Intuition is a word that is universally understood. Normally, it’s a gut feeling about a person, an event, or some other daily phenomena. Sometimes, people will feel a sudden impulse to do something, other times they will feel like it’s not in their best interest to take part in a certain activity. So where does this come from? Is it a higher level of consciousness? Does it come from our brains? Is it fabricated? Is there a way we can better understand this type of understanding, so we can use it to enhance our everyday life?
Like anything esoteric, it’s difficult to pinpoint the exact relationship of intuition to consciousness, but it bears some importance in the larger context of awareness, as a whole. The concept brings our attention to subjects often ignored, taboo, or not discussed openly. Most importantly, it causes us to prod deeper, and question further what we know and generally accept to be true.
For instance, how can we be aware of things that come from outside of our own awareness? Or, more precisely, how can we be aware of something outside of ourselves (such as whether or not we should take action) and feel internally that there is a correct choice to make? The answer to this presupposes a connectedness between the external world, and our internal awareness (also called knowing).
Within the context of intuition, knowing something has two separate meanings. First, when we intuit information, it’s knowledge that isn’t deduced logically, meaning it’s not based on prior information, or by our own reasoning alone. In other words, our arrival at this new understanding is not fact-based in nature. Secondly, intuition is something that is held to be true, based on an internal feeling regarding our external surroundings, people and events, which a person believes even against factual evidence supporting the opposite. In other words, intuition just isn’t logical, but it does exist. In order to explain its existence in more depth, it’s important to bring it up in relation to another topic: synchronicity.
Are There Coincidences: Understanding Synchronicity
Synchronicity has become something of a buzzword in spiritual circles in recent decades. The term synchronicity was first theorized by the famous psychologist cum-philosopher, Carl Gustav (C.G.) Jung. His theories were revolutionary for explaining the existence of a collective unconscious. In his work, he explains how humanity as a whole (the collective) experiences a type of unconscious belief system, that are innate to us as a species. He goes on to explain, that we all share this collective unconscious, through a series of shared fears, motivations, and archetypal symbols that have been building progressively since ancient times.
In order to explain the significance of how we all share one unconscious mind, Jung suggests we are all more or less connected in our experience of events. Sometimes, these events are what Jung would call, “meaningful coincidences” because they seem to be connected and meaningful, but they aren’t causally connected. When events happen we perceive to be connected, we refer to them as coincidence. However, Jung would argue these trivial coincidences contain great meaning for understanding other connections in our lives, and for making sense of the seemingly randomness of existence. So, he coined the term synchronicity to refer to how certain events seem to fall together in time (more on this later). Seemingly random connections, happen together and are perceived in relationship to one another through the way they occur together, in a linear fashion.