Table of Contents
In her book, Awakening Intuition, Frances Vaughan shares an interesting and practical approach on how to awaken and use your intuitive powers.
She weaves her work as a psychologist and her experiences in leading workshops together with her own other peoples’ experiences of intuition.
If you are interested in intuition and would like practical tools to develop your intuitive power, then this book is a great start.
Here I would like to share her guidelines for awakening intuition which appear in the appendix of the book. Additionally, I have added my own ideas and practical advice to them.
Note: The unaltered text will be inside a blockquote, while my comments will be not.
Intention
The first requirement for consciously awakening intuition is a clear intention to do so. Intuition is already within you, but to awaken it you have to value it and intend to develop it.
Intention is a powerful and sometimes undervalued force. Intention is what gets the ball rolling. One experimental study even indicates that positive intention is a key link in the effect of distant healing.
You might assume that intention is similar to desire. When you intend to have something, you desire that thing. Makes sense right? Well, yes. However, there is a subtle difference.
Intention is rather passionless while desire is usually full of passion.
Also, the stronger your desire is, the more neediness, cravingness, and wantingness you attach to the desired goal.
And you might have already noticed that desire precedes intention. You can desire something but to have what you desire you have to set an intention. Otherwise, momentum will not increase.
Having said that, there is no need to overthink intention or get obsessive about it.
Setting the intention once is enough. You don’t need affirmations or autosuggestions for intention. Just calmly proclaim that you intend to awaken your intuition.
Time
Your willingness to devote time to tuning in to your intuition, making a space for its unfolding in your life, is part of valuing and developing it.
Devoting time to awakening your intuition is especially valuable in the beginning.
If you are not yet in touch with your intuition, you’ll want to give yourself some space. Learn to perceive the subtleties of intuitive awareness.
Just 10 minutes a day can be enough.
Whatever practice you devote yourself to is up to you. For example, you can do focus exercises, visualizations, or reflecting on intuition.
To get the best result, I recommend supplementing every practice with good ol’ meditation. It’s the singly most powerful means of awakening intuition.
Relaxation
Letting go of physical and emotional tension gives intuition the space to enter your conscious awareness.
A state of relaxation is crucial in receiving your intuitive powers.
This is exemplified by individuals, such as Albert Einstein and Linus Pauling, who made groundbreaking discoveries. After a period of intense left-brain activity, they would daydream or take a nap and suddenly the insight emerged out of the ether in a flash.
The easiest way to relax is by shifting your awareness into your body, especially into the areas that feel most tense.
You can also do a body scan meditation. You scan your body from bottom to top and vice versa which automatically induces a state of relaxation.
The practical thing is that by reducing physical tension, you are also reducing mental and emotional tension as the body and mind are closely intertwined.
So likewise by reducing mental and emotional tension, through meditation, for instance, you can reduce physical tension.
Silence
Intuition flourishes in silence. Learning to quiet the mind is therefore part of the training for awakening intuition. Various meditative practices are useful in learning to maintain the necessary inner silence.
There are many different meditative practices you can try to quiet the mind.
Just pick one, for instance focusing on your breath, and then go from there. You can also read my simple guide to start with meditation.
Developing the ability for inner silence is crucial for awakening intuition. How else are you going to “hear” your intuition?
Imagine being at a party and someone is telling you an interesting story you want to hear. Now imagine that person standing on the other side of the room while 5 other conversations are going on right next to you and the speakers are playing loud techno music.
How much of that story are you going to hear? Not much I assume.
Honesty
Willingness to face self-deception and to be honest with yourself and others is essential. Creating any kind of smokescreen interferes with clear vision. Giving up pretenses is a big step in awakening intuition.
Many people in the self-development space, especially the New-Age space, claim that you just need to affirm and visualize who you want to be, and then it will be that way.
No doubt affirmations and visualizations can be effective. Yet they are even more effective when you are honest with yourself about where you are right now.
Imagine you want to get to a place but you don’t where you are right now. You know where that place is but because you don’t where you are, you have no idea how far or close it is.
Now imagine you don’t have a map but you can call someone. This someone could certainly tell you how to get to where you want to be. But, again, because you don’t know where you are the other person will be of no real help.
A similar thing is happening when you are deceiving yourself about your current situation.
Being honest with yourself doesn’t mean wallowing in your misery (if that is what you’re experiencing). It means you’re accepting where you are and from there looking to where you want to be.
Be honest with yourself about your beliefs, identities, emotions, and current intuitive abilities. This will drastically reduce the time it takes for you to awaken your intuition.
