Source: Deposit Photos
[Note: This post is longer than most.] A few things I’ve noticed in my reading make me think about how culture facilitates or limits what we know and can know. It affects how we interpret experience. I think we might even miss subtle sensory experience when our culture has no language or explanatory framework from which to recognize and express it. I’m thinking specifically about intuition and heart.
In “Intuition: Myth or Decision Making Tool?,” Marta Sinclair and Neal M. Ashkanasy review the literature on intuition to figure out how to measure it in business decision-making. Researching intuition in Western culture is tough for two reasons: 1) intuition isn’t clearly defined, and 2) people lack the vocabulary to communicate the experience. They say the lack of language “may have been caused by a decline in contemplative approaches that use introspection as a valid investigative method” (p. 5) and the language to describe intuition has disappeared from secular Western culture. So, we have an ephemeral experience in a culture without language to express it.
Then we’ve got some reviving to do, or a new direction to carve.
What do we mean by intuition?
A few years ago I read Daniel Kahneman’s influential book Thinking Fast and Slow. I was reading it then because a major part of my work involved getting people to use data in decision making and that doesn’t come easy to most. Kahneman says people have two information processing systems, the intuitive (fast) and analytical (slow) and the analytical is more accurate. What he considers intuitive…. I remember thinking, ugh! That’s not intuition.
That’s a combination of instinct, personal preference, internalized culture and tacit expertise. Instinct, that quick, high-alert state is something all animals have. For people, it doesn’t carry much information, just OK or not OK, essentially. Internalized culture, that’s taken for granted beliefs and values we act on without even recognizing it they’re so engrained and below conscious awareness. It includes stereotypes and implicit biases of all sorts. So sure, decisions made based in this jumble may very well be wrong. The expertise form of intuition is typically thought to be experientially accrued knowledge retrieved through pattern recognition. This expertise form, I’ve experienced on the job. Maybe it’s what comes into play in creative and scientific breakthroughs that appear in dreams or reverie.
As you can tell, I’m not on board with what Kahneman considers intuitive. I agree we often use this jumble of unconscious stimuli and material that bubbles up for our shorthand, quick decisions. But lumping it all together and calling it intuition, or intuitive decision making, confuses and feeds into Western culture’s denigration of intuition. Further, this jumble in no way matches my experience of intuition. In fact, in my experience it’s intuition that cuts through this jumble and shines a light on the truth, or essence of a situation.
East West Consciousness Chasm
That makes me think of another instance where Western culture doesn’t have the language, and maybe not the experience either. At an MIT symposium that brought together Western scientists and Buddhist contemplatives jointly studying the nature of mind (Waking, Dreaming, Being by philosophy professor Evan Thompson), the enduring debate about whether consciousness is generated by the brain or whether it transcends the brain came up.
Most neuroscientists believe the former. Buddhist tradition holds to the latter. Buddhist contemplative adepts in some traditions experience in meditation what they call “pure awareness” or “luminous consciousness,” a clear, resonant knowing that contains no mental imagery or sensory stimuli. Harvard’s history of science professor Anne Harrington pointed out that Western science has no concept like pure awareness. Consequently, she questioned how brain scientists and Buddhists can work together on this given that lack. Is it an uncrossable chasm?
The Dalai Lama doesn’t think so. He’s questioning whether there might be some physical basis for the experience. Thompson too thinks it can be done. But, scientists need to incorporate contemplative methods–though they don’t have to bring along Buddhist philosophy–and Buddhists need to weigh their experience in the context of what scientists have learned. I’ve experienced what I might call “pure awareness” or “luminosity,” so undoubtedly others in Western culture have too. It may or may not be qualitatively the same as what the Buddhists experience, but it should be close enough to serve as a bridge. I don’t have language for it though other than luminosity—which in science has specific meanings that I don’t intend.
