Some Definitions of Intuition
(copyright by Penney Peirce)

Intuition is direct knowing, or the perception that occurs when mind, body, feeling, and spirit are simultaneously active and integrated while being focused entirely in the present moment. This unification of awareness results in knowing what is real and appropriate in any given situation, with full confidence and trust, without need for proof.

Intuition is knowing what you need to know, just when you need to know it.

Intuition is engaged indifference, a personal relationship with possibilities and the abstract.

Intuition is a result of practicing beginner's mind and radical honesty.

Intuition is an experience of bridging worlds, of healing the painful split between our earthly, mundane selves and our divine, eternal selves.

Intuition is the natural perception of the soul-in-the-body, the mind-in-the-heart. It brings the recognition that our spiritual wisdom is in us now and always has been, and it fills us with light making us light-hearted and enlightened.

Intuition is a state of perceptual aliveness in which we feel intimately connected to all living things and experience the cooperative, cocreative nature of life. When intuition is active, we choose authentically, trust the intelligence that is present in each moment, and find joy and entertainment in the flowing, changing quality of life.

Intuition is perception in which synchronicity is natural and miracles are probable. It cuts through the normal limitations of time and space, brings the answer and question simultaneously, and shows us that all knowledge is available.

Intuition is a cyclical, comprehensive process of knowing life that includes both left-brain analytical thinking and right-brain communion states, and that oscillates between experiencing the world of form, then essence. The intuitive process is also called the process of creativity, self-recovery, evolution, transformation—even enlightenment.

Intuition is knowledge that registers all at once, and appears differently depending on what level of the triune brain is being activated at the moment. At the level of the reptile brain, intuition appears as instinct: attraction-repulsion, expansion-contraction. At the midbrain, intuition appears as sensory input: smell, taste, touch, hearing, vision (dreams, symbols, flashes, vibes, the little voice). In the neocortex, intuition appears as pattern recognition and the ability to grasp complex visions and higher knowledge instantaneously.

Resources for Learning to Develop
and Apply Your Intuitive Abilities

The Intuitive Way: A Guide to Living from Inner Wisdom

The Present Moment: A Daybook of Clarity and Intuition

Other Books and Intuition Resources

Intuition Trainings by Penney Peirce

Experience Intuitive Consulting and Mentoring

Articles on Intuition

InnerViews #3/pdf: When Life Gets Messy and Won't Behave: The Positive Use of Ambiguity, Uncertainty, and Disorder (6/02)

InnerViews #4/pdf: First Cues: Making Friends with Your Reptile Brain (Intuition Magazine 3/98)

InnerViews #5/pdf: The Silent Mind (Intuition Magazine 9/98)

InnerViews #8/pdf: The Big World Is Your Body; It's Conscious, It's Cooperative! (8/02)

InnerViews #9/pdf: From Polarization to Paradox: Eclipsing the Old Dynamics of Struggle (3/03)

InnerViews #11/pdf: Becoming Transparent: Preparing to Live in the Permanent Present Moment (7/03)

InnerViews #12/pdf: Being a Medium for HER Voice (1103)

InnerViews #13/pdf: Beyond Suffering (Summer 1987)

InnerViews #16/pdf: The Art and Entertainment of Life in the Flow (604)

InnerViews #18/pdf: The Time of Waves: Toward an Enlightened Emotional Body (105)

InnerViews #20/pdf: Soul-Crafting: Getting Serious About Who We Want to Be (206)

InnerViews #21/pdf: Forgetting What We Know to Know Anew (406)

Download these free pdfs!

7 Tips for Better Intuition

Maintaining Open Intuition

Working with a Professional Intuitive:
What's Possible to Know?

