Tools to Enhance Intuitive Decision Making

This article also appears at www .22cplus.blogspot.com

By Marcus T. Anthony( PhD)

Email: mindfutures at gmail dot com

I have a new book coming out soon which includes many of the articles and
themes addressed here. It's called Extraordinary Mind: Integrated Intelligence
into the Future. Here's one of the segments from the book. Those who have read
Sage of Synchronicity will recognise these tools. If you are keen to develop some
of the skills that I outline here regularly, these will get you started.

One of the reasons I developed the theory of Integrated Intelligence was

because I felt that much of the writing on ideas like intuition and spiritual
intelligence was too vague. So I came up with not only the core operations and
end states of INI, I also developed some practical ways to develop and implement
the intelligence. Here I am going to outline the main ones in brief. For a more
detailed and compressive outline, see my book Sage of Synchronicity, which goes
into more detail about how to apply INI.
The tools do require practice and commitment if you are serious about using
them. Remember, I learned much from other teachers. But I also innovated, and
invented things for myself. You can do the same. Because integrated intelligence
is everywhere, all the time, there are innumerable possibilities. Don’t let my tool
kit limit your thinking, and your practice.

Five Breaths. This is a presence technique, and it will help bring your mind
fully into the present moment. In presence it is much easier to read energy, and
the ego quiets down. I recommend that you use these presence techniques before
doing the divination methods such as the Quick Check and using The Feeling
Sense, because you will be more centered and present.

The Process is as follows. Simply stop whatever you are doing, take a deep breath,
and bring your attention to your breath moving in and out. Take a second breath,
this time just a normal one, but still paying careful but relaxed attention to the
feeling of the air moving through your respiratory system. As you notice your
thoughts, just gently acknowledge them, and return your attention to your breath
(remember, you are not your thoughts). Do this for about five breaths. It will
bring you into presence.

The Oneness Technique. This allows you to become present with

something nearby. For example, you can allow yourself to silently connect with a
flower, a tree, a baby, a cup and so on. Simply bring your mind into relaxed focus
on the thing. If thoughts or judgments come into your mind, just observe them
and let them go. You can do the Oneness technique for a minute or so, or you can
prolong it if you want to turn it into a meditation. The Field exercise, mentioned
in section three of this book, is a special form of this technique.

Non-judgmental Re-framing
This is another process which will help centre you before you use the other INI
Tools. The goal here is to assign non-judgmental and positive meanings to events,
people and things, with the aim of maintaining a relaxed, compassionate and
loving relationship with the world.
What happens to you is not as important as the meanings you assign to things,
and the subsequent state of mind you create. Most suffering occurs not because of
what happens, but because of the judgments we assign to events. This includes
the meanings of what we think might happen.
At one time I was to travel by ferry to a nearby seaport near Hong Kong with a
friend. As it happens, there was a great deal of congestion because it was a public
holiday, so we missed our boat. There was a two hour wait for the next ferry, and
I was quite happy to chill out at Starbucks while waiting for it. However my friend
became incredibly flustered, and began to go into blame and anger. He blamed
me and said the whole day was “a nightmare”, and stormed off. The truth is that
there was no “nightmare”. He turned it into one.
A better way to deal with the same event would be to avoid judgment, blame or
self-persecution. By relaxing for a few hours, the reasons for the undesired
outcome could have been digested calmly, and all parties would have been wiser
for the error. Such a response would also affirm that one is an empowered human
being, not like a toy sailboat easily blown of course by the slightest wind of
misfortune.
The victim blames, while the empowered person takes responsibility for the
actions, results and meanings he assigns, and for his emotions. When you find
yourself in the victim state, you can also stop and bring yourself into the here and
now with either of the presence techniques. That will shut the inner victim up
real fast. As with any form of meditation, simply witness thoughts and let them
pass. Don’t struggle with them. It’s about developing the right relationship with
your mind, and your ego.

Using an Intuitive Diary

This is a diary where you record your intuitive feelings, images, prompts,
synchronicities and so on. Keeping such a diary will help connect your left and
right-brain thinking, and get you in touch with the subtleties of the intuitive
mind.
Use a good-sized hard-cover diary. If you use your computer, make sure you have
at least one backup file saved elsewhere.
Use your Intuitive Diary to record your dreams, intuitions, synchronicities,
impressions from meditations, and any auditory, visual or feeling impressions
that come to you. Of course, you can write your interpretations of these also. Use
it daily if possible.