Defining Intuition
Back to what intuition is. Sinclair and Ashkanasy say intuition has three characteristics: “1) intuitive events originate beyond consciousness, 2) information is processed holistically, and 3) intuitive perceptions are frequently accompanied by emotion (p. 7).” The emotion though may be more of a feeling or sense than what we typically think of as emotion–happy, sad, angry. There’s another place where perhaps our everyday language is inadequate.
Anyway, putting these three components together, they define intuition as “a non-sequential information processing mode, which comprises both cognitive and affective elements and results in direct knowing without any conscious reasoning.” They recognize a transcendent or transpersonal component of intuition (like the Buddhists’ view of pure awareness), but just note it given the difficulty it adds to understanding intuition and measuring it. To avoid excluding it though, they use the term “non-conscious” as a catch-all for all levels or states of awareness that aren’t conscious. I can go with their definition. Their wording is clunky for ordinary use though.
Jeffrey Mishlove, President of the Intuition Network, uses a dictionary definition of intuition to try to get to the heart of the matter: “direct perception of truth, fact, etc. independent of any reasoning process; immediate apprehension,” “a keen and quick insight” and “knowing without knowing how you know.”
That’s better. If we don’t lose the affective, sensory part. Although even that doesn’t exist with “pure awareness.” So for now, I’ll go with perceiving new information immediately, directly, by non-conscious means.
Intuitive and Analytical Knowing
The last piece I’ll bring in here that made me think about the confusion or absence of language happened while I was listening to Mishlove interview a medium. An audience member wanted to know how to distinguish real, intuitive information from random thoughts. The medium’s answer was listen to your heart. It will tell you which way to go. The spirits don’t talk to the analytical mind. He said he thinks people don’t know how to distinguish heart, how they feel, from intuitive information. The intuitive information is resonant.
Two thoughts here.
One: I wonder how many scientists have experienced intuition in the transpersonal sense. Some have, I know. It seems they’d have an easier time crossing the investigative bridge. But then, would scientists who haven’t had experience accept what’s learned? Regardless of its quality, parapsychologists’ investigations have repeatedly been called into question and dismissed (though the credibility of cumulative findings over decades is beginning to be accepted).
The medium’s statement also makes me wonder whether the traditional experimental, objectivist science approach or attitude inhibits intuition from operating or being observed. Based solely on my personal experience, the analytical and intuitive are complementary and these two ways of knowing work differently and they feel different. I’ll talk about the knowing process here and save the feeling part for a later paragraph.
For me, it’s been a lifelong conflict and testing to learn to let the analytical and intuitive work together, rather than competing. Or the analytical extinguishing the intuitive. The intuitive doesn’t vie for control. That’s the exact opposite of its nature. It’s an open, receptive state. The analytical bears down, picks apart, pushes and pulls to figure things out. The intuitive grasps information whole. If there’s a process, it’s so subtle I don’t recognize it. It seemingly just appears. (Which would be a more conducive state for spirit communication—if indeed that’s what it is— than the analytical state). I can set conditions to make intuition more likely though. The analytical mind can verify or extend intuitive insight. The intuitive mind can get the analytical mind out of the ruts it can dig itself into and expand the view. When they work in parallel, magic can happen.
After reading Sinclair and Ashkanasy’s take on the decline of contemplative practices, I wondered, would formally learning contemplative practices make coming to that place of analytical-intuitive complementarity faster and easier? Probably. If I’d have known such training exists, I may have jumped in to get myself out of the anguish the split between these two ways of knowing caused me sometimes. But then I wouldn’t have the experience of trial and error and learning without an established worldview’s way of doing it.
(Digression: This is why I can see what Thompson means when he says Western scientists can learn the contemplative methods, but don’t have to accept the Buddhist philosophy. In fact, contemplative inquiry methods existed in Western culture prior to the ascendancy of empiricism. And, what about “thought experiments”? That might not be considered contemplative, but it’s certainly a different method, a method of the imagination—a component of the mind. Thompson thinks “neurophenomenology”—combining phenomenology’s intricate study of experience from within the experience, with neuroscientists’ imaging of the brain is a way for Buddhists and scientists to “create a new and unprecedented kind of self-knowledge” (p. xix).