Intuition Development Exercises
(in random order)

Drop Deeper into Your Body

To expand your sense of the present moment, simply drop your attention out of your "to-do" list, deadline orientation, and the line of running verbal commentary that cycles continuously through your waking brain into one of your senses. Try your sense of smell or touch today. Pretend you're an animal, knowing the world directly through your nose, or through the nerve endings on your skin, or through hearing as far into the distance as you can. Your senses connect you more directly with your body, which is always in the moment. As you attend to what one of your senses is receiving, your mind will slow down automatically, and your intuition will open. Then you can get the truly important and inspired messages. Focus on: My body is trying to tell me something important. What are your body's key concerns today? Hint: The body never says "should"!

Is Your World View Based on Love or Fear?

1. Pay attention to the conversations you have with other people this week. What do you choose to talk about? What do the other people choose to talk about? Which points do you react to? Which ideas do you reinforce during the conversations?

2. Make a list of the themes and core ideas underlying these conversations. How many are love-based? How many fear-based?

3. Rate the following options from 1 (least)-10 (most). Be honest with yourself. How much energy and sense of self do you get from: • Complaining and getting sympathy? • A crisis or emergency? • Being spontaneous? • Learning something totally new? • Criticizing others? • Creating something new from nothing? • Being kind and of service to others? • Refusing to participate? • Being out in nature?

Cultivate Surprises

Write about something or someone who surprised you this week. What was revealed to you about life, or about some hidden aspect of yourself? Then write about how you surprised yourself or someone else. This week, emphasize words like Oh, Wow, Ho-ho-ho, Open, Now, So! Notice how your mind responds to the exclamatory "O" sound.

1. Scan through your recent experience, making a list of any issues that have triggered upsets or discomfort for you. Define the cause of the discomfort as simply as possible. "I'm uncomfortable about having to talk to my sister; about the driver who honked at me; about losing my paycheck."

2. Imagine that the upsetting issue is the skin around a subconscious block. Imagine facing the issue. Begin conversing with it: "You are making me feel. . ." It responds: "I'm really your friend. I'm trying to show you. . ." You say, "Show me the lie I've been buying into. What am I really afraid might happen? Show me how I can see the whole picture." Remember: subconscious blocks want to be understood and set free. They always cooperate and give you the information you need—if you ask.

Clear Your Energy Pathways

1. Imagine your skin is porous and your tissues are transparent. Let every cell, molecule and atom in your body feel cooperative with the rest. Visualize millions of tiny wavelike threads of light coming from every direction, entering your body, each running on a particular pathway, then going out the other side and back into space again. Relax and let yourself feel suspended in this wondrous, safe, loving web of light.

2. In your mind's eye, watch some of the light filaments, and see the waves of energy moving toward you from the highest, farthest reaches of the universe. Let the tiny waves of information enter your body and continue waving on through, imparting their vibration to the surrounding particles. Let the energy/information waves continue out the other side of you, perhaps changed slightly by your own truth. Release the energy once it's left your personal field. The departing energy waves are your loving gifts to the universe.

3. Sit for a while, simply tracing waves of energy, or light, through different parts of your body. Notice any tendency you might have to stop a wave and hold it. What happens when you do? Are there any places in your body where you've stopped waves in the past and jammed up your circuits? Let those waves pass through now and clear any spots that may seem flooded, chaotic or "dead." Simply clear away the logjam and direct the flow along its natural pathway. HINT: You won't know what wisdom the wave has for you until you let it pass all the way through.

Open Some Space

Get quiet and see what you really want to create next in your life. Now ask yourself, How can I create a "hungry void" into which something authentic can come? Make a defined space in your calendar, in your evening, in your file cabinet, on your bookshelves, in your closet, in your journal, and ask for the new and good.

What Are Your Soul Activities?

Spend some time thinking about your “soul activities.” Write about what fascinates you to the point of total involvement. In what activities do you allow yourself to “learn as you go,” to be self-taught? Do you recall the effortless quality of your work at times like these? How work seems like play? How you magically proceed from one step to the next, and everything seems just right? Describe in detail how it feels emotionally and physically to be involved in a soul activity.

