Why Cats Don't Bark: Unleash Your PowerZone: Intuitive Intelligence-the Other I.Q

Why Cats Don’t Bark Unleash Your PowerZone™ Intuitive Intelligence The Other

Edie Raether,

M.S., CSP

Liberty Publishing Group Raleigh • Frederick • Egg Harbor

I.Q.®

Copyright ©2002 Edie Raether All rights reserved. Reproduction or translation of any part of this work beyond that permitted by Section 107 or 108 of the 1975 United States Copyright Act without the permission of the copyright owner is unlawful. Requests for permission or further information should be addressed to the author.. This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering legal, accounting, or other professional service. From a Declaration of Principles jointly adopted by a Committee of the American Bar Association and a Committee of Publishers.

Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication Data (Provided by Quality Books, Inc.) Raether, Edie. Why Cats Don’t Bark : unleash your power zone : intuitive intelligence-- the other I.Q./ Edie Raether. -- 1st ed. p. cm. ISBN 1-893095-14-2 (soft cover) ISBN 1-893095-17-7 (hard cover)

1. Intuition. 2. Self-actualization (Psychology) I. Title. BD181.R34 2002

153.4’4 QBI02-701949 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Dedication I dedicate this book to those wise souls whose wisdom, enlightenment and empowerment allowed me to explore, discover and express my truth: My mother, Mildred Kirchman Rabas, who has no conception of defeat and magically turned problems into possibilities. My father, James John Rabas, Sr., who through his passion, charisma and uniqueness left his mark. All the heroes - victims and survivors - of September 11, 2001, since I began this book the week of September 11th and completed it on the one-year anniversary.

Acknowledgements The continual support, encouragement, and caring confrontation of Matty Mathison, teacher and coach extraordinaire, gave me the "push" and persistence to sing my song. J.L. Moreno, the father of Psychodrama, and Jean Houston, researcher and author, both unleashed my PowerZone,™ my intuitive intelligence. I also want to thank Sam Horn, Diana Booher and other authors in the National Speakers Association who made writing a book seem so possible and rewarding, as well as Bil Holton, my editor, whose excitement and expertise brought me to the finish line. I am also grateful for my hometown, Algoma, Wisconsin, which gave me roots to grow and wings to fly.

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Table of Contents 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9 10. 11. 12.

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .ix Cats Leave Their Marks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Intuitively Hijacked . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .9 Our Multiple Intellects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17 Ignite Your Intuitive Intelligence . . . . . . . . . .27 Listen to Your Intuitive Nudges . . . . . . . . . . .41 Toxic Logic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .51 Dreams — Your Intuitive Mirror . . . . . . . . . .61 Liquid Intuition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .69 Intuitively Speaking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .79 Seeing From Eye to I . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .85 Intuiting Your Life Purpose . . . . . . . . . . . . . .93 Intuition Workout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .101 Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .117 About the Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .119 Other Products by Edie Raether . . . . . . . . . .120 Contact Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .121 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .122

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Introduction

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eing a psychotherapist for over 25 years, I’ve always been interested in the discovery of personal truth, human potential, life’s purpose, our authentic self, our true biography, our fate and our destiny. My search has led me to ask myself questions like: Who am I? Why am I here? What is my life’s purpose? Am I living a life written by genetics or environment (nurture or nature), fate or destiny – or something more elemental and mysterious? What would I be doing if I knew I couldn’t fail? This book answers those questions. The psychotherapist in me lures me into observing the world around me. I process reality through my six senses: sight, smell, taste, touch, hearing and intuition. It has occurred to me that what we know determines how we think, what we decide, what we do and how we act. This book is about that sense of intuitive knowing. I have discovered that it is our self-expression, not our selfhood, which evolves. We have always been who we are. Each of us has a true self. Unfortunately, most of us learn to conceal our true natures as we fall victim to society’s imprint. Our personal truth is the gateway to personal freedom and joy. This book is about recovering our true nature. ix

Why Cats Don’t Bark I do not pretend to know all of the answers to life’s pressing questions. There is much more to life than mere theories, lab tests and statistical analysis. So where do we go to find the answers? How do we know what we know? How can we find out who we truly are? How can we find and then express our uniqueness? Are we defined by our circumstances or are our circumstances defined by our character flaws? The answer to all of these questions is: because cats don’t bark, dogs don’t chirp and birds don’t meow. Animals don’t know how to be anything other than themselves. They are true to their unique natures. This book is about why cats don’t bark. I believe we all have a life purpose, a special calling that is ours and ours alone. It may be repressed, postponed, delayed or avoided altogether – but hopefully, after reading this book, it will not be denied expression. To the degree we do not express, we depress. Sooner or later it will come out. The Romans called it our genius; the Greeks referred to it as our daimon; the Egyptians believed it was ka; the Sumarians called it atom. Other names for it are guardian angel, free-spirit, breath-soul and monad. Emerson called it the over-soul; James Hillman calls it the soul’s code; and I call this core genius our PowerZone. The question is: How do we access it? The central principle of this book is that you will be truly alive and joyful when you ignite your intuitive intelligence to discover and express your inner guru and unleash your PowerZone. I believe my father had phenomenal intuitive intelligence. He had a love affair with steam engines. He built them, collected them and became a legend because of them. When he died, there was a pouring in of poems and eulogies expounding on "the man and his machine." Although my father had only a grade school education, x

Introduction many people said he was an engineering genius. His mechanical inventions had to be intuitively guided. Coincidentally, it was intuition that brought me to write a book on intuition, and unleashed my PowerZone – writing. A few years ago I had nearly finished writing a book, Shattering the Glass Handcuffs, but had lost interest. Perhaps the sequence was wrong. My "gut guidance" whispered: You must write something else first. That “something else” was this book, which came to me during the week of September 11, 2001. I had heard stories of some of the World Trade Center survivors who had listened to their “gut guidance,” and either stayed home that fateful day, delayed their arrival to run an errand before they went to work or ran to safety after the first plane hit. I resolved to write a book on my chief occupational specialty: Intuitive Intelligence. The book you are holding in your hands, Why Cats Don’t Bark, is my tribute to the heroes, victims and survivors of September 11th and a reaffirmation that all of us need to develop and express our intuitive intelligence. I suspect you have been intuitively drawn to this book. You may have plucked it from its shelf because it’s title intrigued you; perhaps a friend told you about it or maybe you are the kind of person who is interested in books on intuition and self-development. Whatever prompted you to read this far has influenced you before. I believe it is your intuitive intelligence, your inner guru, your core genius that whispers: “There’s something here for you that will contribute to your soul growth. Read it and apply it.” If something I say in this book contributes to your life calling, it will have achieved its purpose. So delve in and discover!

Discover why cats don’t bark.

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Chapter One Cats Leave Their Mark This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish, elfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. George Bernard Shaw

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nce upon a time there was a cat named Freda. Like most cats, she was quite independent and freespirited. She had a mind of her own, and pleasing her master was not at the top of her priority list, as it was for her friend Fritz, the neighbor’s dog. Freda would not fetch balls, wag her tail or leap for joy when her master returned home. She would not bark at strangers or chase letter carriers. She seemed to have a strong personal cat agenda and only did cat things. 1

Why Cats Don’t Bark Although she could be quite affectionate and the purrfect young lady, she knew her place and kept you in your place. She was teasingly adept at brushing her agile body gracefully against your leg, inviting you to pet her. However, any attempt to pick her up for a quick cuddle or put her on your lap would be flatly rejected. Her owner wanted Freda to be more like Fritz, who would obediently sit, beg and roll over on command. So he enrolled Freda in obedience school. Her owner read all of the motivational books and pet-training how-to manuals. He listened to all of the pet psychology tapes and CDs. He showed his support by attending every pet training session with Freda. After years of trying to get Freda to bark, he decided that neither he nor his stable of pet trainers would ever get Freda to act like Fritz, or any other dog. She just didn’t have any canine in her. She was quite simply a cat. In fact, he noticed that the more he forced Freda to act like a dog, the more resistance, anger and rebellion she displayed. She had become aggressive, neurotic and aloof. She had adopted extreme feline behaviors such as biting, scratching and hissing. He was distraught at losing the good cat he once had and, although his intentions were good, he was paying the penalty for forcing Freda to be something she was not. He had wanted Freda to live up to his expectations. He had failed to appreciate and accept her true cat nature. The changes he wanted to force upon her were inconsistent with her feline spirit. He had robbed her of her cat identity.

Ω This story captures the essence of this book. Like Freda, so many of us are forced off track by well-meaning friends, 2

Cats Leave Their Mark family and colleagues who have their own notions of how our success and happiness should look. Like Freda’s owner discovered, we all have our own life calling. Each of us has an authentic self which must be expressed, or like Freda, we retreat into defensiveness, anger and neurosis.

Catnip for the Mind To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight and never stop fighting. e. e. cummings It is my belief that we are all victims of scientific, academic and therapeutic paradigms which ignore the sense of calling that makes each life unique and mysterious. Our individuality, sense of purpose, self-concept and intuitive intelligence illustrate what many people call the “Acorn Theory,” which holds that each of us bears an innate uniqueness that asks us to be expressed, nurtured and honored. In the language of Plato, “we each embody our own authenticity.” Etymologically, the word acorn actually goes back to the Old English word, acern, which in turn goes back to the Indo-European root meaning fruit or berry which was ripe. In Greek, the related terms, age or agete, originally meant to move or get going. Our pushy acorn nature, it seems, encompasses both of these meanings: our acorn nature pushes us to achieve our full potential – our ripeness. We are much more than bundles of DNA. We are spiritual beings in somatic spacesuits. We are filled with mystery and myth. We have qualities that transcend our 3

Why Cats Don’t Bark genetic code because we are the products of a spiritual code as well. It is from the realm of spirit that our intuitive intelligence springs. And it is our intuitive intelligence that protects our divine essence and reminds us who we are. I have chosen to begin my discussion of intuitive intelligence by using Freda and Fritz to illustrate the importance of honoring your life narrative. Animals, like children, present the best evidence for an acorn theory. You no doubt have heard amazing stories of cats falling from high ledges without harm, or dogs buried under tons of earthquake debris or falling into deep wells and surviving. The incredible resilience and spirit of animals in these situations remind us that the survival instinct, the will to live, to accept one’s fate, to exercise the patience and courage to live out one’s destiny are beyond comprehension. It is important for us to be able to nurture our nature and to be who we are. We can do that by listening to our intuitive intelligence. Animals are so accepting of themselves, their instincts, abilities and surroundings. Cats don’t bark, dogs don’t chirp and birds don’t meow. On the other hand, we humans can do all of those things. We can bark, chirp and meow to our heart’s content. We mimic animals and we imitate each other, sometimes to our own detriment. Unlike animals, we try to live two lives at once – the one we are born with, our soul’s code, and the life socially and culturally imposed upon us. Individuality, self-expression, acceptance, resilience and independence are all primary characteristics of acorn behavior. Our acorn essence is also our potential essence. We are what we become and we become what we are. Both Freda and Fritz know this instinctively. Freda is happy as a cat. Fritz loves being a dog. When Freda meows, arches her back and visits the litter box, she is exhibiting acorn behavior. Every time Fritz barks, relieves himself by a fire hydrant 4

Cats Leave Their Mark and wags his tail, he demonstrates dog acorn behavior. We can learn a lot from our pets, don’t you think? One of my acorn teachers was a black poodle mutt named Pouka. His face was so full of hair you had to search for his eyes. He taught my children and me daily lessons about values, loyalty, passion, determination and survival. Weighing in at a whopping eight pounds – before a haircut – Pouka epitomized an acorn who thought he was an oak. I’m not sure if it was his inflated ego, courage or ignorance, but he had the David-and-Goliath thing down perfectly. He would take on dogs ten times his size – and win the standoff! I believe his barely audible but passionate bark conveyed the message “You may think I’m just a tiny acorn, but I am a mighty oak!”

Catnip for the Mind Like an ability or a muscle, hearing your inner wisdom is strengthened by doing it. Robbie Gass

Perhaps we underestimate ourselves and our abilities to overcome what appears to be insurmountable obstacles. An obstacle is something we see when we take our eyes off our essence. Like Pouka, we need to think big and believe big. We need to leave our mark on every situation in which we find ourselves. Whatever we do, we must be true to our calling. In the words of Pearl S. Buck, “...a writer must write, a dancer must dance, a painter must paint and a musician must play.” If we do not joyfully express who we are, but instead suppress our true selves, we will become unhappy, depressed and physically ill.

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Why Cats Don’t Bark All of us are answerable to our acorn selves. We become irrevocably tied to our own biographies because we are our biographies. Like you, I am discovering my own acorn nature. As a psychotherapist, I have been trained to understand human nature, to uncover emotional baggage and to help people recover their true selves. Of this I am certain: we are all here for a reason. And because we are here, our mere existence requires growth so we can get from where we are to where we choose to be. My question to you is: What would you be doing if you knew you couldn’t fail? I’ll be asking you that same question throughout this book, because it is central to intuitive growth and development. So, how do we find our oakness? That is the question which prompted the title to this book. It is a question which causes us to look further into human nature than mere genetics and environment. Psychology today is moving back to its philosophical, metaphysical, spiritual and religious roots. I want to lift the pall of superficial genetic and environmental explanations for understanding the human personality and take us a step closer to our oakness. I believe our intuitive intelligence is the mechanism to help us reclaim who we really are. The rest of this book takes you on an intuitive journey based on a growing body of scientific knowledge which suggests we are more spirit than matter and as much mystery as fact.

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Cats Leave Their Mark

Paws to Reflect 1. What would you be doing with your life if you knew you couldn’t fail? 2. What does the expression “we are spiritual beings in somatic spacesuits” mean to you? 3. What three things will you immediately stop or start doing to clear the path and continue your life’s journey, so you can leave your mark? 4. To what extent are you the author of your own personal biography? 5. After removing the filters of social and cultural conditioning, what is your life’s purpose or soul's code? 6. Who or what are the obstacles to the expression of your essence?

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The truth is that the average ‘bottom-ofthe-ladder' person is potentially as creative as the top executive who sits in the big office. The problem is that the person on the bottom of the ladder doesn't trust his own brilliance and doesn't, therefore, believe in his own ideas. Dr. Robert Schuller

Chapter 2 Intuitively Hijacked One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives. Mark Twain

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here is in each of us a longing to see beyond our normal physical sight. We sense an invisible world just beyond our visual reach. There is something within us that says we are different from everyone else, that we have a specialness that cannot be replicated. In light of the previous chapter, we know that this “something” is our acorn nature, our oakness. It constitutes the real us – our PowerZone. Awakening to our acorn nature and hearing it speak through our intuitive abilities is the primary purpose of this book. How do we recognize its voice, our true voice? How do we know that a particular intuition is a message from our own unique oakness? How can we get tuned in to our oakness? How do we know which intuitions to trust, or when it is worrisome or wishful thinking and not intuition? Each of these questions has to do with recognizing our intuitive 9

Why Cats Don’t Bark potential. We have been intuitively hijacked by many of the antics of modern science and technology, which cause a loss of inner hearing or intuitive deafness. It is hard to get through our thick 21st Century heads that we can get messages from someplace else more beneficial to our health and well-being than what comes from TV and the Internet. I learned a valuable intuitive lesson when my youngest son turned 16 and had just received his driver's license. I remember thinking, it was not a matter of IF he would have a car accident, but WHEN and how bad it might be. Just a few weeks later, the time had come, and the accident was very bad. In fact, after seeing the mangled car, it is truly a miracle anyone survived it. Although I had been only a few blocks away at the time of the accident, I began my journey from Green Bay to Milwaukee, not knowing what had happened. However, I had an incredibly gnawing feeling in my gut and an intense "pull" to turn around and return to Green Bay. But with no logical explanation for the urge to return, I continued my two-hour journey and, upon arriving in Milwaukee, received the phone call every parent dreads. When I picked up the phone, I tensed inexplicably even before I heard the news. My intuitive instincts told me something terrible had happened to my son. Fortunately, after several surgeries and great medical care, my son, Tory, is fine, and he and his lovely wife, Jean, have two beautiful children. Cats are wonderful role models for listening to internal, instinctual messages. For example, cat owners face their pet’s acorn nature every time they prepare their cats for a bath. Every cat owner knows that cats and water don’t mix. It’s in their – you guessed it – acorn nature. Cats intuitively know they don’t like water, and they will prove it to you. Although cats have the advantage of quickness and lack of concern for pushy humans around water hazards, humans 10

Intuitively Hijacked have the advantage of strength and planning – that’s part of our oakness. Savvy cat “wrestlers” know that it is best to corral fussy felines for bathing by putting them in tubs with sliding glass doors. (A simple shower curtain simply will not do. A berserk cat, true to its acorn nature, can shred a three-ply plastic shower curtain in ten seconds or less.) Your own clothing and body are not immune to such an attack, so you may want to wear hockey gear or a football helmet. Anyone who has ever bathed water-aversive cats knows what I am talking about. Once you’ve washed the cat, the rest is easy. All you have to do is drain the tub, fluff the paranoid feline dry and go about your business. In a few days, your beloved cat will relax enough to pry itself from your leg. In a few more days, perhaps a week, your fluffy feline may forgive you and purr its way onto your lap or caress your leg affectionately by waltzing to and fro against it (classic cat behavior). Of course, as cat lovers know, try to bathe the independent rascal again and its anti-water acorn nature will kick (or should I say scratch and claw) into high gear. That’s the way cats are. They are true disciples of their cat calling.

