Intuition or imagination

[Megan marti]

Hello..... Can someone tell me the difference between intuition and imagination?I get many visions but cannot differentiate between which is real and which is not.Help me realize the difference.And how to develop basic psychic abilities??

[John from Lowell]

These things are very subjective for each of us. Usually the first intuitive inclination a person gets is that intuition speaking to you.

Imagination when I use it during reflective thinking or meditations is quite helpful for me. When my ego gets involved, it is not helpful.

John

[Bendy Demon]

Hello..... Can someone tell me the difference between intuition and imagination?I get many visions but cannot differentiate between which is real and which is not.Help me realize the difference.And how to develop basic psychic abilities??

In my frame of thought there really is no difference between the two.

Your best bet is to ignore any and all "visions" and immerse yourself in learning a real skill that you can apply in real life like learning to do simple home repairs or how to cook an omelet without it oozing over the sides of the pan.

Seriously, so-called "psychic" abilities have no real use in the real world. I tend to see them as a hindrance than an asset. If intuition is real then it will be very subtle and ambiguous; it won't give you visions.

Edited October 6, 2013 by Ryu

[Professor T]

Hello..... Can someone tell me the difference between intuition and imagination?I get many visions but cannot differentiate between which is real and which is not.Help me realize the difference.And how to develop basic psychic abilities??

In my experience, intuition is a subtle gut instinct or knowing without thought.. Imagination on the other hand is born of thought streams that in my case anyway are more ego & logic based.. The trick is knowing the difference between the two, and that involves knowing your inner self and not basing all judgements on ego with it's fixed programming that ultimately distorts your perceptions, narrows your vision and more often than not clouds, veils and makes one turn away from any truth..

That's not to say that listening to Ego doesn't help.. because sometimes intuition or first instinct can be wrong. Sometimes gaining insight involves listening to the question again and again, chewing on it, sometimes the knowledge is integrated or absorbed, and when that happens, knowledge becomes understanding, and intuition becomes a easier to distinguish from any other form of knowledge.

Practice, practice, practice.. lol, one can't gain such understanding without first understanding ones self.

Edited October 6, 2013 by Professor T

[Frank Merton]

I think we have intuitive feelings fairly often; usually they are right because they are in a sense well-informed guesses. When they are wrong we disregard them and forget them.

[Avallaine]

Hello..... Can someone tell me the difference between intuition and imagination?I get many visions but cannot differentiate between which is real and which is not.Help me realize the difference.And how to develop basic psychic abilities??

You're actually talking about three different things, not two: imagination, intuition (the non-paranormal kind), and psychic intuition/psychic ability (the paranormal kind).

I assume you know that many people don't believe the third kind is any different from the second; a lot of them are on this forum. But, for the sake of argument, I'm going to assume for the moment that psychic intuition is different, separate from prosaic intuition, and legitimately works. So for now our definitions are:

Imagination – our mental ability to picture/conceive of things that don't exist;

Regular Intuition (normal) – our mind's ability to be aware of far more than we note consciously, and to process things on a subverbal and/or subconscious level, presenting us (that is, our conscious, verbal selves) with notions that seem to "come from nowhere" and be eerily correct;

and

Psychic Intuition (paranormal) – a hypothesized ability of our mind to sometimes pick up information not available through any known means of data transmission (that is, from sources other than our five senses and our ability to reason/deduce from what we get through them).

Your problem, then, is threefold: you need to tell imagination from regular intuition, imagination from psychic intuition, and regular intuition from psychic intuition.

The good news is that regular intuition and psychic intuition feel similar in a lot of ways, so telling both of them from imagination can be treated as similar. The bad news is...that regular intuition and psychic intuition feel similar in a lot of ways, so telling them apart from each other requires some effort.

Step one: Your best bet to tell imagination from regular intuition is to pay close attention to what goes through your mind, and how it "feels." Imagination can usually be tracked backwards...you can often learn to "see" the train of thought that produced an imaginative notion. Intuition, however, comes from the non-verbal parts of our brain (colloquially, the "right brain") and so tends to feel odd and out-of-place to our verbal "left brain" selves.

Spend some time being mindful of your thoughts—mindful in the Buddhist sense of "attentive awareness." Learn to sit back and "watch" your thoughts flow without being "caught up" in them...that's part of some methods of meditation, but you don't have to full-on meditate to do it. Just take a small mental step backwards and watch how your surface thoughts and feelings flow.

Doing that will help you become aware of your "mental habits..." and when you know what your habits are, you can more easily tell when thoughts come that "break the pattern," which are more likely to be intuitive.

The next part—telling normal intuition from psychic—can't be done quite as easily. Oh, to be sure, they "feel different" from each other in a similar way, but since both feel "alien" to our verbal minds, it can be hard to tell one kind of alienness from another. But to even tell which is which in the first place...you have to act like a skeptic.

That's right. You have to doubt your psychic impressions—not while you're having them, because that's a killer (the same way critical thought is a killer of creative moments). But after the fact, you have to take the time and effort to research the information you "intuited," to verify it's accurate and find out if it was available to you before in any way. Many "psychic" impressions turn out to be normal intuition—but that's not a bad thing! Our intuition is a valuable and rather marvelous ability, and you should never consider it "second best." A lot of people never learn to listen to their intuition...modern culture tends to discourage it.

And if you do take the time to research and examine any impressions you have, and they do turn out to be psychic, then you'll have a little more leverage when presenting your experiences to the skeptical....

[Avallaine]

In my frame of thought there really is no difference between the two.

Well, perhaps that's because you only experience one of them. You could hardly be expected to know the difference between apples and pears if you've never in your life seen a pear...

Your best bet is to ignore any and all "visions" and immerse yourself in learning a real skill that you can apply in real life like learning to do simple home repairs or how to cook an omelet without it oozing over the sides of the pan.

Um...pardon me, but what's to stop a person from learning repairs or cooking and learning/experimenting with "visions" and their intuition? They're not mutually exclusive, you know.

Seriously, so-called "psychic" abilities have no real use in the real world.

If you've never had a "psychic" experience, how would you know? It seems to me that you're making a judgment on insufficient data.

I tend to see them as a hindrance than an asset.

I see a flaw in your reasoning here: if, to you, there is no difference between intuition and imagination, then what are you calling a hindrance? Imagination? If so, I must strenuously disagree; I consider imagination to be one of the most valuable abilities in the mental realm.

If intuition is real then it will be very subtle and ambiguous; it won't give you visions.

Not true. Intuition (the non-paranormal kind) is merely some parts of our mind working things out their own way without our being consciously aware of it – sometimes it's ambiguous and subtle, but sometimes it's loud, clear and sudden.

The non-verbal parts of our mind often deal with visual images. Have you never had a "eureka" moment that involved a mental picture? I have, and they can sure feel like a "vision."

Intuition is a complex process; and it comes in all shapes and sizes. Just because you've never had a dramatic epiphany doesn't mean they don't happen.