I
feel that since the moment we became tiny beings newly earth-side,
we’ve been taught not to trust ourselves. Not to believe that inner
voice that is the true connection to our self. I’ve seen it – and
lived it – many times over. A well meaning parent (myself included)
will redirect a child: don’t do that you’ll fall; don’t run
you’ll trip; put that down there could be a spider in there… of
course these warnings are given not with the intent to harm but
rather the opposite and often out of love. However, recently I’ve
come to wonder what the ongoing impact of these well intended yet
undermining words have had on our long term wellness? By wellness I
refer to our all-encompassing wellness: mind, body and spirit. What
impact has the undermining of our natural curiosities had on our
abilities to trust in our own knowledge and thoughts?
Let
me step back and dissect this for a moment… How is it that we come
to possess our knowledge: how is it that we come to know what it is
that we know?
It
was back in 2004 when undertaking my first ever postgraduate study
that the theory of knowledge came across my path. I was required to
write an essay on Carper’s (1978) ways of knowing in nursing vs
intuiting knowledge. Oh, if I could find that essay now, this post
would be done! That was the first High Distinction grade I’d ever
received for a written assignment and the first time that I actually
understood the reasoning behind the theory… I just got it. I will
admit, sometimes my mind sees more (and faster) than I can put into
language, but I found myself fascinated with the concept of having
different ways of knowing stuff; and the concept of intuiting this
knowledge. You see, I decided that instead of arguing that we either
drew from our knowledge or used our intuition when making decisions,
that they were actually one and the same. Bear with me.
Looking
around the vast array of information on knowledge theory readily
available on the web I can see that Ms Carper’s “Ways of Knowing
in Nursing” is not far from current philosophical schools of
thought on the origins of knowledge; although many sources have
broken the concepts down further into eight ways rather than four. To
make it easier, and because it is familiar to me, I will use Carper’s
four ways of knowing (Empirical, Personal, Ethical, and Aesthetic)
here and relate it as best I can to broader life.
Empirical
knowledge refers to the things we know which are factual – they can
be verified. Often scientifically, and always faultlessly. We know
we need food to eat. We know
we need to sleep to be well. We
know the grass is
green, the water is wet, that there is night and there is day. Our
personal knowledge comes
from our own understanding of what is; our core values; our own
experiences; and to some degree our ability to experience empathy.
Ethical knowledge comes from our own intrinsic
value systems and understanding of morality. And aesthetic knowledge
is what we can see, hear, feel or
touch in the entirety
of the current moment or
situation: what is the here
and now?
All
of these four things make up the ways in
which we know all of the
things we know. Some things
are instinctual – a newborn babe knows the feeling of hunger and
that the breast will satisfy them. The rest we gather throughout our
life journey. We unconsciously file this knowledge away for when we
might need it.
But
what is that feeling we get? That inner voice or that sense that
something is right or wrong? What is it that tells a mother that her
child is in trouble before the cry is heard? What is it that tells us
to leave a dangerous situation, before the danger is even evident?
What is that yearning? I’m sure you’ve felt it. The longing for
change, for something different. Travellers call it the wanderlust.
Some people experience it when they need
to be by the sea, the bush, the city or the country. That feeling we
sometimes get about an acquaintance where you just know
something is not quite right
with the interaction.
Most people call it Intuition.
I
think it is fair to say that the
general definition
of intuition is
knowledge that appears in our consciousness without being able to pin
point the reasons for it being there. We are not consciously aware of
the empirical, personal,
ethical,
or
aesthetic
reasoning behind an intuitive
thought. Intuitive thought could be described as instinctual, like
breathing, eating, drinking, seeking shelter. Believe it or not,
humans are born as inherently
instinctual as most of
the animal world – in my work as a midwife I
have seen women who are labouring
undisturbed reach deep into
their inner being and birth with instinctively
driven, raw and primitive behaviours. I
have seen
fresh born babes crawl toward their mothers breast displaying rooting
behaviours,
searching tirelessly for the nipple and the first quench of their
thirst. These
are
not learned behaviours.
These are instinctive
behaviours. Drawing
from
my empirical and aesthetic knowledge of
our ability as a species to act on instinctive behaviours,
I know that we as
human beings are capable of acting
on the knowledge we intuit.
Is intuition not then a part of our instinctual behaviour?
I
know people who call this inner voice God. Some feel it is spiritual.
The semantics don’t matter: I
personally think
intuition comes from our inherit knowledge. I think it is our inner
self, our intelligence
working for us, drawing from all the things we have come to know over
the years: guiding us by our knowledge.
Innate knowledge, God, a spiritual connection: by whichever name
you’d like to call it, why
do we so often dismiss instinctive
intuitive thought?
If
our inherit knowledge comes from empirical, personal, ethical and
aesthetic ways of knowing… it is reasonable then
that I suggest that these
ways of knowing work together on a subconscious level to inform our
intuition, a form of instinctual thought processing. In this way it
feels
like we just know… we don’t know why we know, we aren't aware of which
way of knowing has informed our intuitive thoughts, our mind is
working in the back ground using the network
of things we know to react
instinctively, sending us
protective intuitive thoughts. Yet we so often ignore our
intuitive thought,
our
gut, our hearts.
Why?
Think back to the first paragraph…
how many times as children were we told not to trust our instinctual
curiosity because it was unsafe? How often was the urge to run, jump,
play with rocks, sticks, in the long grass, or with fire stamped out
of us, and dismissed as dangerous? Is this the way we unlearn our
instinct to trust our intuition? In this scientific world where
proof in the onus on all, perhaps we have lost faith in our intuitive
selves?
You
must know what I mean… how many times has something not turned out
how you wanted and you’ve said to yourself “I knew that would
happen”. How many times have you had a “bad” feeling about
something and did it anyway and then regretted it? How many times did
you know you should speak up, did not, and then regretted it later?
For
me, so many times. All of the times. Over and over again. And each
time I say to myself: “I knew it, and I didn't listen”.
So the next part of my journey toward
authenticity is finding the skills to relearn how to trust myself as
I tune back into my intuitive side. Surrendering to the journey. Some
of you may may call this prayer. Some of you may call it meditation.
Some of you may simply call it thinking… I’m not going to impose
any particular belief system on you. I think these are simply
different terms for the same thing: loving ourselves, trusting that
we know and living authentic lives. Because if we don’t learn and
grow from our knowledge, what is the point of it?
Reading list if you feel so inclined…
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