Catnip for the Mind There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats. Albert Schweitzer

Cats and their cousins (dogs, horses, chimpanzees, foxes and bears, to name a few) exhibit what we call instinctual behavior. Their need for structure, routine, protected 11

Why Cats Don’t Bark territory and survival expresses itself in antisocial behaviors such as possessiveness, paranoia, hypervigilance and aggression. According to Paul MacLean, an evolutionary neuroanatomist and senior research scientist at the National Institute of Mental Health, we also have instinctual complexes resembling our nearest primate relatives. Although our human neocortexes are specialized versions of our primate cousins, we are prone to exhibit self-serving patterns of behavior whenever we feel threatened. When we are under stress, we downshift into our rudimentary, instinctual selves and adopt selfish, impulsive and even ruthless self-protective behaviors. However, we must soar deeply, for deep inside our instinctual self we discover the core of our spiritual wings. The problem is we live in denial of who we really are and what our life’s purpose is, because we fail to listen to our oakness. We neglect our true calling, when we allow our insecurities to bathe us with doubt, fear and depression. Unlike our feline friends, we relinquish our power to others who want us to subscribe to their values and belief systems. We do not scratch and claw our way to selfhood. Our passivity and blind obedience perpetuates their comfort zone, making us predictable, compliant and hollow. We will never find the inner peace, balance and harmony we seek unless we turn their comfort zone into our PowerZone. In the early eighties, I had decided to move to Salt Lake City, Utah; however, I had mixed emotions about the move. I had placed a large sum of money in my bank account, which was the amount needed to close on the home. I believe intuition unconsciously guided me, because I deposited the money into the wrong account. I never moved it, and the misplaced funds could have averted a financial disaster. Unfortunately, the banker saw what seemed to be an obvious error and took the liberty of transferring the money so the house would close as scheduled, eventually 12

Intuitively Hijacked resulting in a loss of the entire sum of money. Did I unconsciously or intuitively know something that the wellintended banker did not know? More recently, I had the opportunity to put some of my beach property up for sale. As I was thinking about the sale price of the property, an incredibly large figure came to mind. A week later I received an offer on two ocean front properties which had received no attention since Hurricane Fran rendered them worthless back in 1996. Coincidentally, the combined selling price of the two lots was the exact figure I had seen. Our thoughts are magnets for the realities we create. For example, I was fortunate to turn another piece of property around. The book you are holding is a tangible manifestation of an intellectual property which was intuitively conceived in 1975.

Catnip for the Mind No matter how deep a study you make, what you really have to rely on is your own intuition and when it comes down to it, you really don’t know what’s going to happen until you do it. Konosuke Matsushita Until we learn to nurture our acorn nature and express our true selves, we will continue to be disillusioned with work that has no meaning, friends who have no substance and free time that has no depth or joy. “Argue for your limitations,” says Richard Bach in his book, Illusions, “and sure enough, they’re yours.” I have found that people who express their acorn nature have several things in common: they have freed themselves from their past; they plan for the

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Why Cats Don’t Bark future but live in the moment; and they have a confidence and composure that permeates everything they do. The Course in Miracles puts it this way: To be born again is to let the past go, and look without condemnation upon the present…you are…asked to let the future go, and place it in God’s (capable) Hands…(then) the past will punish you no more, and future dread will now be meaningless. You may not need a spiritual teacher, guidance counselor or motivational speaker to tell you how to erase your past and move beyond your personal limitations. These well-meaning human potential gurus can, however, help you appreciate yourself and offer techniques to improve your life. If they can help you get out of your concrete boots and excited about improving your life, they have met their calling. My calling is to ignite your intuitive intellectual potential so you can unleash your PowerZone. I hope the only scratching and sniffing you do is digging deeper into your acorn nature. And if you must cling to something, hold on to the belief that your intuition is an unfailing inner compass that will guide your choices and open the doors to your true purpose in life. And open the doors I must, because just as a cat has “nine lives,” we have multiple intelligences. We are multidimensional beings who possess many aspects of emotional, mental, physical, spiritual and intuitive intelligence. How we succeed or fail in life is determined by all of our fully functioning intellectual selves.

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Intuitively Hijacked

Paws to Reflect 1. What special qualities do you have that are different from everyone else and cannot be replicated? 2. How have you been intuitively hijacked? 3. When you are under stress, what rudimentary, instinctional impulses do you downshift into to protect yourself? 4. To what degree do you believe your own intuition is an unfailing, completely trustworthy inner compass? 5. What environment best allows you to hear and listen to internal, instinctual messages? 6. What limitations have you been arguing for and defending that must now be released through forgiveness or simply letting go?

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A few can touch the magic string, And noisy Fame is proud to win them; Alas for those that never sing, But die with all their music in them! Oliver Wendell Holmes

Chapter 3 Our Multiple Intellects The cognitive scientists who think an exploration of (multiple intelligences) has no place in…scientific inquiry… have been seduced by the computer as the operative model of mind, forgetting that…the brain’s wetware is awash in a…substantive puddle of neurochemicals, and is nothing like the sanitized…silicon that…fails to explain…how the mind works. Daniel Goleman

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o the casual observer, cats may seem detached, nonchalant and a bit disinterested in fulfilling their social responsibilities when it comes to pleasing people, pet-owners included. They have an air of arrogance and aloofness, and give the impression it’s their way or the highway as they prance, purr and parade around the house.

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Why Cats Don’t Bark Their multi-intellectual natures are not fully apparent until you discover how they, not you, run the house. For example, they can quickly determine which guests hate cats and manage to jump in-and-out of their laps several times during visits, just to emphasize their presence. What makes cats invariably cuddle next to you in your line of sight whenever you attempt to read a book in their presence? If they really want to make their point, they’ll lie across the book itself and expect to be comforted for interrupting your reading. One of a cat’s favorite mind games is to jump quickly on the bed you are making and curl up in the center, or pounce on the sheet you are holding in your outstretched hands. How do cats know when to do these things? Their timing is usually impeccable, their playfulness is disarming, and their control of the situation is absolutely amazing. If anything gets knocked over or spilled, it’s the human’s fault. Are cats really that good at manipulation and counter-intelligence? Are they that good at misdirection? Do they know us that well? I know I speak for all cat owners when I say, “Yes, cats are really that smart! They seem to have multiple intellects to go along with their multiple lives.”

Catnip for the Mind If we listened to our intellect, we'd never have a love affair. We'd never have a friendship. We'd never go into business, because we'd be cynical. Well, that's nonsense. You've got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down. Ray Bradbury

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Our Multiple Intellects Howard Gardner’s extremely influential book, Frames of Mind, proposed that we have not just one kind of IQ, but a wide spectrum of intelligences. According to this highlyrespected researcher, we have verbal, mathematical-logical, spatial, kinesthetic, musical, interpersonal and intrapsychic intelligences. The operative words in his view of intelligence are a wide spectrum and multiple. Gardner believes we have multiple intelligences, and so do I. And I’m not the only one who holds this view. Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray wrote a controversial book entitled The Bell Curve, which acknowledges the importance of other kinds of human intelligences besides math and verbal skills. Aymus Sawaf and Robert Cooper, authors of Executive EQ, have introduced the concept of emotional intelligence (EQ). According to the authors, “Emerging research suggests that a technically proficient executive…with a high EQ…(will) pick up – more readily, more deftly and more quickly than others – conflicts that require resolution; team and organizational vulnerabilities that need addressing; hidden opportunities; and the murky, mysterious interactions that seem likely to prove golden and profitable.” Yale researcher Peter Salovey says we should not see emotion and intellect as contradictory abilities. One of the founders of IQ research, E.L. Thorndike, proposed that the ability to understand others and make good social choices was in itself an aspect of intelligence. Another Yale psychologist, Robert Sternberg, asserts: “People still count IQ, but IQ doesn’t count (as much)…We must never lose sight of the fact that what really matters most in (life) is not (one kind of) intelligence.” Dr. Paul MacLean has argued that the human brain is comprised of three distinct sub-brains: the reptilian brain, the limbic brain and the neocortex. 19

Why Cats Don’t Bark The reptilian or instinctual brain is the oldest and is steeped in the physiology of survival. It controls the vital body functions: heart beat, respiration, digestion, temperature, etc. It still functions when a person is brain-dead. The mammalian or emotional brain is the limbic gray matter that registers rewards and punishments. It is the seat of emotion and controls the body’s autonomic nervous system. There is an interconnection between the reptilian and mammalian brains. The reptilian brain is the source of our instinctual responses and “gut” reactions, such as fightflight behavior. Our intuitive intelligence has roots in our instinctual brain, but is processed in our emotional brain. The third brain is the neocortex, or “thinking cap.” Reading, planning, analyzing and decision-making occur here. The neocortex decides what information we should act upon or store in our long-term memory. It helps us make sense of our world. Sigmund Freud described the necessity to control our emotional intelligence (although it wasn’t called that then) in his book, Civilization and Its Discontents, when he observed that society is forced to create rules to subdue emotional excesses for the good of society. Also, some path finding research by Joseph LaDoux suggests that various emotional reactions and memories can occur without any conscious, cognitive awareness at all. I believe our intuitive intelligence works much the same way. It may even be a form of invisible math. Mathematician Morris Kline, in his delightful book Mathematics: The End of Certainty, sees mathematics as “a series of great intuitions carefully sifted, refined and organized…into rigorous, logical structures.” I have often thought of music as a lyrical form of math. Perhaps our multiple intellects have interchangeable characteristics. 20

Our Multiple Intellects “Intuition,” says Horace and Ava English, “is direct and unmediated knowledge. It involves the immediate…comprehension of complex (information).” Researcher Howard Warren reflects that intuition seems to be spontaneous and “occurs…without any known process of cognition or reflective thinking.” So intuition seems to operate on gestalts (fields of information) and “sees” beyond the limitations of rational thinking. It is direct, unfiltered logic. In my forty years of research on intuition and mental diversity, I have come to the conclusion that we can add intuitive intelligence (our gut guidance) to the other kinds of thinking. Like the other multiple intellects, it is innate and independent of left-brain, logical thinking. No one knows exactly how we get intuitions, but we do know when we get them and how powerful they are in transforming our lives. If the mind were so simple that the brain could understand it, the brain would be so simple, it couldn’t. This point was reinforced recently in an interview when the singer, Cher, was asked: “What is your greatest gift?” She replied, “My brain.” The interviewer continued: “What is your greatest curse?” Her reply: “My brain.” How might this be true for you? The lopsided scientific interest in rational, logical thinking over the last forty years is gradually recognizing our intuitive abilities as the inspiration for innovative and creative thinking. So the timing for this book is important. It brings my two chief research interests together: intuition and life purpose. Our intuitive intelligence sends us mental faxes (neuro-lightning bolts) to help us solve problems, make decisions, avoid or take risks and gain insights which transform untapped potential into peak performance. All of us from time to time have felt a sense of imminent danger or a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. A sense of “nervous certainty” occurs which prompts us to do something or refrain from doing something. These “intuitive 21

Why Cats Don’t Bark indicators” come to us unannounced. For example, four months after the Federal Building bombing in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995, which killed 168 innocent people, CNN aired a poignant interview with one of the survivors. She was a young woman who was learning how to walk on an artificial leg. She had also lost her two children in the blast. CNN aired the report to show the nation how the victims were adjusting to a life quite different than what they had expected a day before the blast. Out of her shock and continuing despair, the woman said something that, I am sure, has haunted millions of Americans who heard the interview. She said she wished she had followed her instincts that day. She had had a sudden intuition to pick her children up from the day care facility two floors down and leave the building. She tearfully told the reporter that she had dismissed the intuition as a silly notion. Thirty minutes later, her world exploded. I have heard similar stories from the families of the victims of the World Trade Center disaster. Account after account described intuitive impulses to stay at home or leave the building that day. Some had acted on their premonitions, others were not accustomed to listening to their sudden inclinations or gut guidance. I call these intuitive flashes “intuitive markers.” These automatic alarms are deep inclinations that call our attention to potential danger by warning us about something in advance. I am convinced that if we valued our intuitive intelligence (our gut brain) as much as our mathematical and verbal intelligence, we could protect ourselves better from such catastrophes. We could also avert another, more wide-spread catastrophe: not knowing or manifesting our true selves, our acorn nature. Psychologists are taking intuition more seriously. Unlike the familiar IQ tests, there is, to date, no simple paper-pencil test that yields an “intuitive intelligence score” – and there may never be one. However, if there is one thing 22

Our Multiple Intellects I know about psychologists, once they identify “something,” they want to test that “something.” Perhaps the research community will one day test for such things as “hunch acuity,” “gut feelings accuracy” or “inclination proneness.” However, new measurement tools, without numbers or timelines, will be necessary.

Catnip for the Mind In oneself lies the whole world and if you know how to look and learn, the door is there and the key is in your hand. Nobody on earth can give you either the key or the door to open, except yourself. Jiddu Krishnamurti

Recent breakthroughs in cognitive research are redefining intelligence testing and expanding the traditional concept of IQ itself. One lesson we can learn from intuitive insights is the crucial role they play in helping us navigate the endless stream of choices we face every day. While strong intuitions can confuse us and create havoc in our thinking, not paying attention to them can also be disastrous, especially in weighing life and death decisions. We must learn to listen to our intuitive intelligence because change has changed; the velocity of change has changed. We can’t wait for all of the information to arrive anymore. We need a turbo-charged system of decisionmaking and problem-solving, which I discuss in Chapter Six, Toxic Logic. We have many opportunities to listen to our intuition. Every day we are faced with decisions which affect our destiny: what career to pursue or leave, whom to date or marry, what fork in the road to take, whether to get on a particular 23

Why Cats Don’t Bark plane, and so on. The answers to all of these important life decisions require more than rational thinking. Their solutions need as much gut guidance as they do career advice, road maps or dowries. Formal logic and reasoning alone will never work for these kinds of decisions. Without intuitive intelligence, rational intelligence is blind. We have much to learn about intuitive behavior, and I believe our house pets can teach us a lot about listening to our gut reactions. In the aftermath of tragedies like the Oklahoma City bombing and World Trade Center attack, there have been interesting stories about pets’ reactions to their owners’ deaths. It seems that the invisible bonds between pets and their owners transcend geographical distance. Cats, for example, show unmistakable signs of nervousness and distress for which no immediate reason is evident. It later turns out that their owner experienced an accident or a fatal injury at precisely the same time the cat was exhibiting its strange behavior. There are hundreds of documented cases where cats make unusual sounds such as howls or guttural meows, or they whine uncontrollably. Some cats change their sleeping places, maintain silent vigil near their owner’s bed, sit in the same window or occupy the owner’s favorite chair for days. These empathic responses by cats reacting to their owner’s injury or death some distance away is a kind of intuitive “knowing” that springs from the depths of their intuitive intelligence. These premonitions seem to suggest that cats, like humans, have a capacity for multiple intelligences. Feline intelligence, then, seems to include abilities in premonitions and telepathy. The bond between the intuitive nature of pet owners and their pets is the emotional channel through which intuitive communication is stretched, not broken, despite geographic separation. The same bond is present in human-to-human relationships and is made possible through, as yet unexplained, 24

Our Multiple Intellects intuitive connections. According to physicists Paul Davies and John Gribbin, “Once two particles have interacted with one another, they remain linked in some unknown way, (becoming) parts of the same indivisible system.” If we expand the particle analogy, taking it from physics and placing it in a psychological framework, we can refer to each of the various human intelligences as “particles of intellect.” Paraphrasing Davies and Gribbin, we can say that once our multiple intelligences “have interacted with one another, they remain linked in some way, (becoming) parts of the same indivisible (mental) system.” Our intuitive circuitry, then, is interlinked with our logical wiring, which is connected to our spatial terminals. Those people who have tuned themselves into their life purpose, their acorn nature, are able to harmonize their multiple intelligences and keep their circuits static-free.

