Spiritual knowledge comes from spiritual perception. It is not acquired through reason or deduction or calculation or even thought as ordinarily understood. It is intuitive. It is knowing by seeing. Seeing with the mind but from the heart. It is the very opposite to what drives much thinking in the world today which is ideological, meaning the mind attaches itself to an idea and frames its thought around that. Ideology is a kind of dark distortion or inversion of intuition, a false perception heavily contaminated by opinion, desire, resentment, envy and a host of other fixations and disturbances of the lower mind, the lower mind being the mind that can only operate in the material world because it is closed to the transcendent.
To the person whose intuitive powers are unawakened and whose natural instincts have been suppressed, which is most people today, someone who experiences the world through intuition might appear eccentric, even mad. But it is like an individual who only sees in black and white denying colour. "Look at the reds, blues and oranges!" "What do you mean? It's all shades of gray." Intuition is not a quality only accessible to a privileged few. It is open to all but it must be developed. It starts off in a small way but eventually becomes the dominant mode of cognition as one opens oneself up to the reality it reveals. However, it can be parodied by the spiritually undeveloped mind and it can also be imitated by those who, recognising its significance, desire it but have not sufficiently purified their soul of spiritual greed and worldliness. And even genuine intuition is often mixed up with lower level impulses, thoughts, prejudices, desires and the like which it is the spiritual disciple's job to become aware of and clean up.
The development of intuition is the most important task for any spiritual aspirant. However religious you are in terms of faith, however many good works you do, however much you may pray or meditate or whatever practise you engage in to become more aware of higher reality, whatever metaphysical knowledge you may possess, if you have not properly developed intuition you are on the outside looking in and therefore cannot truly be called a person of spiritual understanding. Of course, none of us can be called that really but there are degrees of understanding in the context of this world and so, within that context, this proviso can apply. Every state of being can be described in terms of its means of apprehension of reality. The animal state is instinctive, the human state is mental (intellectual/rational). The spiritual state is intuitive. Develop intuition and you see the world for what it is. Fail to do so and you remain in ignorance, however clever you might be.
I've written about intuition several times before but I bring it up now because it is more important than ever in the context of what is happening in the world today. With regard to the lockdowns, the goals behind the climate change agenda, the American election and many of the fashionable dogmas of modern thought (I really should put scare quotes around that), intuition tells you, even without common sense, direct evidence and reason, that officially sanctioned opinion is wrong and that the truth is elsewhere. And why would it not be? Look at the people peddling these stories in politics and the media. You can see that their hearts and minds and wills are are in no way aligned with God and his purpose for creation. This affects an individual's relationship with truth. It sours his soul and cuts him off from intuition. He will believe what suits him not what actually is. Of course, that accusation is levelled by such people against those who oppose them but the key difference is love. If you love truth, you will know it. Love and intuition are actually closely related, being two sides of the same spiritual coin, two attributes of a soul turned towards God. Too many people in the world today have rejected God and do not love truth.
Thank you for this post. Thinking about that today a lot.
ReplyDeleteThe mainstream narrative is pounding the "only physical reality exists and is real" card very hard these days.
However, even in terms of their vaunted "physical reality," much of what they say is observably not true, even without using intuition.
There are no bodies littering the streets from the birdemic.
I saw the voting stop in the middle of the night on Nov. 4.
Etc.
But it seems that without love in your heart, and intuition, you are somehow unable to "see" the instances in which observable reality does not fit the model that you are indoctrinated with.
You literally cannot see. There is thus no point in trying to present evidence to most people.
I also notice an almost demonic element arise in the eyes of some people when you disagree with the narrative, even slightly. What is that snarling demonic energy about when you don't agree with them?
I've also experienced the real anger when you take a different position to the officially approved one. I think this is all part of the separation of sheep and goats process going on now.