Relax Your Masculine Mind

Pretend your brain-mind is a muscle. Tense it and contract it right now, as though it were a fist. Tighten both fists as well and squinch your eyes closed. Make your brain-mind feel hard and tight. Hold it until you feel like shaking. Then suddenly, let it go slack and loose, let your wrists go limp and your eyes drop open. Don’t focus on anything in particular. Shake out your hands. Go blank, go blah. In fact, open your mouth and hang your jaw down, all the while moaning something like “Duhhhh.” Just “hang” for a minute without commenting to yourself. Let your attention be soft.

What Are Your Parents' Organizing Belief Systems?

Write about the world views of your father and mother. For each parent, list the adages that epitomize their world view. You may have actually heard them repeat certain phrases, get upset by particular behaviors in other people, say what they wished for. By looking at what your parents did and didn’t let themselves have and what brought them satisfaction versus upset, determine:
1) the should’s your parents lived by; then

2) what they were unconsciously afraid might happen if the should’s failed to be maintained.

3) Now compose a statement that accurately describes each parent’s basic assumptions about the nature of life.

4) How have their beliefs affected yours?

Transform Your Opinions

1. List five people you have negative opinions about. Bring the person into your awareness. Put your attention on them fully, without the need to make them right or wrong. If your soul were explaining why the person is acting the way he or she is, what would the explanation be?

2. Do the same thing with five situations you have negative opinions about. What’s your soul’s explanation of why things are as they are?

Identify Superconscious Insights

Write about a mystical experience that changed your view of yourself or of life. Perhaps it was a dream, perhaps a fleeting realization taking only a few seconds of “real time” but having a timeless feeling. These experiences often give you an experience of profound love, a sense that there is a divine order to things. It may just as easily have been an ordinary experience of seeing “to the heart” of something. This is what the superconscious feels and acts like.

Mine Your Subconscious for Stuck Places

In your journal to make an ongoing list pertaining to your subconscious blocks. Start by listing, as rapidly as you can, things you have a morbid curiosity about or can’t stand seeing or thinking about. Then, list things that make you blindly enraged or severely irritated. Cut out images from magazines that trigger odd feelings of attraction and repulsion and paste them in this section of your journal. Let the words and images trigger associations from your past and present experience. Write about the connections.

Cleaning the Energy in a Room

Have you ever had to spend time in a space that felt alien, dirty, unconscious, abused or in some way negative? Have you ever walked into your own living room the morning after a party and still felt all the people’s “energy residue” there? Or moved into a house where the previous tenant had been sick or died? Here’s what you can do:

1. Open a window or door, if possible, and burn some aromatic, purifying herb like sage, cedar or frankincense. Or, spray or vaporize aromatic essential oils, like rosemary, eucalyptus, lemon or pine. As you do this, hold the intention in your mind that energies incompatible with your own highest good will disperse.

2. Sit down in the room. Close your eyes and get centered. Visualize a column of diamond light coming up from the center of the earth, directly below the room, and see it rise slowly through the floor. As it inches its way up through the room, let all the shadows and murky energy be absorbed and turned into sparkling light.

3. Wash the room with diamond light, every corner, every molecule. Let the air become purified by imagining fresh breezes blowing through from the ocean or the mountains. Imagine the sound of a hundred windchimes tinkling. The space is now conducive to your own highest good, and highest creativity.

A Hymn of Thanksgiving

In your journal, make a gratitude list, write a poem or a letter to the Earth, the Universe or to the Creator, expressing your gratitude for your life. Include details from your observations of your body, your environment, what amuses you, what you find beautiful and amazing. Write from your feminine mind.