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Why Cats Don’t Bark

Paws to Reflect 1. How intuitive do you think you are and what percentage of the time do you listen to your “intuitive markers?” 2. Is your logical wiring more developed than your intuitive circuitry? To your own satisfaction, examine your actions over the past three months and determine whether it is logic or intuition that rules your life. 3. If we could test your “gut feeling” accuracy, how high would you score on a scale of 0 to 100? Why? 4. When it comes to assessing your abilities, which ones do you value the most?

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Chapter 4 Ignite Your Intuitive Intelligence It is always with excitement that I wake up in the morning wondering what my intuition will toss up to me. Jonas Salk

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nlike traditional IQ, with a century of research behind it, intuitive intelligence is a new concept. It is a different kind of intelligence. In recent years, it is gaining in respectability largely because psychologists are recognizing it as a natural mental skill which helps us make decisions, solve problems, generate creative ideas and even forecast future events. We are beginning to realize that intuition is not just a “mysterious” gift or an accidental insight. 27

Why Cats Don’t Bark The advances in transpersonal psychologies, brain research and the remarkable acceptance of Eastern medicine and philosophies have led many researchers to believe that there are untapped powers and wisdom deep inside of us. They are beginning to agree that there is something inside of us that understands who we are, what our purpose is, and what is necessary for our protection, growth and development. As psychologist Jerome Bruner wrote in The Process of Education, “The warm praise the scientists lavish on those of their colleagues who earn the label ‘intuitive’ is major evidence that intuition is a valuable commodity in science.” Eighty-seven of 93 Nobel prize winners who were interviewed claimed that intuition was primary to their success. Our canine and feline friends, Fritz and Freda, would say it’s time to define intuition, and my intuition tells me they are right. Derived from the Latin word intueri, which means “to look upon…to see within…to consider or contemplate,” Webster defines intuition as “quick and ready insight…the act or process of coming to direct knowledge without reasoning or inferring.” Psychologist Carl Jung calls it “one of the basic psychological functions that explores the unknown and senses possibilities and implications…not readily apparent.” It is unconventional wisdom, or a direct knowing, that provides sensory feedback and is, in fact, a sensory fact-finding system. Buckminster Fuller called intuition “cosmic fishing.” Here are some other definitions: • Intuition is the primary wisdom, the last fact behind which analysis cannot go. (Emerson) • It is an extrasensory way of knowing…a clairvoyance…telepathy. (Frances Vaughan) • It is a superior way of knowing ultimate truth without using prior knowledge. (Spinoza) 28

Ignite Your Intuitive Intelligence • Intuition is a suspension of logic due to impatience. (Rita Mae Brown) • Intuition is reason in a hurry. (Holbrook Jackson) • Intuitions are psychic telegrams from the subconscious. (G.W. Casper) • Intuition is the mind turning in on itself and apprehending the result of processes that have taken place outside awareness. (Philip Goldberg) • Intuition is God’s telephone. (Kenny Loggins) • Intuition is that “something” in the body which hears messages and knows how to respond to them. (Dr. Bernie Siegal) There are as many definitions of intuition as there are breeds of cats, but the definitions serve to make a point. Intuition is difficult to quantify. It applies to a broad range of human sensory experiences. The good news is all of us have intuitive abilities. Until recently, many people thought of intuition as the domain of a privileged few, despite evidence to the contrary. Intuition has been shunned by its association with Ouija boards and the occult. Millions of women were once burned at the stake as witches because of their misunderstood gift of intuition. Now we realize intuition is a reliable cognitive tool within each of us. More importantly, it is a skill which can be refined and developed. I am not advocating an impulse revolution which would only create a world full of greater chaos and confusion. What I am suggesting is that we persist and persevere with vim and vigor the ultimate manifestation of who we are. Igniting your intuition will automatically provide you with the energy, drive, determination and discipline to cre29

Why Cats Don’t Bark ate your destiny. The fulfillment of your dreams and goals will become so self-rewarding that without conscious will or effort the patterns of success will become self-sustaining. You will become spiritually intoxicated. As you get rid of the emotional cataracts and your vision becomes clear, you will find the walk upon your path effortless as you proceed with ease. Fears will dissipate as you relinquish yourself to a greater cause or your reason for being. You will feel in sync, not out of touch. You will experience your work as an extension of your self or your very soul, feeling one with the process of becoming. You will achieve a level of unconscious competence where excellence and peak performance feels effortless as the energy is allowed to flow through you. Perhaps that is why Michael Jordan refers to this state as being “in the flow.” Other sports use different buzz words, although the experience is the same. In golf, it is referred to as being “in the zone.” Tiger Woods would qualify. In the current world of musicians, Wynton Marsalis seems to become one with his instrument, as does any exceptional musician. The question is, can we all achieve this supreme level of mastery? I believe the answer is “yes,” if we are in sync with our instincts and we learn the mindempowering strategies that provide access to the inner, unconventional wisdom of our intuition and instinctual intelligence.

Catnip for the Mind Intuition becomes increasingly valuable in the new information society precisely because there is so much data. John Naisbitt

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Ignite Your Intuitive Intelligence Estee Lauder, founder of the giant cosmetic company which bears her name, was famous for her intuitive ability to pick bestselling perfumes. She could out-predict market research every time. Wayne Gretsky, famous hockey star, said he would skate to where he knew the puck would be on the ice. Linus Pauling, Nobel Prize winner, realized the shape of the protein molecule when he noticed a string of paper dolls resembled the shape of a helix. One fall evening in 1893, James Couzens, a clerk in a Detroit coal company, passed one of the noisy contraptions that sputtered down the street. As bystanders laughed and pointed skeptical fingers at the bizarre, motorized vehicle, Couzens sensed that the eccentric sitting behind the wheel knew “something” more than first impressions dictated. He bought a hundred shares for a total of $10,000 – his life savings. In 1919 Couzens sold his stock in Henry Ford’s auto company for $35 million. His “hunch” to invest all he had earned him a fortune 25 years later. These are only a few of the stories of people who followed their hunches. I share many more amazing stories in the next chapter. The important thing to remember is in order to ignite your intuition, you’ve got to recognize the value of an intuitive hunch when it occurs. Evidence is mounting that intuitions come to us when we have to make important choices and consider competing options. People who have a good intuitive sense have these things in common: • They trust their gut reactions. They go with their feelings even if they don’t understand why they are feeling uneasy, tentative or unduly excited. They know the reasons will become clear in the future. • Intuitive people keep records of their intuitive activity. They analyze their insights and 31

Why Cats Don’t Bark hunches to see if a reasonable number have proven to be good hunches. • They value experiences more than concepts or theory. Jerome Bruner of Harvard University says, “People who have extensive familiarity with a particular line of work or activity appear more often to leap intuitively into decisions or readily ‘see’ solutions which later prove to be appropriate.” • Intuitive people do not force intuitive insights because they know that hunches, insights and sudden inclinations are not under conscious control. They do thorough spadework whenever they face problems and challenges because they know that the Muse rewards hard work. • People who trust their intuition know that dreams are the royal road to the subconscious and a fascinating mental environment for producing intuitive flashes of insight. They keep a dream journal and analyze their dreams every three or four months. • In addition to a rich dream life, intuitive people generally have abundant prayer life as well. Prayer, meditation and visualization are all excellent “aha” generators. Each of these practices forces you to sit quietly and take time off from busy work schedules. Noise chases intuitions away. The best intuitors know it is best to “be still and know” to invite intuition.

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Ignite Your Intuitive Intelligence • Certain types of physical activity create a shift in consciousness, which invites intuitions. Many intuitors engage in aha-producing activities like: running, walking, swimming, hiking, gliding, exercising, dancing, gardening, painting, taking a shower, traveling, vacationing, and fishing. (My parents would often dance four days a week, including allday marathons. They came home with plenty of ideas!) It is quite common to experience intuitive flashes of insight whenever you are engaged in any of these activities. You don’t need to spend a lot of money or travel to exotic locations to court the Muse. Catnip for the Mind A hunch is creativity trying to tell you something. Frank Capra • Sometimes naps and daydreams are wonderful incubators for intuitive insights. Thomas Edison and John F. Kennedy were famous for taking naps whenever they were stuck on a particular problem. In fact, Kennedy took his naps in a reclined position, which, according to research, stimulates the adrenal glands and restores energy. Of course, pet owners aren’t surprised at “nap power” at all. That’s why dogs and cats are so innovative – they sleep a lot!

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Why Cats Don’t Bark People who are serious about harnessing the power of their inner wisdom have learned how to ignite their intuitive intelligence. The specific intuition-friendly environment may be different but the outcome is the same: Voila! A sudden insight comes which gives them direction and guidance. Seasoned intuitors are very comfortable with their intuitive abilities. Let’s see what your “hunch quotient” is, so you can get a sense of your natural intuitive powers.

Your Hunch Quotient Check “yes” or “no” for each of the following questions. Yes

No

1. Have you ever had a premonition (when you were awake or asleep) of an event that occurred shortly thereafter?

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2. Have you ever answered the phone or the doorbell and instinctively known who was calling or ringing the doorbell?

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3. Have you ever met a person whom you’ve never met before and sensed that you had met before?

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5. Do you have vivid, colorful dreams?

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6. Has the solution to a problem or answer to a challenging situation ever come to you in a flash of insight?

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7. Have you ever sensed someone staring at you and found out that you were right?

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8. Have you ever thought of someone, only to have that person contact you “unexpectedly?”

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9. Have you ever had a sudden urge to leave someplace or not go somewhere, and then discovered it was in your best interest to follow the urge?

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4. Have you ever traveled somewhere or attended a particular event and thought: “I’ve done this or been here before?”

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Ignite Your Intuitive Intelligence Yes

No

10. Have you ever taken a chance and helped someone you didn’t know very well, and learned later that you did the right thing?

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11. Did you ever expect the arrival of some piece of correspondence (check in the mail, gift package, important announcement) which was actually delivered on the day of your hunch?

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12. Have you ever found something you lost, or helped someone else find something they lost, on a hunch?

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reason, only to find out later that something negative happened to someone you love?

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14. Do you invariably know the correct time (within a few minutes) without consulting a watch or clock?

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15. Do you consistently awake just before your alarm clock goes off?

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16. Have you ever found yourself singing, humming or whistling a tune, and then turned on the radio and heard the exact same song playing?

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17. Have you ever bought something on a whim at a yard sale or flea market, and found out later it was a valuable antique or collector’s item?

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18. Do you have a good sense of direction in unfamiliar territory without a map?

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19. Have you ever had the feeling that you should save what you have typed, and then found out later that it was a good thing you did?

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20. Have you ever gotten lost while driving your car, and followed your hunches until you got back on the right route?

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13. Have you ever felt saddened or depressed for no apparent

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Why Cats Don’t Bark

HQ Score Total your number of “Yes” responses and rate yourself using the following table: 0-5 “Yes” responses: You tend to rely on logic and deduction. You are probably skeptical of anything you can’t see, feel, hear, taste or smell. Igniting your intuition will take some work, especially in the areas of spontaneity, change, creativity and using your imagination. (Freda and Fritz both scored higher than this!) 6-10 “Yes” responses: You are beginning to appreciate your intuitive intelligence. This probably isn’t the first book on intuition you have read. You are open to exploring your intuitive potential, and have some exciting growth ahead! 11-15 “Yes” responses: You probably pay attention to hunches and gut reactions to events in your life. While you recognize intuitive skills in others, chances are you fail to appreciate your own intuitive intelligence enough. Begin paying more attention to the times you hear your intuition, and record the impact of either following or not following it. You will be amazed, and strengthen your ability to use your intuitive intelligence to your advantage! 16-20 “Yes” responses: You already have a highly developed awareness of the role intuition plays in your life. Your next step is to take your intuitive prowess seriously, and act on every hunch, premonition and sudden inclination you feel. Keep a journal of the results and enjoy the journey. © Performance PLUS

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Ignite Your Intuitive Intelligence This 20-item paper-and-pencil test gives you an overall “feel” of your intuitive awareness. It is not meant to be a rigorous assessment of your intuitive potential or aptitude. What I hope you gain from it is an increased interest in developing your intuitive intelligence. Whatever your belief is about your inner source of power, you have access to this deep subconscious pool of wisdom that resides in your acorn nature. It is the seat of your truth and the seat of your soul. Your intuitive intelligence can summon the answers from the place that houses your soul’s code, and help you live your life fully and with a clear sense of purpose and direction. After researching the keys to open the doors of intuition, I realized that the lessons had been learned many years ago from a book called the Holy Bible. Here are the steps to getting in sync with your intuitive instincts so you can raise your Hunch Score. 1. Be ye as children. Be open, curious and attentive. See the world through the unfiltered eye with the awe and wonderment of the child. 2. Be still and know. Take time to pray, meditate and listen to your inner guide. Silence is more than golden, it is essential to our spiritual growth and provides fertile territory for moments of inspiration and creativity, which are crucial to thriving in today's competitive marketplace. 3. Seek…and ye shall find. Our eyes must be open to possibilities. We must expect miracles and positive outcomes. We must also be focused and clear on what it is that we seek. Be a possibility thinker. The power of positive expectation is so well stated by the following: "When I was a boy, my mother said, ‘if you are a soldier, you 37

Why Cats Don’t Bark will be a general; and if you are a priest, you will be the pope.’ Instead, I was a painter and became Picasso." 4. Ask and it shall be given. Questions shape our destiny. Questions also activate the brain into an automatic retrieval of information and subconscious processes. It is imperative to first ask "what" questions, which stimulate visionary, big-picture thinking. Then ask "why" questions to gain an understanding of purpose and meaning. "How" questions address the skills necessary for the achievement of your vision. 5. Knock...and the door will be opened. We must be proactive and take meaningful action. As Jack London said, "You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.” 6. Oh, ye of little faith! Trust and belief in the intuitive process only makes it more active and accurate. St. Augustine said, "Faith is to believe what we have not seen, and the reward of that faith is to see what we believe." Research has proven that intuition is more accurate with a state of positive belief and activity. In other words, if you don't use it, you lose it! I believe our intuition is a gift from God. I also believe that pure intuition is 100% accurate when it does not become contaminated by cultural override or confused with worry or wishful thinking. The best way to ignite that purity is to trust in the divine nature of our intuitive abilities and have absolute faith that God speaks to us through our intuitive intelligence. It is through our personal alignment with our divine nature, our acorness, that we can remain in sync with our instincts. 38

Ignite Your Intuitive Intelligence

Paws to Reflect 1. When do most of your intuitive insights come and under what circumstances? 2. What questions would you like answered by your “hunch log” or dream journal? 3. How did you score on Your Hunch Quotient on pages 46-47? What did you learn about yourself that you would like to improve? 4. What “spadework” is ahead of you in terms of developing your intuitive intelligence? 5. Pure intuition is 100% accurate because it comes from God. Knowing that your intuitive nature comes from your divine nature, how can you increase your trust in your intuitive abilities?

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If a man is called to be a streetsweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, “Here lived a great streetsweeper who did his job well.” Martin Luther King, Jr.

Chapter 5 Listen to Your Intuitive Nudges When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone, and of good cheer – say, traveling in a carriage, or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep; it is on such occasions that ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence and how they come, I know not; nor can I force them. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

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Sufi master stopped along a busy thoroughfare. He lit a very bright lamp and then walked some distance from it before he stopped to light a candle. Then he sat by the candle, made room for his lovable cat in his lap, and read a book. His disciples and passersby were confused. “Why don’t you read by the bright lamp instead of the flickering candle flame?” they questioned. The Sufi master smiled and explained, “The bright lamp attracts all the moths, leaving me free to read in peace.” 41

Why Cats Don’t Bark Idries Shah tells this wonderful story in A Perfumed Scorpion. This important teaching highlights a special point in mastering the art of intuitive development. People are often attracted to brightness, glitz and noise instead of peace and quiet. Intuitive nudges come to us when we are relaxed, peaceful and soulful. Our wise acorn self sends insights to us when we have opted for a few cubic feet of silence. Observing the world around you, paying attention to patterns and trends, and listening to your “inner voice” are important skills for developing your intuitive intelligence. An old Egyptian proverb says, “The archer hits the mark, partly by pulling, partly by letting go.” When it comes to intuitive insights, the same “logic” applies. There seems to be a direct connection between effort, interest, time-out and intuitive insights.

