Lent 2026: day 14 – intuition vs. intellect

The human brain – what a powerful tool! Deduction, calculation, logic, inference, conclusion; putting two and two together – the cognitive process, churning away inside your skull. Until recently unassisted by computer power, human brains have been able to manage fire, invent the wheel, erect magnificent cathedrals, devise the steam engine, and indeed invent the computer. Electrical signals jumping across the synapses of the brain's neural networks, all the while reasoning, processing data and information, sifting through the possibilities of probable outcomes – and all the while managing behaviour and self-image.

Intuition is different to thought or cognition. It has metaphysical qualities. Thought is a process; intuitions come instantaneously. Intuition is a sense of knowing something without the act of reasoning. Intuition involves accessing information or insights not immediately apparent deducible from the process of logical thought. Intellect is wedded to the physical number-crunching power of a given human brain. Intuition, I would argue, is closer to the pure experience of consciousness, unmediated by the thought process. Intuitions are often reported as 'gut feelings' – usually ones that turn out correct.

I see intuition as the result of tapping into the Flow, the cosmic purpose; it offers insights, answers and new creativity. Intuitions tend to be positive, optimistic and uplifting; aligned.

Our current scientific paradigm is based on the notion that everything in the Cosmos is based on matter. Our brain is matter; thoughts are the result of electricity moving through that matter. Consciousness, however, splits the scientific consensus (the Hard problem). The majority view is that consciousness is nothing more than the experience of brain activity, an epiphenomenon resulting from evolution. Experiencing the taste of coffee or the sight of bright sunlight on virgin snow requires no cognitive effort. Others state that consciousness is an illusion and doesn't really exist (hence, there's no hard problem). Idealists, however, see consciousness as being fundamental, and this view is closest to mine. From there, the leap to metaphysics.

As well as differentiating intuition from intellect, it is important not to mistake intuition for instinct. The latter is set of behaviours, innate and learned, that an organism carries out unconsciously in response to external conditions. Recoiling away from an object headed for your face. Instinct, not intuition. Instinct I witnessed in my cat, Wenusia, who knew how to give birth and mother five healthy kittens, without access to lectures, advice from her mother or guidebooks.

And now it's time to dive into the speculative: is intuition proof of non-local consciousness? It implies a interconnectedness of minds and potentially access to information that's not limited by space and time. And this implies magic; intending a physical effect without a physical cause. Precognition – 'seeing' into the future, or remote viewing – 'seeing' distant places.

Intuition can be given a theological spin; the Holy Spirit, who inspires believers, allowing for them to interpret all the sacred scripture, and indeed entering the Conclave that chooses the next Pope.

Now, is intuition something that we can tap into if we are open to it? Are some people gifted with greater intuitive powers than others? Or can we develop our intuition through practice and exercise?

I return to my analogy about laptops. It's a useful analogy. One laptop is fully-featured, has huge processing power and a vast hard drive, but it stands alone. The other has a weaker processor and little read-only memory, but unlike the first, it is connected to the internet via wi-fi. Which laptop is more useful?

And further questions... As humanity makes the leap to being a technological species, are our intuitive powers losing out to our highly trained cognitive skills? Has our intuition atrophied during our evolution from hunter-gatherers?

Imagine two musicians. Both have trained intensively, putting in thousands of hours of practice. Both have mastered their instruments. Both can be relied on to perform without errors, without hitting bum notes. But one is a competent, seasoned session musician. The other has the gift of being able to put successions of notes into a novel order, creating new musical quality. A Mozart, a Gershwin, a Bowie. These guys had something above and beyond technical excellence; they had a metaphysical touch; they could tap into the Flow.

Imagine two theoretical scientists. One strains away at the mathematical underpinnings of the subatomic or the galactic scale, working away at formulae, double-checking them and cross-checking them with observational data. The other has an innate grasp of how things work and can come up with dazzling new insights that lead to new theories. 

In every field of human endeavour, there's the plodding donkey, patiently getting on with it, but lacking that spark of creativity, and there's the genius. I would posit that many of humanity's greatest minds had their 'eureka!' moments; a sudden flash of inspiration rather than a final deduction. This is not to say that they haven't put in the donkey work, but that it was an inspired intuition got them to that moment.

