Intuitive is who you are. Intellectual is what you become. You are born with six senses: sight, smell, sound, touch, taste and awareness. Awareness or inner knowing aka intuition is developed through the use of the five senses. Just as a wine connoisseur develops his sense of taste to effectively select fine wines or a massage therapist develops a sense of touch to deliver healing, your sixth sense, intuition, is a sense, when developed that can guide you in every area of your daily life.

Intuitive development is not about “making” intuition happen. Intuition is always happening. However, our ability to hear our intuition is often blocked by the many other voices occurring inside and outside of us. Learning to sense your intuition is a discernment process.

Typically, we each have a natural way of “hearing” and receiving our intuitive “hits.” Unlike the five senses, your sixth sense does not have a specific physical organ associated with it to do its job. This can make your sixth sense seem elusive and unreliable. The nose obviously is responsible for smelling and the eyes for seeing. We can rely upon this. How then does your intuition guide you if it doesn’t have a specific physical organ with which to do so? Consider this, intuition utilizes all the five senses to communicate its messages to you.

If the nose smells, skin touches, tongues taste, ears hear and eyes see, then your intuition can deliver you messages through your sense of taste, touch, sight, sound, and smell. If you smell a rotting egg you might plug your nose, your sensing organ for smell. Whereas, if your intuition suggests, “something smells funny here,” you wouldn’t necessarily plug your nose; although, it is your sense of smell, metaphorically speaking, which guides your intuition.

Here is another example of how your intuition works. Consider the sight you have when you dream at night. Your eyes are closed, yet you are “seeing” colors and images. If you haven’t experienced this, try the following. Close your eyes (after you read the instructions here) and imagine a juicy red apple in your mind’s eye. Imagine you have a laser that points to the apple. The laser strikes the apple causing it to get larger, and larger, and larger, until it explodes. This is an example of using your inner vision to see.

What’s your style? How do you naturally receive your intuitive “hits?” Do you feel it in your gut? Do you have visions? Do you hear a guiding voice giving you direction? A beginning step for your intuitive development is to identify how you already receive your intuitive guidance.

Read the from the list below to identify your natural style:

Sound

Clairaudience, clear hearing, is the ability to hear intuitive guidance through your inner ear. Guidance may present itself as an “inner” voice speaking. No, you are not crazy if this happens. Often the voices speak in word phrases or short directive sentences.

My most natural style of receiving intuition is clairaudience. One summer I was on a road trip with a group of friends. As we were driving through New York, one of my friends, Jesse, was overwhelmed with emotion as he remembered his brother, Christian, who had died unexpectedly over 15 years ago and had been buried in a cemetery located just off the next exit. Jesse moved to Los Angeles soon after his brother’s burial and had not been back to the cemetery since that time. Grief struck, at the time of the funeral, Jesse did not remember the name of the cemetery or its precise location. We spontaneously took the exit and began to hunt for the cemetery. After almost an hour of driving around, with no luck, we gave up looking. As we arrived at the road leading to the freeway entrance ramp we, amazingly, ran into the cemetery grounds. Pulling into the cemetery, we were daunted by the task of finding Christian’s burial site. We parked the car and the group of us wandered aimlessly looking for his tombstone. Jesse was distraught. As I watched him frantically run through the thousands of headstones I stopped, breathed, and tuned into my intuition. I asked for help and guidance to Christian’s site. I received instructions, step-by-step, which said, “go the right, then the left, and take another right.” Within two minutes I was at Christians site. This experience was a true testament to the power of clairaudience and its value.

Sight

Clairvoyance, clear vision, is the ability to see through your inner eye. Inner visions are filled with images, pictures, and symbols. Seen through the “screen of the mind,” the inner eye projects images to your conscious mind the same way a movie projector projects images onto a movie screen. These images can help propel you forward, inspire you to try new things, or simply offer confirmation that you are on the right path.

Images are unique in their symbology to you. It is important to take the time to let the images unfold their personal meaning to you. You may not initially understand the image; but with consistent attention to your inner and outer worlds, the meaning will be revealed to you.

Several years ago, before traveling to India, I asked my intuition to help calm my fears about traveling so far from the United States. I repeatedly received a vision of a pre-teen Indian boy leading me around some type of schoolroom. The vision made no sense to me when I first saw it. Three weeks later while I was on my trip, with Habitat for Humanity, I met the young boy from my vision. He was an orphan from the local orphanage who would be helping us build homes. We developed an immediate friendship. He showed me around the school grounds, taught me much about his life in India, and helped me to feel comfortable in a foreign land. Now, the image made sense!

Touch

Clairsentience, clear feeling, is about receiving intuitive information via your feeling body. Ever hear of the saying “trust your gut” or I have a “knot” in my stomach? These are both metaphorical ways of referring to your inner feeling body.

The best way to build your “gut” knowing is by practicing following it. Start with small choices. Such as what to make for dinner or what party to attend. Then build upon following your “gut” to make larger life decisions, such as leaving an unfulfilling job or relationship.

Smell

Clairalience, clear smelling, is the ability to sense an odor from which the source of the odor is not anywhere present. While this form of intuition is less common, it is not less important. Our sense of smell can evoke memories we may have long forgotten. Can you remember the smell of your grandmother’s cooking? One single aroma and you may be transported in time to a favorite location or memory through the sense of smell.

In times of sadness over the loss of a loved one, people have reported smelling a scent associated with their loved one though they are alone in a room. Or during times of grief and prayer, people have reported smelling “heavenly scents,” which comfort them as though an roses of angels is looking out for them.

Taste

Clairgustance, clear taste, is receiving information via a sense of taste. The taste buds can generate an actual taste in your mouth even though you have not eaten something. Different mediums have reported tasting alcohol or cigarettes in their mouths when channeling information about a spirit who crossed over due to alcohol or cigarette consumption.

Did you discover your natural intuitive style in the list above? Continue to awaken your intuition by paying attention to subtle communications through the five senses. Keep a journal of the daily messages you receive. Have an intuitive story to share? Comment below and let us hear about one of your intuitive adventures.