Listen to your mind, trust your gut.

If you follow NFL Fantasy football, you know the commercial that offers this little snippet of advice offered in the title of this post.

As I prepare to enjoy a rare Sunday where I can watch my Philly Eagles, I happened across this commercial and it brought such a smile to my face. I whispered a thanks above, because God really does find THE most clever ways to pass along a message. I'm not going into any extraneous details, because as I mentioned over the weekend - it's time to adjust my "open for ransack" approach. It might take me a while, so bear with me. You, the 0.000000023% of the world that finds my panderings at all amusing enough to review.

So intuition was already on my mind, and I stop by Jason's vox. Lately he's been kicking up all sorts of stuff that makes me go, "hmm."  Jason's post reminded me, there is value in exploring the mechanics (what an oxymoronic thought) of intuition. I've been thinking a lot about that lately. What is intuition, how can you trust it when it doesn't provide a clear visual logic that you can quickly package up to sell others on your belief? Because that's really what it's about isn't it? Trying to get others to go along with the stance you've voiced, for that added bit for assurance? As if having people's endorsement makes the decision, belief or opinion more...valid?

Hardest part about intuition is being wise enough to sit with it, without coloring it with little details to make it more palatable to others (and quietly to your skeptical/logical mind). Intuition may not always be right, but it's always right for where you are. What others think of it, really isn't relevant. Cognitively speaking, when intuition speaks...whether or not it's saying something directly applicable to the matter at hand is NOT as important as the fact that your intuition is triggering something. The temptation when you're aware of it, is to immediately twist what it tells you, into something you can use to MAKE your already established decision appear "more correct."  Intuition itself is like a really wet football. Squeeze it too hard, and it'll pop right out of your arms (please Brookie, hold tight). Make no effort to hold onto it, and the gift will slip slide away.

Intuition is often misinterpreted. Viewed as being in direct opposition to logic as higher level, spiritual voice, I would contend that intuition is quite logical AND spiritual. Jason's example seems to hint at its strong logical tendencies. Intuition is logic, it's just calling from a place well beyond what our minds log as "pertinent" information. The fact that intuition is present at all is in fact spiritual in my opinion. God's way of offering us a "knowing" that we can't directly explain. Just be sure you really "know" what it's truly trying to say. The spiritual element of intution could be reminding you of something achingly familiar. Familiar can be trying to say, "this is good, we did this before and experienced amazing results!" or, "this is bad, last time we tried something like this we wound up with six stiches and a warrant for our arrest."

Intuition might just be that grandma that remembers every tiny detail about your existence...but can't seem to call you by the right name. She might not call you out - but you know she knows everything about you. Even the stuff you pretend was removed long ago.