Instead of brides-to-be getting drunk and doing silly things in a group, why not do something useful like learning to dowse?

What a great idea! Have a load of women getting a spa and relaxing then, after a good meal in the evening, going ghost-hunting and learning to dowse!

Whether or not there’ s a queue for this, I don’ t know. But I do know that I think it’s great that such things as dowsing are making their way into the public consciousness more and more.

Only one thing I want to ask. What’s the point of ghost hunting? I’ve never worked that out. So, you find a ghost (or not). Then what do you do? Say ‘Hello’ and then go your separate ways? Doesn’t make any sense to me at all.

But then I’m not bothered about talking to ghosts, just dealing with those that bother our clients.

Still, anywhere that encourages people to learn dowsing gets my vote!

Go, girls!!

Sounds great doesn’t it? The  article is all about how a professor of fine art is using radical techniques to get people to create art. Things like painting blindfolded, using string or smoke, splattering or other techniques.

And the point is….?

Well, according to the professor (Dean Nimmer, if you want to know), it is

“to instill is the idea that you don’t have to be thinking of the finished product but rather maximizing the pleasure.”

Wonderful! But, might I ask what this has to do with intuition? Maybe it’s this quote:

“The more self-conscious your thought, the more of an impediment it is. To me, it’s a lot more important to find your sources of creativity”

So, the question to be asked, is whether finding your creativity is what intuition is all about is is the use of the word ‘intuition’ just a fancy way of getting people to enroll in a class?

I have to say, it sounds more like the latter, for the whole article is simply about  how the students splatter stuff around and get to look at it at the end. How is that being intuitive? I’ve got nothing against splattering paint and calling it art, but I hesitate to call the process ‘intuition’.

Or am I just wrong?

• Tell who’s on the phone before you call
• Know which pet you should pick at at the store
• Avoid a really bad film rental
• Know when to change check-out lanes in the supermarket
• Know you’ve got the wrong burger before you unwrap it
• Know which phone booth / video game / cigarette machine / etc., has change left in it.
• Know you’re going to be on time for your flight even though you’re stuck in traffic.

Silly things you can’t seem to do with intuition…

• Actually put money on your hunch to win the race
• Not walk into that argument with your partner / boss / co-worker
• Avoid the really bad meal at the restaurant
• Buy the right lottery ticket
• Stop your cat throwing up on your new rug
• Find a parking space nearer than one mile to where you want to be
• Choose the right day for the right weather at the right time for the right place.

PS, I’m sure you can add some others to these…things you’ve done or things you haven’t done!

You know you should have remembered it but you can’t think what it is. So you rack your brain and decide that it’s just something probably small or not important at all and you’ll probably do without it.

So you relax. You’re in the car and you’re probably a little later than you would like to be so turning back is not an option. But you’ve given yourself permission to feel OK about that nagging feeling you had just before you left, because you’ve talked yourself into believing that it will be fine.

You arrive at the mall, on the way to the in-laws (or wherever) for that last bit of shopping you needed and THEN it hits you. The list with all the details, sizes, names or whatever it was is still on the kitchen table.

You have forgotten the list. The single most important thing you had for the day is miles away and you can’t remember what was on it, because you wrote it down, so why bother???

Any of this seem familiar?

Well, we all curse ourselves for forgetting things. But how many of us actually realize that that nagging feeling, that irritation scraping its fingernail down the blackboard of your mind is really your intuition?

After all, haven’t we agreed, you and I, in all these other posts here, that intuition is nothing more than gaining access to knowledge? Well, the knowledge in this example is the list on the table. You need it. Your brain knows it so your intuition kicks in and tries desperately to help in the only way it can, by making you feel different.

Instead of a funny feeling in your stomach, you get the brain tapping. ‘Excuse me, I’m your intuition talking here. I can’t actually spell it out, because then I wouldn’t be your intuition, but I’m trying to let you know that there’s something you should know about…..’

Now, all that’s left is to to actually KNOW what it is you’ve forgotten!!

Simple… and next week, how to mend a leaking pressurized nuclear reactor with some duct tape and toothbrush.

The story concerns a young woman who was talked into letting a young man help her with her groceries and ended up raping her. She finally leaves when he goes for a drink of water and she had promised to remain where she was. It is at that point that the author says she listened to her fear and left. He says her fear was her intuition telling her that she was going to be killed (her attacker had killed before).