Sinclair and Ashkanasy give a terrific description of the intuitive and analytical:
“Each mode supports a different decision-making approach, suitable for a different type of problem-solving. The analytical approach of the rational mode is intentional, mostly verbal, and relatively affect-free. It adheres to abstract rules of analysis and logic and, as such, can yield precise answers to complex factual problems. (Not unlike Kahneman’s description)
The intuitive approach of the experiential mode operates quite differently. As an automatic, preconscious mode, it functions in a holistic, mostly averbal manner and maintains close links to affect. It is context-specific and explains complexity through associations and metaphors. Therefore, it often operates by approximation, which is intrinsically imprecise” (p. 12). That “imprecise” part bothers empiricist scientists, and it bothers the analytical mind in general. The one part of their description I question is intuition as “context-specific.” I’ve had too many out-of-the-blue flashes of insight about big-picture issues happen at all kinds of times and in all kinds of places to peg it to any specific context. It’s more likely in some circumstances or places though.
Intuitive Heart
Two: It’s been several paragraphs, but if you’re still with me, remember the medium said he thinks people don’t know how to distinguish the emotional heart from the heart’s intuition. It seems to me this is a place where Western secular culture doesn’t have language to distinguish well, so it concerns me when I hear “listen to your heart.” In American culture, we think “heart” means Hallmark. That can easily slip into—whatever I feel, it’s intuitive and therefore the right thing to do. Which can be destructive and off-base and definitely not intuitive. It can also lead people to believe love is the pinnacle of everything. Not dissing love, but I’ve seen that belief so over-valued that people turn themselves into pretzels and doormats trying to be always loving. An 80-year-old friend once told me she thinks we need a lot more words for love, because that one word subsumes too many different feelings. (Maybe an issue for another post someday).
To me, heart intuition feels more like an awareness, a subtle opening of inner space than an emotion, or even a feeling. It’s more likely to happen when I’m relaxed, joyful, grateful, appreciative, even loving. Logic and obsession feel centered in my head. Intuition usually doesn’t. I may not sense it near my physical heart either, if I try to locate it in physical space. That makes me think the body may have multiple receptors, even non-physical ones. What language do we use to communicate this sensing that distinguishes it from the emotion Western culture associates with the heart—like love, compassion, sadness and grief?
Emotion and Intuition
Sinclair and Ashkanasy say emotion and intuition have a complicated relationship. Positive emotion, like joy or enthusiasm, can open channels to intuitive insight. (This makes me think about ritual generating this kind of emotion, and its use in some indigenous and religious practices, but that’s for a different post.) Negative emotion’s influence on intuition isn’t as straightforward. Some kinds or degrees of emotion can block or distort intuitive information. Fear, is a good example. But sometimes the emotion may come after an intuitive insight, such as relief. I’ve never thought of “relief” as an emotion, but…there’s a lot in this research that makes me re-think.
In research for her book Extraordinary Knowing, psychologist Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer talked with a professional intuitive who said she was afraid when she first started noticing her abilities: “Intuition requires being receptive to reality as it is, not how we’d like it to be so why go there when cognitive reasoning assures us that reality is predictable?” (p. 129). It’s uncomfortable, even threatening.
The medium I listened to recently said people don’t understand how what he does works and they can be hurtful. (Which is why I’m not linking to his interview. He no longer gives public readings because of people’s abuse.) In my experience, intuitive insights can be uncomfortable too. You may learn things you’d rather not know about yourself or be pointed in a direction that isn’t the one you want or expect. The intuitive in Mayer’s book thinks this uncertainty and upset may be what’s going on with scientists who blast any other means of knowing besides cognitive reasoning. Essentially, a defense. But she says, “Reality goes on anyway, regardless of who’s noticing.”