Catnip for the Mind Listen. Make a way for yourself inside yourself. Stop looking in that other way of looking. Rumi

In my story of the Sufi master which I used to open this chapter, I included a cat. In many accounts of intuitive people, there appears to be some sort of idiosyncratic preference or behavior which helps ignite the intuitive insight. For example, Samuel Johnson claimed he needed a purring cat, an orange peel and a cup of tea in order to write. Proust needed a soundproof room. Kipling couldn’t write unless he had jet black ink. John Steinbeck needed the atmosphere of a bar in Key West. Dickens slept with his bed turned to the north, believing that magnetic forces would pull ideas into

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Listen to Your Intuitive Nudges his sleeping noggin. Some of Abraham Lincoln’s insights came while he chopped wood. I was taught lessons in intuition and trusting an inner guide when my father taught us how to dance. My parents were hailed as the king and queen of polka dancing and exhibited the essence of "flow." The synergy they created as they graced the dance floor mesmerized those who chose to straddle the sidelines. Dancing was not a choice, it was an essential, for it seemed we were dancing before we were walking. When given our daily dance lesson, rule number one was: Don't look at your feet! Actually, it was the ONLY rule, and we all are quite agile when the music plays. Those instructions were words of wisdom far beyond the dance floor. They taught me about personal alignment, body-mind-spirit, what "flow" was before I could spell it, and how to be in sync with my instincts. It also gave me a dose on how to develop unconscious competence. It taught me that by having fun we release tension and negativity, which obstruct positive intention and peak performance.

Catnip for the Mind We don’t receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us. Marcel Proust

Stepping out of the hustle and bustle (bright light) and into a relaxing environment (candle light) has rewarded many people with breakthrough moments. In those magical moments, everything falls into place. If we pay attention to the subtle intuitive lightning bolt, the puzzle is complete. 43

Why Cats Don’t Bark Here are a few more stories about people who preferred to be with a “candle” instead of the “bright lights.” Emerson took time out each day and meditated near brooks or streams. For Darwin, it wasn’t the road to Damascus, but a carriage ride through the countryside that inspired his natural selection idea. Norman Vincent Peale cleared his head when he visited mountain tops for relaxing afternoon breaks. He often commented that there was “nothing like peace-drenched mountains in their deep, sun-bathed, pensive valleys…Our minds clear and our ability to think intuitively returns.” George Burns visited Gracie’s grave every day for solace and inspiration. Winston Churchill recommended painting as a way to court insights. In 1947 Elisabeth Kubler-Ross visited Maidanek, a Polish concentration camp. Inside the barracks which once housed hundreds of thousands of prisoners, Elisabeth could see the graffiti on the walls. The crude graffiti was a graphic signature of human pathos and tragedy. Suddenly she spied something that touched her deeply. Scratched into the wooden beams along one section of a sterile wall were images of butterflies – symbols of hope and resurrection. Beautifully exemplified in the desperate and brave lives of those concentration camp victims, waiting for a miracle, yet brutalized at the hands of monsters, was the symbolism of hope. For one brief moment in time, a young Swiss woman’s soul was touched by the significance of the butterfly symbolism. In a flash of insight, she adopted butterflies to symbolize her life’s work. Newly wed cartoonist, Walter Lantz, took his wife to an idyllic cottage at Sherwood Lake, California, for their honeymoon. To their dismay, a persistent and obnoxious woodpecker began to stir up quite a racket. Despite the Lantz’s valiant and ingenious efforts to frighten the bother44

Listen to Your Intuitive Nudges some creature away, the daring woodpecker continued his noisy assault on the roof of the cottage. The Lantz’s named the feathered intruder Woody Woodpecker, and before the honeymoon was over, Walter had made preliminary sketches of the noisy tapper. A spontaneous fit of laughter by Walter’s wife, Grace, during their memorable honeymoon produced the wacky laugh that has become Woody’s patented five-note cartoon signature.

Catnip for the Mind When one door closes, another opens, but we often look so long and regretfully upon the closed door, we do not see the ones which open for us. Alexander Graham Bell

Levi Strauss felt that a local woodcutter needed an extra-strong pair of duck-twilled trousers. The new trousers quickly attracted a booming working-class clientele. The heavy blue denim 501’s were born. Candido Jacuzzi’s intuition helped him introduce a whirlpool therapeutic bath for home use. His son suffered from Rheumatoid arthritis and he felt he could relieve his son’s pain using hydrotherapy. The Jacuzzi whirlpool bath was an instant success. Csikszentmihalyi, in his groundbreaking book, Flow, talked about the “power of flow” – the state of being completely in alignment and in sync with our core being, so that our efforts seem effortless, purposeful and timely. Successful athletes and musicians such as Wynton Marsalis, Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan and Sarah Hughes are examples of the power of "flow" and having fun. In fact, Sarah 45

Why Cats Don’t Bark Hughes said it all as a very young child. When Sarah Hughes won the gold medal at the 2002 Olympics, they showed a video tape where Sarah, at age six, told the world that when she grew up she was going to go to the Olympics and win the gold medal. Note that Sarah did not say she would TRY to go to the Olympics, but that she WOULD go to the Olympics. Now that's confidence and commitment. Sarah also exhibited a state of "positive knowing" which is a deeper level of conviction than just positive thinking, when she said, "I can't wait for it to happen." No doubt in this girl's mind! To the degree that we are totally positive, there can be no negativity. My question to you is: What would you be doing, if you knew you could not fail? One of my favorite stories about intuition shows how a single hunch can help us move beyond tragedy and defeat. Right before graduation, a young French Naval officer – who had just qualified for flight school – was seriously injured in an automobile accident, sabotaging his dream of flying. For eight months he struggled to recover from his life-threatening injuries. Doctors recommended amputation of his paralyzed arm, but he refused. His flying days were over, of course, so he took to the sea for physical therapy on his useless arm. In the process, he experimented with swimming and diving techniques. He became so absorbed in aquatic healing experiments that he found he needed more time in the water. He created masks from inner tubes and snorkels from garden hoses. Fueled by boundless curiosity and an irrepressible spirit, Jacques Cousteau felt he should invent a career that involved underwater exploration and study. Cousteau successfully rehabilitated his arm, and as a result, invented such water-related paraphernalia as: turbo-sail windships, underwater cameras, electric sea scooters, a small submarine, sea masks, snorkels, aqualungs, undersea research stations and hundreds more. 46

Listen to Your Intuitive Nudges As all of these cases illustrate, intuition cannot be ordered, commanded, contrived or predicted. We simply have to be ready for it. Anti-intuitive attitudes like skepticism, pessimism, fear of change, intolerance of ambiguity and uncertainty, rigidity, excessive trust in logic, inflexibility, and a resistance to rest all conspire to push your intuitive intelligence deeper into your subconscious. “Many of us,” says researcher Philip Goldberg, “work against intuition by taking ourselves, our work, our dilemmas and our problems too seriously…Playfulness and a certain appreciation for… absurdity favor intuition.”

Catnip for the Mind (We are) most nearly (ourselves) when we achieve the seriousness of a child at play. Heraclitus

Rest, quiet and relaxation siphon off the busy chatter of daily distraction and point the way to hear our inner wisdom which seeks conscious expression. Our “intuitive weather” is dependent on our inner calm, and like our pets, does not like loud, obnoxious noises. Listening to intuitive nudges takes practice. You have to slow down long enough to catch up to yourself. We can learn a lesson from cats who have made an art out of snoozing. Cats have a built-in “snooze alarm” that allows them to doze, but awaken quickly. They have a third eyelid (the translucent nictitating membrane) which is a thin membrane that picks up the merest shadow that crosses it, sending the cat into alert readiness. That’s how Freda and her feline cousins can go from zero to sixty in a few seconds. 47

Why Cats Don’t Bark We humans don’t have a third eyelid, but we do have what the Eastern religions and ancient philosophers call a “Third Eye” (spiritual eye) in the center of our forehead between the eyebrows. It is the center of our intuition and the psychic connection for our intuitive intelligence. Jesus spoke of the spiritual eye, saying, “When thine eye is single, thy whole body is full of light” (Luke 11:34). When we listen to our inner signals, we can hear the world around us in magical ways. The following wellknown story illustrates the power of listening to your intuitive intelligence: A man and woman were strolling along a crowded sidewalk in a downtown business area. Suddenly one of them exclaimed, “Did you hear that meow?” They both stopped and listened intently. “There it is again. Didn’t you hear it?” asked the one who heard the kitten a second time. “How can you hear that kitten’s meow in this frenzied city?” The companion, who was a veterinarian-turned animal rights advocate, smiled but did not explain. She simply took a quarter out of her purse and dropped it on the sidewalk, causing a dozen people to look around for the loose change. “We hear,” she said, “what we listen for.” Learning how to tune in to your real self, your higher self, will bring you unbelievable balance and awareness, allowing your inner intuitive light to brighten every aspect 48

Listen to Your Intuitive Nudges of your being. So keep one eye peeled for novelty, for that something extra that is not immediately recognizable by the five ordinary senses. Your patience and focused practice are necessary to achieve cat-like awareness of the world around you.

Catnip for the Mind One's mind has a way of making itself up in the background, and it suddenly becomes clear what one means to do. A. C. Benson

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Paws to Reflect 1. To what degree are you attracted to brightness, glitz and noise instead of peace and quiet? 2. In what ways do you commit "soul sabotage" of your own intuitive abilities? 3. How “tuned in” are you to your inner voice? 4. If you could change one thing about yourself that would guarantee you a lifetime of success, what would you change – and why?

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Chapter 6 Toxic Logic I did not arrive at my understanding of the fundamental laws of the universe through my rational mind. The intellect has little to do on the road to discovery. There comes a leap in consciousness, call it intuition or what you will, and the solution comes to you. Albert Einstein

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cat-loving couple spared no effort taking care of their two-year-old Tabby. They spoiled the cat to no end. However, they were tired of letting her in and out of the house whenever she wanted to roam the neighborhood. The couple decided to install a small cat door in the kitchen door, so Tabby could come and go as she pleased without bothering them. Several months later, when Tabby had kittens, her owners proudly cut a second, smaller hole in the door. Edward deBono tells this light-hearted story in his book, New Think. He uses it to illustrate how our thinking

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Why Cats Don’t Bark can be too sequential and logical at times, causing us to make inappropriate and even absurd judgments. Another quick story, which involves a frightened lab psychologist, shows what happens when our logic leads to false assumptions. It appears in William Haney’s thoroughly interesting book, Communication and Interpersonal Relations. According to Haney, a psychologist had been keeping his experimental white mice in the attic of his university’s psychology building. One afternoon, the psychologist discovered that several of the mice had gotten out of their cages. Some of them were dead and partly eaten. He immediately recalled that several months earlier, a couple of students had reported seeing wild rats in the building. They had set traps, but were not successful in catching anything. Realizing the danger the wild rats represented, the psychologist raced downstairs to retrieve a tennis racket he had noticed earlier. When he returned to the attic, tennis racketweapon in hand, he saw to his dismay a wild gray rat sitting directly in front of one of the cages. The rat appeared to be trembling. The psychologist took a few steps toward the rodent to improve his aim, then hurled the tennis racket at the defiant rat. When the rat did not move, the psychologist became angry and threw a book at the bold creature. (What an awful way to treat a book, don’t you think?) When the rat still didn’t budge, the infuriated psychologist stamped his feet, flung his arms and made all of the noise he could as he charged the rat – only to discover that the “rat” was a crumpled piece of gray paper. His prior belief about the existence of wild rats running amok contributed to his assumption that the harmless gray piece of paper was a cannibalistic rat. He had initially expected to see healthy, caged white mice. When he encountered the dead mice outside their cage, he naturally assumed they were killed and eaten by their wild gray cousins. His deductive intelligence leaped to the conclusion 52

Toxic Logic that the crumpled gray paper must be one of those renegade wild rats. In this seeming innocuous self-deception lies one of the most fascinating and perhaps awesome aspects of human nature: We see what we expect to see, and what we expect to see is what the rational mind does to eliminate or reduce ambiguity and uncertainty. To make some kind of sense out of our experience, we seek immediate closure to our problems, even if that closure is delusional. Because we are literally bombarded with stimuli, we select what we choose to pay attention to, and base our assumptions on the data we interpret from our five senses. In human behavioral terms, the eye can handle approximately five million bits of information per second. So selection is inevitable and necessary.

Catnip for the Mind The eye of a human being is a microscope, which makes the world seem bigger than it really is. Kahlil Gibran

All of us see through selective perceptual filters. The problem is many people are like the lab psychologist I mentioned earlier, who reacted on false assumptions. As Howard Gardner, in his groundbreaking book Frames of Mind, warns us: Little by little, preoccupation with method, technique and procedure gains in subtle dominance over the whole process…How it is done becomes more important than whether it is done. Means triumph over ends. Form triumphs over spirit. Method (and logic) 53

Why Cats Don’t Bark are enthroned. (People) become prisoners of their procedures…and their (own) obstacles to their goals. This is not to say that reason, practicality and logic do not have a proper place in our thinking process. They most certainly do. We would be lost without rational thought. If we lacked the ability to think rationally, we couldn’t function very well in most situations because we would have difficulty thinking clearly enough to solve even the simplest of problems. Our decision-making ability would be severely impaired. We need to have a critical eye when it comes to organizing and planning our life experiences. The word “critical” comes from the Greek word kritikos, which means to question, to make sense of, to analyze. Rational and critical thinking aid us in reaching the best solutions to our problems and human dilemmas. However, it takes both critical thinking and intuitive intellect to help us synthesize our experience so we can see through clear “lenses” to make sense of the world in which we live. For example, when people are presented with what behavioral researchers Weisberg and diCamillo call “The Charlie Problem,” they make immediate assumptions and generalizations based on initial logical judgments. “The Charlie Problem” goes something like this: Tom came home and found Charlie dead on the floor and Mary in the same room. On the floor beside Charlie was some broken glass, a puddle of what looked like water, and a phone that was off the hook. How did Charlie die? It is amazing how the majority of people interpret this story. Most people assume that all three subjects in the scenario are human, and that the pieces of glass and water came from a drinking glass or bottle, presumably broken 54

Toxic Logic over Charlie’s head (or Mary’s, depending on your point of view). The phone off the hook suggests that perhaps Charlie (or Mary) had discovered an intruder (you pick the intruder) and was attempting to call for help when he/she was victimized by a blow to the head. To be fair, these assumptions follow logically from the way “The Charlie Problem” is presented. Each character has a human name; however, no information provided suggests that the characters are human beings. Letting first impressions dictate your course of thought, without considering alternative scenarios, is what I call toxic logic. It’s the kind of impulse thinking which comes with blinders. People who think “out-of-the-box” consider the possibility that the two characters – Charlie and Mary – may not be human at all. A more intuitive solution goes something like this: Mary, a cat, knocked over a small fishbowl which fell, knocking the phone off the hook. The fishbowl shattered as it hit the floor. Charlie, a goldfish, suffocated from lack of oxygen. Mary is still stalking the noisy telephone, deciding between the insistent buzzing noise and the tasty treat of a goldfish, when Tom enters.

Catnip for the Mind Feelings are not supposed to be logical. Dangerous is the man who has rationalized his emotions. David Borenstein

I included this chapter on the negative effects of logic so you could see how assumptions and faulty judgments can handcuff our intuitive intelligence. As far as I know, there is no way to face uncertainty and the unknown with all of the answers readily available. There will probably never be a 55

Why Cats Don’t Bark time when we have the luxury of having every conceivable piece of information at our disposal. Waiting for all the information to surface before making intelligent and informed decisions is like waiting to hear cats bark and dogs meow – neither is going to occur.

