Can just anyone become highly intuitive?
Intuition is not only
the highest form of intelligence
In fact, using the right approach,
Intuition is a highly trainable skill
Very occasionally, we come across a person who seems to be more intuitive than other people. Such an individual won’t usually stick out from the crowd. We probably can’t even put our finger on what it is that makes this person different in this specific way. They likely don’t emanate some kind of mysterious energy or spread a guru-like atmosphere. Also, they won’t feel much of a need to talk about themselves and their abilities without good reason.
Looked at more closely, you will realize that these rare individuals are able to read emotional states, patterns of thinking, motives, as well as personality traits of other human beings with uncanny precision. The way they react to situations, conditions, and occurrences seems to be based on an inner knowing that ordinary people don’t have equal access to. At least in some areas of life, they appear to have better judgement and make better choices than most other people. They might be capable of helping others become aware of inner limitations and hidden potentials, using a deep understanding of human nature. What they say or do might reflect exceptional viewpoints, often contradicting what society has taught us to be normal. Ultimately, in one way or another, their skills of perception and comprehension go beyond the capacity of their physical senses and their rational mind’s ability to calculate and estimate based on a linear perspective.
WHY THIS MIGHT INTEREST YOU
If you would ask me why I consider myself qualified to talk about how to systematically develop an intuitive skillset suitable to be used in all kinds of situations and for all kinds of purposes, my answer would be this: For all I know, I wasn’t born with any intuitive talent to speak of. Intuitive skills, in my family, were not handed from one generation to the next. Even more, the environment I grew up in utterly dismissed and clearly rejected the idea that a reality beyond conventional normality might actually be a real thing. Except, maybe, as a symptom of a mental disorder. Hence, when it comes to intuition, I had to learn everything from scratch. I know from my own experience what it feels like to go through the whole process of starting out as an underachiever, feeling quite handicapped and inept, to eventually reaching a notable level of competence and proficiency.
Today, after teaching seminars on intuition for more than 20 years, I’m convinced that essentially everybody has the potential to become highly intuitive. In the courses I’ve taught, I’ve watched participants perceive details about character traits, emotional states, mental strategies, looks and formative experiences of people they had never met. I’ve seen sceptics, who didn’t even believe in intuition or just completely doubted that they would ever be able to get any accurate information about anyone or anything, making statements that were straight to the point accurate and verifiable. I’ve seen complete beginners, who had never been in a meditative state before, getting access to realms of perception they never knew existed.
EXTREME INTUITION
If you would ask me why I consider myself qualified to talk about how to systematically develop an intuitive skillset suitable to be used in all kinds of situations and for all kinds of purposes, my answer would be this: For all I know, I wasn’t born with any intuitive talent to speak of. Intuitive skills, in my family, were not handed from one generation to the next. Even more, the environment I grew up in utterly dismissed and clearly rejected the idea that a reality beyond conventional normality might actually be a real thing. Except, maybe, as a symptom of a mental disorder. Hence, when it comes to intuition, I had to learn everything from scratch. I know from my own experience what it feels like to go through the whole process of starting out as an underachiever, feeling quite handicapped and inept, to eventually reaching a notable level of competence and proficiency.
Today, after teaching seminars on intuition for more than 20 years, I’m convinced that essentially everybody has the potential to become highly intuitive. In the courses I’ve taught, I’ve watched participants perceive details about character traits, emotional states, mental strategies, looks and formative experiences of people they had never met. I’ve seen sceptics, who didn’t even believe in intuition or just completely doubted that they would ever be able to get any accurate information about anyone or anything, making statements that were straight to the point accurate and verifiable. I’ve seen complete beginners, who had never been in a meditative state before, getting access to realms of perception they never knew existed.
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What we also need to understand is, that if we want to become really good at using our intuitive skillset in everyday life, we need to put up with challenges that will inevitably await us on our path. Becoming highly intuitive does not just mean learning a few techniques and running with them. It also requires to clear ourselves of internal patterns that might be inhibiting or limiting our intuitive access. It means systematically expanding the range of intuitive experiences that we’re familiar with, making our intuitive access ever more reliable and adaptive to all kinds of situations. It also means that we need to learn to handle those types of people who seem to have a talent to blur and distract our intuitive perception. In one way or the other, to become highly intuitive we need to evolve to become a more conscious, more capable and indeed more functional version of ourselves.
