In our world everyone, including us, talks a lot about intuition as if it were the panacea for everything. But it is not really so much of a panacea, more of a supplement, a daily or regular supplement that is often or usually missing from your life because it is unrecognised, overlooked and has mostly been trained out of you. In science there is this concept of "A Theory of Everything" which, as I understand it, would be the the Holy Grail of Science, the definitive answer that would fully explain and link together all known physical phenomena. I believe that in Religion this is what they call "God"!!! It is odd how Science and Religion have more in common than they might imagine, but that is because we are all of us in search of a Holy Grail of one kind or another. I would say that intuition might be the missing link. It is a part (of your mind) that God or the Big Universe has given you to manage your inner worlds, part of your endowment as a"son daughter of the most high".

In order to understand intuition, you might first need some simplified grasp of the science of mind. Mind seems to function basically with two parts or lobes of the brain. That is not to undermine the complexity of the brain and its many parts, but more to give a working context in which to understand how the mind works. This is what I was writing about last week with the left and right brain, where the left brain represents more of your conditioned and learned or taught mind that teaches you how to function in the world, and the right brain represents more of your creative, seemingly chaotic, but also your intuitive mind that teaches you how to function in the Big Universe.The left brain is more of the ego mind.The right brain is more connected to everything else. It is said that women have a better bridge between these two parts of the brain and therefore function more intuitively. Let's just say, male or female, that bridges can and should be built, in order to get these two parts or two halves to work together. As Kipling so singularly worded it (he was indeed male):

"Something I owe to the soil that grew -
More to the life that fed -
But most to Allah Who gave me 
two Separate sides to my head.

I would go without shirts or shoes,
Friends, tobacco or bread
Sooner than for an instant lose
Either  side of my head.

('The Two-Sided Man.)

In Tarot it is the High Priestess card that represents both the intuitive mind and the connection between these two parts of the mind. She is the bridge between the spiritual world and the physical world. She knows about both of these worlds and understands their relationship to each other. She is traditionally pictured sitting between two pillars, one light, one dark. The light pillar represents the conscious, recognised, known world with which you are all familiar, but this is also the learned or taught, conditioned mind. The dark pillar represents the unfamiliar, unconscious, hidden world that is not physical but lies behind physical expression and manifestation. The High Priestess is connected to the spiritual world of the psyche or soul. The newborn baby may come into this world with knowledge still of the soul and the other world but this gets supplanted by the training and teaching that is necessary for function in the world. The voice of or for the physical world gradually takes over and that other voice is overlooked and seemingly lost.

I believe that it is the right brain or the intuitive mind that is still connected to Source. However, that does not mean that everything in the right brain is connected to Source. Far from it! The right brain is chaotic, disorganised and connected to all aspects of the unconscious and collective mind. A measure of discrimination is in order and quite necessary. In Qabalistic teaching this unconscious mind is called Yesod or the Foundation. Everything that manifests in the physical world has its origins here, but it is of course quite obvious that not everything that manifests in the physical world is desirable. The instruction that goes with Yesod is purification. You need to observe all of these churning images and thought forms here to discriminate where they come from. One of the issues that I have with the so-called spiritual practice of "channelling" is just who and what are you channelling. There are many levels of channelling. You can channel everything from the garbage or waste products of your own unconscious mind or of the collective mind before you ever come to anything that is truly spiritual or connected to Source. This takes observation and discrimination. No one should mindlessly hand over power to a channel, either their own or someone else's. It's just another form of handing over power and  becoming enslaved and is essentially no different from enslaving yourself to some aspect of or belief in the physical world i.e. a political system, an educational establishment, the world of medicine etc. Handing over power to someone or something else outside of yourself is not a healthy use of your mind. In Tarot it is the Emperor card that is about claiming your own authority and autonomy and not handing over power, in other words, being a grown up and not a child, or, worse still, a victim. In spiritual terms, it is about learning to be co-creative.

The daily or regular supplement of intuition will over time teach you to balance out any tendency to hand over power mindlessly. In Tarot it is the Temperance card that works with this balance, particularly the balance between what is going on in your physical world and what is going on in your inner world. Temperance is a kind of enacting of the balance between left and right brain. As the word "temperance" implies, it is about observing and countering any tendency toward excesses of one kind or another.The High Priestess knows. The Temperance card is about putting this knowledge to work for you, so that you can work on and heal your imbalances and excesses and become more whole. The key to all of this is some form of meditation, part of which requires you to take time off from your daily physical routine and spend time with yourself. But the other part is to recognise and be in touch with your intuitive mind even in the midst of your daily physical routine. We recommend what we call "Inner Guided Meditation" as a practice where, instead of casting out what appears in your mind, whether it be a thought, an emotion, an image, a memory, a vision, you work with it and try to understand where it is coming from and what it is showing you or trying to tell you. This practice makes you aware of more of your mind and its contents, and therefore how to work with it. The practice can then hold good not just in meditation but also in your outer, daily, physical life. Thoughts and images can emerge and you can ascertain their value. With time and practice you can so to speak separate the grain from the chaff, or the good stuff from the garbage. The good stuff can be very, very good, in fact transcendental. Your inner world has its own existence and its own language. It is trying to make itself known so that you can manage it and let it work for you. Your intuition is the part of your mind that will ultimately manage your inner worlds. Learning to work with it can put you or keep you in touch with these inner worlds that include your Source. In Christian terminology, it is the Holy Spirit that connects you to your Source. The Tarot High Priestess is akin to the Holy Spirit. But in order to work with it (High Priestess, Holy Spirit, Higher Mind, whatever you call it) you need to acknowledge your intuition, literally your teaching or tuition from within