Catnip for the Mind There are two sorts of curiosity -- the momentary and the permanent. The momentary is concerned with the odd appearance on the surface of things. The permanent is attracted by the amazing and consecutive life that flows on beneath the surface of things. Robert Lynd

Human curiosity, intuition, practicality and logic are the fulcrums of personal and professional achievement. They are the revitalizing forces for converting raw human energy and potential into sound judgments and creative ideas. Managing our logical side and our intuitive nature will take all of the cunning, patience and open-mindedness we can muster. Sometimes we will have to make tough, gutwrenching decisions. Our thinking will have to be precise, accurate and logical at times. It may need to be rational, realistic and regimented. But if we are to be fully intellectual beings, if we are to experience those “leaps in consciousness” that Albert Einstein believed are necessary for bringing solutions to us, we will need to develop our intuitive nature as well. Many of these “leaps” are, in fact, intuitive connections that smooth out the rough edges in the reasoning process. Oftentimes we analyze something, only to have a sponta56

Toxic Logic neous hunch or insight that helps us leap to another track entirely which shows us an alternative that we had not previously considered. Sometimes we decide, for no apparent reason, to move in another direction. Other times we sense that something just doesn’t feel right, so we change direction or stop to consider our next steps. Decision-making and problem-solving are usually portrayed as straight line, rational steps which lead to the right solution every time. The formula goes something like this: define the problem; set objectives; gather information; redefine the problem if you have to; modify objectives; gather more information; identify alternatives; test for the best solutions; evaluate consequences; choose best solution; implement the best solution; monitor results, etc. Unfortunately, when this process is followed too mechanically, it can lead to what I call “intuitive suicide,” caused by the kind of mental rigidity that leads to paralysis by analysis – a.k.a. toxic logic.

Catnip for the Mind Choice of attention - to pay attention to this and ignore that - is to the inner life what choice of action is to the outer. In both cases, a man is responsible for his choice and must accept the consequences, whatever they may be. W. H. Auden

I am not suggesting that we disregard critical thinking or ignore data collection and analysis. What I am suggesting is that rigorous rationality and healthy logic actually feed the intuitive mind by giving it the information it needs 57

Why Cats Don’t Bark to draw inferences, connections and associations. Our intuitive intelligence uses facts as if they are the pin placements in a pinball machine by ricocheting off each pin (fact) to form new perspectives which lead to insights. (If you’ve ever seen a cat bat a ball around on the floor, you’ve seen a live version of the pinball effect!) Psychologist Philip Goldberg, author of The Intuitive Edge, warns us: “We are told to formally plan and outline each step from problem to solution. But in reality, problems are often ill defined, causes are unidentifiable, goals are abstract, and the routes to them are fogbound. Imposing a predetermined or arbitrary structure can often prevent the intuitive mind from operating freely and finding a better way.” Jack Schwartz has a theory that at the moment of indecision, there is simultaneously a solution. However, it may take years for us to discover that awareness and act on it. The result is learned helplessness or mediocrity. People stay confused and unfulfilled, victimized by toxic logic. That happens when we take the maxim “look before you leap” to absurd extremes. Sometimes we just have to take an intuitive leap, trusting that the net will appear.

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Paws to Reflect 1. Recall a situation in which you “cut a second, smaller hole in the door” to solve a problem. What important life lesson did you learn from that experience? 2. Metaphorically speaking, when was the last time you attacked a “crumpled piece of gray paper” to rid yourself of a pesky problem? How often have you made similar mistakes? 3. When was the last time you were a “prisoner of procedure” and what did you do about it? 4. How courageous are you at facing uncertainty and the unknown without readily available answers?

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Your most brilliant ideas come in a flash, but the flash comes only after a lot of hard work. Nobody gets a big idea when he is not relaxed and nobody gets a big idea when he is relaxed all the time Edward Blakeslee

Chapter 7 Dreams — Your Intuitive Mirror If we meditate on a dream sufficiently long and thoroughly – if we take it about with us and turn it over and over – something almost always comes of it. This something…is a practical and important hint which shows…in what direction the unconscious is leading us. Carl Jung

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veryone dreams. A normal night’s sleep is always filled with periods of rapid eye movement (REM) which signals dreaming. Normal sleep in all human beings follows the same rhythms. These natural rhythms run in cycles called circadian rhythms, a biological process which occurs regularly every 24 hours. These rhythms affect our body temperature, heart rate, blood pressure, blood cell count, kidney function, respiration, metabolism and many other bodily functions. One of 61

Why Cats Don’t Bark these rhythms, REM, makes the dreamer appear to be watching something beneath rapidly moving eyelids. Most of our vivid dreams happen during REM sleep, which occurs in four-to-five 90-minute cycles every night. Some people claim they don’t dream, but in reality they simply are unable to recall the dreams they experience. A few individuals have almost complete recall of their dreams and are able to report every detail. Most of us remember a few sketchy remnants of our “nocturnal videos,” which are called dream fragments. We sense that our dreams have something very interesting to say to us. This sense of something special about our dream life comes from our intuitive intelligence. It is telling us to pay attention to our dreams. A whole new world of self-awareness opens up to us once we allow our intuitive intelligence to speak to us through our dreams.

Catnip for the Mind Reality is wrong. Dreams are for real. Tupac Shakur

The general view held by dream researchers the world over is that dreams have meaning, even though some may come to us distorted and seem unintelligible. They are messages (intuitions) from the depths of our personality, psychic faxes from our authentic acorn self. These REM intuitions are one of the chief sources of internal information and guidance about who we really are and what we can achieve – if we pay attention. They penetrate the veneer of our social and cultural environments and give us glimpses of what we need to do to become more like ourselves. 62

Dreams — Your Intuitive Mirror There is another aspect or cycle of sleep which I must touch on lightly, because it relates to intuition. In addition to REM sleep, we enter into periods of NREM sleep (nonREM dreams), which is not characterized by “jittery eyes.” Oftentimes there is no eye movement at all. Researchers have found something very interesting about NREM sleep. It has been shown that NREM dreams tend to be verbal, ruminative and intellectual dreams. Dream researchers have asked NREM sleepers whether “anything had passed through their mind” during their light sleep, and most admitted they had been “thinking about something” or that they had “received some kind of important message” in their dream. Experimenters have not gotten a similar reaction from REM sleep dreamers. Wakened from deep REM sleep, dreamers tend to report they are “doing” something or “watching” events unfold. They have more action-filled, adventurous dreams than the NREM sleepers. It is widely accepted that the rapid eye movement which occurs during REM sleep indicates that REM dreamers really are “watching” and “looking around at something” in their dreams. During NREM sleep, it appears we are capable of learning things in our sleep and receiving solutions to problems. There are many interesting examples of dreams doing just that – bringing solutions to life’s problems. I’d like to share just a few. Robert Louis Stevenson dreamed the plot of Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde. Imaginary “brownies” appeared in his dream and helped him write the plot. Senator Chauncey Depew, who gave Theodore Roosevelt’s nomination speech for the governorship of New York, had received his entire speech after he fell asleep on his verandah. Chemist Friedrich August Kekulé worked for years analyzing structural theories of the carbon atom and its compounds. One night, sitting in an armchair in front of his 63

Why Cats Don’t Bark fireplace, he fell asleep and dreamed of the formula for benzene. In Kekulé’s own words: I dozed off…The atom danced before my eyes…The smaller groups remained in the background. My inner eye saw long rows, densely joined, everything in motion, contorting like snakes…One of the snakes took hold of its own tail and whirled derisively before my eyes. I woke up as if I had been struck by lightning. Albert Einstein recounted that the idea for his Theory of Relativity came to him in a dream. He saw himself riding on a sled. As the sled accelerated, going faster and faster until it approached the speed of light, the stars began to be distorted, producing many colors and patterns before his inner eye. Edgar R. Burroughs got the idea for his Tarzan of the Apes stories from a dream. Renowned mystery writer, Agatha Christie, got the characters and many of her plots from dreams. Jack Nicklaus changed his golf grip as a result of one of his dreams, and improved his waking golf game by ten strokes. Psychologist Carl Jung’s dreams helped him produce his theory of the “collective unconscious.” Another influential psychiatrist, Fritz Perls, developed a dream recall strategy called “the empty chair” as a result of one of his dreams. The idea is to place two chairs facing each other and then sit in one of them. You are to look at the empty chair and hold a question/answer session with it. Psychologists today have expanded on Perl’s original dream recall intent and use this method to help patients deal with anger, confrontation, resentment, self-doubt and many other personal issues. Several of Mother Teresa’s dreams showed her where to go to get much needed funds for her ministry. Edgar Cayce was called the “sleeping prophet” because of his ability to dream specific remedies for people’s physical ail64

Dreams — Your Intuitive Mirror ments. Carl Sagan often commented that his dreams brought him “clues” and answers to important astronomical questions. Through dreams, Walt Disney saw avenues to help him get out of one of his bankruptcies. Farrah FawcettMajors, the popular actress of “Charlie’s Angels,” had dreams during her TV series and off-Broadway plays that helped soothe her emotional wounds. Even nightmares come to guide us through problems and difficulties. A nightmare sends us a message that is vivid and memorable…it is essentially saying, “Pay attention to this!” A perfect example comes from the experience of Elias Howe. His original idea was to invent a sewing machine that duplicated the motions of his wife’s hands as she stitched a pair of his trousers. Idea after idea failed, and his frustration mounted. Over the next two painstaking years, Elias Howe experimented with various machine designs. In every case, however, he had difficulty with the eye placement in the needle’s stem. The answer came to the weary inventor in a fitful nightmare. Howe dreamed that he had been kidnapped by a band of savages who threatened his life. As the spears of the savages descended upon him, Howe noticed that each spear had eye-shaped holes close to the spear tips. Just before he was poked by the razor sharp spears, he awoke. Howe leaped out of bed, ran excitedly over to his wife’s sewing machine, and examined the needle point. He knew exactly where to place the eye of the needle. In April of 1845, he secured his patent and on September 10, 1846 began selling his sewing machine. At the level of dreams, we are all one. Dreaming is a universal human phenomenon which unites us all, even across the boundaries, barriers and limitations associated with age, culture, social class, religion, political systems, wealth and poverty. Dreams remind us of how much work we need to do to improve ourselves. No matter who we are, 65

Why Cats Don’t Bark they come to us to remind each of us of our oakness, our own uniqueness, of the inseparable relationship our deep self has with our Creator. From her own well-developed acorn nature, Mother Teresa said it best: “We are all pencils in the hand of a writing God, who is sending love letters to the world.”

Catnip for the Mind If a little dreaming is dangerous, the cure for it is not to dream less but to dream more, to dream all the time. Marcel Proust I hope you are one of those people who wants to take your dreams more seriously. There are many good “dream books” in the marketplace today which are excellent sources for igniting your interest in dreams. The books you will find in bookstores will only get you started. If you are really serious about dreamwork, take a class or two at your local college or university, or purchase a textbook from a university that offers classes in dream analysis and interpretation. In the meantime, you may want to use the dream appreciation hints that follow to interpret the dream you had last night – or the ones you will have tonight – or that persistent dream that continues to show up periodically during your sleep cycle. Discover what these faxes from your subconscious are telling you.

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Dreams — Your Intuitive Mirror

A Dozen Dream Appreciation Hints 1. Recognize that the content in every dream is “sent” to you to help correct, modify or mend a behavior, attitude or action that is getting in the way of your soul growth. 2. Interpret dreams literally at first, by examining signs of objective truths such as warnings, reminders, health issues, eating habits, relationships, etc. Then look for deeper, more metaphorical and symbolic meanings. 3. Consider the relationship of the dream’s theme, if one is apparent, to some event or preoccupation you have experienced lately. 4. Take note of the emotional tone of the dream and its relationship to your current situation. 5. Realize that recurrent dreams are repetitive warnings to resolve long-standing issues. 6. Because they come from your acorn nature, all dreams come to expand, heal and transform us, not to diminish or frighten us. 7. Believe that the best interpreter of your dreams is your higher self – your own unfailing guru within. 8. Realize that you dream every night, whether you remember them or not. 9. Appreciate the fact that each of your dreams has several levels of meanings. 10. Recognize that a series of dreams, or dream fragments, which occur during the same night’s sleep have a unifying theme. 11. Nightmares usually indicate poor or inadequate diet. They are also serious messages from your real self to clean up your act – NOW. 12. Dreams are filled with symbolism and have a language all their own. You can improve your dream interpretation by learning some of the universal meanings of the symbolic language.

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Paws to Reflect 1. When is the last time you dreamed in color? 2. What can you learn from your most vivid dream or nightmare? 3. If the next dream you dreamed predicted your future, what would you dream? 4. What recurring themes seem to be present in the majority of your dreams? What unconscious need might those themes be expressing?

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Chapter 8 Liquid Intuition Each morning,…all of us come awake by way of dream thieving…Systematically, but quite subliminally, we steal from ourselves every (dream) remnant. We have all learned to carry out this exercise in self-impoverishment with precision and…thoroughness. The alarm rings, and instantly an axe falls across the continuum of consciousness, sharply dividing awake from sleep. For most of us the dreams are gone (in an instant). Theodore Roszak

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call insights that come to us through our dreams “liquid intuition.” They flow into our sleeping consciousness from the deep well of our acorn nature, and seep into our dreams, bringing us reflections of ourselves. In a very real sense, our intuitions are liquid gold because they bring us a rich load of psychic deposits from our buried natural selves. This stream of consciousness has a language all its own. Our dreams are filled with universal symbols and sensory impressions which serve as clues for enriching our 69

Why Cats Don’t Bark evolving personality. Although many of our dreams have a universal language, their interpretation varies in light of our individual differences and life experience. Based on this universal language, there are a number of themes which seem common to the majority of people the world over. The insights we gain from each of these major themes are significant barometers for our continued growth and development. All of us have, at one time or another, dreamed of falling or being pursued; flying or drowning; dying or traveling to an exotic location; being late for an important engagement; or being unable to remember something extremely important, such as test questions or the words to a speech. Some of the themes occur in frightening circumstances; others take us to peaceful or joyful settings. They come as nocturnal flashes of color and movement. The messages they send us may last seconds or minutes. Each dream fragment rushes by, mouse-like, across our mental screen. If we don’t do something to “catch” the dream’s content, we will lose the message our inner guru is trying to send us. We’ve got to be “quick as a cat” to capture the dream material before it gets away. Experienced “dream catchers” pounce on their dreams as expertly as Freda might pounce on a mouse. Just as cats are equipped to hunt at night, we can equip ourselves to recall our dreams by pouncing on these nocturnal flashes with a few well-timed dream recall techniques. In order to capture fast moving dream material, we humans have to have special night vision of our own. I’d like to draw an analogy between human night vision and cat vision. The marvels of feline vision have to do with the cat’s ability to see in very dim light conditions, which is important for nocturnal hunters, and their incredible ability to detect motion and distance, the purr-fect skill to have to track and pounce on unsuspecting prey. The night vision cats enjoy is made possible by some rather unique evolu70

Liquid Intuition tionary “wiring.” A special layer of cells behind their retina enables cats to see objects in darkened conditions with laser accuracy. We are no match physically for cats when it comes to seeing in the dark. When light such as a flashlight or headlight hits the back of our eyes, we reflect red from our blood vessels, which limits our ability to see objects in the dark. Cat eyes, on the other hand, reflect a golden or green flash created by these special layers of cells called tapetum lucidum. But we are more than a match mentally and intuitively when it comes to seeing important dream material in the dark.

Catnip for the Mind All (people) dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible. T. E. Lawrence

Of course, having the ability to recall dreams and the skill to effectively do so can be two different things. As Sigmund Freud wrote in The Interpretation of Dreams, people oftentimes forget what they dream for two reasons: they either don’t have the interest or the courage to recall something that might lead to self-improvement, or the memory of a dream may be repressed and prevented from coming into conscious awareness by one of the dreamer’s defense mechanisms such as denial.

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Why Cats Don’t Bark Erich Fromm, in his book The Forgotten Language, gives us a little more insight: …if all our dreams were pleasant phantasmagories, we might feel friendlier toward them. But many leave us in an anxious mood…others disturb us (because) they do not fit the person we are sure we are…Rather than be confronted with such overwhelming proof of the limitations of our understanding, we accuse dreams of not making sense. Those who fail to recall their dreams are missing out on a very important and enlightening part of their inner life, and are negatively affecting their psychological growth and development. Psychological tests show that so-called “nonrecallers” may be reluctant to remember their dreams because they may lack the courage to face the responsibilities of their own surging growth impulse, which accompanies their heightened self-awareness. According to dream researcher, Anne Faraday, non-recallers are less willing to confront this dimension of experience. Some call it self-awareness, which manifests a close interest in their inner life. Dreams, as we have seen, are psychic telegrams from our subconscious self to spur us into action. Just as we are selective about the facts and perceptions we allow into our conscious awareness during daytime hours, we appear to censor dream material too. We censor dream input for the same reasons we censor waking stimuli – we fear knowing ourself. We are hesitant about self-knowledge because we are anxious about self-development and the courage change requires of us. It is important to remember that dreams tend to be an elusive phenomenon. Dreams are liquid. They flow through our conscious grasp quickly and without warning. They fade as fast as they come unless we are prepared to capture 72

Liquid Intuition them in our waking thoughts. Dream researcher Arthur Koestler was so impressed with our dream’s “vanishing act” qualities that he called it oneirolysis, or dream dissolution. Capturing important dream material is essential for understanding our true nature. Dream recall helps us access our “true colors.” Recall is not so much a mechanism for helping us discover who we are, but to recover who we are. It would be a great mistake to see dreams as mental images which bring only unpleasant material to us. Some psychologists and psychotherapists have done a disservice to the therapeutic value of dreams by concentrating solely on the negative and frightening associations found in dream material. Frightened by what their dreams may reveal about themselves, many people hesitate to recall their dreams.

