Ever hear somebody say, "Trust your gut..."?
Or, like Obe Wan Kenobe: "Trust your feelings...."?
Have you ever followed that "little voice" that whispers to you that you should or should not do something?
This is what people usually refer to when the talk about INTUITION.
To be more precise:
Intuition is the apparent ability to acquire knowledge without inference or the use of reason. “The word ‘intuition’ comes from the Latin word 'intueri', which is often roughly translated as meaning ‘to look inside’ or ‘to contemplate’. ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intuition_(knowledge)
SHOULD WE TRUST "intuition"?
Are we actually born with a skillset that is more reliable than what we acquire consciously through education and experience?
Take a hard look at what is being peddled here: KNOWLEDGE of some sort WITHOUT the use of REASON which comes, somehow, from "inside" of us.
INTUITION is really a form of MYSTICISM.
What is mysticism? Mysticism is the acceptance of allegations without evidence or proof, either apart from or against the evidence of one’s senses and one’s reason.
Mysticism is the claim to some non-sensory, non-rational, non-definable, non-identifiable means of knowledge, such as “instinct,” “intuition,”
“revelation,” or any form of “just knowing.”
Mysticism makes some large claims. Its claims are at odds with the methods of Science which requires perception about everyday reality.
Reason is the perception of reality, and rests on a single axiom: the Law of Identity. A thing IS only what it IS. The Laws of Science are the same
for everybody everywhere and equally testable by all.
Rational knowledge is quantifiable (can be measured, weighed, examined, investigated and proved.)
Why? Because scientific knowledge deals with REALITY. This world. The real world. Nature itself.
Mysticism doesn't deal with what can be seen, measured and tested, however.
Mysticism is the claim to the perception of some other reality—other than the one in which we live—whose definition is only that it is not natural, it is
supernatural, and is to be perceived by some form of unnatural or supernatural means.
Mystics came before Scientists in a pre-enlightenment world in which assertions by magicians (who could dazzle and amaze with tricks) held power
over kings. With the arrival of the Renaissance and Rational methods of testing "claims"-- magicians and mystics lost their power to influence others to enrich themselves.
Science became the enemy of Mysticism.
Science, with its absolutes of reason, logic, matter, existence, reality—put a lot of Mystics out of business.
So, they went underground and stopped calling themselves magicians, mystics, shaman, gurus and such.
Mystics are now SELF-HELP authors with "secret" information they are willing to sell you for the price of their books.
Would you accept medicine from a door to door salesman rather than your own physician?
Would you accept plastic surgery from a surgeon without a license only on the verbal assurance he was competant?
Would you buy swampland in Florida?
Of course not! And why not? You are at risk when you fail to use your MIND to investigate.
Like having a burglar tell you that turning off your burglar alarm will protect your home from theft, the Mystic tells you
not to listen to the alarm bell of rational thought.
Let's take a look at a Mystic's claim of secret information that will benefit your life and see if INTUITION contradicts reality or not.
Author Rhonda Byrne (Prime Time Productions) has sold millions of copies of her book THE SECRET which purports to reveal the LAW of ATTRACTION.
Here are the claims:
The secret is “The Law of Attraction” that asserts what you think creates what you feel, and these feelings flow from your body as magnetic energy waves over vast distances, which then cause the universe around you to vibrate at the same energy level as your feelings.
If your feelings are negative, negative experiences will inevitably flow right back, positive feelings elicit positive experiences. Like attracts like. “Thoughts are sending out that magnetic signal that is drawing the parallel back to you. It always works; it works every time, with every person.”
Thus there is no such thing as accident or coincidence; it is you, the individual, who brings misery on yourself because of your toxic thinking. But the good news, Eeyore, is this: if you can only alter your thoughts, and therefore your feelings, you can actually cause the universe around you to vibrate at a positive energy level and the desires of your heart will come to be realized!
