimer, aka The Intuitive Sociologist

Employees Say Yes. CEOs Say No. Why Not Work from Home?

Anyone remember the 1970s and 1980s when futurists were predicting a telecommuting takeover? New technology would change work and home life, they said. No more traffic jams or long commutes. Companies would save money on office space. The natural environment would benefit. Employees might even be healthier. But work from home fizzled.

Now here we are, decades later, hopefully coming out of a pandemic that’s been a forced experiment in working from home. And what are the results of that experiment?

why not work from home photo of woman sitting in bed with laptop and books

Source: Unsplash

Most employees who’ve been working from home think life’s better without hours-long commutes. Many are eating healthier, are less stressed, and spending less money and more time with family, leisure or volunteering. 90% of those workers aren’t ready to be back in the office. Some are reluctant because of health safety and childcare concerns. About 50% though want to permanently keep the work from home pace and distance, at least part-time. But 83% of CEOs say no, not gonna happen. With so much upside, why not?

What’s Keeping Employers from Saying Yes to Work from Home?

Productivity

Productivity is equal or higher, based on studies I’ve read. That’s what employees think too. Some company executives say that’s not what their data show though. It’s always possible that some types of work or some groups of employees are less productive. Either way, productivity claims are likely to remain disputed.

Some execs believe creativity and innovation will suffer. Well, what happened with the coronavirus? Scientists around the world collaborated and learned about the virus and created vaccines in a matter of months. They didn’t all get in one big room to do this discovery and innovate. Mostly, they did it long-distance. Remotely. One example, no matter how big doesn’t mean creativity wouldn’t suffer anywhere with remote work. It just shows, it doesn’t have to.

Company Culture

Some CEOs talk about maintaining corporate culture. It’s become a common saying among professionals who focus on organizations that culture eats strategy for breakfast. Meaning, regardless of the goals the company wants to achieve and the resources and tactics they plan to use to get there, if its culture doesn’t align, no amount of money or effort will succeed. For example, if the goal is to build an airplane, but the culture is one where each department works independently, you’ll likely never get a plane built that flies.

That airplane goal is an extreme hypothetical example to illustrate culture over strategy. But, is there empirical evidence that a company’s success or productivity is because of its culture, or parts of it? Sometimes, maybe. But mostly it’s belief. If a company succeeds and has a particular culture, managers, in particular, think success is at least in part because of the culture. Company culture=company success. The assumption then is, the existing culture is essential for continued success.

Another belief is, if people aren’t immersed in company slogans, office arrangements and daily norms, the culture will fade. Once imbued with cultural norms, expectations and practices though, they’re inside us. They’re unlikely to fade.

In fact, cultures aren’t interchangeable. You can’t just pick one up and trade it in for a different model. Usually if companies want to make major cultural change, employees who’ve absorbed the existing culture leave—voluntarily or involuntarily. Or at least a substantial enough portion of them do, so that the new ways can squelch the old.

Scheduling Logistics

Some say the scheduling logistics would be a nightmare. If some employees work at home all the time and some only on certain days, how would companies keep track? How would they accommodate company and differential employee needs? For example, younger employees appear to need in-person mentoring and orientation to the company’s ways of life (its culture). That means, when they’re in the office, at least some long-term employees must be there too. But we have software that can handle global supply chain logistics and customer service. Surely, setting up and managing employee scheduling isn’t the holdup, especially given the benefits of flexible, remote working to people and planet.

What’s the Real Reason Working from Home May Stall?

CEOs are the ones saying no to working from home, so we need to focus on them to understand what might be going on. Execs drive the company and often they’re hired for their fit with the organization’s culture. In the case of founders, they’ve established the culture—usually reflecting their own psychology and personality traits. Culture includes both espoused values—those that are overtly known and stated— and tacit values—those that are unconscious, taken-for-granted. Both affect individuals’ behavior.

Espoused Values

One obvious reason for CEOS to oppose working from home is just what some of them are saying. Right or wrong, the espoused belief is that workers need to be at the workplace during certain time periods. The company culture is a regimented one. Even if productivity during our forced remote work experiment counters it, in-person work is still the way they believe it should be done. In these kinds of companies, CEOs are typically the final decision-maker.

Another belief is that people enjoy talking and working with other people, so in-person work meets that need. By-and-large it’s true, humans are a social species. The fallacy comes in with the assertion that it’s in-person work that satisfies that need. For some it does. Others find other ways.

Tacit Values

Often, when a potential change that has so many benefits still doesn’t gain traction, it’s time to look below the surface at the part of culture that’s so deeply engrained it’s rarely even recognized, let alone questioned. Assumptions, beliefs and values that we so take for granted, they’re unconscious. Often, that’s called shared tacit assumptions. Instead of what we “say” we believe and value, sometimes it’s the unconscious beliefs and values that actually drive our behavior and decisions. No surprise, the espoused and tacit values can be in conflict. When they are, tacit wins. Sometimes though, tacit and espoused beliefs reinforce each other.

As an example of one possibility, let’s say a hypothetical CEO thinks employees must be at their desk from 9-5 Monday through Friday because that’s company culture and that’s the way it’s supposed to be. OK, pretty cut and dried. He or she’s the boss. The broader American culture says the boss’s decision prevails. But since presumably productivity’s equal, employee’s want to continue working remotely, there are societal and environmental benefits to doing so, and other CEOs are going with work from home, might there be tacit beliefs reinforcing this CEO’s espoused belief?

Trust

Some scholars have pointed to lack of trust. Really, they say, there’s a deep-down belief that employees can’t be trusted to do the job on their own. A CEO who believes that, and also believes it’s their job to ensure employees work, will hold fast to in-person working arrangements.

