Even though the function of the intuition is experienced in a unique fashion for each person, there are essentially four pathways through which its guidance can be transmitted: clairsentience (clear feeling), clairaudience (clear hearing), clairvoyance (clear seeing), and knowingness (direct perception).
Clairsentience, or clear feeling, is the experience of receiving intuitive information as sensation and/or emotional feelings in your physical body. This information can take the form of an instinctive reaction or response that creates a notable physical change and movement in the body, or it may be received in a more subtle manner, acting on your inner physical world of sensation. Your intuitive self can communicate with you by creating sensations (warmth, cold, tingling, twitching, tightening, relaxing) within your physical body. These physical sensations will indicate something significant to you if you bring your attention and awareness to their existence.
Clear feeling is the most frequent pathway through which the function of the intuition is recognized and understood. It is with your clairsentience that you “feel” the emotional state of someone else, that you “understand” their pain, their joy, their suffering. Because of your clairsentience, you may feel depressed after being in the presence of a depressed friend, or your spirits may improve if you spend some time with a friend who is full of enthusiasm and projects for the future.
Your clairsentience gives you the ability to “feel” a situation and to understand an atmosphere. This ability alerts you when you are in a potentially dangerous situation, so that you can remove yourself or change your behavior in an appropriate way to avoid the danger.
It is with your clairsentience that you monitor your emotional relationships with others and modify your responses to maintain a state of balance and harmony. With the help of clairsentience, you feel the mood of another person and modify your behavior to maintain your rapport. If someone close to you is angry, you may feel their anger as a tightness or a pain in your solar plexus, or as a tension in the forehead and jaws. Regardless of whether other people express or deny their anger, your body is relaying relevant information to you about the truth of their current state of being.
Likewise, if you are stressed and nervous, other people may become drained, nervous, or perhaps develop a headache by being in your presence. Even if you do not recognize the symptoms of stress or nervous fatigue in your own body, other people can experience them when, clairsentiently, they enter into intuitive contact and rapport with you.
The less you are in contact with yourself—with your inner emotional state and your physical body—the less you can be in contact with your clairsentience. The more you are emotionally repressed and physically blocked, the more your capacity for clairsentience is repressed and blocked. The more you are in touch with your physical body and your own emotional state, the more your clairsentience can function for you in your life.
Once your capacity for clear feeling on an intuitive level is developed, it becomes an invaluable tool that can assist you in all of life's situations. However, when you initially bring your awareness to this capacity, you may discover that it causes you confusion and moments of self-doubt as you realize the difficulties you have in discerning the difference between your proper feelings and the feelings of others. If you experience this confusion of differentiation, pay particular attention to the exercises of inner preparation which focus on grounding, centering, and creating a personal boundary.
Clairaudience, or clear hearing, describes the function of your intuition through auditory channels, in the sense that you hear information. In this pathway of expression, your intuitive self speaks to you and you receive messages as words. You may hear an inner voice with a particular tone or accent, or it may be a voice resembling your own. It may change; it may be several different voices. Clairaudience is also known as telepathy, or communication through the mind. Sometimes, you may have a thought about someone and, that very day, you receive a telephone call or a letter from the person. Or the telephone rings and, before you pick it up, you hear the name of the person who is calling inside your head. On answering the telephone, you discover you are correct. Perhaps you have a problem or a question and are in the process of reflecting on this problem when you open a book and there, in front of your eyes, is the answer to your question—a written response that acts as a useful guidance for you. All information and guidance that you receive in an auditory (verbal) fashion is an expression of the function of your intuitive clairaudience.
The indications of a clairaudient talent are most often perceived in someone who is a gifted communicator. If you are confident in your ability to express yourself and you have trust in the truth you communicate, if you are at ease within yourself as you share what you perceive with others, then your intuition very likely functions through the framework of clairaudience.