All you have to do is Ask — Believe — Receive. You just have to visualize what you want, feel good about it, and then ask the universe (and ask once only, oh ye of little faith) — and whatever you can imagine can be yours. “This is like having the universe as your catalogue and you flip through it and go, ‘Well I’d like to have this experience and I’d like to have that product and I’d like to have a person like that’ … It is you just placing your order with the universe. It’s really that easy … [Just] start to have different beliefs like there is more than enough in the universe, everything goes right for me … have the belief ‘I’m not getting older, I’m getting younger.’ We can create it the way we want it.”
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Just as a magician performs his sleight-of-hand by misdirecting the attention of the audience away from the TRICK (the gimmick) with patter and flourishes that dazzle, so too, Author Rhonda Byrne misdirects the reader.
The Secret is actually proposing two completely different systems for achieving one’s goals and then blurring the line between those systems — in effect, selling the system that workson the back of the one that doesn’t.
Which of these systems works?
Planning, hard work, talent and knowledge
or
Lying back and making positive wishes?
This is like a woman using some form of birth control and then lying back and affirming “I will not get pregnant! I will not get pregnant!” It
seems obvious that it is the birth control, and not the positive thinking, that is getting the job done. Certainly affirmations alone do nothing
to prevent pregnancy — any woman who believes otherwise is undoubtedly a mother.
So, what is reality? Is reality the world we live in where hard work, effort, planning and a measure of luck and opportunity get us the things
we need?
Or is it what THE SECRET tells us:
“You are the only one who creates your reality. It is only you; every bit of it you.”
Both the Law of Attraction and that of KARMA gives us a world of insidious moral implications.
Consider the words of Ingrid Hansen Smythe
Source:Skeptic Magazine
When dealing with instances of extraordinary evil, however, both The Law of Karma and The Law of Attraction break down rather
spectacularly. Imagine a particularly hideous situation — a healthy young girl is raped and tortured, hacked to pieces, her remains stuffed
into a plastic bag and thrown in the trash. What the believer in karma is forced to admit, as morally repugnant as it may be, is that this girl
deserved what happened to her. There is no innocent suffering in a universe where we all, at all times, are getting what we deserve. The
believer in karma must also conclude that this event is in some sense good because this girl rid herself of an enormous amount of bad karma
and is bound to come back to a glorious life next time around.
Likewise, a philosophy that claims we are always getting what we ask for, and that nothing is accidental, must also believe that this girl in
some sense deserved what happened to her because she attracted this evil to her. (Remember the law: “Everything in your life you have
attracted. Accept that fact; it’s true.”) One might protest that a young girl has not yet developed the “magnetic powers” to attract
anything to her — but one must then ask at what age do these powers develop, and does it really make the situation any less tragic?
If a 12-year-old boy can attract a shiny new bike, can a 12-year-old girl attract a rapist and killer? It would seem the answer is yes, since there are 12-year-old girls who come to such a brutal demise. Perhaps, though, 12 is too young to attract such powerful evil; is it really better, though, if we imagine the rape, dismembering, and plastic-bag-stuffing of a 25-year-old woman? A 35-year-old mother of three? A grandmother? Can we really feel comfortable ever saying that people attract fatal accidents, illness, trauma, and death?
It gets worse, for what can the believer in karma or The Law of Attraction possibly say about an event such as the Holocaust? Again, the believer in karma is forced to say that each and every individual got what he or she deserved and that karmic justice was served. “Whatever one deserves … he deserves by virtue of his actions and he gets all that he deserves and only that which he deserves. Nothing which accrues to a doer on account of his actions is ever lost and nothing accrues to him on account of anything other than his actions.”
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So what does your INTUTION tell you? Your "knowledge without the use of reason"--is it reasonable?
Or, is it apparent that Mystics selling books under the guise of "secret" information about non-scientific laws of "attraction" are actually
conmen with no morality at the basis of their philosophy?
Your call. You decide.
Discussion?