Cultivate Mindfulness

Pick a small, mundane task: scrubbing your teeth, washing a pot, sweeping the sidewalk, booting up your computer, writing a check. Before you begin the task, pause and talk to your body and soul, “We are going to get this pot clean now.” Then, “We are picking up the pot now; we are turning on the hot water now; we are getting the pot scrubber soapy now; we are holding the pot with our left hand and making scrubbing motions with our right hand; Ah, look! The pot is shiny now right here!; Now we are getting this last dark spot off the pot; now the pot is perfectly clean; now we are rinsing it; now we are putting it on the dishrack to dry; now we are finished cleaning the pot.” Feel every step, noticing how much your body, in its childlike simplicity, enjoys each part of the process. Thich Nhat Hanh says, “Washing the dishes is like bathing a baby Buddha.”

Impeccability

Write about the people and areas of your life you tend to ignore, to gloss over, to go unconscious about. How could you improve your impeccability in these areas or with these people?

Make a Holy Sound

Close your eyes. Bring your attention into the geometric center of your head. Become aware of your breath. Take a slow, long inhale and gather your energy inside your skin. As you exhale, drop your jaw and slowly, evenly, loudly, from your chest and belly, make the sound: AAHHHHHH. Hold it the entire length of your exhale. Let it fade gradually. Close your mouth and inhale. Exhale again, mouth open, this time creating the perfectly rounded sound: OOHHHHHH. Make it full, loud, with the inside of your mouth shaped to perfect roundness, and the opening of your lips shaped in a perfect O. Draw in another breath. Exhale and create the long, smooth U-sound: OOOOO. Narrow your lips to a tiny perfect, puckered opening. Make the sound last as long as you can. Draw in one more breath. This time on the exhale, close your mouth, let your teeth come together, your tongue get fat and fill up your whole mouth cavity. Make the rich, earthy sound MMMMMMM, letting it vibrate evenly through your bones, teeth, nose, tongue and lips.
Do the whole sequence slowly several times. Then, inhale and collect yourself. Exhale and blend all four sounds together, letting them flow into each other. AAHHHHHH--OOHHHHHH--OOOOOOO--MMMMMMM. . . Start with your mouth wide open, then let it close a bit and become round, then narrow to a tiny roundness, then close altogether and take the sound down into your body. Repeat slowly again and again, noticing where each sound resonates in your body. Let the mantra dissolve gradually into silence as it’s ready.

Watch Your Own Eyes

Sit comfortably in front of a mirror, eyes open, good lighting. Relax the muscles around your eyes and in your face. Focus your attention in the center of your head. Watch your eyes in the mirror. Keep your attention focused on the energy coming out of the eyes. Hold the intention to understand (not verbally define): Who am i? Let the energy of the eyes in the mirror come into you. Keep opening and receiving. Keep your attention on the eyes. Watch for 5 minutes, then try 10 minutes.

Balance Your Three Brains

1. Get quiet, close your eyes and bring your attention inside your skin. As you breathe in, imagine energy flowing up your spine, through the back of your neck, into your brainstem, and filling the reptile brain with warm (perhaps red or pink) light. Relax the area where your head and neck join. Let the warm light build and swell gently like a fruit becoming ripe. Let the light educate and heal that part of your brain, relaxing and opening it. As the light expands, let it gently lift off like a balloon, moving upward and outward, filling the midbrain.

2. Concentrate your attention on the clear bright center point of your midbrain. Out of that center pours golden light. Visualize the pink light from the reptile brain gradually turning shiny gold as it merges into and circulates around the midbrain. Let the light educate, heal and relax the second brain, opening it. See the golden light expand outward and upward, rising into the upper brain, the neocortex.

3. Concentrate your attention now at the top of your head. Watch the golden light from the midbrain rise and turn into a clear electric blue light. Feel your uppermost brain vibrating with energy and knowledge, and let the blue light educate and heal the tissues, circuitry and neurotransmitters there.

4. Allow the blue light to cascade downward and gradually merge through your entire brain, dissolving into a transparent glossy diamond light and radiating outward, beyond the head, like a halo. Sit for a while like this. Imagine thqt the data from the lower brains is uploading to the neocortex and the understanding of the upper brain is downloading to the two brains below. Let the exchanges take place easily and naturally.

