Οne day will come, when for an uncanny reason you will decide that you must not go through this interview, you will decide that you must go to this cafeteria and not that one, you will decide that you must buy this book you found at the market, even though you never heard of it before. And then you will tell yourself that this is what your instinct indicated. This day will always be there, to make you wonder: “What if I had chosen the other path?” “What if I had gone to that interview?” But you will never know. And then, once again you will call to arms the ancient excuse of intuition.
We, humans, everyday become puppets of this absurd word with the amazing power, we meet friends, break up, end up smiling or crying, because we followed this “tiny little voice” in our head, without actually knowing if it even exists.
But let science speak first.
Carl Jung, the founder of analytical psychology, within the context of his theory of the ego, describes intuition as an “irrational function”, opposed most directly by sensation, and opposed less strongly by the “rational functions” of thinking and feeling.
At this point, things may get even more complicated, because no one can objectively categorize functions of rational and irrational. This is why instinct, such an abstract concept, can simply be a perfect excuse to follow your choices, and a perfect response to the question: “Why did you do this?”. If the only thing left to do when facing crossroads is to shrug your shoulders, you follow your intuition. Could then instinct be nothing but your own voice, which either desperately wants to follow a choice and has no other obvious reason, or shouts all those things you want to do but are too afraid to say out loud?
Moreover, instinct, apart from being a cheap excuse, may also be something larger than that. What happens on our mind when the revelation of what we must or must not do comes, is a function that many accept as knowledge out of nowhere. An enlightened wisdom takes you by the hand and challenges you to close your eyes and let yourself to its experience. But where do you find this knowledge? Who gives it to you? Spiritualism, describing intuition as a conscious commonality between earthly knowledge and the higher spiritual knowledge, sets such questions and answers them as well. According to Osho, the famous spiritual teacher: “This word ‘intuition’ is beautiful. You know the other word, ‘tuition’; tuition means somebody else is giving it to you. Intuition means nobody is giving it to you; it is growing within yourself. And because it is not given to you by somebody else, it cannot be put into words.”
So, in some magical way, in situations we think we don’t control, only ourselves can finally give the answers. Maybe it is our present selves, or maybe it is our selves from another life, that, while wandering, gather all the wisdom of the world for us, and give us away these fragments of knowledge, measured. Because, what would life be, if we only made the right choices?
Or could it be that we make the choices we actually deserve? If intuition is knowledge we possess, our lives must be interwoven with destiny. The factor fate disappears, and everything is written, left in the hands of the three fates. This means that, no matter what we feel, we will eventually do what was planed for us to do. Fans of fatalism will not consider their acts much, but will simply listen to the louder of the two voices within them. Who messes with the Romantics?
Intuition, in the end, either fabrication of the coward, or actual right brain function, takes us to places beyond imagination and boosts our personal curriculum vitae. Every single whisper of our instinct is the vehicle to one more experience, one more journey. And who doesn’t like travelling?