Reflections :: The Reality of Intuition

Human beings have potentially available a tremendous range of intuitive powers.  We are indeed wiser than our intellects.  There is much evidence.  We are learning how sadly we have neglected the capacities of the non-rational, creative “metaphoric mind”—the right half of our brain.

This was Carl Rogers, the originator of the human potential movement, speaking in 1980.  His practice of empathy, of meeting people exactly where they are at in an unconditional, non-judgmental way, and his devotion to the principle of each individual having untapped, infinite reserves of inner-potential made him one of the most important psychologists of modern times.

How does it serve you to know, too, as a woman, that “the right hemisphere of the brain—the part associated with intuitive knowing—becomes more active premenstrually”?  So said M.D. Christiane Northrup, in her book Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom.

In addition to educating women specifically around the physical aspects of our monthly rhythms, Northrup focuses in this book on the less-valued personal “magic” of this time, as it is a grace of female power to have greater and deeper access to our intuitive and creative functions.  Indeed, studies suggest that emotional disruption and pain during PMS indicate deeper messagry from our true selves about what in our life is or isn’t working, about what needs transformation.

It is a grace, though one that still is undervalued.  Our intuitive knowing is the way to our magic.  Whether or not one consciously undertakes it, the female soul is bountiful, layered, non-linear, continuously regenerative, and alive at any moment we so choose to give honor it.  Yet still it remains the truth of the matter: 30-some years after Rogers’ Human Potential movement we live in a time when the cultural inheritance of our society—that is, the beliefs we take on without realizing—“gives girls the message that their bodies, their lives, and their femaleness demand an apology,” again, in the words of Northrup.

Or, that their bodies are only worthy as vehicles of sexuality.

Because a culture consumed with doing will repress the value of being—which is the intuitive function of the right brain—so that it comes out in a twisted, broken way.  It comes out through a perversion of our natural creative energy, because that energy is real and still needs a place to go.  It shows itself in society today as an over-excessive, warped version of sexuality.  This is how creative “being” channels itself through our left-brained “doing” value-system, the only outlet considered acceptable.

As women and mothers, the way to value both ways of knowing, the logical, focused, “doing” style, and the creative, non-rational, “being” style, is to begin with our very selves.

How can we honor our personal, right-brained magic?  How can we bring it out of the dark where it may have been hiding?  How can we help correct this repression of, and therefor fracturing and perversion of, our creative, intuitive natural energies? How can we model a new way of balance for our kids, boys and girls, our future women and men?

You know my opinion!  We can begin, joyously, within~ We can recognize the reality of these forces in our own lives.  We can honor them by choosing to gently get to know our own, personal tides.

Photo courtesy of: https://emilah.com/events/be-the-dragonfly/