The Art of Intuition

AT THIS POINT it’s appropriate to confess that for some years I’ve worked as an intuitive or psychic and sometimes as a medium; so it behooves us to pause a moment for some definitions. Because the difference between intuition and psychic abilities is one only of degree, like the difference between the child plunking out “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” on the piano and well-practiced fingers rippling over a Chopin étude. It’s a matter of practice, but they’re both playing notes!

How many people in our country consult the tarot, or throw the I Ching, or visit an astrologer, or read the runes? How many go to a palmist, intuitive, psychic, or medium to learn what Fate may hold? Lots more than we imagine, and lots more in times of recession than in financial booms, according to a November 23, 2008, article in The New York Times. Moreover, these clients are often wealthy professionals, like an executive from Seagate Technology, the $11-billion-a-year maker of hard drives for PlayStation 3, or from William Morris, the talent agency; or a Manhattan attorney; or a Hollywood producer, all consulting the same intuitive, Laura Day, to whom they pay $10,000 a month for help with their financial decisions.

I WAS HAVING DINNER one summer at a lovely restaurant in Bar Harbor, Maine, with three other women. It was a sweet summer evening. We watched the boats rock on the water lapping at the green slope of the lawn. The sun was going down, the golden light softening to grey dusk. Clair, a pediatrician, works in genetics in Baltimore, and Judy is a professor emeritus of pediatrics and medical genetics at a children’s hospital in British Columbia. The third in our party, Barbara, is a science writer. I listened in awe as their conversation swung from genes and genomes to childhood diseases or to famous scientists they knew at this convention, including their Nobel-laureate friends. At one point Judy turned to me. She has a gentle way of tilting her head toward you, eyes soft, smiling with encouragement. She should be painted by a Renaissance genius.

An animated discussion about whether intuition and psychic experiences are unusual ensued. Judy murmured that she was intuitive, but she felt her medical diagnoses were based on experience, nothing else. Clair, on the other hand, felt she had had psychic experiences, but she wasn’t sure that everyone had this gift. They both agreed that if an infant doesn’t develop a sensory organ by the age of two, the innate ability is lost. A blindfolded child, for example, will be unable to see. The great proportion of Asian children, who are exposed to tonal languages in which meaning is expressed by pitch, develop perfect pitch, whereas only a small percentage of Western children have perfect pitch. Is it the same with psychic abilities? Would that explain why some people have the talent and others don’t?

I argued that it’s just a skill that can be learned. The brain is a fluid instrument, and I told them of Joseph Fuchs, the famous violinist, who in his seventies lost the use of the fingers in his left hand—his fingering hand. He taught himself to play again, and in his nineties was still giving solo concerts in Carnegie Hall. The brain finds pathways. It grows throughout your life. Why would it be different for psychic abilities?

Surprised, I set down my fork. No one had asked me this before, and I felt shy. But they were serious. Curious. Suddenly the words came pouring out, incautiously, the story I’d not ever told before. And because of that, I can tell it later in this book. Not here. But further on. And not because my way is special or better than that of hosts of intuitives and sensitives but because it’s my experience; at least I can tell how it feels for me.

In the beautiful Greek myth, the young girl Psyche (the soul) is deeply in love with her husband, Eros, god of Love, and he with her. Each night he comes to her bed; each dawn he leaves before she sees his face. Psyche is filled with happiness. Her jealous sisters whisper in her ear. “How can you love him?” they ask. “You don’t even know what he looks like. Perhaps he’s a monster. How do you know? Take a candle,” they enjoin her, “and when he’s asleep, light it. Look on him.”

Lighting her candle, she holds it up and gasps. He is so beautiful! But a drop of melting wax falls on his skin. He wakes up. He tells Psyche that now he must go away, according to the law set down by his mother, Aphrodite. Psyche will not be able to find him until she walks through nine pairs of iron shoes and nine iron staves, searching for him everywhere. He leaves. Then bravely she sets out after him, searching for her husband, Love. In the story Psyche finds Eros, and they are joined once again, and we’re told that this is the spiritual journey that each soul takes to find her Self, which is the same as finding love.

Defining Terms

If you have heightened or extrasensory perception (ESP), if you experience the paranormal, including telepathy and healing touch, animal communication, clairvoyance, and precognition, you are said to be psychic. The word is used both as a noun and an adjective. You may be psychic or have had a psychic experience.

On the other hand, if you are giving a psychic or intuitive reading, and a spirit appears at your elbow, you are acting as a medium, mediating between the visible and invisible worlds. Many say that it is the chemistry of the medium, the frequency of her electromagnetic vibration, that allows the spirit to form the wispy, white ectoplasm that we see. From the time of the Delphic Oracle, such visions have been revered.

The Dalai Lama notes in one of his books of the need to understand “the whole phenomenon of emanation.” The degree of autonomy of a vision or emanation, he says, “depends upon the level of realization of the individual who is creating the emanation, that is, the emanator. At a lower level,” he notes, “an emanation created by an individual is to a certain extent monitored and controlled by the emanator, almost as if by computer. On the other hand, in the case of an individual who has very high spiritual realizations, then the emanated beings may be fairly autonomous.”

He adds that he wishes he’d had such mystical experiences himself. “But—no luck! There are quite a few questions I would like to ask!”

We’ll talk later about seeing spirits and acting as an intuitive or medium. It requires a certain spiritual purification and a discipline that most people are unwilling to undertake. What does it mean to be “spiritual”? I’m not sure, actually. But the fruits are easy to recognize. They are: forgiveness, tolerance, generosity, and patience. I would add humility, tenderness, wisdom, and understanding—the very attributes we’d like extended to ourselves. Where and how are these qualities found? In the Great Silence. In those moments when, communing with the psyche, we hear the still, small Voice of God.