Catnip for the Mind Nothing contains more of (our) own worth than (our) dreams! Nothing belongs to (us) so much! Substance, form, duration, actor, spectator – in these human comedies (we) act as (our) complete selves. Friedrich Nietzsche People are also victims of what I call “cultural override,” which creates a bias and misperception of intuitive information. Cultural override comes from parental and societal messages that create psychological clutter and debris which distract us from our true purpose and life mission. These same societal messages derail us from our personal alignment with our intuitive abilities, whether they come to us in dreams or hunches.

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Why Cats Don’t Bark One of my favorite stories about people’s misconception of dreams is illustrated in the famous cartoon strip, Peanuts, in which Charles Schultz’s two main characters, Charlie Brown and Lucy, are playing the game of psychiatrist and patient. (Lucy’s consultation fee of 5¢ is a far cry from the fees charged by my colleagues!) Charlie Brown asks his psychotherapist friend Lucy about the value of recalling dreams, and she replies, “The dreams of the night prepare you for the day…It’s at night when you’re asleep that your brain is really working…trying to make you see who you really are.” Charlie Brown turns away and says dejectedly, “Even my brain is against me!” Although dreams may bring us material related to our anxieties, fears, and vulnerabilities, it has been my experience that they also show us how wonderful we are. They urge us to recognize our uniqueness, our self-worth and our ability to express who we truly are. Undoubtedly, our dreams do ask us to face up to our shortcoming, especially those we are trying to bury, but they also emphasize the “possible” us, the real us that has a purpose to fulfill and contributions to make. In his classic book on dream interpretation, Dreams, psychologist Carl Jung puts it this way: In each of us there is another whom we do not know. He (she) speaks to us in dreams and tells us how differently he (she) sees us from the way we see ourselves. When, therefore, we find ourselves in a difficult situation to which there is no solution, he (she) can sometimes kindle a light that radically alters our attitude – the very attitude that led us into the difficult situation. I firmly believe we can access our true nature through the liquid nature of dreams. Those who think of themselves as poor recallers are often surprised to find that once they develop a few dream-recall habits, they discover the rich74

Liquid Intuition ness of their dream life. The dream recall hints outlined here will help you improve your ability to turn liquid intuition into liquid gold.

Twenty Dream Recall Hints 1. A conscious commitment and desire to remember your dreams is probably the single most important step in dream recall. 2. Decide what means you will use to record your dreams, and place all writing and recording materials next to where you are sleeping. 3. If you awaken during a dream, immediately record a few key words, or if you remember it, the entire dream. Do not procrastinate. 4. Join a dream appreciation group. Attend dream workshops. 5. Before drifting off to sleep, visualize yourself waking and remembering clearly several dreams or dream fragments. 6. Keep a dream diary. Date your paper or dream journal in advance as evidence of your readiness and intention to dream. 7. Read articles about dreams. Chapters 7 and 8 in this book are a good start. Listen to audio cassettes and CDs, and watch TV shows and documentaries about dreams. 8. Eliminate “dream thieves” like late night eating, alcoholic beverages, sleeping pills, poor or inadequate diet. 9. Never dismiss a dream or dream fragment as too trivial to record. 10. Once you have recorded your dream, relate it to an event or significant events which occurred on the previous day. Oftentimes this will give vital clues to the meaning of your dreams. 11. Look for components such as the setting, the people, special colors, feelings, words, the type of action or things which seem out-of-place.

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Why Cats Don’t Bark 12. Confront unrealistic fears and expectations about the nature of the dream. Recognize that uncharacteristic behavior, sexual fantasies and dreams of falling, flying and death are common themes. 13. Welcome many levels of dream interpretation. Dreams can stop coming to you if you are locked into a philosophical bias that seeks to force its own meaning on the dream content. 14. Relax immediately before you go to sleep. Concentrate on your breathing and reduce your shoulder and neck tension. 15. If you have difficulty remembering the chronological order of your dream, try recording your dream in reverse order. 16. Once you awaken and record your dream, invite the next dream to come to you. 17. Before drifting off to sleep, tell yourself to remember the last dream of each night. 18. Recurrent dreams generally indicate resistance to change. 19. Dreams direct your attention to errors of omission and commission, and offer guidance for self-correction. 20. Dreams are the mirrors of your soul and invite you to express your true self.

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Paws to Reflect 1. What is it about human nature that makes it difficult to take dreams seriously? 2. If dreams are liquid intuition, what are nightmares? 3. How are you like the cartoon character Charlie Brown when he says dejectedly, “Even my brain is against me”? 4. How many “dream thieves” are there in your life, and what steps will you take to eliminate them?

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There is no chance, no destiny, no fate that can circumvent or hinder or control the firm resolve of a determined soul. Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Chapter 9 Intuitively Speaking Your word is your wand. Florence Scovel Shinn

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hat do you say when you talk to yourself? How good of a conversationalist are you when it comes to self-talk? How often do you say positive things about yourself? Do you fully understand the power of words? How often do you talk to yourself? What does your mental dialogue sound like when you make a mistake or disappoint someone? When did you first hear the word “NO?” The answers to these questions relate directly to how you feel about your self-worth. How you feel about your self-worth directly affects how you view your capabilities, including your intuitive abilities. The guiding tenet of selftalk psychology is that the words we use to describe our 79

Why Cats Don’t Bark feelings and experiences plant the seeds for our future feelings and experiences. Catherine Ponder put it a little more succinctly when she said that the “words utter and outer have similar roots…what we utter becomes outer in our world.” What gets impressed on our brain gets expressed. What we verbalize appears to be what we get. To paraphrase Florence Scovel Shinn, our word is our wand. Read that last sentence again, only this time substitute “I” for “we” and “my” for “our” as you read it aloud: What I say is what I get because my word is my wand. Since self-talk has a way of becoming self-fulfilling prophecy, we must be very careful with what words we use to describe ourselves. For example, read the negative words below as if they applied to yourself: abrasive annoying arrogant inadequate incompetent failure

klutz lazy loser reject repulsive scuzzy

You probably don’t have a good feeling about what you just read – even though you know this was just an exercise and believe none of these words really apply to you. The nature of negativity has a diminishing tone to it. If any of these words have applied to you at one time or another, you would probably have a negative opinion of yourself. Words like these, with negative connotations, sap energy and confidence out of us. On the other hand, positive words strengthen and empower us. Positive self-talk is therapeutic. It is a proven morale booster and innovation catalyst. Repeating positive words and phrases – called affirmations – long enough can literally change the way you think and feel. As a matter of 80

Intuitively Speaking fact, there is compelling evidence by brain researchers and physicists that repetitious thoughts, words and actions create “grooves” in our consciousness which become “fixed pathways.” Physicist David Bohm has this to say: When experiments have been done with radioactive tracers to see what happens in the brain, every idea, every feeling creates a radical redistribution of blood in the brain. More cells grow on these pathways and the synapses get fixed, strengthening the grooves and creating powerful thought pathways in the brain. If the very physiology of our brain is affected by our long-held thoughts, feelings and self-talk, then we have the power to program intuition-friendly grooves of thought and action. In my seminars, tapes and CDs, I provide strategies for people to reboot their brain and reprogram their mind for optimal performance and success. By programming positive self-talk into your vocabulary, you can become a legend in your own mind. It will take time for the daily deposits of positive thoughts, words and phrases to reap mental and attitudinal benefits. That is when you will begin to experience the confidence and openness to increase your “hunch quotient” we talked about in Chapter 4. At the beginning of this chapter, I asked you to react to the list of negative words as if they applied to you. Since optimism is learned, I’d like you to do a similar thing with the following list of positive words: awesome memorable committed competent good-looking perceptive honest successful intelligent powerful intuitive wise lovable wealthy

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Why Cats Don’t Bark Each of these words has the power to lift your selfesteem and heighten your intuitive intelligence. You can even turn these positive words into affirmations simply by adding the words “I am” to the beginning of each one. For example, I am awesome; I am intuitive; I am successful; I am wise. Repeat positive phrases like these to yourself as often as you can throughout the day. If you recite them long enough, you’ll begin to notice a distinct difference in the way you see yourself. Carl and Stephanie Simonton (with whom I have studied) are world-renowned researchers specializing in visualization for the treatment of cancers. In their book, Getting Well Again, they report that hope increases one’s immunity, while despair reduces it.

Catnip for the Mind The words “I am” are potent words; be careful what you hitch them to. The thing you’re claiming has a way of reaching back and claiming you. A.L. Kitselman

Saying positive things about yourself to yourself may seem a little childish, even a little silly, but the changes in your overall disposition and health will speak for themselves. Affirmations can become strong, positive mental blueprints that build your intuitive “architecture” and help you realize your fullest potential. They are words that truly can change your life. They are the language of possibility and the micro-biology of hope. Their purpose is to remove the static caused by negative thinking and create a more expansive, abundant sense of your self-worth. Psychologist Carl Jung said: 82

Intuitively Speaking People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own souls. They will practice yoga…observe a strict regimen of diet, learn theosophy by heart, or mechanically repeat mystic texts…all because they cannot get on with themselves and have not the slightest faith that anything useful could ever come out of their own souls. No matter how intelligent, attractive, rich or talented you are, if you do not feel good enough about yourself to say enough good things about yourself, you may never be able to, in Jung’s words, “get on with yourself.” Using positive affirmations is one way to ready yourself to see your inner light. Giving yourself “lip service” through the power of affirmations is the best endorsement you can give yourself. What would you affirm if you knew you could not fail? What negative static would you rid yourself of so you could become more intuitively in sync? How could you turbocharge your personal alignment with your intuitive intelligence?

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Paws to Reflect 1. How often do you use negative words to describe yourself? Under what circumstances are you most likely to use them? 2. If your word really is your wand, in what ways does the quality of your life speak for itself? 3. How deep are your “intuition-friendly grooves?” 4. What kind of “lip service” do you need to give yourself to, as Jung says, “get on with yourself?”

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Chapter 10 Seeing From Eye to I There is a powerful and mysterious force in human nature that is capable of bringing about dramatic improvement in our lives. It is a kind of mental engineering…It has caught the attention of doctors, psychologists and thinkers everywhere, and a new word has been coined to describe it. That word is visualization. Norman Vincent Peale

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isualization is a mental imaging technique which can bring us amazing intuitive insights. It is analogous to a special kind of “home movie” or “mental video” which presents us as a screenwriter, producer, director, star and cameraperson. We can take our “mental videos” with us anywhere and unreel any scenario or drama we want to view. We can stop and start our visualization at any time. We can even pick up where we left off without detracting from the message contained in our mini-production. 85

Why Cats Don’t Bark Conscientious practice in applying visualization techniques helps enhance our intuitive abilities and allows immediate access to our acorn nature, our PowerZone.. All we have to do is open our mind’s eye to discover our true nature by producing images that can help reveal our soul’s code. According to Hillman, this image or pattern is “our inheritance, our soul’s portion in the world order and our place on earth, all compacted into a pattern that has been selected by our soul before we even get here…Thus the soul has an image of its fate.” Once that picture is crystallized in your mind, you cannot not make it happen. For Hillman, this image or pattern is the essence of each of our particular lives and is imprinted with our destiny, just as a mighty oak’s destiny is embedded in a tiny acorn. I believe we can get a glimpse of this image, and perhaps our own destiny, through consistent use of a variety of visualization techniques. Philosophers, priests and shamans in every ancient culture used visualization as a tool for personal growth and transformation. Today, Western medicine is rediscovering the incredible transforming power of visualization as a healing technique. Know that what the mind sees, the body believes. In other words, your body is a “pull toy” to the mind.

Catnip for the Mind When an idea exclusively occupies the mind, it is transformed into an actual physical or mental state. Sivananda

The American physician, physiologist and father of progressive relaxation, Edmund Jacobson, proved that when 86

Seeing From Eye to I we imagine ourselves doing an activity such as running, golfing or playing tennis, the muscles associated with those particular types of movements contract in small but measurable amounts. Neither Freda nor Fritz, nor my own poodle, Pouka, has ever read Jacobson’s research; however, I’m sure they would agree they have noticed their muscles tense every time the refrigerator door opens at home. I’ve included this research in this chapter to show you that our body, mind and spirit are connected, not only at a physical level, but at emotional, intellectual, spiritual and cellular levels. Jerome Frank, a psychiatrist at Johns Hopkins Medical School, believes there is a direct relationship between visualization and healing. Carl Simonton used visualization techniques to treat and heal his patients for years. He believes that the mind can influence our ability to strengthen our immunological responses to disease. He instructs his patients to “see” themselves as cancer-free. A personal account by one of Simonton’s patients illustrates the power of the human mind in combating illness, even serious disease: I visualized my cancer as a snake or some vicious animal. I visualized the cure as white husky dogs. It would be a confrontation between good and evil. The dogs would grab the vicious cancer cells and shake them, ripping them to shreds…Then the cancer cells would shrink and eventually disappear. The army of white dogs would lick up the residue and clean my abdominal cavity until it was spotless. That patient’s courage, discipline and determination are praiseworthy and heroic, but more important are the results. After this patient visualized three times a day for 10-15 minute intervals for six weeks, an examination revealed his tumor had shrunk by 75%. After two months, there was no trace of the disease left in his body. 87

Why Cats Don’t Bark The implications of Simonton’s work, and thankfully hundreds of other researchers, are staggering. There is convincing evidence that with the combination of good science, medicine, technology and visualization, we can literally heal ourselves. Endocrinologist Deepak Chopra believes we can even alter, and possibly slow down, our aging process by visualizing healthy cells replacing old, damaged cells. In his fascinating book, Ageless Body, Timeless Mind, he said: If you examine old cells through a high-powered microscope, the scene is as devastating as a war zone. Fibrous streaks, deposits of fat and undiscarded metabolic wastes form unsightly clumps…dark, yellowish pigments called lipofuscin accumulate to the point where they litter 10 to 30 percent of the cell’s interior…we can help clear that up through visualization. According to Caroline Myss, author of Anatomy of the Spirit: Our biography – the experiences that make up our life – becomes our biology…As our lives unfold, our biological health becomes a living, breathing biographical statement that conveys our strengths, weaknesses, hopes and fears…Changing our biography (through visualization) can change our biology. In the extremely interesting book, The Cell’s Intelligence, we read that “if the cells of the brain do not get to express their mission and purpose in a balanced way, they…rebel by manifesting diseases such as tumors.” We are much, much more than biochemical machines and mere bundles of DNA. We are spirit and matter. We are specks of Divine Intelligence in human clothing. We have the power to visualize and to imagine ourselves happy, healthy and whole. We have the ability to discover ways in which we have been holding ourselves back, blocking our 88

Seeing From Eye to I progress and fulfillment. Once we see from “eye-to-I” we can create the best, most beautiful and worthwhile lives we can imagine. Since the mind is the software for the brain’s hardware, visualization is how we reboot the brain and reprogram our mind for health and healing as well as peak performance and success. It is a visual representation of our intuition. It is a mental rehearsal or tool to become that to which we aspire. What the mind sees, the body believes, and with repetition of desired mental images, our goals and dreams manifest into reality. Practice these simple steps of visualization and mental rehearsal to unleash your PowerZone. 1. Get into a relaxed body-mind state through meditation, prayer, or deep relaxation; 2. Bombard the sensorium. You must see it, hear it, touch it, taste it, smell it…and of course, know it. 3. Think big and be 100% positive. To the degree that we are totally positive, there can be no negativity or emotional interferences. 4. See your desired goal or vision as if it has already happened. It tricks the brain into thinking it’s a “done deal.” 5. Know that you deserve it. We are only open to changes that we truly believe we deserve. 6. Be grateful for the change you have so vividly visualized. God or the universe only continues to give to those who are grateful.