What seems strange to me is that there is no mention of any premonition before the incident. Only that her fear saved her. More worrying is the statement that her fear was the same thing as her intuition.

Is it always necessary that we feel fear before we do something?

Is it always the same thing; fear is the impetus for our actions?

Is fear really what motivates us?

Or, is it something else? Is it, in fact, something which alerts us, prods us, makes us aware but yet which is not fear? Could  this other thing possibly be something more gentle yet more insistent than fear?

Is it foreknowledge in some form? An awakening to information in some fashion not yet understood?

Premonitions are scattered items of knowledge we have not yet assembled into a coherent picture. In the situation described in the article, such premonitions should only be fearful.

But, to jump to the conclusion that fear is the only motivator, the only way in which we can have foreknowledge, is unwarranted and unnecessary.

Intuition is not always gentle, but it is not always fearful either.

Anyway, the subject of this post is, not surprisingly, intuition. But, in this case, it’s a vaguer sort of intuition. Perhaps, if I called it ‘awareness’  that might be more accurate (but less interesting, perhaps?).

Anyway, we were walking to a pub (an institution I sorely miss in the States), along a golf course and just enjoying the greenery (we live  Arizona). It suddenly dawned on me that some trees weren’t looking too good. Lots of growths on them, some leaning to one side and so on.

Whipping out my dowsing rods (don’t go anywhere without something like them), I dowsed a line of negative energy. You could pretty much see where it went, because there were a line of trees all showing similar deformations, while nearby plenty of other trees were growing just fine.

Looking on the other side of the pathwayI noticed that there were parts of the bushes which showed similar deformations in their growth.

Once I’d latched on to the idea that there really WAS something there, I walked more slowly back across the area and definitely felt something there.

Now the skeptics at this point will throw their hands up in horror and exclaim about how stupid I am and how could I possibly say that and I was already susceptible to such things and so on and on and on in their inimtable way.

However, I feel fairly safe as I suspect that few skeptics  will be reading this blog and fewer will have reached this far on this entry, having given up at the word ‘dowsed’.

So what is the point of this? Simply this…

If we keep our eyes open to the world around us, if we manage to be alert to the signs which already exist, we stand a far greater chance of understanding how things inter-relate and interact. Plus, we get to feel our own way through the landscape around us.

In other words, simple awareness of things, of nature, of ourselves, is the most important skill we can bring to any situation.

Sadly, too often, we stumble blindly and never get to see how truly wonderful the whole world is.

May your senses always be pin-sharp and may your intuition lead you to wonderful insights!

I’m talking about what stops us from using or acknowledging our intuition (in whatever form that takes).

This article has a nice series of reasons why and it’s worth taking just a moment to look again at them…

1. Someone around you told you it was wrong to ‘know’ things. 

Hands up if that has happened to you! Yep, looks like a lot of folks out there have had this one in their faces at one time or another. Even if you weren’t told it was wrong, you felt bad about it because of their reaction, didn’t you?

2. Society told you it was wrong to ‘know’ things.

Again, we’ve probably all had this one at one stage in our lives. Films, books, teachers, priests, doctors and so on and on and on. They’ve all fed into our feelings of insecurity and weakness when we finally admitted that ‘we had this feeling’ or we ‘just knew what was going to happen’, or ‘didn’t need telling what to do in a strange situation’.

3. You feel responsible for what you ‘know’. 

This one might not be so on the surface as the others, but it sure plays a mighty role! If you’ve ever ’seen’ or ‘known’ something was going to happen, I bet you felt guilt about it that you didn’t stop it, or you felt responsible for the problem, no matter what or where it was, didn’t you? Yes? I’m right, aren’t I?

And that’s a load of baloney. We all know that in one part of ourselves, but that doesn’t stop the reaction from occurring, does it?

4. It hurts to know what you ‘know’.

This one’s interesting. At some level, you know stuff, but it’s stuff you don’t really want to know about so you hide it or hide from it (the same thing). The, when it happens, you feel even more pain then normal. Cheating partners, impending death (see number 3 above as well), and the pain of it all is worse because you realize you were hiding from it. So why would you want to know anything at all?

