Discovering and working with your intuition

Editor’s Note: If you want to experiment with tarot cards and don’t have any, we provide a free tarot spread generator using the Celtic Wings spread, which is based on the traditional Celtic Cross spread. This article explains how to use the spread. You can visit Sarah’s website here. –efc

By Sarah Taylor

The only physical tool that you need to bring with you to a tarot reading is a deck of cards. However, it is one of the non-physical tools that you can choose to bring with you that I want to focus on this week: that of intuition.

I’m still not sure that intuition is an essential ingredient of a tarot reading. After all, there are many online reading programs (one of which, above, has been designed specifically for Planet Waves) that use a piece of software to generate a spread — and which I believe work in their own way. The laws of synchronicity still apply — you still get the message that is meant for you — but the allowance for the existence of intuition is limited by the fact that you are essentially being read for by a machine. Heck — who knows? Who’s to say that intuition doesn’t play a part in online readings? That seems to be beyond the scope of this article. But for argument’s sake, I am going to posit two things:

1. Intuition has the potential to play a significantly larger role in a reading when the reader is human.

2. Using intuition effectively can make the difference between a good reading, and a great one.

So now that I’ve harped on about intuition for a couple of paragraphs, just what does it mean? The Oxford English Dictionary has several definitions of intuition — some of which I consider erroneous if not downright contradictory — but the one that stands out most in terms of what I understand intuition to be is:

“Mod. Philos. The immediate apprehension of an object by the mind without the intervention of any reasoning process; a particular act of such apprehension.”

In other words, intuition bypasses the thinking mind and communicates with us without mental analysis. For me, it is the language of the soul, spoken in shadows, smudges and whispers. Of course, how we choose to translate what our intuition is telling us then requires thought, or words; but there is, in essence, a mismatch between the two modes of communication, which requires us to listen carefully and translate in as accurate a way as possible if we are going to make the most of what it’s saying to us.

An effective tarot reading is made up of an interplay — an exchange — between intuition and intellect. Sometimes they work seamlessly with each other; sometimes they work in counterpoint. Neither of these is completely positive or negative; both can create sparks of meaning and insight that would otherwise remain absent from the reading. Intuition is to a tarot reading what ‘chemistry’ is to sex: a certain indefinable quality that leaves you in no doubt as to its presence, and which has the ability to transcend the limits of those involved. It is the absolute knowing that we are in touch with something greater than us.

All well and good. But how do we get there? How do we know what intuition is, and how do we work with it? Most of us are so used to applying our powers of analytical thinking (what to eat in the morning, what route to take to school/work, how to juggle our schedules, what to do to ensure we have food, clothing, shelter) that our intuition has become grossly under-used. Intuition in and of itself is powerful — it is the interference between it and us that causes breakdowns in communication, misunderstandings, misinformation. It is our perception of it (or lack thereof) that causes it seemingly to shrink. Like a weakened tendon that we want to bring back into commission, we need to pay our connection to our intuition more conscious attention than usual. We need to get to know how it works, if we want to improve our game. We also need to be gentle, patient and understanding, so that we can feel when it is coming into play and how well we are relating to it.

To this end, here are three approaches I have found very useful over the years for identifying and getting back in touch with my intuition, and learning how it communicates with me. Each requires varying levels of time and commitment, but all of them will give you a pathway into the world of the language of the soul.

“The Morning Pages”

In The Artist’s Way, author Julia Cameron suggests that if there is one thing you take away with you when you’ve read the book, it is an exercise entitled “The Morning Pages.” On the surface, sitting down first-thing (before you do anything else) to write three pages of whatever comes to mind sounds mindless. And that’s exactly what it is! It is an exercise in clearing the mind — anger, judgements, self-doubt, all the detritus that clogs the free-flow between you and your intuition.

After days, if not weeks, of rage, frustration and boredom penning pages of scrawled drivel, I started to feel something else kick in that didn’t seem to be entirely coming from me. In fact, there were moments where it didn’t feel like it was coming from me at all. It felt centred, entirely aware, and brought me absolutely into the present — the only place that intuition speaks from.

Listening to the heart

Like the gut, the heart’s mode of communication is intuitive and feeling-based. This exercise, from astrologer Robert Ohotto, has helped me to work with the heart more actively, and I tend to use it when I want to discern my truth from my fiction — to find out when I am genuinely hearing the call of the soul, or when I am getting sucked back into my story.

To do this, I sit quietly, and imagine myself dropping out of my mind and down into my heart. This might even be accompanied by a physical sensation of downward movement. When I am there, I bring what it is that I want to ask to my heart and I ask, “How do you feel about that?”

The response is immediate: either an expansion or a contraction; a glowing descent, or a jerking upward (towards the mind); a sometimes gentle, sometimes warmly explosive yes, or a tight, breathless no. Hard to explain, but it is only the direct experience of it that helps you to understand what intuition is, and what it isn’t.

Tarot improv

Finally, pull a card from a tarot deck with which you feel comfortable. (There is little point in challenging yourself to the point of working with a deck that stymies you from the outset.) Then try to suspend intellectual analysis and open yourself to the possibility of entertaining and dancing with the first thing that comes to you — and in whatever form it chooses to arrive.

Imagine this arrival in your reading space as you would an esteemed guest in your home. Open the door and ask it in; offer it shelter; ask it questions; listen to its responses; have a conversation. Don’t censor yourself, even if you feel self-conscious. Most importantly: give it, and yourself, the benefit of the doubt. You might be surprised what you discover about each other.

With all three exercises, trust is a key component. It might be that you first have to open yourself up to the idea of learning to trust what is happening — which is also about learning to trust yourself. This can be challenging, especially when so many of us have been brought up to believe that we cannot trust ourselves or others. It often entails a slow, gentle, forgiving process of recovery. Be patient; be open to making mistakes — while also opening to the wonder of what can happen when you get it right.

Intuition is not the only tool you can bring with your deck to a reading. Readings also benefit greatly from empathy, compassion, sensitivity, tact and detachment, among others. Be that as it may, when you can intuit what is going on behind the scenes, in the spaces between images and ideas, what is being whispered to you from a connection that lies deeper than thought, you have the makings of something eminently valuable.