Picture yourself closing your eyes and turning your focus inside. Imagine allowing your whole body and mind to relax and, just for this moment, let go of those entanglements with the outer world that would usually confuse your inner perception and knowingness. Imagine shifting into a state that is detached from your everyday thoughts and emotions. Imagine how, while being in this state, distinct thoughts, emotions, physical sensations, inner pictures, sounds or other perceptions are surfacing in your consciousness. It might even feel like you’re making up part of what you’re experiencing, but on a certain level you know, you’re not. You just know that what you’re perceiving in this moment is a stream of information coming from beyond your rational mind’s dominion.
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Of course, intuition doesn’t have to feel exactly as I just described it. Also, in one way or the other, intuitive perception will always feel different for everybody. After a while, you won’t necessarily close your eyes anymore; at least not every time. You won’t necessarily have to block out the surroundings as much; at least not every time. You might just look at a photo and be able to spontaneously read the energy of the person pictured on it. You might hear the name of someone you’ve never met before and, as an inner response to that, have bits and pieces of information about that person rising to the surface of your conscious mind. You might observe somebody acting or reacting in a certain way and it will tell you something about that person that hardly anybody else is seeing.
Oftentimes, developing our intuitive potential means enabling ourselves to see what others are convinced we should ignore. It means that certain people might feel criticized or even attacked whenever our perception of reality contradicts the appearances they want us to believe in. Truth is, intuition will sometimes lead to stronger opinions and less need to accommodate, but it will also result in a more understanding and less judgmental way of experiencing the world. Pursuing the path of intuitional development requires us to confront our own vulnerability. It might force us to let go of illusions that we were relying on for the greater part of our lives. It means that we need to heal old wounds to be able to open up for new realms of perception. It can also mean getting access to meditative states that otherwise would potentially take us years to reach. Furthermore, if we so choose, it can aid us to help others heal those parts of themselves that are holding them back in life.
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Obviously, the general education system doesn’t teach us how to develop our intuitive skillset. Consequently, the higher education system doesn’t either. When I was in my twenties, I studied psychology, education, philosophy and medicine at the university of Munich. Therefore, I’ve experienced training in human as well as natural sciences, earning a master’s and a doctoral degree. In my thesis, I extensively wrote about empathy and interpersonal perception. Still, none of this qualifies me to do what I’m doing today when it comes to using and teaching intuitive abilities. In fact, if I would have merely relied on my academic teachers’ world view and their way of approaching and interpreting reality, much of what I discovered about myself and reality would have stayed hidden from me.
Although a scientific mind can be useful when the goal is to become proficient in a field or discipline, my knowledge about practical intuition does not rest upon textbooks and scientific studies. Instead, it is based on teachings that I received and personal experiences that I made outside of university. The kind of teachings and experiences that the scientific community often seems to be more reticent about than interested in. Occasionally, I remember a situation from my days at university, when my oldest professor and chair holder in Munich made a comment on the rather defensive attitude of his colleagues towards the topic of intuition and those phenomena connected to it: “Of course, you can dismiss everything like intuition, clairvoyance, psychic readings, or whatever. But when there’s a person in front of you, telling you things about you that you’re positively sure this person has no way of knowing, you might want to start thinking about it.”.
INTUITION, ENERGY AND SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCES
Istill remember the first situation in my life when I consciously felt subtle energy in a rather unsubtle way. Back then, not surprisingly, I had a bit of a hard time wrapping my mind around what happened. A friend of mine had returned home from a weeklong seminar on meditation and energy work. We were sitting in his living room, not much more than a coffee table width away from each other. When he went into an altered state of awareness, the energy in the room suddenly shifted. What I experienced for the next minutes felt like energized wind blowing into my face. Considering that this guy was quite inconspicuous and never actually had given the impression of having any special abilities, I was intrigued. Needless to say, I signed up for the same seminar that he had attended, shortly thereafter.
It is my understanding that to develop our full intuitive potential, we need to gain access to the non-physical side of reality. We need to learn to sense and work with energy. Therefore, we need to learn to perceive the world through our spiritual senses. For some, this concept might feel rather unfamiliar and difficult to grasp at first. It certainly was for me. I didn’t grow up playing with fairies or other nature spirits out in the garden. We didn’t even have a garden and I’m sure my parents would have declared me crazy for doing anything even remotely weird. Hugging trees or talking to vegetables was not an option in my family and I certainly wasn’t taught to believe in anything intangible. It was only in my teens, when I slowly began to leave my parent’s world view behind, that I started realizing that there’s more and indeed always had been more to reality. Over time, I experienced expanded states of consciousness, occasional out-of-body experiences, and a lot of other stuff that could easily be considered more than just weird.
