“A few years back, some friends and I took a stroll down a closed-for-the-season road in a national park. We heard a weird noise in the distance that could have been an owl. But the three of us suddenly felt like whatever made that noise was coming after us. We beat it back to the car in a fast walk.
I hadn’t been on that road since this morning. It is still seasonally closed, but there’s a weathered missing person sign on the gate by the park service, a guy last seen at a trailhead we decided not to walk down.”
Intuition is defined as the ability to understand something immediately without the need for conscious reasoning. Something that one knows or considers likely from instinctive feeling rather than conscious reasoning.
When my niece decided to intern in Chicago, she asked me for some advice about living in the city. I told her always trust her intuition. If you feel uncomfortable, listen to what your mind is trying to tell you. Never downplay it, or think it’s silly. That may save your life.
You can call it whisperings of the Spirit or intuition – whatever you choose – but I know I’ve escaped quite a few scary situations by listening to it.
According to DailyGood.org, Cognitive science is beginning to demystify the strong but sometimes inexplicable presence of unconscious reasoning in our lives and thoughts. Often dismissed as unscientific because of its connections to the psychic and paranormal, intuition isn’t just a bunch of hoo-ha about our “Spidey senses” — the U.S. military is even investigating the power of intuition, which has helped troops to make quick judgments during combat that ended up saving lives.
“There is a growing body of anecdotal evidence, combined with solid research efforts, that suggests intuition is a critical aspect of how we humans interact with our environment and how, ultimately, we make many of our decisions,” Ivy Estabrooke, a program manager at the Office of Naval Research, told the New York Times in 2012.”
They added, “The No. 1 thing that distinguishes intuitive people is that they listen to, rather than ignore, the guidance of their intuitions and gut feelings.”
A BuzzFeed article from August 2022 lists several examples of how intuition saved someone’s life.
“It happened August 1, 2007, around 5:30 p.m., three weeks after my husband and I got married. We were driving to the Mall of America to watch a movie, and were heading toward I-35 West highway. Then, my husband got this feeling it wasn’t a good idea to go that way — it was rush hour. So, we took a different route. When we left the movie that night, we turned the radio on. The I-35W bridge had collapsed at 6:05 p.m. We would’ve been on that bridge.”
“During the first lockdown, I hadn’t seen my dad (who lives alone) for three months, but we spoke on the phone every day. One night while I was drifting off to sleep at 2 a.m., I suddenly started feeling overwhelming anxiety. I was sweating and just felt like something was off. I couldn’t get back to sleep so I decided to ring my dad since he’s a night owl and would pick up… But to my surprise, no answer. I woke my partner and told him something was really off, and my dad hadn’t answered his phone, which had my anxiety running tenfold at this point. He suggested if he still hadn’t answered the phone in the morning, we would drive over and check on him. Still, I couldn’t shake this feeling, so at 3 a.m., my partner and I got in the car and drove three hours to my dad’s home. When we arrived at my dad’s house, I walked in to find my dad staring at the wall… He was gray and yellow in color.
“He was slurring his words and utterly confused about where he was. I immediately called an ambulance. He spent the next four weeks in the hospital with acute kidney failure from undiagnosed end-stage liver cirrhosis. The doctor told me if I’d arrived at his home a few hours later, I would have been calling an undertaker and not an ambulance. Sometimes anxiety can be a lifesaving gift.”
“I was taking my little cousins ice skating around Christmas. I was young, and in college, so I didn’t feel like a very experienced driver yet. I was at a light about to make a left turn, but something told me not to pull all the way out, even though the light was green. On instinct, I glanced to my left. This huge SUV barreled through the red light. If I had trusted the light instead of my gut, that car would have plowed into my back seat, where three children under 10 years old were sitting.”
“I always glance left at intersections now.”
Twistedsifter.com has more stories to add to our list:
“My former teacher was in Japan on vacation and about to go home. He got to the airport and just felt that he shouldn’t get on his flight — something told him to push it back to a later time, so he rescheduled for a later flight.
He had a bit of a stomach ache and nausea but just figured it was from something he had eaten. Nothing to be concerned about.
Two hours later, his appendix burst. He was rushed via ambulance to the hospital for emergency surgery. If he were on that flight, it would have burst while they were in the air over the ocean.”
“We had a pre-construction work meeting planned at 9 a.m. My work partner and I decided to change the meeting, for no reason, to 9:30 a.m. because we suddenly felt like it.
Eleven of us were already there, so we were standing around and chatting elsewhere since we were early. At 9:11, a car going 50 mph went through the room we were going to have our meeting in. The impact was so hard the car was almost in the next room.
It would have more than likely killed, or at least seriously hurt, everyone sitting in that room.”
“One summer, my son was set to attend a week-long student training five hours away from home. A friend offered to take him along with their son, who was attending a sports camp there at the same time. My son planned to get a ride back with four other friends who lived another 40 minutes west of us.
The night before he left, I had a dream that he was killed in an accident coming home. I told him in the morning that I would be picking him up from camp, despite his protests.
On our way home, we came upon an accident near the county line that happened moments before we got there. Before I could pull the car over, another son with us got a terrible nosebleed, so I had to continue home.
The next day, we learned that the van involved in the single-vehicle accident was the car my son would have been riding in.“
I LOVE Mom stories like that (well, not stories where other kids get hurt in car accidents, but stories that protect your own child) – there is an inner sense moms have about when their children are in trouble or when they need them. When my son was stationed in Afghanistan, they only got Internet access once in a blue moon. It would just come on suddenly, so there was no way to anticipate or plan for it. And, it would come on during their day –the middle of the night here. However, whenever they got internet access, I would wake up from a sound sleep and just know that he was online. I’d hurry to my computer and be able to chat with him – which certainly was a blessing.
The Spirit whispering or some natural, internal manifestation that helps us interact with our environment. Whatever it is – I strongly suggest that you pay attention for your own good!
Happy Friday!!!