I woke in a quiet bedroom. I was on the trundle bed but my friend was not in her bed. Before I was fully awake I knew something was wrong. Every alarm bell in my heart was ringing.

I knew I was in trouble. How did I know? An empty room with no sound and I knew. What would it be this time?

I tried to tell myself that I was being ridiculous and I didn’t believe myself.

I had to go in the silent house from the basement to the fourth floor to find my friend. She had slept in that spare bedroom instead of her room.

“My dad is really mad. I think you are going to need to apologize.”

She had begged me to stay at her house while I was on missionary furlough. I hadn’t wanted to because I didn’t really like her pastor dad, but she was my friend and I felt sorry for how alone she was.

She continued, not looking me in the face, “He didn’t like how late you came in last night….and there is other stuff. He’ll make an appointment to talk to you in his office.”

How had I known? How had the air vibrated with warning before any discernible message had been given to me?

I will never forget that morning. It is a touchstone to me for intuition.

I am not so great at intuition. I talk myself out of hunches and impressions. I like data and analytical proof.

Some things…a lot of things…the best things?…do not match with analysis.

In the last couple years I have been working on happiness. If happiness is to be analyzed, and God knows I must analyze it because that’s what I do, all experiments must be subjective.  I want to know about my happiness.

I am the scientist and the subject for my happiness experiments.

And to adequately measure my own happiness after I try a hypothesis I have to use intuition.

I hate intuition. It is subjective and not provable and not what I really want.  I began by completely rejecting it as something to pay attention to. As a matter of fact, I doubted it’s existence. You can’t measure intuition!

Then I remembered that one morning on the trundle bed. I could not deny that experience. It happened, it happened to me, and I will never forget it.

So. If intuition exists, how do I grasp it?

I had to step onto the flying carpet. Intuition involves my subjective slippery self.

Having spent a lot of time re-wiring reflexes to the schema of  what I was supposed to want and feel, intuition was not readily accessible.

“Doing what comes natural” and “Follow your bliss” were nonsensical statements for me. I appreciated the sentiment.

My natural bliss was in a corner behind a lot of heavy boxes. At least I think it is. That’s where I started looking.

A couple things I’ve discovered about intuition. It is:

• important
• equal parts easy and impossible
• God’s voice

That last part turns out to be the most important. My intuition is the divine spark of knowing and creation that God put inside of me. That’s why it is so ineffable, and also why it is so important.

I think I want the security of repeatable and provable analysis. What I know, though, is more important than what I can logic out. How frustrating! And how much faith is required to know without security.

I know.

I’m not done moving the heavy boxes out of the way to find my natural intuition. I’m not going to be done for a long time, maybe ever. And I know it’s worth it.