Receptivity
Learning to be quiet and receptive allows intuition to unfold. Too much activity or conscious programing gets in the way of intuitive awareness that emerges when a receptive attitude is cultivated.
Receptivity is a byproduct of silence and openness.
Once again, meditation is a powerful tool to get into a receptive mode. You cultivate a receptive attitude by relaxing your mental activity.
This doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to turn off thoughts (good luck with that!) but to assume an attitude of not grasping.
What you do is you are opening yourself to whatever arises in the present moment without holding on to anything. You just let everything be as it wants to be. You are the Witness.
Intuition can sometimes show itself in fleeting glimpses between the mindstream. But for that to happen you have to allow the mindstream to flow by instead of trying the catch water.
An enjoyable practice to increase your receptivity is to engage in occasional daydreaming and let your mind wander wherever it wants to.
Sensitivity
Finely tuned sensitivity to both inner and outer processes provides more information and expands intuitive knowing. Sensitivity to energy awareness and quality of experience is particularly useful.
You can be sensitive to many different levels of your experience. Physical, mental, emotional, subtle, causal, spiritual.
The higher on the spiritual scale the more subtle are sensations and the more fine-tuned your sensitivity has to be.
However, intuition has many different means of communicating. So in the beginning, choosing the aspect of your being you are already sensitive about is a good starting point.
If your physical sensitivity is already finely tuned, start listening to what your senses are telling you. Then from there try to perceive your subtle energy body. See if you can sense the energy flowing through your central meridians.
Although in the beginning you might not sense much, with practice you definitely will.
Develop sensitivity to all inner and outer processes. Then you’ll awaken a multifaceted intuition that can speak to you in many different languages and forms.
Nonverbal Play
Drawing, music, movement, clay, and other forms of nonverbal expression done in a spirit of play, rather than for the purpose of goal-oriented achievement, provide excellent channels for activating intuitive, right-hemisphere functions.
Have you ever noticed that great ideas and solutions to problems come to you when you are immersed in something completely non-related?
This is intuition at work.
Children are great at play and they’re coming up with creative ideas all the time, regardless if they’re realistic.
The point is that there is no shame in doing things for sheer fun and enjoyment.
Let me say that differently. There is not only no shame in playing, there is gold to be found in it.
And when you get to the point where your work feels like play, you have struck a gold vein. People who are constantly in an attitude of playing are super receptors to intuition.
One note though. Don’t try to trick intuition by engaging in nonverbal play for the sake of receiving intuitive insights. That usually doesn’t work.
Genuinely start playing, that’s all.
Trust
Trusting the process, trusting yourself, trusting your experience, are the keys to trusting and developing your intuition.
The modern age of internet connectivity has led to some amazing developments. However, it has also led to a lot of self-doubts.
People are constantly comparing themselves with others, trying to emulate someone else’s success, and hoping that just one more video on how to become a millionaire will make them rich.
One of the most powerful traits you can develop is trust.
Sure, trusting other people is commendable, but even better is to trust yourself. And trusting yourself means trusting your subjective life experience.
You see, life is an ongoing process.
Often we want to jump from A to Z immediately so we can finally relax and enjoy the fruits. But usually, there is a path in between and if you want to enjoy the fullness of life – not just the short-lived positive emotions of results – then you have to trust the process of life.
Essentially, you have to trust life.
Dare to trust yourself and life a little bit more each day. Then you’ll see that your intuition will awaken to nudge you into even more interesting and fulfilling directions.
Openness
If you are afraid of being seen, you may close up and then be unable to see. Being open to all experiences, both inner and outer, gives intuition the space it needs to develop fully.
I have briefly mentioned openness as part of receptivity, but it’s not just the prerequisite for something else. Openness is a powerful trait to adapt in its own right.
It seems that some people are naturally more open than others. But openness has nothing to do with personality. Openness is the result of accepting life as it is and being curious about each unfolding moment.
When you do this, you’ll discover all kinds of adventures and opportunities in unexpecting places.
Life will suddenly become much richer. It will be as if the saturation in an image was turned up a notch.
So how do you be more open?
Essentially, it’s pretty simple. Seriously, don’t overthink this.
Whenever you come across a thing, situation, or emotion you don’t like or disagree with, consciously relax your body and heart. Don’t fight the situation or thing or emotion (if you can’t change it anyway).
Just let it be what it is. Let it be itself.
If you do this, you will feel a sudden lightness and surge of energy. Now you have created space for your intuition to develop and communicate with you.