Develop Your Attention Span

1. Think about what you did yesterday. List the activities you concentrated on for the longest time to the shortest time, in descending order. How long did you hold your attention on activity #1? Activity #2? Activity #3? etc.

2. Think about what breaks your attention span. Is it a stimulus from the outside, like the telephone, or your children wanting attention? Make a list of the most common external stimuli you blame for interrupting you. Or is it a force inside you, like an unnamed restlessness that makes you get up and go to the refrigerator looking for a snack? Make a list of your favorite ways to distract and interrupt yourself.

3. Visualize a situation in which you were concentrating, where you have distracted yourself recently. Just before you interrupted yourself, what did your body feel like? Is there a realization or an experience just under the surface that you’re avoiding? Can you remember what triggered your desire to distract yourself? What would you discover if you continued to pay attention?

Dialogue with Your Organs

1. Get quiet and with your journal, pay attention to your body, inside. Which of your organs seems to draw your attention? Perhaps you feel a throbbing in the area of your kidneys, or sense that your lungs are giving off a greenish light. Whichever organ catches your attention, drop your roving eye down into the organ’s territory and surround it with an aura of your full and loving attention.

2. Notice the energy state of the organ. Is it tense, hyper, sleepy? What emotional tones can you feel? Does it seem pressured, scared, wistful, lonely?
3. Ask the organ,”What do you need to tell me that I haven’t been hearing?” “What are you the most worried about?” “What do you know about the current situation I’m dealing with?” Let the organ talk to you. When it seems complete, thank this part of you and ask it how you will know when it needs to talk to you again.

Affirm Your True Identity

1. From your quiet, centered place, say: “I, [name], am . . . infinite kindness.” As you say it, pronounce each word and feel what it means. Let it be true. Continue: “I, (name), am . . . infinite wisdom. I am . . . infinite courage. I am . . . infinite energy. I am . . . infinite beauty. I am . . . infinite strength. I am . . . infinite patience. I am . . . infinite creativity.” Keep on going, thinking of divine qualities to associate with and become. Reown it all as truth.

2. Write an affirmation of your true nature and your deepest intent in life, as though you were applying for a job with God. As you write each description, each specific statement, make sure you know it to be true. If you don’t believe it, don’t write it down. Now: wouldn’t you love to hire you?

Write a Prayer

Write a prayer to your own favorite spiritual figure or divine source. Make it personal and meaningful. Ask for what you want the most, and say what you want to give. Tell what you’re grateful for and what your intentions are.

What's the Message?

Imagine that:
1. You have one of those days where every errand has to be done twice, everything you buy has to be returned, and most people either don't notice you or misunderstand what you're saying. Stop. Feel and describe what's happening in your body. What emotions are lurking below the surface? What's the message?

2. Your lottery ticket wins you a fair-sized amount of money. Stop. Feel and describe what's happening in your body. What emotions are lurking below the surface? What's the message in the day's event?

3. You trip and sprain your right ankle, then later in the week come down with a head cold. Your eyes are watering badly, and everything feels swollen and sore. Stop. Feel and describe what's happening in your body. What emotions are lurking below the surface? What's the message in the week’s events?

4. You leave your wallet at the pay phone, go back to your table at the restaurant, and when you rush back to find it, your money, ID and credit cards have already been stolen. Stop. Feel and describe what's happening in your body. What emotions are lurking below the surface? What’s the message?

Identify Your Personal Symbols

1. Make a list of your positive character traits, the things you like about yourself. These traits should describe both the way you do things and the way you are inside. Next to the words and phrases, list images that represent those characteristics. For example, for FREE you might list HORSE, EAGLE, WIND; for INDUSTRIOUS you might list ANT, BEE, BEAVER, HAMMER.

