Despite a comparatively late night, I woke up early this morning, felt very awake and lucid, and thus decided to see the day break – something which I usually do at least once while on vacation, although usually it precedes sleep rather than follows it!
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| Sunrise over Monastiraki |
The sea is perfectly calm - like oil as the Greeks say – and the sun is rising up slowly over the far off mountains on the other side of this little bay on the coastline. Shades of pink and orange emanating like a halo from the hills in a splash of colour that would have pricked the interested of J.M.W. Turner.
The noise of an occasional car and the pump for the swimming pool compete with the early bird song while a small fishing boat glides across the water in the distance.
Peaceful, idyllic and refreshing.
As I come towards the end of my time in Greece – and thus most likely towards the end of the more philosophical pieces of writing - I wanted to devote a little time to the topic of instinct & intuition. Something of a follow-on from my piece on “connections”. (http://osapp.blogspot.com/2011/09/odyssey-journey-to-greece-2011-part-10.html )
These two methods of interpreting the world and making decisions are my two most prized. According to the psychometric tests I am a highly intuitive person, while according to experience I use my instincts more than I use my logic. Logic and reason really often only being used to post-rationalise or justify why we’re going with what I am sure is true / right in the first place. . .
Defined as the ability to acquire knowledge or directly perceive truth without the use of reason, intuition takes up a special place in Jungian psychological theory.
“Jung said that a person in whom intuition was dominant, an "intuitive type", acted not on the basis of rational judgment but on sheer intensity of perception. An extraverted intuitive type, "the natural champion of all minorities with a future", orients to new and promising but unproven possibilities, often leaving to chase after a new possibility before old ventures have borne fruit, oblivious to his or her own welfare in the constant pursuit of change . . . Jung thought that extraverted intuitive types were likely entrepreneurs, speculators, cultural revolutionaries, often undone by a desire to escape every situation before it becomes settled and constraining—even repeatedly leaving lovers for the sake of new romantic possibilities. His introverted intuitive types were likely mystics, prophets, or cranks, struggling with a tension between protecting their visions from influence by others and making their ideas comprehensible and reasonably persuasive to others—a necessity for those visions to bear real fruit.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intuition_(knowledge) )
It struck me that following the topic of my previous piece on “connections”, it may be that the attraction to “random” people is perhaps driven mainly by intuition and instinct.
Intuitive people tend to see patterns in things that rational people do not. Rational people use data, focus on detail and are characterized in psychological terms as “sensing”, and “left brain” compared to the right brain approach of intuitive people.
Following this logic it would seem that rational people would automatically prefer the connections with people that are built on the logic of structure and obvious context – the “institutional” connections I referred to previously. While intuitive people would in fact see the same attractions in what appear to be random people – because they can see something in them that has no basis in - as yet experienced - fact. In other words, there is no empirical evidence to suggest any reason for connection, but yet, there is clear and obvious motivation for the connection for the intuitive person. It makes sense to them. Kismet. It is our destiny to know these people – even though on the surface there appears to be no reason or rhyme.
So in this sense there is really nothing random about the connections that intuitive people make – the connections just appear random when logic and rational thought are applied to understand them.
For intuitive people, the “random” connections are usually with people who actually strike some kind of a chord that is somewhat akin to “memory”. The patterns we perceive in the “random” person are familiar, resonate, and are therefore trustworthy as they align with other patterns that are already familiar to us. We “remember” the random people we meet although we have never met them before.
Most of this seems to happen unconsciously and therefore provides a “high” of excitement as we discover someone we were in fact destined to know from the outset. The only random part is the initial contact that prompts the transmission of the signals (VIA) which the intuitive person can pick up and which the rational person may not – or at least not so easily.
Intuition and instinct in decision making (c.f. “Blink”) is similar. We see a pattern, we recognize it somehow outside the boundaries of logic and rational thought, we align it with patterns we know, and we feel the necessary comfort to make a decision and take a risk. The risk appearing in factual terms to be much larger than we actually feel it – because we have intuited the decision and have already underpinned it with our “knowledge” gained from our intuition.
So when it comes to intuitive people, not only are “random” connections less random than I thought, they are also less “risky” as the intuitive person knows somewhere inside that the risks are in fact much less than they might at first appear to the rational mind.
The use of intuition to determine and decide connections with other intuitive people would also explain the rapidity and intensity with which those connections develop. They can speed ahead in their connection and relationship because many of the normal precursors to forming a connection with someone are already verified, ratified and certified by the intuition of both people.
However, when an intuitive person forms a connection with a rational person, it is less rapid, for while the intuitive person is already sold on the idea, the rational person is still processing factual data to contextualize what the intuitive person has already “seen” and felt.
The note of caution of course comes in the assumptions that intuitive people make which prevent them from even the most cursory verifications once a connection has established.
I have had many relationships / friendships where there is an assumption that everyone is on the “same page” but in fact it isn’t necessarily true. What creates a connection isn’t necessarily what can sustain it. And here both intuitive and rational people have to recognize the need to verify – through listening, attentiveness, questions, and remaining free enough in mindset to adapt to the “reality” of the developing connection. If not, then things can go wrong quite quickly!
Finally, the intuitive people have strong instincts for the “next thing” and as such are often looking to depart quickly from the present to arrive in the future – as such displaying enormous capacity for change, novelty and diversity – to the extent that rational people have difficulty understanding their ability to do this.
While this energy for constant departure and arrival can be very powerful in a positive way, it can also be destructive if unchecked. Sometimes we don’t need to depart to find something new. Sometimes we can stay and find new things where we are or with the people we are with – and that can be equally nourishing and rewarding. But it requires self-discipline and self-awareness – and total honesty with oneself, and usually with others – otherwise we can get into a mess, replace intuition with wishful thinking and generally cause misunderstanding.
So to intuitive people reading his, it probably all makes total sense and is obvious. For rational people, welcome to our world. We’re not crazy, adrenaline junkies with no staying power. We’re just massively curious about the possibilities of life and hungry to understand them. What frightens you or makes you feel uncomfortable, makes us tick, gives us fuel and energy and is necessary for us to sustain life.
But we know that to get along with everyone, we need to slow down, take stock sometimes and understand that what comes naturally to us, does not come naturally to everyone – and more importantly that rational people’s ability to sort fact from fiction, to understand the finer details might be something we can very usefully learn from.
Just the other day I intuited how to use a cooker in my villa when I found out how to make the dial come out of the face of the cooker and turned it to “bake”. Happily a rational person was close by and reminded me that I also had to turn the cooker on, and not just dial the setting . . . our delicious pastourmadopites took a little longer to come to the table that day, but when they did it was a triumph of rational thinking over intuition!
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