Courage
Fear gets in the way of direct experience and often generates deception. Your willingness to experience and confront your fears will facilitate the expansion of intuition.
A genuine fear of survival, as in being confronted by a sabertooth tiger, is mostly a thing of the past.
What most of us fear nowadays are made-up constructs in our minds.
Imagine every little one of your fears turning into reality. That would almost be comical and probably make you feel like you are in staged play.
If this is your current reality, however, then what else do you have left to fear?
Most of us interpret fear as a sign to turn away from the source of the fear. Yet, in the shadow of many of your fears lies your hidden potential.
All you need is the courage to look.
The next time you experience fear about something you really want to do, reframe this fear into excitement. Because that’s what many of our fears are, excitement in disguise.
You’ll see that your intuition sometimes points you towards something you are afraid of. But when you do act despite the fear and as a result have a pleasant or growth experience, you affirm your intuition and it will become more pronounced.
Awakening intuition takes courage and courage existence only because of fears.
So what else is there left to do than to embrace your fears?
Acceptance
A nonjudgmental attitude, an acceptance of things as they are, including self-acceptance, allow intuition to function freely.
By now you can see that many of the traits and attitudes are closely interlinked with each other.
Acceptance, openness, sensitivity, receptivity, trust, honesty, relaxation are all part of a multidimensional hypercube. Kind of like an OLAP cube.
I could tell you now how to accept things but this would just regurgitate what I have said before. So instead I will tell you this:
When you start developing any of the traits in this list, you’ll naturally start developing the others because they all overlap at one point or another.
When you give your best in accepting yourself, others, and situations, you’re building momentum and this train of momentum picks up all the passengers (traits) along the way.
The cool thing is that when momentum is going, your intuition will grow and develop on its own.
Eventually, you’ll be able to use your intuition like you use your rational mind.
Love
Opening your heart to feelings of nonjudgmental love and compassion allows you to see into the nature of things. Emotional empathy and intuitive identification are facilitated by love and compassion.
What is meant by love here is not necessarily romantic love or the love you have for family members.
Trying hard to love someone you don’t is futile. You can’t force love. Love happens on its own when you remove the obstacles.
When the clouds are removed the sun shines forth.
But what you can do is occasionally acknowledge that we are all in the same boat. Yes, even the acquaintance from school who keeps pitching you his multilevel marketing business.
Realize that everyone is trying their best just as you are. This enables you to step into another’s shoes and hence be more understanding and compassionate.
You don’t have to agree with someone’s behavior. Yet you can still try to understand that they are doing what they think is right.
In the least, they’re doing what they think will serve them the most. Don’t we all want to create a good and meaningful life for ourselves?
With an attitude of compassion and understanding, you’re nourishing the seed of unconditional love. And this nourishment is awakening intuition as you learn to see the purity in everything and everyone.
Nonattachment
The willingness to let things be as they are, rather than trying to make them be the way you would like them to be, or the way you think they should be, allow intuition to emerge. You can see things as they are only when desires and fears are out of the way.
Nonattachment is one of the most common hurdles people trip over on their spiritual path.
Many people misunderstand nonattachment as a cold uncaring attitude where you don’t give a heck about anything.
That’s not what nonattachment is. When you are nonattached you do care but you’re not holding on to things.
In a state of nonattachment, you’re experiencing freedom because you’re no longer trying to subdue reality.
Many people believe that when they let go of strong emotional attachments and are happy right where they are they won’t get what they want. However, exactly the opposite is true.
When you let go of strong desire and fear, you’re no longer trapped in a scarcity mindset. By being nonattached, you’re creating space in your life for the things you want to enter your life.
Imagine your goals being people. How would they feel when you constantly bombard them with your neediness, insecurities, and fears?
Of course they’d want to get away from you. Just as you give people the space they need and deserve, give things the space they need and deserve.
The most practical way to practice nonattachment is to actually allow yourself to feel emotions such as desire and fear.
If you want to know more about how and why to practice nonattachment you can read this article.
Daily Practice
Intuitive awareness grows with daily attention. If you discount or neglect it most of the time and only want it to perform occasionally, it may not respond.
Here is the thing. We are all intuitive beings but many of us are not in touch with our intuition.
This is no surprise though. No one ever taught you how to awaken and develop your intuition. Unfortunately, this is not part of the standard school curriculum…yet.
Anyway, awakening your intuition will take daily practice, at least in the beginning.
Like I have mentioned earlier, practice for developing intuition can come in many forms such as focus exercises, visualization, and meditation. Feel free to try them all!
Don’t feel like you have to force yourself to mechanically do the same exercise every day. This is counterproductive. Be playful about it.