Active Dreaming. This is where you record your dreams, and learn to decipher
and intuit their meanings. Use your Intuitive Diary to record dreams. Active
Dreaming will help you to do a number of things.
1. Learning to distinguish the many voices of the psyche. The different
types of dreams are quite similar to the various sources of intuition.
2. It will help your learn the language of the psyche – its symbols and
intuitive prompts.
3. It will help you identify your Soul Issues. The narrative of many dreams
involves issues that are crucial to your spiritual journey.
4. It will improve the connection between the logical and intuitive parts
of your mind.
5. It will get you in touch with your spiritual guidance.

Embracing Synchronicity.
Some things which happen to you are the universe’s way of telling you
something, or just helping you along your way. These are synchronicities, or
meaningful coincidences. Life presents ‘clues’ in the dance of creation. You can
learn to notice synchronicities as they occur, and intuit their meaning.
 Approaching life with a lighthearted, serendipitous and adventurous spirit
facilitates synchronicities. To appreciate their meaning, it is best that the mind be
fully present. The act of presence seems to imbue the world with mystical fervor.
The deeper meaning and purpose of experience is revealed, as if the psyche and
cosmos are in open dialogue.
Synchronicity is a little like water in the hand – as soon as you try to grab at it,
it falls away. You can’t force meaning to make itself known, you can only allow it;
embrace it.[1]

The Quick Check

This is a simple tool, where you take a reading of the ‘energy’ of an intended
decision. This is done by drawing a line across a page and quickly running your
finger from left to right (or right to left- it doesn’t make any difference) to take a
percentage measurement. One end of the line represents zero percent, and the
other end 100 percent. When I do this I feel an invisible ‘wall’ at a certain point,
and my finger won’t go any further. You might also feel a tingling feeling in your
finger.
You can also do a Quick Check by running the same finger across the palm of
your dominant hand. Hold the non-dominant hand sideways in front of you (i.e.
your fingers will be pointing sideways, not upwards). In this case the length of
your palm replaces the line on the paper, with the tip of your index finger
representing ‘zero’, and the other end of your hand representing 100 percent.
As with any form of divination, make sure the question is simple and clear. A
good way to phrase the question is, “What is the energy on my…?” For example,
“What is the energy on my taking this job?”; and “What is the energy on my going
to the seaside for my holiday this year?”
The Quick Check requires practice, and a little faith, as at first it may seem like
you are wasting your time. Persist with it, as it takes time to begin to feel the
energy. Use the Quick Check every day for a month, testing the energy on small
decisions you are making. After a while it will become second nature.
That does not mean that the readings will be perfect. This is an approximation
process, and is open to distortion from the ego, external influences, and plain bad
execution. Use it cautiously.

Free-form Writing
This is stream of consciousness writing used to enhance your creativity, insight
and wisdom.
Free-form writing is sometimes called automatic writing. It involves taking a
theme, problem or question, writing it down, then just letting go and beginning to
write whatever comes to mind. It is a bit like jumping into a car’s passenger seat
and being driven off. You lose control, but you can just relax and enjoy the ride.
Free-Form Wring can be used to address just about any issue or problem: for
inspirational ideas, for personal business problems, for spiritual guidance and so
on. It can also be used by researchers. I used Free-Form Writing extensively
throughout the writing of my doctoral thesis, but particularly in the first two
years of enrollment.
 One way to develop this channeling process is using it for writing, at least five
minutes every day, no matter what.
Free-form Writing involves asking a question, then writing whatever comes to
you, and without editing, proof-reading or censoring yourself. There is no going
back, not even for typos! Whatever idea comes into your mind about the topic –
connections, distinctions, hypotheses, questions, guesses, confusions, whatever -
you write it down during your daily writing time.
minutes was just not enough. I adapted the system so that I set myself a goal of
writing five hundred words a day, every day, first thing in the morning.

The Feeling Sense

This is the ability to feel the energy within people, things, and situations,
including the outcomes of intended actions.
The Feeling Sense employs the subtle feelings of intuition. The Feeling Sense is
innate, and although it is latent in most of us, anybody can learn to use it.
The more you become comfortable with looking within yourself, the easier it will
become to distinguish amongst your many subtle feelings. You have to learn the
difference between a genuine intuitive pull and the other competing voices of the
psyche – the ego, desire, wishful thinking, fear of the unknown, and so on. This is
something you learn by trial and error.
You can use the Feeling Sense to pull data from people, objects, places, futures
and pasts. Here are a few possible applications.

