Just like Wifi hot spots, there are certain hot spots for intuition, too. These are places and times when intuitive information just streams in effortlessly, whether by chance or on demand.
Over the years I have discovered intuition hot spots that work for me, and have learned how to slow down the moment and harness the information. Here are my personal favorites, and my stories might trigger you to find your own.
The Bed
The bed is a place where the rational mind can partner with the intuitive mind, instead of feeling compelled to lead it. In the bed, whether lying down or sitting propped up on pillows, I have full permission to relax. There is no need for constricting clothes nor concern for public image. I have privacy, and with that privacy comes permission to let my mind wander. At last there is room for intuitive information to surface, outside the normal constrictions of time and social expectation.
For me personally the moments just before falling asleep are an especially good time to set my intentions for the next day and to listen for intuitive clues. Ideas will suddenly pop into the mind, seemingly from nowhere. I have learned to follow these ideas while nodding off to sleep because they could provide a clue to some present challenge, or because they could become the anchor for something that becomes part of the rest of my life.
Try this when you are in bed: you don’t need to do anything special; just pay attention to all the thoughts that stream in, even if they feel disorganized. If something strikes you deeply and you feel a certain emotional intensity to the thought, then write it down. Keep a pad of paper and a good, smooth writing pen beside your bed so you can scribble quickly and effortlessly. This could be an issue you want to work on to enhance your personal effectiveness, or it could turn out to be solution you have been mulling over at work for a long time without resolution.
The moments following sleep are simply the most productive moments of the day, bar none. Revel in them, savor them, and actively arrange your life so you can lounge in bed for 15-20 minutes each morning before facing your day and the rest of your routine. These moments can possibly become the most important moments of your life if you learn to use them well.
If you have the opportunity and can train yourself to take a short nap during the day or evening, then you can double or triple these key moments of sleep and waking in your intuitive development, thereby fast tracking your success and your sense of fulfillment.
The Bath
For me, there is nothing like hot water. It is my refuge, my therapy, a key component of my sensuality, my intuitive moment.
The water allows my body to relax, and even permits me to forget about my body for a moment as the hot water assures me that it is well taken care of. I am free to engage in flights of fancy. Ideas pop into the mind effortlessly in hot water, because there is no resistance: no physical resistance and no mental resistance. When the body is warm and comfortable and safe, the rational mind couldn’t care less – unless, of course, you just finished watching “Psycho” on television.
Water also enhances sound, so thoughts can travel to you and be “heard” with ease. When I put my head under water past my ears, I can’t help but relax and hear and feel the beating of my heart. Lying there, in perfect harmony with my body, thoughts race into my mind: sometimes things to remember to do, or phone calls to make. But most often, once that flurry has tapered off, intuitive ideas, creative thoughts , even wild ideas that could be patented perhaps, stream in and tickle my fancy. Ideas for an article I’m writing, or for a regular client, also come in and give clues about where my formal writing may go once I return to “professional” mode. These moments are delicious and extremely valuable, often saving time, and always saving effort.
If I can hold that thought once I get out of the water, I’ll grab a piece of paper and jot down a brief note or outline for that moment when the rational mind returns from its coffee or water break.
Even if you don’t write them down right away, intuitive hits or teasers that come in those moments before or after sleep, or while standing in a warm shower or soaking in a hot bath, will stick with you and return in other forms more suited to normal consciousness and daily waking life. Pay attention and learn to pick up on them when they whisk by, there just beside your full regular awareness.
I have written here about accessing your intuition while being in the bed awake. There is plenty of other material available on dreams, dream interpretation, and lucid dreaming. You can allow your dreams to simply happen and try to sort them out, or you could become a “dream pioneer” and extract intuitive precognitive information, among other elements, from your dreaming state. One great resource for lucid dreaming – which is waking up in a dream and realizing that you are dreaming – is Robert Waggoner’s new book entitled Lucid Dreaming: Gateway to the Inner Self.
One last thought for the bathroom before moving away from the home-based intuition hot spots:
The Toilet
The toilet can be the equivalent of the “one minute manager” for intuitive information. If you are stumped at home or at work, taking a brief moment to go to the bathroom can help enormously. Just as you listen to your physical body when it is appropriate or inappropriate to eliminate, you can also train your intuitive body to show up quickly and effortlessly when you take that three-minute bathroom break.
A single breath, a moment to shift gears, and you can get intuitive information to help you avoid an argument, understand a complicated formula, develop a character in a story, or unwind a clue to your past.
Toilets are great places at home and at work; a true intuition hot spot. Use those moments to get information your inner wisdom quickly retrieves – useful information – and then get out. That brief moment will be the equivalent of a quick, refreshing nap, and perhaps even the linchpin to a better rational day.