Eventually, when you are in touch with your intuition, your practice can assume a different character. You no longer have to actively develop your intuition so much but start following its hunches.
When you perceive your intuition, take whatever action it nudges you to take. Then observe where it leads you.
If the outcome is unwanted or non-beneficial, there are three potential reasons:
- You have misinterpreted your intuition.
- You have acted on some impulse that is not your intuition.
- The situation has not played itself out fully.
If this happens to you, don’t see this as a failure. See it as becoming more clear on how your intuition is communicating.
Remember, intuition is true by definition. If it’s not true it’s not intuition.
Like with most things in life, you learn the best from experience. So don’t hesitate to follow your intuition because that’s why you want to develop it, right?
Journal Keeping
Keeping a record of intuitive flashes, hunches, insights, and images that come to mind spontaneously at any time of the day or night, can help stabilize and validate them.
There are many benefits of journaling.
Keep a journal, even if you are not a fan of writing. Having a commonplace book where you can quickly jot down ideas, insights, intuitive hunches, and images is very useful and enjoyable.
I’m sure the following has happened to you before.
You had an exciting insight or idea and didn’t have anything to write it down with. You thought to yourself: “Oh, I’ll surely remember it,” just to absolutely not remember it later on.
Get a physical notebook, preferably one that’s satisfying to your eyes, and see it as the physical extension of your creative mind.
Don’t bother trying to make it clean and neat. Write from all directions, sketch images, make bullet lists, throw some glitter in there. Do whatever you want with it.
Also, writing down intuitive hunches and then later on seeing that they have fulfilled themselves is a great way to increase the trust in yourself and your intuition.
Support Group
Finding one, two, or more friends with whom you can share your interest in the development of intuition, as well as your successes, failures, hopes, and fears, can facilitate and accelerate with someone who is willing to listen without judging or interpreting, is very useful.
Awakening intuition is cool. But awakening intuition with other people is even more fun.
Having people around you who share a similar worldview and want to develop their intuition as well can be a great source of motivation and inspiration.
You can share insights and techniques, and keep yourself accountable for your practice.
If all your friends think that intuition is woo-woo and you know no one who is interested in developing intuition, don’t despair.
We live in an attractive universe. Sooner or later you will attract people who are interested in the same things you are. For sure.
Just one small word of warning. When you are in a support group around intuition and making progress, magical things might start happening.
You may feel like you are part of a chosen few, using some sort of superpower (which is not completely wrong though), and develop an attitude of superiority toward the “unenlightened sheeple.”
Don’t fall into the narcissistic holier-than-thou trap.
Celebrate your wins and developments but don’t assume superiority over others. Narcissism and intuition usually don’t go hand in hand too well.
Enjoyment
Following intuition does not always feel good. At times it may seem difficult and entail arduous work. At other times it may be effortless. Enjoying the creative resources of intuition is based on the intrinsic satisfaction of expanding consciousness, taking responsibility for your life, and surrendering to your own true nature.
Finally, perhaps the most important aspect when it comes to awakening intuition. Enjoy the process.
I know it sounds like a lot of work to develop your intuition. But keep in mind that everything on this list will not just develop your intuition.
Essentially, these are also guidelines for raising your level of consciousness.
Sometimes this can feel fruitless, difficult, and unrewarding. Other times it can feel abundant, easy, and plentiful.
Remember that you’re expanding and growing. As you know, growth spurts can sometimes hurt a little.
At times your intuition might tell you to do something that doesn’t make sense and is uncomfortable. Know that your intuition can serve you in any situation, not just in pleasant situations.
But your intuition will never lead you into a life-threatening situation.
Your intuition is your inner compass towards your highest potential and fulfillment. It often knows better what you need than your rational mind.
The more you enjoy developing your intuition, the more you’ll enjoy using and following your intuition.
Intuition is your superpower and birthright. So feel free to have fun with it.
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If you want more practical ways to develop your intuition, check out my other article on 10 ways to develop your intuition.
Or if you want to get the book, you can click the image below.
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“Intuition is a memory of the Truth.” – Sri Aurobindo
Luka
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I didn’t find intuition, it found me through almost all those examples you listed. It started with following it pointing, and now it’s waiting for what I need next. The more Faith I put in the better, but that Faith is tempered by Doubt (but honestly, they feel like the same thing now). Once it led me to inspiration to “blow myself wide open” to let it through I felt the cogs of an impossibily massive machine begin to turn. I feel like I’ve gotten myself in over my head and I’m thrilled by that.