Sometimes it is a moment – a flash, and you're there. But creative genius is about how long you can remain 'in the Flow', how much you can download from Big 'C' Consciousness before – for whatever reason – that direct contact is interrupted. You return to your former status as pedestrian writer, musician or artist.

The ability to tap into the Flow and stay there long enough to complete something new, imaginative, creative – and to return to that state time and time again – is what differentiates genius from the merely competent.

But intuition isn't just about the inspiration that stands behind creativity. It is also about tapping into non-local consciousness for the sake of avoiding mishaps or disasters. Intuition can be seen as that 'guardian angel' that out of the blue sends you a go/no-go signal. I shall post tomorrow about intuition and luck.

Lent 2025: day 14
Ego, consciousness and time

Lent 2024: day 14
Emergence and Complexity vs. Entropy and Chaos: Good vs. Evil?

Lent 2023, day 14
The appeal of mystic traditions

Lent 2022: day 14
Between Serendipity and Proactiveness

Lent 2021: day 14
Prayer

Lent 2020: day 14
Choose the music for your religion

Lent 2026: day 13 – mindfulness and meditation

Are meditation and mindfulness the same? Both are spiritual practices engaged in by many secular people – indeed, by atheists even. And yet both verge on the metaphysical in terms of how they engage consciousness

Though often associated with each other, they are different. In today's post, I present how I see the difference between meditating and being mindful.

Let's start with definitions: mindfulness is easy; it means the state of being full of mind. Being alert, heedful, attentive; being aware of consequences; being in the flow, latching on to intuition, having presence of mind. Paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally. Mindfulness is being aware of being aware ('metacognition'); it is the cognitive skill of sustaining that metacognitive awareness towards the contents of one's own mind and bodily sensations in the present moment. This involves monitoring and regulating one's attention. Mindful awareness can be focused on internal phenomena such as thoughts and emotions, as well as external phenomena, such as speech or movement. 

Meditation requires more explanation, so before the definitions, the etymology. The word comes from the Latin meditatus (to meditate, to think over, consider), from the Proto-Indo-European med- (to measure, limit, consider, advise). Meditation is defined as "A devotional exercise of contemplation, or achieving an altered state of consciousness, such as vacancy of mind, through relaxed or focused mental activity of a non-substance-induced nature". 

The two are different, and which you are more likely to practice boils down, I think, a great deal to personality. Meditation requires more discipline; allocating time for it – at the expense of any other activity – is tough. People on the ADHD spectrum find it harder to meditate; staying focused is difficult. But mindfulness requires the occasional nudge to get back on track.

I have prompted Google Gemini and ChatGPT to come up with illustrations that highlight the difference between the two. First Gemini (to whom I'd say: "Don't pick the flowers! Let them live and bring joy to others!)

And then ChatGPT (to whom I'd say: "Don't waste money on takeaway coffee!").

Interesting how both AIs have gone for the same visual comparisons.

I see mindfulness as being consciousness at the interface with matter. Will I catch that train? Yes, if I don't lose track of the time. Will I catch flu when in town tomorrow? No, not if I'm aware of people around me coughing and sneezing and keep a healthy distance from them. Will I have a car crash? No, not if I drive with total situational awareness for the entire duration of my drive. 

Mindfulness should be taught to children before they hit adolescence, when normal thinking gets switched off by hormonal rush. My mother taught me the saying quidquid agis, prudenter agas, et respice finem as a child; it was only in middle age that I really got the importance of this piece of wisdom. Essentially, it says, whatever you do, do it mindfully. 

Mindfulness – whether it's when stepping off a bus or knowing that you have switched off the iron before leaving home – should be ever-present at our interface between the material world and consciousness. In a way, the point of the cross where the spiritual crosses the material.

Meditation – on the other hand, is purposefully cutting the inner world of consciousness and the mind off from the noisy, distracting material world. Meditation is about calming oneself into a trance and entering the Flow from within an altered state.

I try to be mindful of the need to be mindful (metamindfulness) as often as I can!

