by Demola Olanrewaju

Irrational does not mean illogical – it means that there is an exact intelligence behind the gut feeling but it is not yet in your conscious mind. You see someone and decide that they will probably cause you harm and for that reason, you decide not to give them a chance to get close to you.

I had planned to write today about spirituality and intuition but there is a part that must precede it which I haven’t delved into. Intuition as the voice of one’s deepest perception comes to us in several ways but mainly five: Fear, Gut Feeling, Persistent Thought, Nagging Feeling and Blurted Words. I will explain all five, link them to intuition and then we can discuss how spirituality gets in the way tomorrow.

Fear is one of the most misunderstood feelings in every human. It is described in several ways ranging from phobia for certain things to a general feeling of perpetual anxiety. Phobia is an unresolved fear of certain things while what we commonly refer to as fear when we say someone is fearful is actually the feeling of anxiety or apprehension. Both anxiety and apprehension are also instinctive reactions on some occasions but when it becomes a permanent mindset and approach to life, it loses its intuitive genius and can even dull the senses of a person to such an extent that they cannot react the way they should when occasion demands it.

Fear is nature’s way of survival. Most animals obey it without question except man who seeks to fight of the feeling when first it comes. The emotion of fear when it seizes a person suddenly can help them to decide within a moment whether to fight or take flight and infuse the body with the needed energy to do both.

Gut feeling is a feeling deep within a person – usually somewhere in the belly, where you all of a sudden become extremely certain of a truth about a person without rational explanation. Irrational does not mean illogical – it means that there is an exact intelligence behind the gut feeling but it is not yet in your conscious mind. You see someone and decide that they will probably cause you harm and for that reason, you decide not to give them a chance to get close to you.

Persistent Thoughts are thoughts that come to your mind at intervals, urging you to take a particular action. It could be as random as calling your wife or an old friend just to check up on them or it could be a thought about sending your application to a particular company which advert you just watched on television. If you listen carefully or have your mind attuned to your inner self, you can usually call people at the point where they are at a crossroad and need to hear your voice or talk to you. Persistent thoughts don’t go away easily but if you do not act on them, you start to feel their weakening until it fades away.

Nagging feelings are different from gut feelings in the sense of certainty: gut feelings usually occur in a moment and with such a sense of urgency that a person has to take action. When the feelings nag, it seems more like a sense of foreboding about things to come, a certain perception that things are not all right or not going to go well. It happens on a minor scale when you leave home without your key or phone and you know with certainty that you have forgotten something but can’t quite place what it might be. Nagging feelings may also occur when you suddenly start to feel that things are not right within a relationship: you keep on asking the person whether there is something wrong or something they want to tell you.

Blurted Words are usually the most inexplicable ways that intuition speaks to us. The thought may have existed on some unconscious level but the speaker never knows what it is or how to articulate it until after they are spoken and usually doesn’t take thought of it until it comes to pass. Late journalist Dele Giwa was at his breakfast table one morning when he received a parcel.

‘this must be from the president’

He remarked as he opened it and got blasted by the first letter bomb in Nigeria. Those words should have made him suspicious since he had been critical of the president through the magazine he edited.

Blurted words could sometimes be a warning to a friend to drive safely only for him to end up in a ditch after an accident.

One thing for sure about intuition is that it is always in response to something and is always a warning for one to beware, it is a signal of imminent danger.

How spirituality blocks these messengers will be our subject of discourse tomorrow.

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Read this article on Demola’s Blog

 

Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija.