This is one of the most grounded explorations of instinct I’ve read in a long time. We romanticize the binary because it makes us feel stable—like we’ve chosen a side that protects us from uncertainty. But real discernment doesn’t flatter the mind or the heart—it demands both be honest. The line about intuition being trained by repetition hit home. Integration is messy, slow, and often thankless… but it’s the only thing that holds up in real life. Beautifully said.
Thanks so much. I really do believe it's all forms of pattern recognition—even if we're "intuiting" some of those patterns... patterns nonetheless. Glad this one resonated with you, thanks for reading.
Thank you for sharing your well-thought-out and heartfelt text. I would add two other variables. One is the locus of control. You located intuition within the person, their gut, which we should also note is comprised of microbiota that are non-human. As humans, we are embodied, and we are embedded in a culture and, of course, in the natural world. In my mind, my intuition arises from that intersection of my internal world and my existence in a reality that is beyond me. I don't think of it as mystical but rather as a manifestation of life forces that operate on a different scale, physically and temporally. Intuition, for me, is the communication between my embodied self and the larger world in which I am embedded. So, in a sense, my intuition is a manifestation of belonging to that world, an attempt to communicate a path or a decision that aligns better with that world. What I do with that communication is entirely up to me. The second variable is trust. Do you trust your intuition? I do. So for me, the rational and irrational modes play significantly different roles. In short, I allow my intuition to provide the direction, and I use my rational mind to draw the map and create the plan. So far, so good. I have a happy life.
Thanks for this thoughtful comment, Brian. I couldn't agree more. I especially loved what you said here "my intuition is a manifestation of belonging to that world." YESS. Trusting what we know (especially based on previous pattern recognition) is crucial. Here's to much more happy living ahead! x
As someone who once wore, "I am a logical person" like a badge of honour, this post articulates perfectly the journey I've been on.
Our gut tells us when we meet someone who's not to be trusted, not out of some mystical sixth sense but from all of the micro-expressions and body language cues that our conscious brain off loads to the unconscious, to the gut. I used to ignore the signs, trusting my "logical" brain over the "mystique". Then I got severely burned, now I always heed its warning signs.
Oof, yes, those are important lessons—especially bc I think those warnings are all rooted in pattern recognition. Even if we might not be making "logical sense" out of something, we have intuited those patterns and can recognize them when they pop up again. And yes, we have to trust them!
Thank you for this insightful piece. As a long-term Buddhist practitioner I’m always interested in how language commits fouls upon our path to enlightenment. Take the phrase “right speech“. Unpack all the judgment in that translation and then try to open your mouth and say anything! For decades, practitioners of the spiritual path in the West have positioned heart and mind as binary and heart and intuition as supposedly the far more pure and right. The “mind” was supposed to be a corporate subsidiary of ambition and ego. And mystic reality was supposed to be so over that.
And yet, if you look a little more closely at the sutras, there is a little-noticed and useful phrase: “discerning mind” buried in there.
This (in your essay, and not the sutras…) particularly spoke to me:
“The purely intuitive-me ignored the fact that my gut is not some pristine oracle whispering eternal truths. It's been shaped by every fear, every trauma, every half-remembered lesson from childhood. Sometimes what feels like wisdom is just anxiety wearing a very convincing disguise.”
thank you for this—deeply appreciate how you brought the discerning mind into the conversation. that nuance is so often lost in the West’s heart-over-mind romanticism. i think we’re all just trying to unlearn the noise without losing the signal. glad the piece resonated with you, Iskra :)
Another superb essay, Stepfanie. Intuition based upon years of experience and knowledge is a very powerful skill. Malcom Gladwell touches on the concept in his book Blink.
He refers to it as "thin-slicing". The ability to make accurate judgements/decisions based upon intuition and limited information.
Gladwell gives an amazing example in the book about the Getty museum acquiring a 6th century BC Greek Statue. After the museum's exhaustive due diligence, they decide to bring in one more seasoned art expert who after the first few seconds of looking at the statue, sensed that it was not authentic. Intuition at full strength.
A marvelous opening of an important part of what it is to be human. I would want to pause, to meditate on this relationship in the light of evolutionary psychology, and the spaces between the lizard brain and the frontal lobe: between structured, language-equipped thought and the wordless that silently drives, protests, husbands our genes, and struggles to tell us what is bothering it.
Yes, I subscribe to the idea that a practical, logical approach to problem solving that uses both logic and intuition. As someone with blindness, I need to put together what I can discern from the available senses and deduce how something appears visually. For instance, listening to someone's voice, I imagine a picture of them that sometimes is strikingly closer to the realty. On Clubhouse platform once, I described someone as having a bulbous nose and that turned to be right. What began as a kind of fun game ended up spooking many. But if the steps you mention here are applied, it is much easier to udnerstand how I got it right.
In aviation: if an aerodynamic stall occurs and the nose sharply drops, a pilot's untrained instinct would be to pull back on the yoke and try to raise the nose. This is very unlikely to have a good outcome. His instinct must be *trained* to let the nose come down to break the stall, and only then recover by adding power and gaining airspeed. But he likely won't have time to think through the aerodynamic factors in real time--hence, the logic must be applied in *training* the instinct, so that the instinctive response will be the safest one.