Lent 2025: day 13
You, your consciousness and Time

Lent 2024: day 13 
Aesthetics, metaphysics and ethics

Lent 2023, day 13
High Church and Low: Religious Styles and Personality

Lent 2022: day 13
Comfort and Luxury, Consciousness and Ego

Lent 2021: day 13
Comfort and Luxury – knowing when to stop

Lent 2020: Day 13
Holy buildings and the sense of the mystical

Lent 2026: day 12 – the Purpose

I want to return to the great 'why?' questions. Why is there something rather than nothing? Why do we exist? What's it's all for? What is the purpose? What is the direction – towards what is the Cosmos unfolding? The study of these questions is teleology, carrying with it the implication that there is a goal. 

These questions neither bother me nor nag at me – they just are, deep and ultimately imponderable.

These are questions of philosophy, rather than of science. Hard-headed physicalist-materialists tend to poo-poo philosophy as something squishy and intangible. Yet science – as a set of mathematical formulae defining reality – is unravelling at its seams, unable to progress theoretically despite all the vast benefits it has brought humanity in recent centuries. So scientists continue to postulate and theorise with the aid of formulae, while philosophers just continue to postulate and theorise.

For me, the Cosmos is more than just a random bunch of matter that happens to exist. It has a reason for its existence and a goal for its unfolding, it has and ultimate destiny. And as such, some agential force must have determined it thus. 

One of my great revelations of this past year is accepting that we humans are destined never to know. We can only inch forward in ever sharper approximations of our human understanding of the nature of reality. That understanding is by necessity vague, poorly defined – the H. sapiens brain being the limiting factor. Perhaps H. superior will get closer. ("Gotta make way for the Homo superior... Homo sapiens have outgrown their use" – Oh You Pretty Things, David Bowie, 1971.) 

We can reach that understanding better through intuition than by reasoning; that intuition comes to us 'from on high' – or, to use contemporary explanatory language, 'non-local consciousness' (which can be understood in religious terms as the Holy Spirit).

So – what do I feel is the purpose of the Universe? What is my own, personal teleology?

Two images, by ChatGPT (left) Google Gemini, prompted as follows: "Please produce a photorealistic image that encapsulates the notion of teleology". One shows the journey towards the light, the other the acorn's destiny to become an oak.

An eternally long journey with the Flow, in the Flow. Towards an ultimate goodness, the love supreme, pure Consciousness, unity. A full shift from the material to the spiritual realm. The triumph of syntropy over entropy, of creation over destruction, of love over barbarism, of light over darkness. A final binding together into One of myriad individual consciousnesses that have experienced myriad lifetimes, each representing an eternal sequence of steps up in spiritual evolution. Each life lived better than the last, each life intuiting more deeply, experiencing more richly, living in ever-greater awareness, moving ever closer to an Omega Point.

And then? At that Omega Point?

Enjoy the moment and start all over again? Or remain in that state for all time?

Our minds are just too puny to contemplate such thing. 

A cat or dog, watching us turn darkness into light by touching a switch, can no more understand the flow of electromagnetic forces along a copper wire than we can understand the Divine Purpose. But intuition is a powerful guide, as long as we are open to it, and let it in unfiltered by doubts – doubts shaped by the materialist-reductionist paradigm that surrounds us. 

Lent 2025: day 12
Eternally grateful

Lent 2024: day 12
Metaphysical memories of, and from, childhood

Lent 2023: day 12
Obstacles on the Path to Growth

Lent 2022: day 12
Understanding our Universe and our physical reality

Lent 2021: day 12
Chance and Luck: can we will an outcome?

Lent 2020: day 12
Find your own Holy Places

Lent 2026: day 11 – revel in joy!

Despite Easter being a moveable feast (it can fall anywhere between 22 March and 25 April) Lent usually starts in the cold of winter and ends in glorious spring. This year's Lent began amid an unusually long, cold and snowy winter; last Saturday still saw flurries of fresh snow; over the past week ,the temperature returned into positive figures... and today is glorious. One week from snow on the ground to being able to stroll outside without the need for a coat or even jacket.