5. You’re wrong sometimes!

This is always good one! It kicks in whenever  you’ve plucked up the courage to talk to someone about what you ‘know’ and BINGO! it doesn’t happen! And you feel like a fool and what little confidence you had has evaporated and you wish the ground would open up and swallow you whole.

But, despite all those things happening to you, all those negative feelings, you still get the ‘knowingness’, you still get the feelings about things. One day, you’ll be ready to admit and accept it and know that it is erratic, that it can show you painful things and that you can learn to live with it. Either that or you’ll shut that part of yourself away from yourself and live a lesser life.

Tough choice, huh?

Oh dear. That means I’m going to have to tell you  about it….

Here goes..

As you know, I have a bone or three to pick with science because of their blinkered attitude to all stuff natural (like intuition, that is). I’ve always wondered why it is that scientist seem to be incredibly intelligent and incredibly stupid at the same time. Radin’s book has helped explain this to me.

To start with, there are some very good quotes from various authors, like this one from a chap called Thomas Etter,

When a belief is  widely held in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrar, we call it superstition. By that criterion, the most egregious superstition of modern times, perhaps of all time, is the “scientific” belief in the non-existence of psi.

You can see why I warm to Radin, can’t you?

In chapter 3, ‘Who Believes in Psi”, he argues convincingly (by quoting surveys and studies) that the two most commonly used arguments against those who believe in psi, (that they are somehow stupid or mentally deficient and easily duped) is overwhelmingly dismissed by clear evidence to the contrary. Intelligent, well-educated people are the ones who believe, not downright stupid, or those suffering from mental illness (although skeptic would like to put such believes into a mental health category).

As for the other main argument against so-called ‘proof’ of psi (as in telekinesis, premonitions and the like), Radin systematically destroys the  objections of skeptics. He does this by discussing the surveys of experiments made over the years and subjecting the results to statistical analysis such that possible non-recorded results are taken into account along with many other factors. (Please bear in mind I’m telling you this because you haven’t read the book and I’m summarizing a great deal in  a little space.)

The results of such  meta-analyses are such that the psi factor is significantly above mere chance, and this continues year after year, experiment after experiment.

One of the nicest touches is that, due to the pressure from skeptics, experiments about psi are more carefully controlled than ever before in order to avoid criticism of experimental weaknesses and faking of results. I’m sure he had a gleam in his eye when he reported that,

Psi research has always attracted a particularly passionate form of scrutiny, so theses experiments, on average, tend to be more rigorously designed and executed than those in other fields.

He then has a note which says,

This is supported by a  study by biologist Rupert Sheldrake, who found in a large survey of experiments published in the physical, biological, medical and psychological sciences that standard protections for experiment bias, the double-blind design, were vary rarely used in mainstream disciplines but used frequently in parapsychological studies.

and he then gives the journal reference (Journal of Scientific Exploration, if you’re interested, (12(1), 73-78).)

I just hugged myself with glee!

There’s an awful lot more to this book than the couple of things I’ve pointed out and you really should go and get it for yourself.

If there’s one message which comes through from this book, it is that science is not the dispassionate edifice it pretends to be. It is as blinkered as those it accuses. It ignores results it doesn’t like and this attitude has forced those involved in psi to become ever more aware of what they are doing; the reverse of science itself.

Although I’ve pretty much said as much in other posts, it’s Sooooooo nice to have someone else be able to quote chapter and verse!

So, don’t just sit there….go and get it!!

It’s actually a scientist who shows how other scientists reject stuff they don’t want to know about.

This paragon amongst humans is Dean Radin. in his book Entangled Minds, he makes  a very good case indeed to show that not only do some scientists not want to know about anything like the psi faculties of humans, they also totally ignore the published research or, if they don’t they then assert that it was seriously flawed. Radin, however, proves that the accusations are unfounded and that some very meticulous research has been conducted.

I will add an extra post to this one to give references and quotes next week, but, for the moment let me just assure you that, if you are looking for a way to counter scientific skeptics, this volume will give you the ammunition you need!

I can do no more than urge you to read itin time for the next post so that you can follow along with me  as we stick it to the skeptics!

Go buy it. NOW!!!

So here it is. this one is only about 6 minutes long but is well-worth watching as it gives you some good insight into what happens when you get a flash of an idea….

Enjoy!