It has been said that men and women start to become great when they begin to listen to their inner voices. Your intuition is your direct connection with infinite intelligence. Intuition is so powerful that the greatest men and women of history have written and studied it for thousands of years. When you begin to use it regularly and systematically, there is virtually nothing that you can’t accomplish.
Intuition has often been called the “still small voice” within your mind. You may experience intuition as a gut feeling, as an inner sense of what is right or wrong for you. Sometimes, intuition manifests itself as a hunch or an inspiration. Often, it comes as a flash of insight. Intuition leads you to new ideas, concepts and breakthroughs. Sometimes, an intuitive flash will enable you to see a situation completely different, and solve it on a completely different level. Einstein was referring to intuition when he said, “No problem can be solved on the same level at which you meet it.”
In breakthrough thinking, we are taught to redefine a problem and take it to a higher level to find its solution. Since you’re likely to continue on your current path with the same behavior, you’ll only earn the rewards at that level; therefore, trying to solve your current problem at your current level is often an exercise in frustration. You can unlock your intuition by using your imagination to think about your problem in a completely different way.
There are two major types of imagination that you use continually, both of which require the highest use of your intuitive powers. They are synthetic imagination and creative imagination.
Synthetic imagination is your ability to assemble existing pieces of knowledge and information into new forms. It is very similar to having a clear idea of a jigsaw picture, and then assembling all the pieces into a single piece.
This form of imagination is also called “integrative intelligence.” It is one of the highest forms of intelligence for success and achievement. Integrative intelligence is defined as your ability to integrate a large number of different pieces of information into a single precept for decision and action. It is your ability to recognize and sort many different facts and insights, choosing some and discarding others, in the process of making the correct decision. This form of intelligence is extremely valuable in fast-moving, fluid situations that require you consider a large number of different pieces of information in making a decision.
It has been estimated that you need 20,000 to 50,000 bits of information at your disposal to be successful in any field of endeavor. We live in the information age, and knowledge is the raw material of production and value of this age. The more different bits or “bytes” of information you have, the more effective your integrative intelligence, or synthetic imagination, will be.
The people who rise to the top of any field of endeavor are invariably those who know more than others. In fact, the division in our society today is not between those who “have more” and “have less” but between those who “know more” and those who “know less.” One of your jobs is to be continually gathering additional bits of practical and useful information, so that you have plenty of different ideas and concepts to apply to any problem or reach any goal. Your intuition then helps you quickly recognize the relevant facts and gives you the answers you need when you need them.
When you are exposed to more ideas, then the greater the probability that the right idea will appear at the right time. When it does, your intuition will help you to recognize the idea and integrate it into everything else you are doing.
The second form of imagination is creative imagination. This is a higher form of imagination, where intuition plays an even more important part. Creative imagination refers to your ability to learn or develop completely new and different ideas and concepts to solve your problems and achieve your goals. It is the highest form of imagination, and is responsible for all the great breakthroughs in science, technology, art, music, literature and medicine. The most successful men and women of all time have been those who have deliberately trained themselves to tap into their creative imagination on a regular basis. You can too, if you learn how.
Your creative imagination is the source of all hunches, inspirations, imagination, flashes of insight and new understandings of complex concepts. The cultivation and development of your creative imagination can enable you to make more progress in one or two years than the average person might make in ten or twenty. Your creativity, your intuitive sense, is like a muscle. It grows with use. The more you practice with it and rely on it, the stronger it becomes and the faster it acts for you.
“You can unlock your intuition by using your imagination to think about your problem in a completely different way.”
