By Bobbie Stevens, Ph. D.
Many of us have heard stories of people in many different walks of life who just knew things? Did you ever wonder how they knew or have you experienced just knowing? I did, and have spent considerable amount of time questioning and exploring just knowing. Here is some of what I know.
We all have two ways of gaining knowledge. Both are potential, and must be developed. These ways of knowing are known as intellectual and intuitive.
We often talk about this in terms of left brain and right brain abilities. Left brain abilities are reason and logic – linear thinking – memory – beliefs and verbal communication.
Right brain abilities include intuition, imagination, innovation, creativity, compassion, the ability to see wholeness, the big picture or how all the parts fit together.
We gain intellectual knowledge through teaching and learning. We gain this knowledge by learning what other people already know. We start developing our intellect at a very young age. Families teach us and then we start school. Our entire educational system is designed to facilitate our intellectual knowledge
In fact, few of us were aware we had another way of gaining knowledge. This intuitive ability has only begun to be accepted in the last few decades. Many people actually experienced this way of gaining knowledge, but it wasn’t recognized as a legitimate way to know until recently.
Developing the intellect (left brain abilities) is an external process, meaning we gain it from others and things such as books. Developing our intuition or right brain abilities is an internal journey.
Intuition is how Universal Intelligence (all knowledge) communicates with us. Universal Intelligence is the intelligence that guides each of us and the entire universe. We are all connected to Universal Intelligence, but most are unaware of this. We all experience intuition on some level, but, for the most part, we have been unaware of it – or denied it, until recently.
Everything new comes to someone intuitively. We can only learn what someone else already knows. Anything new starts from an intuitive idea. That idea may have been stimulated by something we learned, but the new knowledge is a direct communication with universal intelligence.
I have worked with many entrepreneurs who gained knowledge intuitively, but didn’t understand it. Generally, they had to get someone to figure it out intellectually so they could communicate it to others and move forward with their idea.
Once they understood how it worked, and were successful in communicating it to left brain thinking, they were able fulfill their desire, move forward and make their special contribution to the world.
My late husband, Dr. Dean Portinga, was the director of a research foundation that was funded by a highly intuitive man. In fact, he is known as the father of fluid hydraulics. He usually had to build a prototype himself, of what he wanted done, to get highly educated engineers to understand his idea. The highly educated engineers had much more intellectual knowledge than he did, but he was the only one who knew how to create what was needed.
As a result of his intuition, he made a huge contribution to the world, and a very significant amount of money for himself. He saw the value of intuition and believed it could be developed, but he didn’t know how to develop it. It was something he had always experienced. Ideas just came to him intuitively, but he didn’t understand how one would develop that ability. His plan was to teach intuition to grad students. And they tried, but it didn’t work.
You cannot teach intuition. Teaching and learning is how we develop the intellect, but we develop intuition in a very different way. It is a discovery process. It is potential within each of us, but we must discover it within ourselves. We can’t teach intuition, but there are processes that we can practice to develop our intuitive abilities within ourselves.
Now that we understand intuition better, we can see different people are inclined to gain knowledge easier one way or the other. Each of us is either left brain dominate or right brain dominate.
I now understand that I am right brain dominate. I remember algebra class when I was in high school. I knew the answers to the problems, but I didn’t know how I got them. To this day knowing the answers doesn’t count if you cannot explain how you got them.
Right brain high school student in algebra class – “We can’t fine your X – she is gone and she’s not coming back – so stop asking us to find her.”
We, of course, need both well-developed left brain, and well-developed right brain abilities to fulfill our potential and make our special contribution to the world. And it is quite appropriate that we develop our left-brain abilities (intellect) first.
Since in the past, we haven’t realized that we had anything except left-brain abilities we have learned how to use the intellect to figure out most things. But once we develop our right brain abilities much of what we have learned is no longer useful. Our right brain functioning is so much easier and faster.
Scientific studies are left brain work, and very valuable because they validate what many people intuitively knew many years earlier. Many of the things that science is now discovering was revealed to me intuitively 40 years ago.
Planet earth is now evolving into a more advanced awareness of who we are and abilities that we had not realize existed in the past. This more advanced level of functioning is preparing us to re-create our world.
With our limited level of understanding and functioning we were well on our way to self-destruction, until Mother Nature stopped us with the coronavirus pandemic. With our more advanced level of knowledge and functioning we will be re-creating our entire world. We will be creating a new world that is life supporting, in all areas, for everyone.
We have much work to do and there is someone who wants to do everything that needs to be done. What we need most now are people who have developed their right brain abilities. These people will create new and different ways to do almost everything. This new way of functioning will replace the misunderstanding that created many of the things that have been detrimental to our way of life and our environment in the past.
Are you ready to expand your right brain abilities?
What beliefs do you hold about your ability to do so?
What might be your contributions if you could receive on-going intuitive guidance?
As a leader, are you looking for people who can bring innovation and new ideas to your organization?
Could that person, be you?