Since we have talked about your life purpose and soul’s code in this chapter, the following guided visualization is an excellent technique for helping you get in touch with your higher self, your acorn nature. You may want to record the script, or have someone with a soothing voice record it, so you can focus entirely on the process. Revisit it as often as you need to unlock your intuitive intelligence and discover your soul’s code.

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Find a quiet place where you will not be interrupted by the phone, doorbell or needs of others. Seat yourself or lie comfortably so you can relax. Close your eyes and listen to the sound of your breathing. Take a deep breath to the count of ten, hold the count for a few seconds, and then exhale slowly to a count of ten. Repeat the process twice and return to your normal breathing. Relax your whole body. Let this relaxation flow from your neck and shoulders to your arms, hands, legs and feet. Breathe slowly and comfortably. Now take a slow, deep breath and exhale softly. Breathe naturally, taking notice if you are still relaxed. You are walking down a long, wooden boardwalk to a very beautiful, expansive beach. It is surprisingly deserted and stretches off into the distance as far as you can see. The sand is very fine and dry, almost white in appearance. As you step onto the sand in your bare feet, you notice how warm the sand feels. It is not hot, and it feels good as it sifts through your toes. You walk slowly toward the water’s edge and marvel at the methodical nature of the roaring surf as it breaks over the sand. The sound of the waves crashing along the shoreline is soothing as you walk just out of reach of the surf. The ocean itself is a beautiful shade of blue cast against a pale blue, cloudless sky. As you scan the horizon, you can see – a couple of hundred yards or so offshore – several sailboats with their multicolored sails moving in concert with the tides and wind.

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Seeing From Eye to I As you continue walking down the beach, you take a deep breath and fill your lungs with the smell of fresh ocean air. You take another deep breath as you close your eyes, pausing for a moment to enjoy your oneness with the ocean. You feel the warm breeze against your face and enjoy the sensation of the soft wind blowing through your hair. You remember you have come to the beach to contemplate your life’s purpose. You want to know who you really are and what your future holds. You lift your eyes toward the heavens and sigh deeply. “It would be nice to know who I am and why I am here,” you say to yourself. When you open your eyes, you spot something lying on the beach, some distance away. As you approach the object, you realize it is a treasure chest of some sort. As you stand before it, you notice an envelope fastened to the lid hinge, which isn’t locked. You are surprised to find your name is on the sealed envelope. You look around, but there is no one else on the beach. You reach down and untie the note. When you open the note, you are surprised to find that it is your own handwriting. The message informs you that when you open the chest you will find your life’s purpose. You pan the beach area again. You are alone. You take a deep breath and lift the treasure chest lid. Inside, next to a book entitled Why Cats Don’t Bark, is a 3x5 notecard. Scrawled on the notecard is your life’s purpose. You pick up the notecard to get a closer look. In your own handwriting, the note says…

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Paws to Reflect 1. How would you define your soul’s code? 2. All of us have some type of physical challenge. It could be a weight issue, diet or illness. Pick your challege and answer this question: How can I visualize this thing away? 3. How is your biography your biology? How do you choose to change it? 4. What do you think seeing “eye-to-I” means? 5. How will you incorporate visualization into your daily routine to access your PowerZone?

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Chapter 11 Intuiting Your Life Purpose We are less under the influence of nature and nurture and more indebted to…our own original gift…When our calling, character and fate have become more inescapable, then too, (our) intelligence and all it serves belongs more to the code of the soul than to that of the genes. James Hillman

There must be something representing tree-ness in an acorn. That’s why cats don’t bark! And that’s why none of us will ever be completely happy or fulfilled unless we represent the we-ness in us. Our pets have no problem representing themselves. Kittens get away with all their goofiness because they are endearing fur balls of playfulness, but there is a distinct catness in their nature. Puppies are cuddly and clumsy bundles of joy, but there is an obvious dogness in their wolf-like nature. 93

Why Cats Don’t Bark All living things grow into their nature with a supportive environment. For example, while a dog enjoys paddling across a lake, a cat scratches to get out of a bath tub! In each case, they seek an environment which allows them to express their oakness. Our purpose as human beings is to be more human-like every day, to be the person we were meant to be. Violating our soul’s code often results in depression, addictions, obesity, lack of motivation, stress, disease or a feeling of empty existence. Research indicates that dolphins taken out of their natural habitat and trapped in pools for our amusement may be holding their breath to commit suicide. George Bernard Shaw so well describes our purpose: This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. We must have the courage to be different to make a difference; we must transcend from success to significance. However, the inspiring words of George Bernard Shaw show us how easily we can dismiss our acorness. To know ourselves authentically means growing into our natural selves. It means getting a clearer picture of who we are through our thoughts, actions, and experiences, sensing intuitively what we must do to express our oakness, our true essence. Let’s take this analogy one step further. When you open acorns, you’ll find nothing which resembles a tree. All you’ll find is a glob of brown stuff, air and dust. If you peel through the layers of acorn stuff, you’ll find you can pull it apart. Further examination with a high-powered electron 94

Intuiting Your Life Purpose microscope reveals distinctly acornish molecules. Then you’ll find atoms, electrons and subatomic particles, all of which become so small that it’s impossible to tell the “acorn” particles from the “oak” particles. There is an invisible connection between what the acorn is and what it will become. Wayne Dyer in his book, Manifest Your Destiny, describes the process as it relates to us: We can go back to (your) conception and explain (your) creation as one drop of human protoplasm colliding with another, resulting in your appearance in the form of a tiny speck that grew into the body that is you today. But if you delve further into those drops of human protoplasm and turn up the magnification on the microscope, and if you do the same with the speck that was your first experience of form, you discover the same truth that described the acorn. Its original self (exerts) a “future pull” that comes from an invisible something. That “future pull” is our present self becoming our future self, for we gravitate toward our own uniqueness. Singleness of purpose means avoiding exterior clutter like power, prestige and possessions, which interfere with the chief purpose of our lives.

Catnip for the Mind Every time you don’t follow your inner guidance, you feel a loss of energy, loss of power, a sense of spiritual deadness. Shakti Gawain

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Why Cats Don’t Bark Activities and life experiences which derive from our purpose are not burdensome because there is harmony between what we feel we are supposed to do and what we want to do. We often are living in someone else’s comfort zone other than our own. Our parents often encourage and coerce us to manifest their own unfulfilled wishes and destiny. When we find our purpose, all of our experiences ring true. There is no gap between our acorness and our oakness. Henri Nouwen, author of a jewel of a book called Out of Solitude, puts it this way: A few years ago I met an old professor at the University of Notre Dame. Looking back on his long life of teaching, he said with a funny twinkle in his eyes: “I have always been complaining that my work was constantly interrupted, until I slowly discovered that my interruptions were my work.” We live in a world full of distractions. Our lives are filled with work and family responsibilities, our own desires and goals, community concerns and global pressures. Most of us get caught up in the demands society places upon us and end up in the center lane of the rat race. On the surface we may appear happy, confident and in control, but inside we suffer from the tensions imposed by 21st Century living. We move so fast that we lose opportunities to discover and express our acorness. We grow out of touch with ourselves and settle for just going through the motions. We lose sight of our purpose. We become strangers to ourselves. If we’re not careful, we will dilute our oakness to the extent that our lives will become more shell than substance – or more bark than bite! Having a clear sense of your acorn nature is what this book is all about. It is the answer to the riddle why cats don’t bark. Knowing yourself – what you do well and what you don’t do well, what motivates you, what you value, who 96

Intuiting Your Life Purpose you want to spend time with, what makes you happy or sad – is your chief occupation in this life. “The purpose of life,” said Eleanor Roosevelt, “is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer life experiences.” Until we do the work of excavating, claiming and expressing our uniqueness, we run the risk of putting our life script into someone else’s hands. Joseph Campbell, in his book Myths to Live By, warns, “The world is full of people that have stopped listening to themselves or have listened only to their neighbors to learn what they ought to do, how they ought to behave and what the values are that they should be living for.” Unfortunately, for many people, Campbell is right.

Catnip for the Mind If you advance confidently in the direction of your dreams, and endeavor to live the life which you have imagined, you will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. You'll put some things behind and pass an invisible boundary; new, universal and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within you -Old laws will be expanded and interpreted in your favor in a more liberal sense; and you will live with license of a higher order of things. H. D. Thoreau-(paraphrased)

If your real self, your acorn nature, is still hidden from view and remains invisible and inaudible, it is due to its being cloaked in the interpretations of others and your own inability or disinterest in wanting to find out who you truly 97

Why Cats Don’t Bark are. Mandy Aftel puts it a little more succinctly in her book, The Story of Your Life: “As you begin to pay attention to your own stories and what they say about you, you will enter into the exciting process of becoming, as you should be, the author of your own life, the creator of your own possibilities.” In her companion book to The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron gives her interpretation of why we must express our purpose. She says, in Vein of Gold: All of us are far richer than we imagine. None of us possesses a life devoid of magic, barren of grace, divorced from power. Our inner resources, often unmined and even unknown or unacknowledged, are the treasures we carry, what I call our spiritual DNA…the stamp of originality, which is the blueprint of our unfolding. Our intuitive intelligence is the gateway to discovering our true nature, our acorness. Anything which blocks that awareness is an unnatural thwarting of our selfhood. If you have blocked the flow of your true self from expression – all of us have to greater or lesser degrees – you will need to learn how to get out of your own way. The “intuition workout” techniques in the next chapter will help you do just that.

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Paws to Reflect 1. There must be “something” representing youness in you – what is it? 2. What is your manifest destiny, and if derailed, how can you get back on track? 3. If interruptions are your real life’s work, how would that change your perception of why you are where you are today? 4. In what ways have you stopped listening to your inner guide, and what will you do to be more tuned in?

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One of the strongest characteristics of genius is the power of lighting its own fire. John Foster

Chapter 12 Intuition Workout Your work is to discover your work and then with all your heart to give yourself to it. Buddha

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ll of the exercises and activities in this chapter are designed to ignite your intuitive intelligence – your other IQ. Our intuitive intelligence is the gateway to our authentic self and our passion, which unleash the other 90% of untapped potential and transform it into peak performance. Intuition, like any other natural ability, must be developed. Since it comes from deep inside us, intuition is an inner knowing that comes from an invisible realm. Psychologists call this inner realm our subconscious. The Romans called it “genius;” the Greeks believed it was our “daimon;” and the Egyptians referred to it as “ka” 101

Why Cats Don’t Bark energy. Whatever this something is (genius, daimon or ka) it envelopes both our conscious and subconscious natures. It knows everything about us and controls our destiny. Our intuitive intelligence works on our behalf by catalyzing creativity and providing a competitive advantage, whether it comes to us in dreams, visualizations, flashes of insight or even nightmares. The exercises in this chapter will help you gain an intuitive edge, not only over everyday challenges and concerns, but over the forces which block your access to your authentic acorn nature, your PowerZone. You owe it to yourself to find out who you are and how much intuitive power you have. Spend some quality time with this chapter. The intuitive dividends you reap will make the exploration of your “other IQ” one of the wisest, most intuitive moves you have ever made – besides buying this book! With a few exceptions, most of the following exercises and activities can be practiced in 15 minutes or less. For example, the hemispheric visualization Mental Tennis, adapted from Jean Houston’s right-brain, left-brain studies, requires an audiotape or someone to read the exercise to you, but it is one of the best intuition warm-ups you will ever experience. Some of the other activities require pencil and paper to record your insights. Others will stimulate your thinking, like the Paws to Reflect items you found at the end of each chapter in this book. You may want to read through the entire workout first, and then intuitively select the activities you want to start with, depending on your time and energy. I encourage you, however, to build each one into your workout schedule. Plan to spend 10 to 15 minutes two or three times each day for the next three months to maximize the benefits of your intuitive development. 102

Intuition Workout Catnip for the Mind Nothing splendid has ever been achieved except by those who dared believe that something inside them was superior to circumstances. Bruce Barton

Burn It or Flush It Release any of your old mental and emotional tapes that replay negative, self-defeating thoughts, keeping you stuck and unhappy. Release these shackles symbolically by taking the following steps: • Write a letter to your negative thoughts, illnesses, emotional baggage, doubts, or fears. Tell each of these “enemies” what you think about them. Be explicit. Be straight forward and to the point. Explain why you no longer want them in your life. • Read the letter aloud to yourself. • Then burn the letter or flush it! • Close your eyes, take a deep breath and relax. • Record any thoughts that come to mind.

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Why Cats Don’t Bark Coin Flip Think of an important decision you have to make. If you’ve already begun the decision-making process – identified the key issues, collected information relevant to your decision, asked for help from friends and experts, taken a few steps toward resolving the issue, explored a number of alternatives, etc. – add an intuitive coin flip to the mix. • Use a quarter to decide your course of action. • Determine which side of the coin (heads or tails) represents which decision point (i.e., heads means you will take the job, or relocate, or go on the blind date, or stay in an important relationship; tails means you won’t). • Flip the coin and look at the result. • It doesn’t matter which side comes up for the purpose of this exercise. What does matter is how you feel about which side comes up. That “feeling” is your intuitive IQ at work. Pay attention to it!

Swelled Head Close your eyes and relax. Hold your hands, palms facing each other, in a prayer position. Position them in front of your face, nose high, and at a distance of 12 inches or so from your face. Now, keeping your eyes closed, separate your hands slowly, until you sense you have measured the width of your head, including your ears and hair. Now stop. Keep your hands in that position and open your eyes. 104

Intuition Workout How close was your measurement? How accurate were you? Most people tend to have “swelled heads” based on their measurement. This exercise helps you become aware of your mind-body connection.

Switch-Hitter Close your eyes and visualize a cat or dog playfully engaged in its own game of “chase the tail” or “running in circles.” Notice how care-free and happy the pet is as it rolls on its back and licks its paws. In your mind’s eye, become that pet. Feel its sense of freedom and playfulness, its air of independence and security. Remember how easy it was to feel this sense of freedom, safety and independence as a child? Remember how you played cat and mouse, or imitated your dog by kneeling, cupping your hands and barking for food in front of your amused parents? You felt free to be yourself, to be silly, to experiment, to play. Think of something in your current life that you would like to do: something that may seem child-like or even a little foolish, or something that would cause no harm or inconvenience to anyone. It could be something totally “unlike” you. Complete the following sentence and keep writing as your intuition motivates you: “What I really wish I could do is…” When you’ve exhausted your thoughts, transfer your writing instrument to your other hand. Even though your 105

Why Cats Don’t Bark writing will be awkward, begin to record any additional thoughts which push through your subconscious. You may have to wait a few moments, but convince yourself to wait. It is not unusual for your other hand (probably your nondominant hand) to stimulate additional awareness from your right hemisphere.

Mental Tennis This intuition inducer is an adaptation of a hemispheric exercise created by Robert Masters and Jean Houston. It is one of the best intuition calisthenics exercises you will ever encounter. You will need to tape record this exercise or ask someone to read it to you. Make sure, whichever way you do it, that you leave yourself enough time between statements to form mental images. Seat yourself comfortably with your back straight and supported, so that you can maintain that position for 15-25 minutes. Focus your attention on your breathing and posture. Close your eyes and breathe easily. Keeping your eyes closed, look down with your left eye, then look down with your right eye. Return your awareness to your left eye and look up. Now move your left eye in a clockwise direction and then counterclockwise. Which direction seems easier? Now look up with your right eye and repeat the process, rolling your right eye clockwise, then counterclockwise. Which direction seems easier? Relax both your eyes. Keeping your eyes closed, direct your attention to the right side of your brain…and now to the left. Shift back and forth a few 106

Intuition Workout times. Speed up the mental tennis and then slow your motion down again. Back and forth…back and forth. Do not strain as you do this. On the left side of your brain, imagine the number 2. And on the right side, the letter Z…what color is the Z? On the left side, the number 4… And on the right side, the letter Y. On the left, the number 6…what color is the 6? And on the right, the letter X. On the left, the number 8… And on the right, the letter W. Rest for a moment, taking a deep breath as you do so. On which hemispheric side were the colors more vivid? Which were larger – the numbers or the letters? Continuing with your eyes closed, on the left side of your brain imagine a festive beach scene with sun bathers, beach umbrellas, blue skies and a volleyball game. On the right side of your brain, imagine people praying. Let those images go, and on the left, imagine two alley cats squaring off against each other. On the right, there is a hurricane sweeping through a coastal town. On the left is an acorn. On the right, a galaxy. On the left are dogwood trees in full bloom. On the right, icy streets and bridges. On the left is a gorgeous sunset. On the right, a cloudy day. On the left is a three-ring circus. 107

Why Cats Don’t Bark On the right is a mother cat giving milk to a litter of kittens. On the left is the sound of a car starting. On the right is the sound of a car alarm. On the left is the sound of your stomach growling. On the right is the sound of a tea kettle hissing. On the left is the smell of bread baking. On the right is the smell of coconut soap. On the left, the taste of a juicy lemon. On the right, the taste of chocolate candy. On the left, you are sitting with a cat on your lap, watching TV on top of a mountain in a thunder storm. On the right, you are swimming in Kool-Aid®, carrying a black poodle on your back and singing God Bless America. Rest for a moment. Then, in the middle of your forehead, imagine a small yellow Post-it® note. Mentally enlarge the note so that you can see the handwriting on the note. The message tells you something very important about yourself. Move closer to it so you can read it. What does it say? Remember that message. Keeping your eyes closed, record the message or ask your reader to record the message for you. Let that image go. Coming from the right side of your brain is someone with something important to tell you. Who is that person and what does he/she tell you? Record that message, then let the image go. From the left side of your brain you get a sense of something you should do in the future. What message are you receiving? Record the instruction and then let the image go. 108

Intuition Workout Relax and take a few slow breaths. Roll your shoulders and release any tension in your neck and shoulders. Keeping your eyes closed, take another slow breath and smile as you exhale slowly.You have just made contact with your higher self, your acorn nature. When you are ready, open your eyes.