This has profound implications for mood. The sun, which could and did shine brightly despite the intense recent frosts, now brings warmth as well as light. Much as I love days when the sun reflects off virgin snow cover, the feeling of warmth on the face for the first time since mid-autumn is wonderful.

This morning, for the first time in two months, I started the car and drove to down to Warka to do some big shopping. (After shopping locally with a rucksack for all that time, the ability to buy bulky or heavy items without worrying about how much I could physically carry home, was welcome.)

My early-morning drive to Warka, through the orchards of south Mazovia, was full of enchantment and joy. Qualia flashbacks came one after the other, some from this life. and one or two feeling like those familiar past-life experience. This is a regular phenomenon – the frequency of exomnesia events peak with the changing of the seasons.

In the garden, there are still patches of snow in shady parts, but I can see butterflies and bees for the first time this year, and hear birdsong, great tits and woodpeckers. The digital thermometer says it's 15.8°C outside in the early afternoon. Meteorological spring starts tomorrow; I feel it in the air. 

Joy. I feel joy.

Joy, as distinct from pleasure or fun. Joys are profound and spiritual; the others superficial and physical.

Should we seek a life filled with material goodies, or live for moments of joy?

For me, it's clearly the latter. Joy outweighs here-today-gone-tomorrow fragments of fun. Memories of joyous qualia will resurface again and again in your consciousness throughout your life. Childhood joys come back, rich and familiar. But what pleasures I can I still recall? 

The repeatability of moments of joy has been on my mind for several years; my way to this is through enhanced sensitivity to joy(s) whatever the source, appreciation – and gratitude.

I know what I need to do now – the sun sets a little before quarter past five this evening; a second walk to catch it is in order. The magic hour, the twilit afterglow. 

Lent 2025: day 11
The will to be well

Lent 2024: Day 11
Spirituality vs. the Scientific Method

Lent 2023: Day 11
Personalities and Disorders

Lent 2022: Day 11
Aliens, Angels and Daemons

Lent 2021: Day 11
The Ego, Consciousness and Spiritual Evolution

Lent 2020: Day 11
Dreams and the Afterlife

Lent 2026: day ten – the esoteric and the exoteric way

How does God speak to us? You may be a member of a religious congregation; God may speak to you through holy texts, or through the words of intermediaries – priests, pastors, rabbis etc. But then, you may be (as am I) spiritual but not religious, believing in a more direct relationship with the Divine, based on first-hand experience.

The difference in approaches to spirituality may be summed up as that between the exoteric and the esoteric. Google Gemini illustrates the two paths:

The exoteric approach gives you – and indeed everyone – all the answers on a plate. The nature of God, life after death, how to live one's life. There are no questions, only doctrines. The exoteric is suitable to be imparted to all, regardless of age or their levels of curiosity or need for nuance. Roman Catholicism is classically exoteric.The exoteric is handed down hierarchically, in a pre-digested form. "Take this all of you and believe it". No great need for questions.

In contrast, the esoteric way is based on internal experience. How you feel God, rather than being told how others have known God. The esoteric way requires constant engagement with the deepest questions, wrestling with doubt, dialogue.

I would distinguish the esoteric from the occult; the occult is that which is hidden. Truth is not hidden (which implies someone hid it); rather, it is there to be revealed, discovered, person by person. Like the exoteric, the occult requires intermediation. The adept has to be initiated into the secrets through a series of trials, ordeals or tests. Again, a hierarchical structure is called for (Grand Hierophants of the 33rd Degree etc). Having said that, the Roman Catholic church warns its faithful against secret sects and the occult, tainting esotericism with the same brush). 

Gnosticism as a way of looking at spirituality appeals somewhat to me, in particular the notion of gnosis – direct experience of knowledge (or spiritual knowledge gained through direct experience). However, Gnosticism's division of creation into the material and spiritual realms (the former being created by a flawed demiurge, the latter being the created by hidden and uncorrupted supreme being) is too dualist for my taste. Still, if not taken to literally and considered metaphysically, the Gnostic perspective on spirituality is worth looking into.

