Have you ever walked into a room full of people and felt the mood was “off”? Or when you were making a decision, you just went with your gut? Have you ever had a sudden insight, or pictured in your mind something you were working on before it physically materialized? Have you ever just “known” or had a hunch about something and then that’s what happened? Of course you have! We all have. These are common ways we use to describe how we perceive our intuition or psychic awareness and the awareness of other people’s energy, including feelings and thoughts. For now, let’s call this awareness or non-verbal communication, intuition. And believe it or not, we are all intuitive – you have amazing and unique talents and your intuitive gifts are key part of these – and we all use our intuition to guide our decision-making every day.
What is intuition? Intuition is information received in ways other than the five senses. This may come through as sights, sounds, feelings, scents or as a deep knowing. Intuition can come to us in music, geometric shapes, numbers or patterns, colours or animals or nature. Intuition may express itself through you creatively as art, music, athletics or hobbies and interests. Intuition is seeking to inform your life to allow you to feel good and in the flow of enjoyment and creativity.
As we grow older from childhood, our imagination fades when others in our lives tell us messages such as “grow up” or get real. We lose trust in our intuition because we feel pressure from adults in our lives to “behave” according to their wishes and leave fantasy and make believe behind. This leads us to believe that our intuition is just fantasy and childish and that as adults we should be relying on logic and reason learned through school and work experiences. As a result, we may turn off or away from the information being provided through our intuition so that we can fit in and make decisions like the other adults around us.
I have apparently worked with intuition throughout my life, mainly via the four clairs, even though I was unaware that this was how I perceived information. It’s important to understand that the clairs are always loving, supportive and straightforward. There is no opinion, judgement or emotion with the clairs, they are informative and present the information in a clear, obvious way so there is no mistaking the guidance.
Many of you have experienced guidance from your intuition and may be looking for more information to support, validate and navigate what is happening to you and through you. You are talented and gifted and you may find yourself using these gifts without actually knowing it. In fact, you may notice you are guided or supported by one or two of the clairs predominantly, with the others providing guidance occasionally or infrequently. Be assured that you have all the clairs available to you and my hope is that my blog can guide you to develop them and come to use them without hesitation for decision-making.
This is not an exhaustive overview but here are some of the four main ways I receive communication or perception, known in psychic circles as the four clairs: clairaudience (hearing information), clairvoyance (seeing information), clairsentience (knowing information from a feeling), and claircognizance (instantly knowing information).
Clairaudience is when you hear a message through sound, songs or voices. It’s not actually a voice but that is how it is perceived. It can be quite surprising and can seem to come from nowhere. For me, clairaudient messages sound like someone talking in my chest in the area between my throat and my heart. This voice is always calm and straightforward and the information is very brief. If you were to ask your heart a question about the timing of something in your life, for example, the response would be something as simple as “3-5 years”. Clairaudience is most present during questions or decisions in life. If you ask a question in your heart, and hear the answer, this is clairaudience. Clairaudience is not the same as thoughts or mind chatter which are typically opinionated or judgemental and originate from your head area. You might get a clairaudient message when you’re driving your car, for example, which tells you to turn left out of the blue and your thoughts may even reply saying “no, that’s not correct, I am going this way!”
Clairvoyance is the ability to see visual pictures of information and this could be from any timeframe – current, past or future. Clairvoyant messages are images and can be as clear as a photograph or can be numbers or geometric shapes and may be animated or static. Clairvoyant messages may last only moments or linger in your mind and they can been seen with eyes open and closed. For me, clairvoyant downloads literally pop into my mind as an image like a photograph or scene in my mind. When I’m offering a reading as a medium for a client wishing to hear from a passed loved one, for example, I will clearly see in full colour the “spirit person” that has come forward for the client, like someone is showing me a photograph. If it’s a grandmother, I can see clearly the white hair is braided in a certain way and the floral dress with lots of bright colours. I can see the facial expressions of the spirit person, if they are happy or excited, I can see them waving to be sure I see them next to their loved one.
Clairsentient messages come through as a sensation or feeling, including vibration, pins and needles, pressure and pops. Clairsentience is the most common of the four clairs and you likely experience this clair yourself without thinking too much about it. Gut instincts, being able to sense the emotions of others, or sensing the collective energy of a room all fall under clairsentience. When providing a mediumship reading, I can feel other’s ailments or injuries, for example, my arm will feel a “pop” if the person I’m reading has had a fracture. My throat will often feel tight briefly if someone is unable to express themselves or they have something important they need to say. In one reading with a mediumship client, I experienced strong tingling in my feet and the client advised the loved one had gout, a painful arthritis in the foot. Clairsentience can also be a sensation about the future and whether a decision feels right or wrong. This is actually really obvious although we may not even realize that when something feels bad, any emotion or sensation at all, this is intuition guiding you.
Suddenly knowing something “out of the blue” without being told the information is called claircognizance. You know the insight to be true even though you haven’t been told, seen or heard the information. It’s when our brains get an immediate download from our intuition, just like when you download a large amount of information into your computer’s hard drive. Although when it happens to a human brain, the download occurs instantly. A recent example of this for me was the superbowl; my husband was watching the football game and it was almost half-time and I said “Oh, the Buccs are going to win” and he said “that would be a major upset as the other team is the favourite!” The Buccs won. Now, I didn’t know before that moment who was going to win so there’s no way I can bet on these things! I get these all the time and most of the time I don’t know if the information is related to me or if it’s just random communication in the psychic field and most times when it’s random, it’s not organized in any way I can use it to be helpful.
Of course, there are many ways intuition may appear in your life and however it appears is exactly right for you. Intuition is always guiding your decisions and preferences, even if you don’t know it. Because you are guided by one or two aspects of intuition most of the time, you may not even notice the guidance. Think about some occasions that come to mind where one of the aspects stands out, can you think of a time recently where you were guided and how it came through? Can you think of many times with that same guidance? What was the predominant aspect that was guiding you? Do you use the full suite of intuition, or do you have some that are stronger or more prominent? Can you start to make note of examples every day of being guided by your clairs, guides or numbers? Whenever you get a strong, intuitive feeling about something, write it down in a journal. Over the next weeks or months, you will realize how many intuitive messages you receive. By recognizing these messages, it will help you pick up on more of them. These are the kinds of experiences you can expect with more regularity once you start opening to your intuition.
Have you tried my fun bubble visualization yet? You can get it for free when you sign up for my email list on my website www.vickymcgrath.ca Visualization is a really important tool for developing your intuition!