WHAT EXACTLY IS INTUITION
I love being a Wordsmith. Words fascinate me. Maybe because I was born in a small town in Southern West Virginia and my first language was Greek, and then English. Imagine that? Anyways, back to words. I had always wondered why we use the words we do, and how sometimes I would use a word and not really know what it meant, or even where it came from. Why?
So i dove in hard. Really hard. And not just the words … the people, language, and the total etymology of everything. It go so bad that I would literally take encyclopedias into the bathroom with me. If only I had an iPad and the Internet back then. There would've been so much more I would've been able to accomplished.
In this specific writing, I want to look at a word that I often use, and had never really taken a hard look at it. I mean, I thought I knew what it meant … but then again, there’s always more to find, as long as you keep digging.
So, let’s have a peek at "INTUITION" from Merriam-Webster. But before we do that, let’s look at "TUITION" first.
tu·ition noun \tə-ˈwi-shən, tyu̇-\
money that is paid to a school for the right to study there.
teaching that is done especially for a single person or small group.
Full Definition of TUITION
1 - archaic : custody, guardianship. 2: the act or profession of teaching: instruction - pursued his studies under private tuition. 3: the price of or payment for instruction.
So then, a quick summary of TUITION would be “price or payment for being taught or instructed.” For example, our Colleges and Universities have “Tuition Fees.”
Now a look at INTUITION:
in·tu·i·tion noun \ˌin-tü-ˈi-shən, -tyü-\
a natural ability or power that makes it possible to know something without any proof or evidence: a feeling that guides a person to act a certain way without fully understanding why.
something that is known or understood without proof or evidence.
Full Definition of INTUITION
1 : quick and ready insight. 2a : immediate apprehension or cognition. 2b : knowledge or conviction gained by intuition. 2c : the power or faculty of attaining to direct knowledge or cognition without evident rational thought and inference.
So we now combine the two words TUITION and IN-TUITION and find an interesting thing occurs. We find that OUR intuition, first and foremost … occurs WITHIN us. It’s a natural cognition - knowledge without evident rational thought. It’s a guiding teacher instructing through intuitive means. And this leads us back to the archaic definition of “custody or guardianship … and Professor.”
This leads me to the point of this writing. The REAL US, driving this machine we call the body, our Source/God/Soul/Spirit is sending us a message from within. This intuitive teacher knows the right answer. It’s that still small voice that gets drowned out by our screaming ego that we need to bring more conscious awareness to it. We need to “pay” (tuition) more attention to our inner guidance system. That “gut feeling” is there for a reason and a purpose.
Just a thought …
~Justin Taylor, ORDM., OCP., DM.
