Gut Feelings: Should We Trust Them?

[Idolfan]

Let me give you guys the example that caused me to write this thread. Okay, ever since September I've been keeping getting really strong hunches and nudges. I was responding to a certain thread in the help section (I don't like showing people up, but I need to give an honest context). Soon after I got this sudden feeling that I had just done something intensely wrong. It came from the fuckin void. I spent a couple of minutes retracing my steps, trying to see where this bugger came from, and then I remembered. I know why I'm feeling this! It's because it's about homosexuality. And homosexuality is supposed to be something that's wrong and evil and will have you burn in hell. It's all just a reflection of the paranoia I had last year! The evangelical knobheads put it into my unconscious! Now, let's take this back a few stages. Say, I never sat back and looked at what had triggered it. There are loads of people who reckon you should "Trust your instinct" and "Trust that feeling inside of you". So, if I had taken their advice it could lead me into some kind of homophobia! Now how many people here want to tell me that that was a genuine plea from my spirit guide, or my Daemon, or my higher self, or even more extremely, from God? I think we can all rationally see what the answer is. Don't forget; most well versed Christians would tell me that this is divine conviction by the Holy Spirit! I discovered this to some degree when I realised that I was a bit iffy about listening to heavy metal, but I was not iffy about playing violent computer games or watching violent movies! You know, pretty much all of these 'gut feelings' I have can be traced back to their original theological roots! Sometimes the feelings are so powerful that I doubt whether this is the case, and I'm still thinking that it is some kind of 'Spirit conviction'. In fact I'm doing that right now. So, how do we know that all of the other 'feelings' people have are genuine or wasted? There's always people who 'knew' their relatives were in trouble and saved them just in time. So, how is it possible to distinguish 'real' feeling from 'fake' ones!?

[♥Mark]

Never give up! Trust your instincts!

[Abra]

The way I see it, if we have evolved faculties for analyzing our instincts instead of blindly following them ("faculties" being >80% of your brain), then we should most definitely use them. Aderp. Never give up! Trust your instincts! Best reply yet.

[juroara]

