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New ideas come into this world somewhat like falling meteors, with a flash and an explosion.  — HENRY DAVID THOREAU

Though intuition may, at first, seem elusive, unpredictable, and mysterious, it is not, by nature, random or haphazard. Its processes follow very real principles and natural laws. Like a light­ning flash, we may not always know when intuition is going to show up, but we can predict the environments where it is more likely to “strike.”

By understanding the foundations of the intu­itive process, and how its extraordinary insight arrives, you can create your own lightning in a bottle.

The Intuitive Process

To start using your own intuition radically — holistically — let’s look at the four essential ways that our inner wisdom guides us:

1. We receive intuition: First impressions are how intuition speaks to us before we have a chance to think. 
   
   
2. We are moved by intuition: Resonance is how we feel our way ahead. Our intuition calls us to action — inspires us, nudges us, calls us down the path of our truth.
   
   
3. We are guided by intuition: Discernment is the touch-point where intuition and intelligence work together. 
   
   
4. We are uplifted by intuition: Ultimately, it is through validation that we learn to trust ourselves and follow our intuition to a deeper experience of life. 

When we become conscious of how these principles are at work within us, we are able to touch into the most extraordinary insight — the radical bits of information that go beyond anything our rational minds could ascertain. We gain the ability to move from the intuitive idea to its actualization in our life.

Starting with an immaterial nudge and ending with a choice that changes material reality, this is how intuition comes into the world. In this way, our consciousness is the conduit for intuitive manifestation. The way you choose to react to your intuition, following it or honor­ing it, is the root of your forward evolution.

These four foundations, together, create a unified framework for using intuition in all you do. Together, this holistic experience of intuition — first impressions, resonance, discernment, and validation — interplay within to lead you to the extraordinary insights that bring awareness to your life.

Here are examples of this process in everyday life:

Making a Decision with the Intuitive Process

1. First impression: A mother is touring a new day-care center for her child. As she pulls into the parking lot, a thought immediately pops into her head: No.
   
   
2. Resonance: As she sits in her car, getting ready to go inside, she notices that the place just doesn’t feel right. Even though the building is nice, she’s just not getting a good “vibe.”
   
   
3. Discernment: As she tours the building, though every­one is friendly, her attention is drawn to a variety of little red flags that support her negative first impression and feelings about the center. She discerns, based on both her internal and external intuitive impressions, that this is not the right place for her child.
   
   
4. Validation: Later that day, a friend calls out of the blue and mentions some bad press she saw in the news about the day-care center.

Result: By honoring her first impressions and resonant feelings about the establishment, the mother is able to intuitively discern the right course of action easily. The friend calling with reinforcement of her choice is a nice validation that she is doing the right thing.

Averting a Crisis with the Intuitive Process

1. First impression: A young man is driving to work, when something tells him to go back home.
   
   
2. Resonance: He tries to ignore it at first, but he just can’t shake the feeling that he needs to go back to the house.
   
   
3. Discernment: Did he forget something? Did he leave the tea kettle on? He has no idea what exactly the feeling means, but since it persists, he reluctantly decides to turn the car around.
   
   
4. Validation: When he gets home, he sees his dog waiting for him in the driveway. He now sees that he didn’t fully close the back door and the pup escaped. Crisis averted!

Result: Even though the young man has no idea what is going on, he discerns that he should trust his internal “knowing feeling.” In this case, he gets immediate validation of his extraordinary insight when he realizes there is no way he could have known the dog was out.

As you begin to practice consciously using this technique to clar­ify your intuition, you will see how naturally it comes to you. You don’t need to memorize this system or even learn it; this is how your intuition naturally works. All you need to do is become aware of it.

First Impressions: Sudden Insight Never Lies

Intuition first. These two words are the key to building a powerful inner guidance system. Intuition first means that, not only should we prioritize intuition in our life, but that, in terms of information processing, literally, intuition comes first.

In any situation, your intuition speaks before your mind, thoughts, feelings, imagination.. . anything. This is key to recognizing your intuition: It pops into your head first, before your thinking mind or emotions take over.

As you start to identify and work with your own intuition, the trick is to recognize and honor this first impulse, which is pure and unpolluted by your personal feelings and thoughts. This, too, is a dividing line between intuition and nonintuitive thoughts and feelings. The first impression is pure, objective, and untainted by lower-conscious reasoning.

Intuitive Impression vs. Thought Impression

Regular thought: You realize you should check your tire pressure because a light comes on in your car.

Intuitive first impression: You are in the shower and it hits you that you should check the tire pressure in your car. In effect, your intuition is the light that comes on — only on the inside.

Regular thought: You decide you don’t like someone you have just met because they have creepy tattoos and smell bad.

Intuitive first impression: You instantly don’t like them, but you can’t explain to your friends why. When you know, you just know, with no reasons why. And that’s okay!

With intuition, there is no reasoning process involved. There is no process of deduction or reference based on our perception. When these impressions arrive, our job is just to get out of the way — and let our insight guide us. Intuition leads the way — we just follow it.

Resonance: You Know The Truth By The Way It Feels

Do you often make decisions based on what just feels right? Maybe all the pros and cons add up to one thing, but for some reason you can’t explain, you just feel drawn to choose something else. Or maybe you just felt a calling to do something, even though you, consciously, weren’t sure why. This is the magic of resonance at work.

Resonance is the powerful complement to our first impressions. While our first impressions bring sudden awareness, resonance slowly moves us. It is the other side of our intuitive coin. First impressions come to us in a spontaneous moment as an attention-grabbing thought or experience; resonance, on the other hand, draws us in, almost magnetically, toward our truth or best course of action.

