Dazzle Gradually
A low-stakes test of intuition
The stakes are remarkably low — but even so, I would encourage you not to cheat.
It was the perfect manifestation of something I’ve been pondering all week.
Namely, whether Intuition — this month’s theme, meditation HERE — is akin to a muscle we can strengthen.
And now, here’s a chance to test it for yourself:
I showed up for last night’s yoga hot class, one of only a few on the schedule with music.
The instructor surprised me by announcing that he was taking a vote on which decade the music would be from: 70s, 80s, or 90s.
Towards the end of this, I’ll reveal the winner, but for now take a moment — or as long as you like — and ask your intuition which decade won.
There’s no cash prize — and the odds are 1 in 3 that you’ll be correct — but why not enjoy the exercise?
Many years ago, I first read about such intuition-strengthening practices from experts like Laura Day.
Day now boasts many celebrity clients — Demi Moore and Nicole Kidman, for example, are cited on her website — and her specialty is training gut instinct through practical methods to guide life, business, and relationship decisions.
For example, my last apartment had two elevator banks and the one before that had three, so you could always amuse yourself trying to guess which one would arrive first.
Still … is guessing which elevator arrives next — or which decade’s playlist more people voted for — really going to help me with meaningful life decisions?
There are many scientific examples of groundbreaking discoveries coming through intuitive means.
For example, in 1869 Dmitri Mendeleev reportedly conceived the arrangement of the periodic table after dreaming of the elements falling into place.
Four years earlier, August Kekulé solved a huge chemistry mystery — the structure of the benzene ring — through another dream.
Before Kekulé, chemists knew benzene’s formula but it made no sense to them.
Benzene should have been a highly unstable, reactive mess, but it was strangely not that at all.
In his dream, Kekulé saw the image of a snake biting its tail.
He realized that the carbon molecules formed a ring instead of a chain, an insight which revolutionized organic chemistry.
Kekulé’s dream became almost the archetypal story of how the unconscious, intuitive mind could solve a scientific problem the conscious mind could not.
Intuitive breakthroughs are not limited to science, however.
By his own account, Paul McCartney woke up one morning with the melody of Yesterday fully formed.
At first, because it arrived so completely, he assumed he must have unconsciously plagiarized it.
He actually spent several weeks asking friends and peers, including producer George Martin, if they recognized the melody.
No one could place it.
It came special delivery from his unconscious.
The lyrics, it’s worth noting, would only come months later.
Amusingly, to remember the melody, McCartney improvised:
“Scrambled eggs,
oh my baby how I love your legs...”
On the flip side, it’s very easy to find examples of disasters where warnings — both practical and intuitive — were ignored.
These range from the Titanic to the Challenger explosion, from Chernobyl to the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.
It’s all too easy to Monday morning quarterback any historical incident.
It’s far more challenging to take responsibility for disasters in our own lives.
When I look back at my own personal train wrecks, if I’m being honest, they almost always involve a failure to listen to my intuition.
Perhaps you can relate?
The most vivid example I can recall was a relationship-defining moment that actually took place on a train.
I can acknowledge the complexity of the situation, but even in the thick of it I knew on a gut level that what was about to happen was definitely not going to end well.
Yes, years later I can apply Nietzsche’s aphorism — “What does not kill me makes me stronger” — with great sincerity.
Even so, I wonder if, had I listened to the intuitive voice — rather than holding it hostage in the attic of my mind — how much smoother the journey might have been.
At the opposite end of the spectrum, last week I also ignored an intuitive prompting — albeit with far less dramatic consequences.
Catering to other deadlines and a little laziness, I ignored an inner nudge to double-check the online pathways for the new Rapid Reinvention course HERE.
Thus, I awoke to a bunch of messages from confused would-be purchasers.
Less mysterious than the benzene ring, it was easy enough to adjust the landing page and email sequence in under an hour, but … lesson learned.
(Once again.)
Trust those inner promptings.
I’d offer that the same advice applies to you as well: if your intuition is suggesting that this 90-minute workshop could help spark the breakthrough you need:
I often think about the first line of this Emily Dickinson poem — “Tell the truth but tell it slant” — but while contemplating the mysteries of intuition, the final lines resonated most with me this week.
Perhaps the reason the voice of intuition seems so soft is because there may be only so much insight we can handle.
Tell all the truth but tell it slant —
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth’s superb surprise
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind —
It’s endlessly interesting how intuition works.
Sometimes, long-standing mysteries are solved with a single image.
More often, though, as with Yesterday,
The process is NOT:
Boom. Finished masterpiece.
Instead, there may be a sudden arrival or insight, followed by doubt and testing, perhaps some further incubation, and then gradual embodiment into finished form.
So is intuition a muscle that we can strengthen … or is it simply a matter of removing our earplugs and listening to the inner voice that’s been trying to advise us all along?
Speaking of which — and before I forget — I’ll share which decade won the yoga student election.
The class began to the strains of Madonna’s “Borderline.”
The 80s had triumphed.
I wonder … did this confirm your intuition?
Or is there a much deeper message you need to listen to instead?
Tell A New Story. Transform Your Life.
Intuition Meditation HERE.
Rapid Reinvention — a short, practical course designed to help you find direction and start moving — HERE.