GUT INSTINCT
Mindful, carefully considered and applied thought processes, help us to make sense of the world around us. Conscious decisions based on sound judgment and reasoning will steer us on the right path in life. But deep thinking can be time-consuming, and energy-depleting and potentially even take us away from where our true desires intend us to go.
Before the mind's synapses get too heavily burdened with complex thought processes, take a moment to listen to that inner voice. Our intuitive brain understands our needs and desires the best of all. Registering that sensation, felt in the solar plexus area, can be helpful for quickly answering a life conundrum and provide us with the necessary early warning signals for making snap decisions when it really counts.
Reactive decisions can often be right. Gut feelings can steer us on the right path or divert away from danger, but because it's closely connected to our emotive state, it can also get us to make poor decisions. We should learn how and when to trust this pre-thought 'gut instinct' over the more complex thought systems if we are to avoid bad outcomes for more favourable situations.
Fast And Slow Brain
Our minds operate in both fast and slow modes. The fast mode references pre-learned or 'known' experiences in order to make quick decisions and the slower mode uses a process of reasoning with calculations to assess situations in greater 'depth'. The slower mind is mostly what we term the conscious brain. Our subconscious handles a lot of the autonomous processes we are mostly unaware of. When reading the environment and dealing with every motion taken throughout the day, the subconscious recall process accesses both implicit (learned) and explicit (sensed) memory.
The sensors on our body are primed for operation when we're awake (and some when we are asleep) Our entire body is covered in proprioceptors – sensors for pressure and temperature connected to our skin, hair, stabilisers within our ears for balance and in various safety sensors in our muscles to avoid injury.
There's a lot of information continually being processed, even when our conscious brain is engaged in other tasks. Our senses are on the alert for danger in ways we cannot fully understand. Our peripheral vision, for example, is working while we read this text. Depending on our level of general awareness, we may 'feel' that we're being watched or know instinctively when a person is approaching. We may already know if there's any danger. This is what we experience as hairs on the back of the neck or prickling of the ears.
Sixth Sense
How do we 'sense' when someone is looking at us from behind? Can this be put down to reflections, peripheral vision or something else? Our eyes give us away from a distance and the angle of the head and body of a stranger, when looking at us, can be picked up by our peripheral vision – but everyone must have experienced that moment when someone is watching from behind and we 'feel' their gaze. Fighter pilots were encouraged not to look upon the enemy pilots during a surprise attack, as there were clear instances when the other person would somehow 'sense' the approaching danger and change course. There are many studies been made into ESP and the paranormal and there's no clear evidence to suggest it actually exists. However, we should all recognise that a strange kind of inner knowledge does exist – an intuitive mind, which can and does make good decisions, when the seemingly rational mind comes to the wrong conclusions. Learn to trust it!
