Your Skepticism is Key

June 6, 2022

Intuitive knowledge is the foundational knowledge upon which all other knowledge depends. Skepticism is the key that unlocks it.

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I was sitting on a piano bench, waiting my turn to throw some darts when my eyes wandered to the shelves against the wall. My eyes landed immediately upon a half inch thick, black paperback spine on the second shelf from the bottom. The author’s name LOCKE lit up and beckoned me towards it.

I walked over, pulled out the book, and looked briefly at its title: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding.

In a nearly imperceptible, wordless flash, I processed the knowledge that I’d never read it, never even seen it, and I decided it must have been my husband’s.

Then, I closed my eyes and opened the book to a random page. When my eyes opened, they landed here: “But because the memory is not always so clear…” And then a word jumped out at me, italicized a few lines below: “Intuitive.”

Your turn, my husband said as he marked the scoreboard. I picked up a stray piece of paper from the table and tucked it into the book, marking the page for later.

Of the 475 pages in the book, I just happened to open to that page—page 325—a page on memory and intuition, and I was curious to know what it said.

But first, I threw some darts, I ate some dinner, I watched some TV, I brushed my teeth, I slept for seven hours, I ate breakfast, I meditated, and then, I opened the book again.

“But because the memory is not always so clear as actual perception, and does in all men more or less decay in length of time, this, amongst other differences, is one which shows that demonstrative knowledge is much more imperfect than intuitive.”

He goes on to explain that intuitive knowledge is essentially the knowledge that comes through immediate perception without any need to examine or prove it. Like when you see two colors—black and white—and you immediately discern that the colors are different. That base knowledge is intuitive knowledge.

Before we—as thinking minds—can even get into demonstrative knowledge (a.k.a., knowledge rooted in reasoning)—we first have to accept our intuition.

We have to accept the rapid-fire, foundational discernment of the world around us that forms our basic perception.

But what happens if we don’t?

My parents can attest to the fact that I’ve been challenging and struggling to accept that base intuitive perception my entire life.

I’m prone to question the reliability of basic sensory experiences and the implicit agreements and assumptions that underly most human thought.

We assume so much in order to maintain a sense of certainty, a sense of normalcy, a sense of control, and we often think that our base assumptions are our intuition and that they are reliable.

I however do not.

According to Locke, this means that I’m basically a skeptic (yes, I know), but what maybe Locke didn’t realize is that skepticism supports the intuitive mode of perception.

We all have the basic ability to process information intuitively, but because our minds are so cluttered by demonstrative chatter, our intuition becomes a polluted, clouded mess of a thing, leading people to believe all sorts of hogwash based on “intuition.”

This is how intuition becomes weaponized. This is how it’s used and exploited in service of conspiracy and cults and plenty of organized religions and other institutions. It’s how your inner superpower stops empowering you and starts enslaving you.

Skepticism, on the other hand, can free you.

I’m not talking about the kind of skepticism that leads people to deny intuitive gifts (which isn’t really skepticism so much as following the idealogical status quo), and I’m not talking about the kind of skepticism that leads someone to be a conspiracy theory spouting contrarian (which isn’t really skepticism so much as paranoia). The kind of skepticism I’m talking about simply refuses to let the mind get stuck on any one idea. It releases all rigid belief and takes you into the unknown where uncertainty reigns and intuition rises to the top.

When you intuit something, it goes through the filter of your mind before becoming words and often even before being turned into actions. If your mind is a messy filter, then your intuition will struggle to serve you.

Skepticism helps clear your mind of ideas, so there’s space for intuitive knowledge to move freely and clearly, so there’s space for something (hopefully) most closely resembling TRUTH to guide your life.

❖

After reading from the book, I picked up the piece of paper I’d used as a bookmark. I noticed for the first time that it was a USPS receipt, and it was old. Browned in spots with faded ink.

Its address read Long Island City, and it was dated November 9, 2020.

Somehow it had traveled all the way from my old neighborhood in New York City, moved with us into an an apartment in Ohio, and moved with us yet again into a house. It moved and moved and moved, eventually landing on top of the table in the basement, and that’s where it was at the exact moment that I reached for something to tuck into the book Concerning Human Understanding.

I had just cleaned off the table and organized it a few days earlier, and I don’t recall the receipt being there then. Did my husband recently find it in the pocket of some pants he hadn’t worn in a long time and leave it there? Perhaps. Probably. Whatever it was, somehow, all events coalesced to deliver the receipt to that particular location at that particular time, allowing me to reach for it, and tuck it into the book.

I held the receipt in my hands. My eyes zoomed in on the date: November 9, 2020.

That’s odd, because while it was now 2022, I’d just been writing all about 2020 in The Magic Guide. Specifically, I’d been writing about a pattern connecting November 2020 to this exact moment now—in 2022. I’d written that our experiences now are likely to echo aspects of our experiences then, and here I was, holding a random though highly specific receipt from the very time period in question, and I was holding it just as I was about to launch an entirely-new-to-me direct mail campaign via USPS.

Now, you can chalk all this up to coincidence. It’s just an old receipt! But my intuition tells me it’s more. Yes, it tells me this through the filter of my mind, which has come to believe in signs and patterns based on years of demonstrable evidence, but still, the bias to believe is there. I recognize this, and so…I don’t.

I don’t just immediately believe that this receipt is meaningful. Instead, I observe my intuition telling me it is. I feel the excitement in my heart. I observe my mind putting all of the pieces together—the points in time and patterns and strange circumstances—and then, I return to my life, and I stay curious about what will happen.

I receive the information. I let it move through me, but I don’t hold too tightly to any of it.

I balance my intuition with skepticism, knowing that there’s alway more to know.

And this is, I suspect, is the only way that any person has ever gotten close to any idea that’s true.