Gut instincts aren't always right......But they aren't always wrong either And we use the word to mean both our instincts, and intuition. Both are communicated to us as emotions. But they are entirely different and stem from different types of consciousness within us Instincts in this case are pre-programmed responses based on past experiences. These responses are experienced as emotions. Such as fear, anger, disgust, desire. They are automatic tendencies created by the subconscious mind, based on the information given to the subconscious mind So these automatic responses are vital to life, it's what allows us to go on auto-pilot and just enjoy ourselves instead. But MOST of these automatic responses have NOTHING to do with survival. MOST of them are created by beliefs held in the subconscious mind. Becuase these emotional responses are sooooo strong and can happen in our intelligent conversations we don't think of them as being pre-programmed.......But they are. It works so much like a machine, if you 'delete' the belief in the subconscious memory base...you delete the response. Now I do believe in the Holy Spirit, however the Holy Spirit will never use NEGATIVE emotions to communicate to you. If there is fear or anger involved, that is a sure sign it is not 'divine conviction', what ever that is. I'm not saying being angry is wrong. But it's important to understand that the anger is coming from your subconscious. Now what about intuition? Intuition is also felt as strong emotions. So we confuse intuition with our emotional and instinctual responses. But intuition is not based on past experiences. There is no trigger for intuition. And even though it's a strong feeling, it doesn't necessarily take over you all of a sudden. It can be an emotion that always sticks with you, that seems to swell and grow. And it's at this point when it swells and grows that you can't ignore this feeling anymore. While traditionally intuition is known as a feeling of 'knowing' something, we don't always feel it this way. Sometimes it feels like tension. Sometimes it feels like our life is falling a part, or we're going crazy. An unsettling feeling. Anxiety. This is what intuition feels like when you can't understand it's message. Most of us think of intuition as a message, and it is a message. Unlike instinct, which is automated response. From where this message is coming from depends on your belief. The best science has to offer us is that intuition is probably your right brain communicating with your left. If the left brain sucessfully understands this emotional and sensory based communciation, it can then translate it into a logical plan of action that you can carry out in your life. Most of us are afraid to listen to our intuition, because it seems it has been wrong in the past before. Well it's important to understand that the message intuition has for you is entirely personal. Don't look to your intuition to confirm whether your beliefs about the world are true. The right brain is NOT concerned with the absolute truth. Only your own truth. Our intuition is never 'wrong'. It's simply communicating what YOU need right now in your life. What YOU need to do, NOW. What YOU need to be, NOW. Now heres the catch......tomorrow you could have different needs. Intuition can't see the future.........It's not concerned with the future, it's concerned with the present. The sooner you understand your intuition, the sooner you should act. And if you're intuition includes some sort of future goal - it's important to understand that only important thing right NOW is that you are actively reaching for this goal. How can you trust your intuition is right? Well, we have many kinds of consciousness to our being. We have what I believe to be a Super consciousness. While most scientists just lump it together with the subconscious, I call it Super becuase of how amazing it is in comparison to just storing data and creating instinctual responses We recieve vasts amounts of information every second. But it's not equally distributed among our types of consciousness. If the amount of information your Super Consciousness recieves is a page...your daily ordinary conscious is less than a dot on a page. . <--- your ordinary conscious It's thousands of times more information than your ordinary consciousness!!!! If your Super Conscious wasn't recieving thousands of times more information per second, we would be dead. Remember those beliefs that were recorded in the subconscious?? Well how did they get there? Your Super Consciousnes isn't just recieving information from your environment and body, but your thoughts as well. It knows the totality of your being more than you could consciously understand. This is how you know you can trust your intuition. It isn't controlling, it's not some god in the sky. It's very much you. But it's the you that knows you. It's the you that knows what you want. And its the you that knows what you need. Sometimes we confuse it with the subconscious mind. The two work closely together and you can meet both in your dreams. But they are strikingly different. By comparison, the subconscious isn't actually you.............The Super conscious is you. The subconscious mind is more animalistic, creating automatic responses. But the Super Conscious will never make you automatically respond to anything. It will persistently communicate to you, nagging louder and louder every time. But it always, always, waits for you to consciously respond. Which is what makes intuition so difficult, because in the end we must decide to act. I'm sorry for the long rant but I feel its important to understand the difference between our emotional instincts and our genuine intuition

[WakataDreamer]

^Listen to this man Although I don't agree with everything he said, I agree with most of it.

[Specialis Sapientia]

^Listen to this woman Although I don't agree with everything she said, I agree with most of it. Fix'd (Omg my first "Fix'd" :O )

[grasshoppa]

Never give up! Trust your instincts! When I read that is was like an audio clip played in my head.

[Idolfan]

I need to read what juroara said. Just so long... but that's a good thing. I really appreciate the fact that you go to insane lengths to explain things! I am going to the coop. Will be back with choccy!!

[The Invisible Man]

There's a reason why we have them, trust them.

[Zhaylin]

I, too, agree with almost everything Juroara said. Excellent read!! (Holy Spirit, I believe, CAN have negative feelings such as anger associated with it. Jesus was filled with Spirit when he drove the merchants out of the temple,for instance) If I have any STRONG immediate reactions, I step back and ask myself "why". It's never failed me. Sometimes it IS a reaction to something I was taught as a child, but other times it has no foreseen "cause" and I pay close attention to those "instincts".

[SkA_DaRk_Che]

Well, i think if you have a gut feeling and you can't rationalize it then i believe that it should be discarded in most cases. Not that thats always possible. I have pretty bad paranoia unfortunately, and they started as gut feelings and hunches.

[Idolfan]

I have pretty bad paranoia unfortunately, and they started as gut feelings and hunches. They came later for me, but I can totally understand where you're coming from. Gut feelings have a massive part to play in paranoia.