Last night I met up with a few Reiki friends at a pub in Osaka, and so naturally I introduced them to the Reiki Beer Game as discussed in my post on Cooking with Reiki. Not only did the cold beer take some of the sting out of the hot summer night, but it led to a most interesting discussion.

As you recall, in that game, one glass of beer is given Reiki and the players must choose which one it is. After a couple of rounds of repeated failure on their part, the conversation drifted towards a discussion on the difference between guessing and intuiting, which led to some interesting observations.

By my own analysis, the long and short of it is that guessing relies purely on statistics while intuiting relies purely on skill. There are generally two voices simultaneously going on in your head (maybe more, depending on exactly how damaged you really are 😆 ). One is the voice that won’t shut up. This is the one that the Chinese traditionally refer to as “Monkey Mind” and it is the one that Zen Practitioners endeavor to permanently silence as their solution to the enlightenment koan. This is where the skill of intuition comes into play… that is, the skill required to ignore, stifle, silence or otherwise void that voice.

The other voice is that of your true self, the one that Victor Frankl discovered in the concentration camps and this is the one that provides the answer to Nisaragadatta’s question of “Who are you?”. When the monkey mind finally shuts up… who is it that notices? That is your true inner self… the one connected to the universal presence or (collective consciousness as Jung put it). This is the one that led Eckhart Tolle to enlightenment through his analysis of the statement “Sometimes I can’t stand myself”. Meaning sometimes I (the true inner self) can’t stand myself (the monkey mind) whereby it is clearly seen that the I and the myself are completely different entities. Perhaps a closer analysis of Descartes’ “cognito ergo sum” or “I think therefore I am” will demonstrate that the I that thinks is different than the I that am… logically rendering the statement incorrect.

Guessing is the process of logical deduction, whereas intuiting is the process of being very quiet and listening for the answer (which isn’t always easy in a crowded bar… although I do think that is the ideal place to practice…because it takes you to a much deeper level if you can focus amidst all the confusion). Intuiting is a skill… I believe we are all born with it, but before long we grow up and learn to reason our way through life rather than trusting the universe to offer solutions.

One of my comrades asked about the difference between men and women in this respect, as it seems that women are generally much more intuitive than men. Actually I believe we are equally intuitive, its just that women tend to listen to the voice more, while men generally ignore (or even blatantly defy) it. Either way, as a skill it needs practice and refining before mastery can be attained.

Other questions came up, such as the right brain/left brain dichotomy, inductive processes vs. inductive processes, thinking vs. feeling or sensing vs. intuiting (in Myers-Briggs terminology) chunking up vs. chunking down (in NLP parlance), concrete vs. abstract thought patterns, biorhythm accuracy, etc. which led to the typical philosophical debates of the type generally reserved for pubs in the wee hours…. after which its all a blur. All of these, no doubt, are related somehow, yet, for our purposes in Reiki the how’s and why’s are not as important as the results we are seeking in techniques such as Byosen Scanning and Reiji, although they make great fodder for our daily meditations. 😉

For further explanation or discussion, your thoughts are most welcome and highly encouraged, please feel free to comment below!!!