If you have a tendency to doubt your communicative ability, if you have difficulty listening to and hearing others and in understanding the expression of others, then this function may be blocked. Chronic throat problems, neck tension, teeth and jaw problems, and upper-back pain are also indications of a repressed capacity for clairaudience. Exercises which encourage you to speak and express your inner feelings and impressions will certainly aide you to develop your intuitive capacity for transmitting truth through words.
Clairvoyance, or clear seeing, is the intuitive ability to perceive truth in a visual framework. When intuition operates in this mode, we see visions, symbolic images, metaphorical pictures, and dreamlike sequences which have significant meaning when translated and interpreted.
Clairvoyance allows us to perceive subtle energies that exist beyond the perception of our physical eyes. This gift of inner vision allows us to see beyond the limits of physical matter, to perceive the subtle energetic structure of the physical universe, as well as the energies which exist between particles of physical matter. With our clairvoyance we can perceive the invisible and the visible, as well as that which connects structure and the void. Through clairvoyance, we can also see the patterns and rhythms existing in situations, people, relationships, and events. Looking into other people, we can see the path of their past experience and we can see their present state of being. We can perceive their behavioral patterns, emotional habits, and systems of beliefs.
Clairvoyance gives us the gift of artistic grace and the appreciation of form, flow, and color. The inner world of the imagination (initiation of images) is related to clairvoyant function, as are dreams, fantasy, and wishful thinking. If you possess a rich and flexible imagination and express artistic talent in a visual form, if you can perceive the deep underlying patterns of behavior in yourself and in others, and can see “behind” the actions of others, perceiving their needs and essential motivation, you are experiencing your capacity for clairvoyance.
If you find visualization techniques difficult, have problems remembering your dreams and using your imagination, and have a tendency to “not see things coming in your life,” then this capacity is probably blocked in you. Difficulties with the eyes and tension headaches can also indicate suppression of your potential for inner vision.
Techniques which aid grounding, centering, and trusting will help you establish a basis within yourself from which you can begin to rediscover your capacity to see, both inwardly and in the external world. Exercises of visualization and those that insist on the capacities of detachment and witnessing will help you to find your true center and place more trust in your inner, intuitive perceptions.
This aspect of the intuition functions in a totally unique manner of direct perception. With our intuitive awareness, we suddenly know something to be true, to be as it is, and yet we may not perceive how we know that we know this truth. Knowingness functions beyond the other three pathways of intuitive expression in that we are faced with the challenge of simply trusting the information we receive as a truth, even though we do not receive other sensory, auditory, or visual evidence to support the information we are receiving. For this ability to function within us, we are required to take an internal “quantum leap” of both consciousness and self-trust. We must be willing to act on the guidance we receive in complete trust that the information is correct and in accordance with the truth of the situation we are investigating with our intuitive perception.
When we can allow ourselves to function at this level of intuitive perception, our lives become an ongoing, unfolding, creative experience of trust, communion, and a sense of belonging. At this level of expression, we realize that we are intrinsically linked to the creative intelligence of our universe and that we can participate in the expression of that intelligence.
When we experience our knowingness, we understand that, by our very nature, we are illuminated beings. All that exists, that has already existed, that will exist, is accessible to our conscious awareness at this level of perception. Time does not operate in the same linear mode that we are used to when we function through our rational, logical mind.
At this level of awareness, the concept of separation simply dissolves away and we are able to perceive the absolute perfection and chaotic order of the universe, as well as the way it is playfully unfolding and revealing its mystery to us. Intuitively, we both understand and accept the truth of our perceptions as we receive them, each insight arriving in relationship to the harmony of the whole. We realize that we are the creators of our concepts of reality, based on the framework of our attitudes and belief systems and that, therefore, we have the ability to transform these fundamental frameworks according to choice and free will.
It can be helpful and encouraging to be aware that we are all capable of functioning at this level of perception and personal intuitive awareness. It is our birthright and our natural state of being. Our intuitive self is waiting to guide us to this state.