People. Imagine reaching out with your hand and into the body of the person
you wish to “read”. Then just let go and allow that person’s thoughts and feelings
to move through you. Alternatively you can imagine your body merging with
theirs, and repeating the same process. Always let go of the person as you finish.
Otherwise you may find your energy entangled with theirs.
Objects. Pyschometry occurs when you reach out with your mind to touch an
object and feel the energy within it. Use the same process as for people, above.
This is something that is relatively easy to do.
Places. Imagine moving out of your body and finding yourself in the place you
want to know more about. Here you are looking for any feelings about the place.
Of course you may get images of words coming to you. If so, take note of them.
Futures. The future is not set in stone, but you can get a sense of probable
futures. The further away in time, and smaller scale the event, the less predictable
it is. For major events, such as economic shifts or ethnic conflicts, the results are
more reliable.
To sense a possible future, feel yourself moving into the future choice you are
thinking of making (e.g. accepting that job). What does it feel like? You can use
this to imagine the futures of career choices, products you buy, places you visit
and so on.
Pasts. Generally speaking, the past is set, however the way that people relate to
their past can have a great effect of the energy of the past as it is represented in
the present. You can read another person’s past, in precisely the same way you
read another person’s energy in the present (see above).
As you move your energy outwards and into theirs, you will pick up the emotional
experience of the past event, rather than the literal event itself. Any emotional
energy that is trapped in the psyche of a person is relatively easy to read, as
emotional energy is ‘loud’.
The more you honour your intuitive feelings, the more they will speak to you.

Light Trances. This is where you put yourself into a drowsy, dream-like state,
pose questions, and allow the answers to come in feelings, visions, inner voices
etc. The sleepy state just before you sleep, and just after you wake up can also be
harnessed for this same purpose. The process is to quiet the mind, put out
questions, and wait for the answers to come in any sensory modality.
It is well appreciated by mystics and many parapsychologists that cultivating
non-ordinary states of consciousness is invaluable in accessing intuitive and
spiritual knowledge. Throughout my life after my mid twenties I used these states
very deliberately to glean data from transpersonal sources, and my subconscious.
Trance States are an intimate part of the development of Integrated Intelligence.
You can familiarise yourself with Trance States through deliberate meditation,
or by taking advantage of the drowsy state between sleeping and waking – the
hypnogogic state . This state occurs naturally when you are falling asleep and
waking up. But you can enter it deliberately through meditation also.
To bring about the sleepy state, sit quietly in a chair (or wherever you feel
comfortable), and relax. Focus on your breath, and breathe deeply in and out. As
thoughts move into your mind, just allow them to pass. If you like, you can
imagine them being placed inside balloons and floating away. A good time to do
this is when you are actually feeling tired, such as in the middle of the afternoon
or just before bed. This way you will naturally tend to drift towards sleep when
you sit and relax deeply. After some practice, you will be able to do it more readily
even when you are feeling alert.
Trance States are a little different from some other forms of meditation, in that
you are deliberately trying to begin to fall to sleep. As you relax, you may find
yourself becoming too drowsy or nodding off. If so, simply persist in bringing
yourself awake – but not fully awake. When you find yourself just shy of sleep,
put questions out to Spirit/the subconscious mind. Then observe what comes
before your awareness.
Be patient. If you get no definite answers, simply repeat the questioning
process every minute or so. Even if you get no answer during the entire
meditation, one may spring into your mind at a later date, or during a dream. A
synchronicity in your everyday life may answer the question for you. Regardless,
your subconscious will go to work on the problem, and begin to pull information
and data together, both from mundane and spiritual sources. Just trust that the
answer is on its way.
I recommend you employ Trance States in short bursts. These could be as short
as a minute or two for ‘lighter’ questions, or could be ten to fifteen minutes for
more in depth issues. When you finish the meditation, record what you have
experienced in your Intuitive Diary. If you want, you can later analyse the
meaning of what you have “seen” or experienced. You will not be able to do this
during the meditation, because the analytical mind cannot operate effectively
while in deep states of relaxation, and vice versa.

Connecting with the Sage

This process is similar to Free-form writing, except that you are voicing the
message, not writing it. Choose a private space where you are free to voice
whatever comes to mind. Imagine yourself as a wised old man or woman. Feel
that energy moving through you. You might ask Spirit for guidance if you like.
Next, bring a problem or issue to mind, then pose a question. As soon as you have
done so, feel and embody the answer. Act out the answer as if you are the Sage
addressing ‘you’, the small self. Don’t feel shy to move around, orate, sing, or
whatever you feel moved to do. The key is to let go and trust the process.
If you like, record the words, or write them down in your Intuitive Diary. Act
upon the guidance the Sage brings to you, and observe the outcome.
All the tools and methods mentioned here are within ready grasp. Like all
cognitive skills, practice is required. Use the ones that come naturally to you.

[1] See Rob and Trish MacGregor’s www.ofscarabs.blogspot.com for more on

synchronicity.

* * *

Have you ever felt you had a greater

calling, but been unable to put your
finger on what it is?

Marcus T. Anthony’s Sage of

Synchronicity is now available. Find out
more about the book at
www.sageofsynchronicity.weebly.com .