2. Pick the traits you want to use to represent yourself to the business world. How do you want to feel when you're "out there"? What do you want others to notice about you? Design a logo for yourself.

3. Pick the traits you want to use to represent yourself to your mate or a potential soulmate. Design a logo for yourself.

4. Design a meditation symbol or mandala to help you focus on your essence.

Meet a Being from the Superconscious Realms

1. Imagine that you are out camping in the desert, under a bright full moon. Feel your desire to get help with a pressing problem. Or maybe you’re hungry for higher teachings. Ask the Source to send you an appropriate teacher or guide from the superconscious realms.

2. Let the entity appear in front of you. Before any words are exchanged, let your body receive the full experience of their energy. Do you feel comfortable? You may set the parameters of how the other being can interact with you. Make sure you feel safe and receptive.

3. Let a dialogue occur, beginning perhaps with introductions. Receive the message, guidance or teachings that the being has for you today. When you feel complete, thank the entity and offer a gift—your imagination will know what to give. Come back and write it all down.

Pick Up Impressions

1. Make a list of 5 people you know well but haven't seen for awhile. Then quickly list three things you feel about each one's body or state of mind.

2. For each of those 5 people, next pretend that you are looking out from inside them, through their eyes. List 3 things you see.

3. Now pretend you are inside each person and thinking their thoughts. List 3 things they are preoccupied with, issues they'd like help with.

Work with the Four Elements (with a partner)

Close your eyes and imagine your partner's energy filling the space in front of you. Out of that field of energy will come the images you need.

1. First you'll look at the way your partner relates to and uses the earth element in life. Imagine a tunnel or hole in the ground. It can be large or small. Allow a being to emerge from the opening—this is the guardian of the earth element, and it will take you safely back into its realm to educate you about what your partner needs to know about being physical, manifesting, being safe, grounded and financially secure. As you get the information, describe it to your partner. Then clear away the earth imagery.

2. Second, look at how your partner relates to and uses the water element. Imagine a body of water—a lake, river or ocean. Allow the guardian of the water element to come up to greet you, then let it take you safely into its world, to educate you about what your partner needs to know about dealing with emotions, being more fluid, intuitive, feminine or receptive. Share what you get. Clear away the water imagery.

3. Third, look at how your partner relates to and uses the fire element in life. Imagine a huge bonfire and allow the guardian of the fire element to come out to greet you, then take you safely into its realm, to educate you about what your partner needs to know about creative passion, purification, elimination, transformation and letting go. Share your insights. Clear away the fire imagery.

4. Finally, look at how your partner relates to and uses the air element. Imagine floating high in the sky, being blown through clouds by the winds. As you move, allow the guardian of the air element to emerge and greet you, then take you into a safe experience of its kingdom, educating you about what your partner needs to know about communication, inspiration, mental skills, adaptability and lightheartedness. Share your insights, then clear away the air imagery.

Come back to normal reality, open your eyes and discuss the information with your partner. What does it mean? What are the key pieces of advice?

Find Your Hidden Communication Agendas

1. This week, hold the intention to notice your negative communication and the underlying reasons for it. Pay attention to the negative obsessing that goes on inside your mind, your negative external comments and the negative self-talk directed by your critical mind at some aspect of yourself. What could cause you to want to damage another person? Are you jealous? Hurt? Why'd you give your power away? What can't you accept? If the other person were sitting with you, hearing you speak, how would they feel? And what might they say to you if they spoke from their heart? Why can't you accept the part of your own self you are criticizing? Could you praise it instead?

2. Do a ruthless examination of the motives behind everything you say this week. To what extent does insecurity prompt you? Do you need attention, to feel accepted or right? If you succeed in each communication, what might you gain by it? Might you be talking to maintain control? Make a practice of "If you can't say something positive, from a clear motivation, don't say anything."

