On October 9, 1903, the New York Times published a frontpage editorial stating it would take “one to ten million years for humanity to develop an operating flying machine”. Sixty-nine days later, the Wright brothers flew for four miles at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.
The future is one of the great unknowns. Logic takes what we already know and projects it onto what we don’t know. Because other attempts at flying had failed, the leader writer was simply drawing on existing knowledge to predict the future.
Intuition is image-based rather than language-based. To think intuitively we must loosen the hold of logic on our thinking and allow our intuitive mind some freedom to express itself. This form of ‘seeing’ is very different from rational thinking.
We spend little time attending to our intuitive mind. That is why intuition can be unreliable. It is easy to mistake genuine insight for illusion or emotional prejudice. Like any other ability, we can improve our intuition through attention and practice.
I am in the process of setting up Intuition Workshops here in Bath. For those who are interested in learning about intuition and its methods, the workshops may be of interest. The link below provides more details:
(Graphic: Echte Wagner card collection, 1930, artist unknown)