Intuition & The Deconverted Man

January 31, 2022

Looking back on my time in the Church, I slowly came to realize that, outside of the seven life areas, one of the biggest ways religion damaged me was by completely scrambling my connection with my own intuition. Although I don’t see this talked about often, I believe I’m far from the only one who has suffered from this.

Why is this bad? Because even though intuition is intangible, amorphous, and possibly subjective, scientists are starting to call it the highest form of possible intelligence—considering it greater than even highly rational, purely objective thinking.

Studying great minds from history also demonstrated to me the importance of intuition. Leonardo da Vinci, Isaac Newton, and Albert Einstein—while all highly intelligent—attributed their discoveries, accomplishments, and successes to their intuition rather than their hyper-rational thinking.

“I sometimes FEEL that I am right. I do not KNOW that I am.”

– Albert Einstein

It’s hard to describe intuition, but I think pretty much everyone reading this intuitively knows what it feels like. It’s like an “inner knowing” that doesn’t always seem to come from a place that makes sense; definitely not to the conscious mind. Rather, it bubbles up from the subconscious mind, from a place deeper within us. Intuition guides and protects us and we only really seem to realize it in hindsight. When we reflect back, we realize that we avoided a certain situation or took a chance without a logical reason to back up the decision. Somehow, it just felt right, and it turned out to be the right decision.

And as you already know, something as “mystical” as intuition is a goldmine for an institution like religion.

Looking back, I considered my own intuition to either be “God’s voice” or “temptation” depending on what messages I was getting from within myself. If I took a chance based on a powerful hunch and it turned out to pay off for me, then I attributed it to God’s voice. He spoke into my life and guided me and brought me to something that he’d pre-planned for me.

On the other hand, if I had a feeling that I should question something or explore a resource outside of the Bible itself, then my intuition was “temptation.” I thought that this was perhaps the voice of Satan trying to “lead me astray.” Anything that goes against the interests of the Church or Christianity was to be suppressed, quelled, ignored, and then prayed away.

In both cases, I now realize this was my intuition speaking to me. And in both cases, my connection with my own intuition was harmed.

When my intuition led me to something good (and I considered it be God’s voice) then I attributed my own intuition to God—something outside of myself. It reinforced that I was not capable of a deep inner knowing that would guide my path. Instead, it was an omniscient and powerful entity who lived a million miles away in heaven.

It was perhaps even more damaging when I mistook my intuition for temptation. Here, my intuition was trying to protect me. It was trying to point out that I wasn’t operating with all the information I needed to make an informed decision. It was trying to tell me that I was outgrowing a rigid and dogmatic belief system and that it was time to move on from it. It was trying to tell me that there was more to the world and reality than I previously knew, and that this new reality was to be explored. It was trying to tell me that I was not operating with the Truth.

On top of these things, I spent the majority of my life believing that hyper-rational intelligence was the best way to approach all situations. This hindered me because the nature of intuition is that it sometimes pushes you to do things, go places, meet people, or take a chance without any logical reason as to why. For me, when I felt these things, I would often let the opportunity slide right past me, telling myself that I “didn’t have a reason” to do that, so therefore I shouldn’t, and that the feeling inside of me was just a feeling that was wrong because it had no evidence to support it. And in my opinion, that’s just no way to live anymore.

I’m still working on this (and I suspect I’ll be working on it for the rest of my life) but I am making strides toward living a life of intuition. Yes, intelligence and knowledge is important. Yes, emotional maturity is also important. But combining these things can only, in my opinion, strengthen intuition and make it more identifiable when it’s trying to tell me something.

And while sometimes it’s scary to act on hunches, it’s actually been a rewarding experience thus far. I’m learning to better trust my intuition, and each week that passes I’m realizing more and more the value of rediscovering it.