If you feel the slightest hint of God's presence in the Universe, don't ignore that voice; be open to it and seek. Be open to intuitions, to meaningful synchronicities, to the inner voice, to moments of awe and wonder – and take up the quest. Your own quest.

Lent 2025: day ten
The Ghost in the Machine: consciousness and inanimate objects

Lent 2024: Day ten
{{ We were born to recognise the answer }} – words from knowwhere

Lent 2023, Day ten
Spirituality and neurodiversity

Lent 2022: Day ten
Where was God in Auschwitz?

Lent 2021: Day ten
The Sins that cannot be Purged

Lent 2020: Day ten
Those who have created their own religions

Lent 2026: day nine – the great unfolding

"Would it spoil some vast eternal plan/If I were a wealthy man?" asks Tevye the Dairyman in the 1964 musical Fiddler on the Roof. Tevye is petitioning the Lord to give him luxury and status. "I'd build a big tall house with rooms by the dozen/Right in the middle of the town/A fine tin roof with real wooden floors below/There would be one long staircase just going up/And one even longer coming down/And one more leading nowhere, just for show." 

How do things end for Tevye? Not in wealth, but in expulsion from home and an uncertain future.

Remaining in the musical memories from my childhood, I remember well listening to Whatever Will Be Will Be (Que Sera, Sera), a number one hit from Doris Day. Trite banality? A call to fatalism? Or profound acceptance that we have no influence over the outcome of the unfolding of the Universe, event by event?

There is death. Entropy. Matter decaying. There is birth. Syntropy. New matter forming. The whole show threaded together by Big 'C' Consciousness and teeming with small 'c' consciousness. The Conscious whole, limitlessly vast and flowing, eternally. 

Have we any say in how it all turns out in the end? We are so far from the end... We are so powerless in face of the enormity of the Cosmos. Even in the span of the individual life, there is rarely closure. 

And yet... align oneself with Goodness, with Love, and be at one with the Flow. Luxury and status for the individual is not on the Cosmic agenda. But a modest, comfortable life that unfolds in the same direction as Creation – this is aligned, it is what our Maker wants for us.

The materialist/physicalist will bridle at this notion. "I make my life, my world, according to my will!" Is that so? Or is it just luck, brute force, personality – and indeed accident of birth – that determines status?

We need continually to strike balances, each day throughout our lives, avoiding excess, living in humility. Not boasting, not seeking external validation, seeking instead wisdom. And constantly being aware of being at the same time the tiniest part of the unfolding of the Cosmos, while, in our own subjective consciousness, being at the centre of it all.

Lent 2025: day nine
On Consciousness (Pt III)

Lent 2024: Day nine
Stages of Life – where are you?

Lent 2023, Day nine
Physical reality and the metaphysical

Lent 2022: Day nine
Precognition and willing the future

Lent 2021: Day nine
Original Sin - yes, it exists

Lent 2020: Day nine
Can praying bring luck?

Lent 2026: day eight – the power of gratitude

"Thank God for that!" Even the most avowed atheist might catch themselves saying that, when faced with positive outcome from a situation that could have gone horribly wrong but ended up just fine. Illness, financial matters, a legal tussle, a near-miss in the car. A sigh of relief, and a deep sense of gratitude. 

Illustrations: Google Gemini (left) and Chat GPT (right)

But be grateful to whom? It was just a random happening! It was a stroke of luck, pure chance that things turned out well, when they could have ended up as a catastrophe!

"There but for the grace of God, go I." 

"You don't even believe in God!"

"It's just a saying."

But was that positive outcome random, or was it somehow meant to be – or did we will that good outcome into existence? That would suggest magic thinking – magic being defined as a physical effect that has no physical cause.

Being thankful is powerful; it is more powerful than asking. Who receives more from his master over the long term – the grateful person or the supplicant? 

Gratitude's evil mirror is complacency. Taking good fortune for granted. Like being born rich, clever, energetic, driven, talented and beautiful and not feeling the slightest sense of gratitude for those gifts. "Accident of birth, eh?"

Wake up in the morning without aches and pain. Feel grateful for that. No financial worries. Again, be thankful. Be grateful that all is as well as it could be.

