Intuition, Creativity, Memory and -- Conscience

This piece illuminates the relationships of intuition, creativity, memory and -- conscience.  

You can further illuminate those relationships by using The Set-up or -- for really high-powered results -- The Middle-Way Memory Matrix Ritual, with all the possible pairs of each of those functions: intuition, creativity, memory and conscience; that would be MOST illuminating -- and jump start or make more vivid your intuitive sense. There are six pairs; start with memory and conscience.



Intuition is a form of innate knowing or sensing; "innate" means, "naturally present in oneself". Intuition has to do with awareness of emerging (immediate) conditions and to the intelligence doing the choosing, moving or acting, in the midst of those conditions.

Conscience is also a form of innate knowing or sensing. Conscience has to do with the memory of behavior and the consequences.  Ring a bell?

Creativity is a form of emergent action or movement into action.  "Emergent", as I mean it, means coming into existence; "action", as I mean it, involves purpose or intended outcome.  Creativity is purposeful action -- and its results -- coming into existence. Creativity is not haphazard; it is imbued with an intuitive and intuitable feeling of intent, a recognizable integrity of form (not merely a random expression constructed of words and remembered things pieced together "experimentally", without an integrated intention being present). So-called experimental (random) creativity is creativity in word, only, and leaves one dumbfounded, rather than intuitively awakened. Note the distinction.

Guilty conscience seeks to exclude information; it strives to get out from under the thumb of error and the compulsion to correct it (compulsion which may seem to come from outside, as in "someone making me feel guilty", but actually comes from myself -- the draw or attaction of the eros of integrity, or wholesomeness, from which we feel we have departed, abandoned, betrayed.)

Clear conscience allows information to come in.

"Information coming in" is the essential nature of creativity and of intuition. Creativity doesn't come from us; it comes to us and through us, in acts of creation. "Information coming in", innate knowledge, intuition is not made from pre-existing knowledge from outside sources or guesswork, combined with hope of correctness, but we perceive it directly, unreasonably, mysteriously, obviously, vividly, and more or less blatantly.

These distinctions may seem murky to those who have a pile-up of guilty conscience and whose intuition is blocked; their innate knowing is obscured by the effort not to know -- guilty conscience -- or it may be that one has never cultivated intuition and so its ways remain as yet unknown.

You can feel the connection between guilty conscience and the effort not to know.

For that reason, guilty conscience blocks both intuition and creativity; it leads to stupidity and to repetitive error -- or to being an ignoramus -- (until the guilt is resolved by corrective action -- repentence -- which is not merely an emotional gesture, but an action that carries out the emotional gesture in ways that have consequence).

Intuition is subtle. It's a feeling -- of the type one has when having pangs of conscience -- an innate feeling of what one should or should not have done -- or when one loves someone -- or the pleasure one feels, listening to music (creating music is primarily an intuitive process).

However, intuition is different from guilt or guilt's absence, more than romantic love; it's the pre-feeling of the consequence of a course of action in a situation, of the fittingness of an action, as one would sense in advance, for the good of ones beloved.

To test my words, use your imagination; daydream. Remember a situation about which you feel guilty and imagine two courses of action, the one about which you feel guilty and the other you might have taken. Do that now. Take 30 seconds.

* -------^------- *

There is a distinct difference of feeling between what one should have done and what one should not have done. It's more than guilt. Isn't it.

* -------^------- *

Creativity and imagination are obviously related; creativity is the activity that makes imagination tangible; "tangible" means having durable existence in a form someone else can perceive. Creative flow occurs for those whose attention is open and occurs more so for those who do not merely have flights of imagination, but also act to create something tangible from those imaginings.

Imagination and memory are closely related; imagination is "incoming", a possible future, an alternate present; memory is "outgoing", an approximation of an actual past event. They are the "incoming" and "outgoing" of the same type of thing. Memories fade. To remember something, you must imagine it. Because it is remembered, it's easier to access; imagining something new takes more effort (except in dreams, when memory recedes). Daydream to test my words: Remember something. Now, imagine it. Alternate and compare. Take ten seconds.

When we stifle conscience, we stifle memory. By stifling memory, we also stifle imagination, since we are stifling the part of memory that involves imagining the event about which we feel guilty.

If you want to be more creative, locate and correct the areas in yourself about which you have guilt.

If you want to use intuition reliably, locate and correct the situations about which you have guilt. Open the flood-gates of attention.

SUMMARY
The key characteristic of guilt is persistence -- and our persistence in suppressing guilt.

Persistence also characterizes knowledge to which we are attached; we want to make it persist; we want already to be right.  It's "reason" and "reasonableness". Reason and reasonableness also underlie guilt; reason and reasonableness depend upon memory -- what we believe we know -- as does guilt.

If you want to direct your life by intuition; clean up your life.  Then, acknowledge your reasoning in any moment of choosing a course of action -- and let go of the decision you may reach by reasoning to consult your intuitive/imagined sense of the outcomes of your options. It's an unreasonable action that you must test, to develop confidence in intuition. Remember: Intuition is not an emotional preference; it's a sense of how things may turn out as you imagine each course of action (or your sense of things happening, felt from a distance). If you don't feel it, you don't feel it; be honest with yourself.

Intuition trumps reason. (So said Albert Einstein, by the way.) It's unreasonable -- though sometimes reason may justify intuition. You may act reasonably, instead of intuitively, particularly if you don't yet trust intuition; you may think you're playing it safe.  However, the force of reason fades -- and the intuitive feeling you had about the situation doesn't fade and is what you will have to live with after you have taken action. Test my words.

Those who do not trust intuition rely entirely upon memory and reason.  They are either blocked by guilt, and so do not trust their innate knowing -- or have never knowingly developed and relied upon intuition.


An aside: Homological Conceit
"Homological conceit" is the attitude of, "Because I believe it and say so, it must be right." "Homo" means, "self"; "logical" means, "having to do with words"; "homological": "having to do with my words."  "Conceit": the judgment that "I am better than . . . ", plus the unwillingness to allow that I may be wrong.  It's self-reinforcing ones own, memories ones own knowledge and automatically invalidating others'.

We are experiencing an epidemic of homological conceit, particularly among those in power (who may seek power just so that they are immune to being questioned or second-guessed). It's interesting that those who do so, so often act unwisely.


MORE ABOUT THE DETAILS, THE ONs AND OFFs, OF INTUITIVE GUIDANCE to come

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