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Let's do a memory exercise. How many times have you felt something about a place or a person immediately after coming into contact with them or even just hearing about them and dismissed it, only to find weeks, months or years later that your original feeling was spot on? How may times have you second-guessed a sensation as a figment of your imagination only to confirm it later on? Chances are you'll remember quite a few of these instances.

In my two previous posts I talked about **[lies](https://peakd.com/hive-181017/@drrune/the-cost-of-lies)** and **[gaslighting](https://peakd.com/hive-181017/@drrune/the-dangers-of-gaslighting)**. Today, partly inspired by the Rune you see below, I want to talk about perhaps the best tool we have against deceit: Intuition. This capacity can be hard to understand and encompass, especially for men or people with intense male energy, because it's mostly emotional in nature and we're generally not that good in that aspect. While related to instinct, this ability is an upgrade as it doesn't promote patterned behaviors but rather the opposite. Instinct is animalistic, often based on fear and desire, while intuition relies on empathy and attention; taking true advantage of it requires both external and internal awareness.

Intuition is a natural ability to collect information from our surroundings and extracting it from our memories on the fly without any rational processing or intellectual analysis. The more present we are, the more connected we are to our feelings, the easier it is to come to correct insights about any context. Everything is speaking to us all the time, the world is honest, it's only when we filter things out through our biases, beliefs and stories that the data gets muddled up and loses reliability. To properly exercise our intuitive skills, we have to be as neutral as possible regarding the stimuli we're receiving. As soon as we color situations through the lens of likes and dislikes, morality or rejection, the quality of the experiences we're having diminishes.


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One of the many stories that we're told is to never judge a book by its cover, to never give in to first impressions. This is useful advice for the most part, sure, but when it comes to navigating our world, and particularly in new, hostile or rapidly changing environments, long reflections aren't efficient and may lead to unnecessary, costly hesitation. Instinct helps with regards to danger, but again, being a primitive, pattern-based capacity, it filters out a lot of nuance. Intuition takes those book covers and first impressions, and gives them instant meaning that we can trust pretty much unconditionally. Intuition isn't the same as judgment, it's not an opinion but a verifiable sensation, so in order to train this, we have to go through a lot of trial and error, questioning our senses and reactions; once we've done this for a while, however, the trust and the inquisitiveness become one and the same. 

When dealing with lies, gaslighting, corruption and any other form of manipulation, intuition usually tells us everything we need to know about anyone in seconds. A glance, a gesture, a word or noise, signs of decline in a place, dirt or disarray, can be tremendously revealing if one is observant enough, in particular if one has heard or seen them before. You know all those tales about precognition, mind-reading or telepathy? That's what happens when you tune up your intuition properly, and we can all do it provided we do some serious inner work.

Let everything speak to you and listen intently, the message is always far more important than the messenger. Remember, even lies tell an honest story about the liar.

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###### <center>Rune of the Day: Laguz</center>

The river flows through its own channel and in one direction, wishing it were different only brings pain; accept the way things are moving and you may use that movement to your advantage. The sincere expression of frustration and sadness is advisable sometimes, but lamentation and regret waste energy, they accomplish nothing. Pay attention to your feelings, any sudden spikes of anger or fear are often signs of undue external influences; ponder the effect that the words and actions of others are having on you, moderate your own, impulsive reactions may be particularly harmful in the current context. Emotions are running high in the world, show respect and detach as much as possible from the dramas around you, provide support only when requested; neutrality is preferable to unsolicited involvement.

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