Life Review In a notebook, diary or journal, make a list of every single success you’ve experienced in life, as far back as you can remember. List accomplishments in areas such as home life, marriage, work, travel, health and nutrition, hobbies, business associations, personal development, finances, friendships and so on. Read through your list reflectively. Now close your eyes. Do you have more successes in one or two areas than the others? In your mind’s eye, visualize your next meaningful success in those areas. Record your insights. Now, close your eyes again, and think about the areas where you have fewer accomplishments – or none. Visualize your next meaningful success in those areas as well. Record your insights.

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Why Cats Don’t Bark By Candle Light Seat yourself comfortably in front of a candle. Stare at the base of the flame, not directly at the light. Focus on the flickering light as you listen to the sounds in the room. As you listen to the room chatter, keep your eyes focused on the base of the flame. Ask the flame what you should do about an important issue at hand. You may address the flame out loud, or simply do it mentally. Wait for its response by keeping your attention focused on the base of the flame. Record any impressions which come to you. Close your eyes and thank the light within you for its patience and guidance. Act on the information you receive from your inner source of wisdom.

Give Me Five Make a list of five people whom you admire. They can be living or dead, extraordinary or ordinary, man or woman, rich or poor. Stop right now and create your list. Once you have put your list in writing, read on. Take a look back over your list. I have a very interesting question to ask. Are you on it? I didn’t say you couldn’t include yourself, did I? The instructions simply read: “Make a list of five people whom you admire…” If you failed to include yourself, why not think about adding your name to the list? Be aware of the feelings you experience as you do this or decide not to, as the case may be. Starting with the first person you identified, make a list of all the qualities, attributes and attitudes you admire most

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Intuition Workout about that individual. What was it about them that made you include them on your list? Repeat the inventory for each person on the list, including yourself (assuming you were willing to add your name, and I hope you did). List at least five qualities for each person. You can be sure that the qualities you admire most in others are qualities that you possess, but express to a greater or lesser degree. They are most likely qualities inherent in your true nature and are the ones which you are being asked to develop. Record any thoughts, questions or feelings you experienced as you worked through this activity. Ask yourself what you need to do next to build the qualities you most admire in others.

Going Solo With your eyes closed, repeat the following affirmation at your normal speech rate as many times as you can in the next five minutes: I am very good at intuiting solutions to every problem that presents itself to me. Now listen to yourself answer yourself! Jot down all the thoughts going through your head as you continue to repeat the affirmation. Assess your inner comments and respond to them. If they are negative, record positive comebacks. If they are positive, reinforce those thoughts to strengthen them. Get very quiet and ask yourself what your most important learning is from this exercise. Record your intuitions.

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Why Cats Don’t Bark Metaphorically Speaking Sometimes solutions to life’s dilemmas come through a form of writing called “flow writing” or “stream of consciousness” writing. It involves writing as fast as you can. This activity is best done early in the morning. In fact, I recommend you have a journal and pen next to your bed, and complete this task before you even get out of bed, as our wakening state is one of heightened creativity and abundant insights. Pick an event in your life which has disappointed or saddened you. It should be one that still has an emotional pull, because of its lasting effect on you. Write about the event. Don’t spend time editing your thoughts or worrying about the grammar, word choice or sentence structure. Just let the thoughts flow through you to the paper. Go with first impressions. Write about the entire event, its causes, the people involved, the circumstances, your efforts to resolve it, your feelings, its impact on your life and the lives of those around you. Continue writing until you have exhausted the subject. Now complete the following statements: “Dealing with him/her was like…” “Trying to solve a problem like that is like…” “Confronting those issues is like…” “Looking back on it now is like…”

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Intuition Workout Put the notepad aside and wait until bedtime to re-read it. Review your responses. Evaluate what you have written and then ask yourself: “If faced with a similar situation again, what can I do differently?” Repeat that question several more times and then sleep on it. Record any messages, including dreams or dream fragments, that come to you overnight.

Ponderables Ponder these questions: 1. How high is up? 2. What color is the wind? 3. Where does your lap go when you stand? 4. What is the sound of one hand clapping? Create a list of your own ponderables, and record your thoughts and ideas.

Literary Itinerary Part 1: Go to your favorite books, and ask your intuitive intelligence to direct you to a passage you most need to read at that moment. Then open the book and read the first thing your eyes focus on. Ask yourself what message your intuitive intelligence is sending to you. 113

Why Cats Don’t Bark Part 2: Contemplate on the following words of wisdom. Add quotes of your own. Select one each day and make it your literary itinerary for the day. Be really whole and all things will come to you. (Lao-Tzu)

The more we learn to operate in the world based on trust in our intuition, the stronger our channel will be. (Shakti Gawain)

In a dark time, the eye begins to see. (Theodore Roethke)

When the soul wishes to experience something, she throws an image of the experience out before her and enters into her own image. (Meister Eckhart)

Stop thinking and talking about it and there is nothing you will not be able to know. (Zen paradigm)

To know and not to do, is not to know. (Lao-Tzu)

What we vividly imagine, ardently desire, enthusiastically act upon, must inevitably come to pass. (Colin P. Sisson)

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Paws to Reflect 1. Which exercises were most meaningful to you? Why? Have you adopted any as a steady mental diet? Which ones? Why? 2. What intuitions found their way into your consciousness after you experienced Mental Tennis a few times? 3. Which self-defeating thoughts, attitudes and beliefs did you symbolically burn or flush out of your life? In what ways have these symbolic acts translated into practical reality? How will you sustain your self-empowerment and unleash your own PowerZone? 4. What has been the most significant, enlightening and personally transforming information you have received from this book? 5. How will you pass it on? With whom will you share the insights and lessons of this book? 6. How will you make a difference and what will be your mark? Orison Swett Marden summed up my philosophy perfectly when he said, “Deep within (you) dwells those slumbering powers, powers that would astonish (you), that (you) never dreamed of possessing; forces that would revolutionize (your) life if aroused and put into action.” By taking the action to read this book and ignite your Intuitive Intelligence, you have already begun to revolutionize your life by arousing those internal forces, your PowerZone. 115

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As I complete this book, I feel humbled, privileged and grateful for the opportunity to be manifesting my soul’s code – which is to give those of you who are still searching the courage to discover and manifest yours.

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Bibliography Aftel, Mandy. The Story of Your Life – Becoming the Author of Your Experience. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996. Bohn, David. Causality & Chance in Modern Physics. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1957. Bruner, Jerome. The Process of Education. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1961. Cameron, Julia. The Vein of Gold. New York: Putnam, 1996. Campbell, Joseph. Myths to Live By. New York: Bantam, 1972. Cooper, Robert K. and Sawaf Ayman. Executive EQ: Emotional Intelligence in Leadership and Organization. New York: Perigee Books, 1996. Davis, Paul and John Gribbin. The Matter Myth. London: Viking Press, 1991. deBono, Edward. New Think. New York: Avon Books, 1967. Dyer, Wayne. Manifest Your Destiny. New York: Harper-Collins, 1997. English, Horace B. and Ana C. English. A Comprehensive Dictionary of Psychological and Psychoanalytical Terms. New York: David McKay, 1958. Faraday, Anna. Dream Power. New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1972. Freud, Sigmund. The Interpretation of Dreams, Vol IV of the Standard Edition of The Complete Psychological Works. New York: Hogarth Press, 1953-74. Fromm, Erich. The Forgotten Language. New York: Grove Press, 1957. Gardner, Howard. Frames of Mind. New York: Basic Books, 1993. Haney, William. Communication and Interpersonal Relations. Homewood, IL: Richard D. Irwin, Inc., 1960. Herrnstein, Richard and Charles Murray. The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life. New York: Free Press, 1994. Hillman, James. The Soul’s Code. New York: Random House, 1996.

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Why Cats Don’t Bark Jacobson, Edmund. Progressive Relaxation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1942. Jung, Carl. Dreams (Selections from the Collected Works). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1974. Nietzsche, Friedrich, The Dawn of Day, Volume 9 of Complete Works. Ed. Oscar Levy. Edinburg: n.p., 1911. Nouwen, Henri. Out of Solitude. Notre Dame: Ave Maria Press, 1974. Ponder, Catherine. Open Your Mind to Prosperity. Marina Del Ray, CA: DeVorss & Co., 1971. Shah, Idries. A Perfumed Scorpion. London: The Octagon Press, 1978. Simonton, Carl and Reid Hanson, with Brenda Hampton. The Healing Journey. New York: Bantam, 1992. Sternberg, Robert J., Successful Intelligence. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996. Wallace, Howard C., Dictionary of Psychology. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1934. Weisberg, R. and M. DiCamillo. “Multiple memory searches as the basis for restructuring in an insight problem.” Unpublished dissertation, Temple University, 1948.

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About the Author

E

die Raether, M.S., CSP, has been a student of intuition and the psychology of consciousness since her conception. She is an international keynote speaker, author, psychotherapist and performance coach. Edie has also been a college professor and radio/TV talk show host with ABC. Helping corporations bridge the gap between knowing and doing, Edie is a Fortune 50 favorite and has presented to over 3,000 professional associations and companies such as IBM, General Motors, EPA, Marriott, S.C. Johnson, Oscar Mayer, and JCPenney. A recognized authority on Intuitive Intelligence – The Other IQ®and brainbased performance, Edie's seminars provide the power tools for mastering change and MindShift™ Edie has co-authored books on customer service, sales, leadership, and women’s empowerment and is an expert resource to publications such as USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, Selling Power, Inc magazine, and Reuters. A native of Wisconsin, both Edie's master’s and bachelor’s degrees are from the University of Wisconsin. She currently resides in North Carolina, and enjoys her two sons and four grandchildren. When she’s not speaking or writing books, you can find her skiing the slopes of Utah or sailing off the Carolina Crystal Coast.

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Other Products by Edie Raether Hypnosis Tape/CD Series: Weight Control I Weight Control II Stop Smoking I Stop Smoking II Drug & Alcohol Abuse Stop Your Worrying! Panic Attacks & Phobias Sleep Easy Pain Control Anorexia Bulimia Self Confidence Fly Without Fear Forgiveness for Spiritual Renewal Healing Broken Relationships: Reclaiming the Self Sensuality: The Path to Spirituality Presentation Skills: Speak Like a Pro Golf: In the Zone Sales Strategies

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Books: Fantastic Customer Service Inside & Out Work Smarter, Not Harder: How You Can Increase Your Sales in Any Economy! Life, Work & Money: From a Woman’s Perspective Magnetic Leadership 120

Contact Information For information on Edie’s coaching and corporate training programs, to book Edie for your organization or association, and for information about her books, tapes, and CDs, write or call:

Edie Raether 4717 Ridge Water Court Holly Springs, NC 27540 USA 888-RAETHER 919-557-7900 Fax 919-557-7999 [email protected]

Visit Edie on the web at www.raether.com

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Index A

D

acorn nature 14, 22, 25, 37, 66, 69, 86, 89, 96, 97, 102, 109 Acorn Theory 3, 4 Aftel, M. 98 Auden, W.H. 57

deBono, E. 51 Depew, C. 63 Disney, W. 65 dream 32, 33, 34, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 113 Dream Recall 64, 70, 73, 74, 75 Dyer, W. 95

B Bach, R. 13 Barton, B. 103 Bell, A. 45 Benson, A.C. 49 Bohm, D. 81 Borenstein, D. 55 Bradbury, R. 18 breakthrough moment 43 Brown, R. 29 Bruner,J. 32 Buddha 101 Burn It or Flush It 103 Burns, G. 44 Burroughs, E. 64 butterfly 44 By Candle Light 110

C Cameron, J. 98 Campbell, J. 97 Capra, F. 33 Casper, G. 29 Cayce, E. 64 Chopra, D. 88 Coin Flip 104 concrete boots 14 Cooper, R. 19 cosmic fishing 28 Cousteau, J. 46 Csikszentmihalyi 45 cummings, e.e. 3

E Eckhart, M. 114 Einstein, A. 51, 56, 64 Emerson 28, 44 emotional intelligence 19, 20 English, H & A. 21

F Faraday, A. 72 Fawcett, F. 65 flow 30, 41, 43, 45 Frank, J. 87 Freud, S. 20 Fromm, E. 72 Fuller, B. 28 future pull 95

G Gardner, H. 19, 53 Gass, R. 5 Gawain, S. 95, 114 Gibran, K. 53 Give Me Five 110 God’s telephone 29 Going Solo 111 Goldberg, P. 29, 47, 58 Goleman, D. 17 Gribbin, J. 25 122

Index Life Review 109 Literary Itinerary 113 Loggins, K. 29 Lynd, R. 56

gut brain 22 gut guidance xi, 21, 22, 24

H Heraclitus 47 Herrnstein, R. 19 Hillman, J. x, 86, 93 Houston, J. 102 Howe, E. 65 Hughes, S. 46 hunch quotient 34

M

I intuition workout 98 intuitive intelligence x, xi, 3, 4, 6, 14, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 27, 34,36, 37, 38, 42, 47, 48, 55, 58, 62, 82, 83, 89, 98, 101, 102, 113 intuitive nudges 47 intuitive weather 47

J Jackson, H. 29 Jacobson, E. 86 Jacuzzi, C. 45 Jung, C. 28, 61, 64, 74, 82, 83

MacLean, P. 19 mammalian brain 20 Matsushita, K. 13 Mental Tennis 106 mental video 85 Metaphorically Speaking 112 Mother Teresa 64 Mozart 41 multiple intelligence 14, 17, 19, 24, 25 Murray, C. 19 Myss, C 88

N Naisbitt, J. 30 nap power 33 neocortex 20 Nietzsche, F. 73 Nouwen, H. 96

O

K

oakness 6, 9, 11, 12, 66

Kekulé, F. 63 Kitselman, A. 82 Koestler, A. 73 Krishnamurti 23

P

L Lantz, W. 44 Lao-Tzu 114 Lawrence, T. 71 life purpose 21, 25, 89, 93

Paws to Reflect 102 Peale, N. 44, 85 Perls, F. 64 Ponder, C. 80 Ponderables 113 PowerZone x, xi, 9, 12, 14 Proust, M. 43, 66 psychic telegrams 29 123

Index

R

Twain, M. 9

REM 61, 62, 63 reptilian brain 19 Roethke, T. 114 Roosevelt, E. 97 Ross, E. 44 Roszak, T. 69 Rumi 42

V

S

Woody Woodpecker 45

Sagan, C. 65 Salk, J. 27 Salovey, P. 19 Sawaf, A. 19 Schultz, C. 74 Schwartz, J. 58 Schweitzer, A. 11 self-talk 79, 80, 81 Shah, I. 42 Shakur, T. 62 Shaw, G. 1, 94 Shinn, F. 79, 80 Siegal, B. 29 Simonton 88 Simonton, C. 82, 87 Sisson, C. 114 Sivananda 86 soul’s code x, 37, 86, 89, 94 Spinoza 28 Sternberg, R. 19 Stevenson, R. 63 Swelled Head 104 Switch-Hitter 105

Z

Vaughan, F. 28 visualization 32, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 102

W

Zen 114

T third eye 47, 48 Thoreau, H. 97 Thorndike, E. 19 Toxic Logic 51, 55, 57, 58 124