This is one of the most grounded explorations of instinct I’ve read in a long time. We romanticize the binary because it makes us feel stable—like we’ve chosen a side that protects us from uncertainty. But real discernment doesn’t flatter the mind or the heart—it demands both be honest. The line about intuition being trained by repetition hit home. Integration is messy, slow, and often thankless… but it’s the only thing that holds up in real life. Beautifully said.
Thanks so much. I really do believe it's all forms of pattern recognition—even if we're "intuiting" some of those patterns... patterns nonetheless. Glad this one resonated with you, thanks for reading.
Thank you for sharing your well-thought-out and heartfelt text. I would add two other variables. One is the locus of control. You located intuition within the person, their gut, which we should also note is comprised of microbiota that are non-human. As humans, we are embodied, and we are embedded in a culture and, of course, in the natural world. In my mind, my intuition arises from that intersection of my internal world and my existence in a reality that is beyond me. I don't think of it as mystical but rather as a manifestation of life forces that operate on a different scale, physically and temporally. Intuition, for me, is the communication between my embodied self and the larger world in which I am embedded. So, in a sense, my intuition is a manifestation of belonging to that world, an attempt to communicate a path or a decision that aligns better with that world. What I do with that communication is entirely up to me. The second variable is trust. Do you trust your intuition? I do. So for me, the rational and irrational modes play significantly different roles. In short, I allow my intuition to provide the direction, and I use my rational mind to draw the map and create the plan. So far, so good. I have a happy life.
Thanks for this thoughtful comment, Brian. I couldn't agree more. I especially loved what you said here "my intuition is a manifestation of belonging to that world." YESS. Trusting what we know (especially based on previous pattern recognition) is crucial. Here's to much more happy living ahead! x
As someone who once wore, "I am a logical person" like a badge of honour, this post articulates perfectly the journey I've been on.
Our gut tells us when we meet someone who's not to be trusted, not out of some mystical sixth sense but from all of the micro-expressions and body language cues that our conscious brain off loads to the unconscious, to the gut. I used to ignore the signs, trusting my "logical" brain over the "mystique". Then I got severely burned, now I always heed its warning signs.
Oof, yes, those are important lessons—especially bc I think those warnings are all rooted in pattern recognition. Even if we might not be making "logical sense" out of something, we have intuited those patterns and can recognize them when they pop up again. And yes, we have to trust them!
Thank you for this insightful piece. As a long-term Buddhist practitioner I’m always interested in how language commits fouls upon our path to enlightenment. Take the phrase “right speech“. Unpack all the judgment in that translation and then try to open your mouth and say anything! For decades, practitioners of the spiritual path in the West have positioned heart and mind as binary and heart and intuition as supposedly the far more pure and right. The “mind” was supposed to be a corporate subsidiary of ambition and ego. And mystic reality was supposed to be so over that.
And yet, if you look a little more closely at the sutras, there is a little-noticed and useful phrase: “discerning mind” buried in there.
This (in your essay, and not the sutras…) particularly spoke to me:
“The purely intuitive-me ignored the fact that my gut is not some pristine oracle whispering eternal truths. It's been shaped by every fear, every trauma, every half-remembered lesson from childhood. Sometimes what feels like wisdom is just anxiety wearing a very convincing disguise.”
thank you for this—deeply appreciate how you brought the discerning mind into the conversation. that nuance is so often lost in the West’s heart-over-mind romanticism. i think we’re all just trying to unlearn the noise without losing the signal. glad the piece resonated with you, Iskra :)
Another superb essay, Stepfanie. Intuition based upon years of experience and knowledge is a very powerful skill. Malcom Gladwell touches on the concept in his book Blink.
He refers to it as "thin-slicing". The ability to make accurate judgements/decisions based upon intuition and limited information.
Gladwell gives an amazing example in the book about the Getty museum acquiring a 6th century BC Greek Statue. After the museum's exhaustive due diligence, they decide to bring in one more seasoned art expert who after the first few seconds of looking at the statue, sensed that it was not authentic. Intuition at full strength.
A marvelous opening of an important part of what it is to be human. I would want to pause, to meditate on this relationship in the light of evolutionary psychology, and the spaces between the lizard brain and the frontal lobe: between structured, language-equipped thought and the wordless that silently drives, protests, husbands our genes, and struggles to tell us what is bothering it.
Thank you.
Yes, I subscribe to the idea that a practical, logical approach to problem solving that uses both logic and intuition. As someone with blindness, I need to put together what I can discern from the available senses and deduce how something appears visually. For instance, listening to someone's voice, I imagine a picture of them that sometimes is strikingly closer to the realty. On Clubhouse platform once, I described someone as having a bulbous nose and that turned to be right. What began as a kind of fun game ended up spooking many. But if the steps you mention here are applied, it is much easier to udnerstand how I got it right.
In aviation: if an aerodynamic stall occurs and the nose sharply drops, a pilot's untrained instinct would be to pull back on the yoke and try to raise the nose. This is very unlikely to have a good outcome. His instinct must be *trained* to let the nose come down to break the stall, and only then recover by adding power and gaining airspeed. But he likely won't have time to think through the aerodynamic factors in real time--hence, the logic must be applied in *training* the instinct, so that the instinctive response will be the safest one.