Faith and Intuition

Two years ago actress Gabrielle Union, in an interview with Oprah, spoke about the day she had been raped. She was 19 years old at the time and was working at a shoe store. One evening, around closing time, a man came into the store. “Within seconds, Gabrielle says she knew something was wrong…but she stayed silent. ‘As women, we're raised to be polite and you don't want anybody to feel bad…but my body, my instinct, everything in my being was saying, 'Run. Just run out of the store,' she says. Moments later, the man had her co-worker at gunpoint.” He later raped Gabrielle.

“In her well research and documented book, Psi Trek, sociologist Laile Bartlett gives a number of examples of how intuition has saved lives. She tells the story, for example, of a nineteen year old girl, Elaine, getting ready to board a bus for an important trip. Suddenly Elaine had an overwhelming urge to visit her mother instead. She switched buses and headed in the opposite direction, toward her parents’ furniture store. All the way on the trip she found herself anxious to get there. When she arrived, she found her parents sitting in some chairs near the store’s front window. She felt silly about her bizarre feeling of apprehension. Yet she managed to convince her surprised parents to leave the store to get some lunch with her. As they left through the back of the store, a car crashed through the front window, demolishing the chairs where her parents had been sitting.”
-An excerpt from Henry Reed’s book entitled Edgar Cayce on Channeling Your Higher Self

Jennifer Baltz writes in an article about intuition of a woman she met while on board a flight to Phoenix. She was having a conversation with this woman who was a former flight attendant. This woman told her that, “she had been on an international run for many months, traveling from San Francisco in a loop with overnight stopovers in several destinations, then back to San Francisco again. One night at one of the stopovers, she became sick to her stomach and decided that she wasn't up to continuing on the flight the next morning. In fact, she decided that she was going to quit flying, period--which she had been thinking about doing for some months. Her crewmates continued on without her, and the plane crashed--killing everyone on board.”

What do all of these stories have in common? All of the people in these stories experienced an intense feeling that was urging them to act in a way which, at the moment of their having the feeling, probably seemed to defy reason. The flight attendant in Jennifer’s story had felt the sensation so acutely that she literally became sick to her stomach which resulted in her not boarding the flight of a fatal plane crash. The woman Laile Bartlett spoke of felt so unnerved by the intensity of the feeling she felt that she was willing to overlook both her embarrassment and logical assessment of the situation that was probably telling her that she was simply letting her imagination run away with her. And because this woman was willing to set logic aside and follow her intuition, she saved the lives of her parents. Gabrielle Union chose to dismiss the intense feeling she felt in favor of heeding to a value that she had been taught since childhood – that it’s not polite for young ladies to be rude. The result was a personal tragedy.

Many of us, all too often, make the same mistake Gabrielle did. Most of the time this failure to act on a feeling (which at the time seems in opposition to reason) doesn’t lead to such dramatically tragic ends, but some degree of adversity is always the result. We too often choose to be led, first and foremost, by reason. In doing this we effectively deny the value of faith - faith being knowing without reason. “For faith is not a product of reason; faith is the (very) foundation of reason (faith transcends reason)…Reason always falls into place behind faith,” - Divine Heritage. With faith, the why always comes after the what. And if we didn’t so frequently insist on knowing the why of everything first we could probably prevent ourselves from introducing an enormous amount of unnecessary complication into our lives. If we didn’t so concern ourselves with how foolish our actions might appear in the eyes of others if it does indeed turn out that our feeling is in err, then we would probably act on our faith all the time. If you learn not to stress yourself about how you might appear in the eyes of others and choose to act on faith you will find that “miracles” do occur everyday (not just in the world in general, but directly to you specifically). If you learn not to rely on reason to substantiate your feelings, you will come to know that there is indeed a wise Something that is not only watching over you, but is constantly offering you guidance (if you would only choose to heed it).

Things don’t have to make immediate sense. This is faith. It’s okay if the wisdom of an action follows the actual action. This too is faith. Be careful, however, not to confound the idea of faith with the notion of wishful thinking. There is a world of difference in pursuing a certain course of action (even though it may fly in the face of any reasonable justification which you may be presently aware of) because you are desperately wanting something to be true; and pursuing a certain course of action (even though it may fly in the face of any reasonable justification which you may be presently aware of) just because… When you have a vested interest in the outcome of your actions, you are not acting out of faith; you are acting out of hope. Not that there is anything wrong with hope (without hope we would be all incurable pessimists) – but hope and faith are not synonymous expressions.

Learn to have confidence in this light that guides you and you will be a follower of faith.