Intuition is always correct but interpretation fails us

“What the world needs now, is love, sweet love,” sang Podge over the phone, as she is wont to do, in her mildly telepathic, and maddeningly wise, way.

Sometimes I’ll receive these nuggets from her unexpectedly, after weeks or months of no contact.

And, almost to the minute, what she says reflects what’s happening in both my inner and outer worlds.

I asked Podge once how she always knew what was what, and when it needed fixing, or speaking about.

“We all know, but we think that we don’t know, and so we don’t act on the voices in our heads, preferring to continue down the aisle, packing milk and biscuits into our trolleys, and worrying about supper,” she replied, gazing intently into the mist of a Monday morning, probably thinking of loftier things.

“And yes, I’m concentrating on your question, because I’m here in this moment with you, and nowhere else — it just so happens that the sky is beautiful, and it’s framing your statement,” she said, ferreting about in my head, and alarming me with her uncanny ability to get to the heart of a thing, while reading one’s mind to boot.

She explained, then, that the concept of intuition has been watered down and fed a diet of media junk for so long, over so many years, that it’s devolved into a cliché.

Perhaps, she opined, this was deliberate, because the powers-that-be are better able to control a world in which ordinary folk don’t feel in control of the minutiae that makes up daily living; the hundreds of decisions needing to be made, the mistakes feverishly avoided, the desperate attempts to do well, or at least, survive until the end of the week.

Intuition, she said, was never wrong — only our interpretation of it was; and it gets better with practice, too.

I remembered this conversation with Podge because I noticed how often, over the past month, I’ve ignored the smallest nudges, and realised afterwards that I’d been wrong.

The trick is to understand that intuition doesn’t follow the mind’s rational, chronological thought process — it whispers, and often at inopportune, or apparently disjointed, times.

Example: I was driving down a road, saw a flock of chickens, and thought about eggs.

I had a strong feeling about eggs — I began thinking about their importance, and had this thought in mind for a good two minutes.

Several hours later, when I opened the cupboard to collect two eggs for French toast, I saw that I’d run out.

I remembered my chicken-drive incident, and wanted to kick myself for not collecting a box on the way home.

Because this example is small, and doth not a peer-reviewed clinical trial make, I ignored that intuitive nudge; but it happened again and again, and about more important things.

The big ones often involve deciding, at the last moment, not to go to a party, and “coincidentally” missing a multi-vehicle accident on that road; that hasn’t happened to me, but it ’ s happened to people I know (most of them terribly logical types, who nonetheless found it difficult to dismiss as just “one of those lucky events”).

This morning, I had a strong sense that somebody needed a good hug today — and probably, not someone whom I knew.

Podge ’ s singsong telephone voice, and then my remembrance of her intuition theory, seemed important to share.

And so, I’m going with my gut.