ReplyDeleteGreat stuff. I think we can distinguish between two modes of thinking: modern, scientific-conceptual thinking and archaic, symbolic thinking (which is not recognized today). The former is concerned with facts and details, the latter with the whole and the meaning of a thing or phenomenon. So with symbolic thinking, the concept and the percept forms a recognizable object with meaning based on a universal idea, whereas the 'scientific' mind only sees a thing, in a world of endless detail which otherwise doesn't make any sense. So just as a percept and a concept comes together, I think the symbolic mind and the intellect should come together and make conscious whole. And this relationship is certainly broken in modern man, who has a pathological relationship to the past, as well as our deeper faculties of mind. And I think this is what makes the modern liberal such a paradoxical being. On the one hand, he has put a lid over his instincts, passions and feelings. If there is any emotion that rules him, it is negative emotions directed towards what he doesn't like, such as repulsion towards religion. Otherwise there is the urge to be as rational as possible. But in this imagined state of enlightenment, in which the individual imagines himself as completely free, the collective falls completely unconscious. And this is why we are so intellectual, but at the same time collectively driven by malicious unconscious forces. God is supposed to be the anchor that prevents this. We have lost touch with our own depth, because it meant recognizing that we are entangled in an invisible world which is much deeper than the reach of our individual consciousness, which goes against the enlightenment narrative. The truth is, we have failed this challenge to become more conscious, and from now on awaits descent until a harsh wake up call, or what we call the day of judgement. These are both good and horrible times depending on where you stand. God is just, but not "nice".
ReplyDeleteAs has often been remarked, we have left childhood but refused to move into adulthood.
ReplyDeleteMr. Wildblood,
ReplyDeleteWould you please provide some practical tips on how to develop one's intuition?
That is a very good question but a difficult one to answer because there is no technique as such. However, there are several things you can do which will encourage intuition to develop. To start with, you should open up your mind to the possibility of it. Then there is the matter of faith in a higher, a divine, reality. You can't start to develop a spiritual quality, which this is, without believing in a spiritual reality. This is a problem today when so many people have closed themselves off to the source of intuition. You must be open to the transcendent as I put it in the post.
ReplyDeletePrayer and meditation are important, I would say. The former to try to get close to an awareness of the presence of God and also to ask for his help, and the latter as in contemplation of holy things, symbols of the divine, which will help stimulate the mind along the right lines. I also believe that familiarising oneself with myths and legends of the past is beneficial in this regard. That stimulates the imagination, and imagination and intuition are connected.
Start to trust your feelings though trying to make sure these are true feelings and not arising from your personal preferences or prejudices. The more you trust the intuitive sense, the more it will come out. It's not always easy to separate true intuition from personal stuff but you must make the effort. That is all part of the development process.
Look at everything as though it is imbued with divine quality. Contemplate nature as alive, not just animals and birds but trees, rocks and mountains too. This might be regarded as paganism but there was much that was good in proper paganism. The point is, Nature is God's creation. His life dwells within it. It is not him but he informs it and when you look at the world in that way (admittedly not easy in the 21st century) you find that your mind begins to be transformed and you see other things too.
Perhaps the most important thing is to love God. People say how can you love what you don't know but you do know God in your soul and if you want to find him then you need to open yourself up to his word in humility and through faith and trust. Then intuition will start to grow. It's a lifelong task but steady progress can be made if you work along these lines.
Thank you for that. What you have written in your original post and in this most previous comment reminds me of a passage I read a couple years ago in a book called Feeling and Healing Your Emotions by Conrad Baars. Don't let the pop-psychology sounding title fool you; there is much wisdom in it.
ReplyDeleteAfter discussing the discursive powers of the mind to reason, he says:
"Much less known is the fact that man also possesses a receiving source of knowledge which obtains its insights as free gifts, without the effort it takes for our reason to construct thoughts, judgments and solutions. Our intuitive mind (not instinctive mind) directly perceives truths independently of any reasoning process, but merely by, as the Latin root (intueror—to look, to view) indicates, "looking," "considering," or "contemplating." Our receiving, intuitive, or contemplative mind receives its knowledge from such sources as nature, the arts, faith and directly from God through the Spirit. If man can be said to possess a spiritual faculty, it is his intuitive mind that is the basis of his spiritual life, and provides the link between the material and spiritual world."
Always treasures to be found in the comments. Thanks William!
ReplyDeleteThat's a very good point about cutting out the propaganda and corrupt entertainment and art. We have to keep abreast of what's going on because we live in the world and unless we are hermits have a certain duty to know what's taking place around us. But it's a good idea to go back to the literature and art, even films, of the past so as to have a clearer view of the human condition. I have a weakness for Westerns from the '50s in which good and evil were clearly delineated. I like the scenery too!
ReplyDelete