The Café
Libraries are sometimes overwhelming and can put me to sleep. I have a home office, but sitting in there because it is time to work, or checking that endless email can ruin any writing or reflecting moment and make work feel like a “chore.”
On the other hand, there are a couple of restaurants in my small town that are dog friendly on the patio. I won’t mention their names here, or that friendliness may go punished and end one of my very favorite intuition hot spots.
So I love cafés, especially French style outdoor cafés. The sound and the music act as a kind of white noise, even if the music is fairly loud. I take a moment to look around, feel grand in the world, smiling at the stories going on around me, and start to write in very quick, often automatic writing style. Many intuitive consults are written in such places,whether right here in my home town (where I’m writing at this very moment), or at a little corner café in the 15ème of Paris.
I wrote the bulk of my doctoral dissertation in another similar place in Harvard Square many years ago, long before I was consciously aware that there are such things as intuitive hot spots. The sense of feeling “at home” permits me to put the rational mind at rest, while I take off on flights of intuitive and artistic fancy. All of the knowledge of the rational mind is present, mind you: I have not completely “disappeared.”The difference here is that the usual mental constraints, the rules of the scientific and rational method to which I can return later, no longer apply.
The title of this blog, for example, just popped into my mind sitting at a café. I had recently talked about this subject at a conference and was still musing over our conversations, so the percolating had already taken place. My thoughts were being framed in the subconscious mind, ready to pop into conscious awareness as soon as I stopped long enough to pay attention and consciously write them down. Then I became aware that the entire subject was there and waiting for me if I wanted to notice, to be an intuitive “scribe” for what already existed and was waiting for me in the “blue ether.”
Find your own café-type intuitive hot spot. It may not be an actual café, it could be a sports bar or a park. The key for me is that it be a public place, were I don’t have to worry about dusting or cooking for myself – or worry about emails!
You will be amazed at how quickly and easily thoughts flow in such environments. No need for it to be quiet, even, as long as you feel relaxed and safe, knowing that the body can take care of itself and that you are part of a teeming and fun exterior environment.
The Car
Quite a few sociological studies have been conducted on the extent to which rideshare commuters open up to each other during daily trips to and from work. In that enclosed space, where there is nothing to do until the destination is reached, everybody enters a kind of “altered state.” What an opportunity to roll out those intuitive wheels!
If you are riding, just let thoughts float into and through you consciousness without choosing a particular focus or asking specific questions. Remember that the questions have already been percolating in your dreams and your conscious waking states. Pay attention, though, and keep a tiny pocket-sized notebook handy (or notes applications on your smartphone), for when those ideas pop into your head that excite you and tease you, and prompt you to explore further. Surprises await!
If you are driving and have a bluetooth, you can use voice memo apps to say the thoughts out loud so you won’t forget, or you can actually pull over and jot a quick or a long note while the thoughts are flowing.
Long trips are especially fascinating as intuition hot spots, as you will have plenty of time to think through and follow thoughts in silence. I never get sleepy driving when I use the drive as an intuitive hot spot!
The Park
My knees are shot, so I walk a lot these days instead of running. My dog gives me ample opportunity to explore the local parks and the nearby Junior College campus as intuitive hot spots. Furthermore, I made a conscious decision to stay off my cell phone while I spend time with my dog, but the beautiful weather and exercise and relaxation ensure that ideas will pop into my awareness while we walk and sniff out various realities together.
Jogging is great for intuitive information, because the mind goes into a different brainwave pattern from the exercise. In part it is my past habit of jogging that I have to thank for triggering the name I came up with for the sociological concept of buffering, which was the linchpin for my doctoral dissertation. After struggling with what to call the concept I was developing, “buffering” popped into my mind as I jogged around Fresh Pond in Cambridge, Massachusetts many years ago. Later I did some research on the word in the library, and its usefulness as a sociological concept instead of its typical use in the field of chemistry.
Thus the ideas pop in during a jog or a hot bath, or upon awakening from a long sleep or short nap. The automatic writing happens in bed or in a nearby café, and the research, typing, and footnote citations occur in the usual places of reason: the office or the library (unless you have a smartphone and do some of your research on the fly). In the old days before there were word processors, the typing actually took longer often than the thinking and the writing.
So play with these and other intuitive hot spots in your own life and your own context. See and welcome the surprises that are about to burst onto your field of consciousness.
By the way, these intuitive hot spots work as effectively for business considerations as for personal and academic ones. You can frame a question if you like, or you can simply be there in the moment and see what comes up for you. You will be pleasantly surprised, and infinitely more effective in your rational world!
Very nice Helen! Thank you
Thanks, Linda! :)