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When I talk about spiritual experiences in relation to intuition, this has nothing to do with being religious. I am not affiliated with any form of organized religion and I’ve never come across a guru, teacher, religious leader, or cultural icon that I felt the need to worship or put on a pedestal in any way. However, if you’re similar in that regard or quite the opposite, doesn’t actually matter. What does matter though is that you give yourself permission to acknowledge your own power as a sovereign being. What matters is your willingness to explore a reality that is disregarded by many. I’m not asking you to believe, or not believe, anything. I’m merely telling you that you’ll need to acknowledge and explore your nervous system’s ability to give you access to experiences that your intellectual mind is often not able to sufficiently explain.
In 1996 I attended a seminar led by a medical intuitive who shortly thereafter turned out to become an important teacher of mine. Preceding this seminar, I had already touched on the topic of practical intuition several times, but had never felt actually confident about it. On the first day, she addressed me with an observation combined with a question: “You have such a beautiful intuition … why don’t you use it?”. She was right, of course. Becoming highly intuitive is a lot about turning an inherent and partially dormant potential into an active skillset. We need to make use of what we’re able to do, to become more capable of doing it. We need to get ourselves into different situations and contexts, aiming to stretch and go beyond our limits. In fact, if we want to become really good at what we’re doing, we better train our abilities in an at least somewhat systematic and strategic way.
TEACHERS AND COMPANIONS
Those of my teachers in the field of self-development and spirituality who initially introduced me to the practical use of intuition, were neither famous nor generally well-known. Public recognition and acknowledgement didn’t seem particularly relevant to them. Also, the term teacher didn’t always appear to be the most fitting label. They were people with special skills and unusual perspectives who helped me find my own way of learning what I needed to learn. Some of them I indeed met on seminars they taught. Others I came across in apparently random situations in life. Some I only met because they were introduced to me by friends or acquaintances. I have to disagree with that old saying about the teacher showing up when the student is ready. Teachers are showing up all the time. The question is, if we’re willing to recognize them.
The truth of the matter is that you don’t necessarily need many physical teachers. That is, if you’re open for insights and learning experiences that offer themselves to you in other ways. Life can teach you a lot as long as you’re not too devoted to believing in coincidence. Energy will teach you a lot if you develop the ability to read it. Altered states of perception and heightened states of awareness can be easier to reach and make use of than you might expect. Books can give you access to their authors’ perspective and experience, time and again conveying teachings between the lines awaiting to be deciphered.
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On top of all that, when it comes to intuition, those people we spend the most time with will often inevitably become our most relevant teachers. I met Melanie, my significant other and partner in life, some years after I had become interested in intuition. We both met at the beginning of our studies at the university of Munich, ending up finishing our doctoral theses around the same time. Outside of university, when it came to our common interest into personal development and psychic abilities, we usually attended the same workshops and seminars. Most of the people I met and learned from, she equally got to know. We agree a lot, but we also quite often use different as well as complementary styles and approaches, which allows us to support each other broadening our perspectives and diversifying our experiences.
It’s always been my understanding that developing one’s intuitive abilities is not just about learning a single technique, method or approach. Instead, it needs to be about studying, experiencing, and experimenting with intuition from a variety of angles. The teaching approach that Melanie and I are using today is indeed tailored to give access to such a variety. Having received training and inspiration from multiple sources over more than two decades, we developed our own methodology combining a broad range of strategies, frameworks, techniques, and exercises. A system designed and compiled to enable those who practice it to voluntarily get access to specific states of awareness and perceptiveness, as well as to resolve inner patterns and emotional blockages.
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Pursuing the goal of developing our intuitive abilities, we did more than just attend seminars. We also learned by observing highly intuitive people applying their skills and therefore by directly experiencing unique individuals who had gone a somewhat similar path as ours. We studied meditation techniques, as well as energy work, breath work, and body work, and we also broadened our perspective by reading old and new books on many related topics. We spent time experimenting with what we had learned and concluded, applying our intuitive toolset in work-related as well as personal situations. We understood that for us to expand our intuitive skills we would have to make use of them. Therefore, facilitating coaching sessions that required us to be highly open and perceptive for our clients’ emotional reality and mental attitude, as well as for those interpersonal dynamics they had to deal with every day turned out to be extremely helpful.
Over the years, Melanie and I realized that, to be able to teach intuition in the most effective way, we would need to combine several perspectives and angles of learning. Analyzing and breaking up the whole intuitive process into its basic components helped us to identify those techniques and approaches that we deemed best suited for a system of teaching intuition in a time-efficient and result-oriented way. I’m aware that this may sound a bit technical but I assure you, it’s not. What we came up with is indeed a very organic approach focused on creating synergetic effects that are deepening and significantly speeding up the learning process.