Status and Identity

Even more tacit may be beliefs about status and identity. In our culture, CEOs expect certain kinds of treatment, deference for one, and recognition that they’re the boss. If they’re not operating in an environment where that feedback is constantly at hand, validating their status and identity, is it threatened?

Some may see these as psychological explanations. To some extent they are. But they’re also cultural. What the culture we’re raised in or socialized into in other ways (ex., military, higher education, religion) tells us about how life should be and how we’re to behave. Culture gets lodged in us so deeply that we don’t even realize where those norms, expectations and beliefs come from. Yet often, they forestall change.

When telecommuting was first a hot new thing decades ago, futurists thought we’d be there by now. Unless we learn to address the sociological and psychological issues holding back change, a golden opportunity to make work work better for more people may pass us by again.

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Christina Leimer, aka The Intuitive Sociologist

InnSaei: The Power of Intuition Documentary

If you haven’t seen the documentary InnSaei: The Power of Intuition, give it a watch. When 29-year-old Icelander Hrund Gunnsteinsdóttir burned out on her job at the United Nations, she resigned. Then she went exploring to find out what went wrong.

Talking to professors, healers, artists, elders, shamans and a deep-sea diving ecologist, she learns about innsaei. It’s the Icelandic word for the sea within.  Also, to see within—to know yourself. And to see from the inside out—intuition. But how does that explain her burnout?

Innsaei: the power of intuition documentary about knowing our inner world

Source: Zeitgeist Films

After dealing with the horrors of the war in Rwanda and other atrocities, Gunnsteinsdóttir didn’t know she was experiencing what so many in the helping professions experience, a disconnection from her emotions. (See my essay The Human Cost of Taking Care.) Under traumatic stress, the logical mind takes over and blocks out everything else to help people keep going. In the short-term, that can be useful. But long-term, being centered solely in reason not only denies or distorts emotion, it blunts our sensory receptors and cuts off intuition too. We’re only fully human when we’re in touch with all of these ways of knowing.

Ideas from InnSaei I Resonate To

Harvard University business professor Bill George says the highest level of decisions is intuitive. If that wasn’t true, we’d just turn on the computers and have all the answers. With the dominance of rational thought, we’ve become lost in the numbers and logic. It’s taken away our capacity to advance intuitive skills. We need to let our intuition flow.

Psychiatrist and author Iain McGilchrist says people experience the world as a heap of fragments and it’s hard to see how they cohere and what they mean. The left brain doesn’t make these connections.

George adds: We need the detailed execution of the rational mind, the left brain. We also need the broad view of the world, the meaning and interpretation that comes from the right brain, our intuitive side. The analytical and intuitive are complementary. We need to be able to put disparate thoughts and information together into some kind of integrative whole. The problems we have today are intractable because we haven’t brought ideas together from different disciplines. We just keep doing the same thing and get the same results.

Shaman Marti Speigelman thinks modern people aren’t in touch with intuition, yet it’s one of the ways we know things. We’ve forgotten how to be aware of all of our sensory data—the five senses and more—that are constantly scanning the many dimensions of life. We’re designed to take in many views of the world at the same time, without confusion.

We can intuit from nature, by being in the natural world. But modern people are so constantly bombarded with information and distractions, it’s hard for them to experience the natural world, to sit with it for five minutes without thinking, with all their senses open.

McGilchrist: Intuitive awareness lies outside of our focus of attention. Most of our mental processes aren’t conscious.

West African Elder and author Malidoma Patrice Somé  says nature speaks in all kinds of languages. Without nature, we cannot revive our intuition.

Noise is blocking our connection to the world. It’s mitigating the sound of the internal world. Give trust to the power of intuition and allow intuition to be the platform to connect our past, present and future.

George: Intuition is the missing link between our inner and outer world

How People & Our World Benefit from InnSaei

Speigelman: Over many generations, the Polynesians mapped most of their ocean world without instruments, just by listening to the sea, immersing themselves in its rhythms.

Ecologist and diver Enric Sala explored parts of the ocean where humans haven’t been. He said experiencing first-hand that solitude and new territory helped him develop his intuition. It was his intuition that let him see what’s wrong with the ocean today and how to bring it back.

McGilchrist: Intuitive information is implicit and subtle. He gives an example of meeting someone who seems friendly, but something seems a little bit wrong. You can’t quite put your finger on it. It’s intuition that’s in touch with that kind of information.

Somé: Knowing what we’re feeling and what others are feeling

Speigelman: Use intuition to make the wisest decisions we can, not just the smartest.

Practices to Improve Intuition & Sensory Awareness

Speigelman: Do tiny exercises throughout the day that teach you and bring you to your sensory awareness. Between your front door and your car, notice all that’s around you. When you stop at a traffic light, open all your senses for a moment. See what you take in.

Somé: Let nature revive you and speak to you.

Artist Marina Abramović:  Going to the unknown is rule number 1. Give every last ounce of everything you have to something. Then you have to let it go. The moment when you’re not expecting it is when the answer comes. Potential failure is part of the journey. You don’t know what will happen.

George: Use mindfulness practices so the trivial things wash away.

For me, mortality contemplation, or just resting for a few moments in the awareness that I will die washes away the trivial and makes what’s most important sparkle. Sensory immersion in the natural world too, even from my window.

The InnSaei Documentary

If intuition and sensory awareness as ways of knowing interest you, watch the documentary. You won’t be disappointed.

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Christina Leimer, aka The Intuitive Sociologist