Be Entirely Transparent and Honest

1. Make a list of all the things about yourself that you're afraid to have "the public" find out about. Imagine that everyone already knows about each of the items on your list and accepts you anyway. Integrate the way that feels. Let yourself be the composite of everything you've ever done—for better or worse. In your own mind, simply let yourself show up for who you are.

2. Make a list of the things you feel you have natural authority about. When you talk about these subjects this week, relax your will; let the pictures in your aura help you communicate.

3. This week when you speak about something you don't feel you have authority in, make a point of prefacing your comments with a short statement of truth, "I'm interested in this and I don't know a lot about it yet, but here are my ideas. . ."

Send a Telepathic Message

1. Close your eyes and get centered. Imagine stepping out of your physical body in your energy body. As you step away from your resting physical body, you are in the etheric realm where energy and knowledge travel faster.

2. Think of a person you want to send a message to. You must feel convinced about communicating with them. Visualize the person in as much detail as you can and call their name: "Michael, I call upon you to become aware of me now." See them appear in their energy body in front of you. Make eye contact.

3. Form the thought clearly in your mind. Walk up to them and speak the message into their left ear, calmly and directly. Then ask the person, "Did you hear and understand what I said?"

4. Thank the person and imagine both of you going back to your physical bodies and reconnecting with your normal reality. Make a note later on of any response you get in your waking reality or in the dream world.

Develop Patience

1. Make a list of 5 things you were impatient about this week, areas of your life where you wanted instant results. How could you transform each frustrating experience so it offers you greater depth? What might you learn from each thing if you gave it more time and attention?

2. List 5 times this week when someone was impatient with you. If they had taken more time with you, what might they have learned? What benefit did they not receive from you?

Identify Your "I'D BE BETTER IF" Beliefs. . .

1. For each statement list 5 answers that you got by comparing yourself to someone else:
• I'd be more attractive if ___________.
• I'd have more friends if ___________.
• I'd make more money if ___________.
• I'd be happier if ___________.

2. List one answer for each statement that originates from your soul.

Eliminate Excuses and Double Standards

1. Where in your life do you hear yourself saying, "Yes, but. . ."? Make a list of 5 excuses you made to yourself this week to avoid doing something. What were you avoiding? How did you rationalize it to yourself? If you hadn't made an excuse and had done each thing, what would you have had to face? What would you have learned?

2. List 5 areas where you have double standards about your behavior. Do you meditate but drink too much alcohol? Do you work out aggressively but avoid returning phone calls? Why do you hold these expectations? How could you even out these areas of your life and what might you learn?

Balance Your Ability to Give and Receive

1. Write about a time when you gave too much to someone else; describe their reaction and yours. Why didn't it work? Now write about a time when someone else gave too much to you; describe your physical and emotional reactions. Why didn't it work?

2. Write about a time when someone else gave you too little, or gave something that didn't meet your needs; describe your physical and emotional reactions. Why didn't it work? Now write about a time you gave someone else too little, or gave something that didn't meet their needs; describe your reactions. Why didn't it work?

Be Clear About Who and What You're Not

Think about your life and get very clear about where you are wasting your energy and time. List three answers for each of the following statements, and be sure you mean what you say:
1. I don't want to be __________ anymore. Instead I intend to be __________.
2. I don't want to feel __________ anymore. Instead I intend to feel __________.
3. I don't want to do __________ anymore. Instead I intend to do __________.
4. I don't want to create _________ anymore. Instead I intend to create _______.

Know Your Primal Emotions

Describe three times in your life when you touched into the primal emotions at the bottom of the subconscious mind. Did you feel terror? Rage? Hatred? Grief? Write about the experiences in your journal, in detail. What was the trigger experience? What conclusions did you draw? Describe the deepest beliefs you hold about the nature of life, the physical plane, good and evil, suffering. "I believe ________". Where might you be hung up in illusion concerning all this?

(All exercises are excerpted from The Intuitive Way and are copyrighted.)