Resonance is, at once, a knowing feeling. It is a subtle yet powerful practice. No matter where you are in your life or what your goals are, doing a quick “gut check” before you act is a great way to be sure you get and stay on your best path.

Resonance vs. Nonresonance

Nonresonance: When you are looking to buy a new house, you tour a lot of homes but none of them really speak to you. No matter how much you want to like a place, a part of you just doesn’t see yourself living there.

Resonance: You finally tour a home and something about it just feels like the one. You just know it’s right, even though you may not even have all of the infor­mation yet.

With resonance, your thoughts and feelings are in alignment. There is a unified consensus of action, regardless of the details. When we feel resonant about something, we know that we are being guided in the direction of that knowing feeling.

Discernment: Intuitive Intelligence

Discernment is the meeting point of intuition and the intellectual mind. Through this process, you are able to bring conscious meaning to the superconscious insight you receive. Discernment brings intuition into focus.

Have you ever had an intuitive experience but had no idea what it meant or how to understand it? Maybe something extraordinary happened and all you can ask yourself is: What does this mean? This is where discernment comes in. It is your guide to interpreting the great mystery of intuition, as it reveals itself to you. Why did that intuition come to me? What am I meant to learn? What am I meant to do? — these are the questions that discern­ment will help you answer.

Discernment is the final step to extraordinary insight. First impressions and intuitive resonance lead you to the truth, but discernment leads you to understand the truth. Discernment is the process that pulls down the extraordinary piece of information, guidance, or illumination that helps you understand a situation or make change in the world. The process of discernment enables you to clarify your intuitive insight and find the true meaning of your intuition.

The act of stepping back, of waiting a few minutes, hours — or even just seconds, in some cases — gives you the pause you need to “get into the gap” where your intuition can communi­cate with you. When you step back from obsessive overthinking or emotional spirals, you step into the calm space where you can pick up — and discern — your intuitive signal.

Validation: Signs From The Universe

Have you ever had something extraordinary happen in your life, only to think: It’s a sign! Maybe that uncanny coincidence was telling you that you were on the right track, or maybe that same word you kept seeing over and over, everywhere you looked, had a message of guidance for you, on a subtle level. In the world of intuition, we call these validations.

A validation is a reinforcement that we receive, either from within ourselves or from the outside world, to confirm our intuitive actions. It’s kind of like a high five from life — that you got something right, made the best choice, or are on to something big. In these small moments of magic, we are reassured of our path and purpose.

These assurances from life can come to us in endless ways. They can be moments of “kismet” or “serendipity” that spontaneously arise in our life. They can show up as the meaningful coincidences in our life. As your intuition grows, so will the occurrence of these validations. They reflect the synchronicity between you and life; they are a literal manifestation of the alignment of your inner and outer worlds.

Validations arrive in one of two ways: as either internal or ex­ternal validation. Internal validation is the abiding intuitive sense that you are in alignment with your truth; external validation is when a serendipitous sign or “coincidence” in the outside world reinforces your course of action.

Internal Validation: Intuition Abides

One of the defining traits of intuition is its constancy. It abides. A solid intuition will remain resolute and unchanged in your consciousness. It is not unsure or fleeting, like a passing thought or whim. Intuition has a mission and it persists until it gets the job done.

If you have a calling to write a book, that calling is not going to go away until the book is written. If you need to end a relation­ship in order to heal and grow, your intuition is going to persist until you free yourself from the stifling situation.

If you want to validate any intuitive guidance, come back to it in an hour, a day, or a week: Is the same feeling still there? Does the same guidance persist? If so, there is a good chance it’s real intuition. If it changes or is gone — if you can’t feel it or remember it anymore — it was most likely your mind or imagination.

Arriving At An Extraordinary Insight

Genuine intuition delivers extraordinary insight. The combined experiences of our first impressions along with intuitive resonance, discernment, and ultimately, validation lead us to exceptional moments of awareness. This awareness arrives from somewhere greater than us. Extraordinary insight is the revelation, the understand­ing, the solution or knowingness that doesn’t result from our thinking.

The experience of extraordinary insight is the ultimate experience of your intuition. You are aware of higher truth and have the understanding to act upon it. It is the evolutionary fulfillment of the two-part process of intuition: awareness and ac­tion. When we become conscious of our inner wisdom and follow it to make real change in our lives, we have done our job. The mission of intuition is complete.

©2020 by Kim Chestney. All Rights Reserved.
Excerpted with permission of the publisher.
Publisher: New World Library.

Article Source

Radical Intuition: A Revolutionary Guide to Using Your Inner Power
by Kim Chestney

Radical Intuition reveals an all new understanding of intuition and how to use it to live an extraordinary life. This practical guide will teach you to go beyond thinking and discover higher awareness with the power of intuition — a revolutionary force at the threshold of a new era of consciousness. Kim Chestney gives clear guidance for tuning in to your own process of insight, backed by voices from successful insight leaders who recognize intuition as the source of genius in all aspects of life. Learn how to tap into your inner wisdom and create the life you are made for.

For more info, or to order this book, click here. (Also available as a Kindle edition.)

Books by this Author

About the Author

Kim Chestney is a globally recognized author, innovation leader, and intuition expert. As the founder of IntuitionLab and the CREATE! Festival, she has touched thousands of lives by raising awareness of “insight” as a revolutionary next step in the evolution of both personal and world consciousness. Working for nearly twenty years in the tech sector, Kim has led initiatives with some of the top thought leaders, technology companies, and universities in the world. Her books have been published around the globe and translated into multiple languages since 2004. Kim leads a thriving global intuition community with online intuition training, professional certification, live workshops, and retreats. Visit her website at KimChestney.com/

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