Advent Week 3

Intuition

During the third week of Advent we reach the spiritual faculty of Intuition. These facilities are actually very familiar to us because when we were in the spiritual worlds before being born they were active in our consciousness just as we use thinking, feeling and willing now on this earth.

“Thus the discarnate, spiritual human being works through Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition towards his reincarnation in the physical world, while the incarnated, sense-bound human being can gain through Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition a vision of the world of soul and spirit.” Rudolf Steiner, Old and New Methods of Initiation, Lecture 5

Today, it is thought that to be intuitive is to be instinctive. Instinct is an automatic response that does not involve thought. True Intuition is very conscious, and involves raising Imagination (thinking) and Inspiration (feeling) to conscious awareness using the will. This is something we are working towards, but we should never think that we can’t use it today, at times. The times when we do use it is when we are selfless, when we can let go of ourselves and enter into others to have a true experience of them.

This means that we feel their pain and their joy as if it were our own pain and joy. This, of course, requires a lot of strength and the ability to be objective and surrender our self to enter into this experience. This knowing by entering other beings is very informative about life and indeed the entire universe. We merge with the inner presence of things.

Valentin Tomberg, in his lectures on the New Testament, in Chapter 4, had these profound words to say about Intuition. He said that the soul reaches a point of emptiness (poor in spirit) then from within itself, its aloneness, it musters a force not present in the soul (like water gushing from a rock) which enables the soul to live outside itself. Two currents of will meet each other, flow together and remain within one another.

He said, “In this process of Intuition, a man doesn’t not only know, but is also himself known.”

This, of course, is what we all yearn for, and during Advent we can to some extent have this experience which will serve us well during the year ahead.