Gratitude is proof that you are aligned with the Flow, of being at one with the Purpose. "Receive with simplicity everything that happens to you" – Rashi. But receive with thanks everything good that happens to you.

Don't take it for granted; the sense of entitlement ('mnie się należy') is a bad feeling to experience. Pride comes before the fall. So every time something goes right for you, when it could equally have gone wrong, take the time to experience gratitude, to really feel grateful. To be aware that you are grateful. It is a more powerful habit than asking Providence for something.

Lent 2025: Day eight
On Consciousness (Pt II)

Lent 2024: Day eight
Spirituality for our (New) Age (Pt III)

Lent 2023: Day eight
A Universe into which life fits exactly

Lent 2022: Day eight
Body and Soul

Lent 2021: Day eight
Guilty of feeling guilty

Lent 2020: Day eight
Salvation - or peace of mind?

Lent 2026: day seven – the old question; how much spirituality do we need?

A question I return to time and time again, throughout the year, and over many years. 

We are consciousnesses temporarily housed in biological bodies, with a finite lifespan, destined never to know the true nature of our reality. We may inch towards that knowledge, one life at a time. We all have diverse levels of intellectual curiosity; the curious will want to educate themselves, either as specialists or as generalists. Now, intellect and spirituality do not necessarily overlap; many militant atheists are highly intelligent human beings, whilst those of modest intellectual capacity are not excluded from the spiritual journey. Intuition trumps intellect. A picture of reality that you honestly feel to be right.

But curiosity – especially when it comes to the Big Questions in philosophy and theology – is fundamental. Is there a God, if so, what's the nature of God? Is there life after death? If so what is it like? What is our purpose? What is life for, what is the Universe for, and why is there something rather than nothing?

We can take guesses, educated ones or wild ones, but ultimately we die not knowing. The epistemic underpinnings of what we know are ever-more sophisticated, as we progress from animism to particle physics as language to explain reality. Even so, we can but intuit. We can have a feeling, not certainty. This is faith. That intuition is internal, it comes from a personal conviction rather than from teaching or learning. 

Moments of awe, of wonder, of contemplation of the numinous, being lost in the ineffable – this often triggers such feelings. Many people report such moments when looking up at the stars in a cloudless night sky far from urban light pollution, or gazing into the eyes of a newborn infant.

Image: ChatGPT

So how much spirituality do I need? Enough to remove the doubts cast by physicalism that consciousness is but an illusion and all is matter. Enough to keep me connected to and aligned with the Flow, the non-local Big 'C' consciousness that connects the Cosmos. 

Is the answer qualitative or quantitative? Religions like to prescribe times of holiness; holy days of the week, holy days throughout the year, times of day allocated to prayer. And Lent is certainly a part of that! But is that enough – or too much? Or does each individual feel for themselves how much of their lives should be given over to whatever form of spiritual practice, be it meditative or ritual in nature.

For some, the act of communal worship is the high point of their spiritual week. For some, the 'religious, but not spiritual', it's a tradition, you turn up, see people, and go home, no great sense of communing with the Eternal and Infinite having been achieved. 

The mind does turn away from matter to consider the metaphysical, the numinous, the ineffable. And as I have written previously, it does so with increased frequency once material comfort has been achieved and social striving can be switched off, or a least dialed down.

Many esoteric traditions purposefully do not engage with the young. Step into spiritual pursuits once you have done all your biology and your society expects of you. Youth needs guidance, instruction; organised religion brings that framework and sense of certainty. Organised religion works alongside material striving in a way that more gnostic approaches to spirituality don't need to.

My daily walks, averaging about two hours in duration, provide me with ample opportunity to ponder the Big Questions. But am I doing enough? I carry with me a notebook at all times, but often feel I'm not having enough of those deep insights profound enough to jot down. I do pray (petition) to be 'in the Flow', to connect, to have those significant dreams – but not often enough. The discipline of daily blog posting is helpful here; but that discipline is underpinned to a degree by the Ego; seeking the external validation of getting to Easter Sunday with another run of unbroken Lenten posts. 

{{ Share, don't boast. }} 

OK, I get it!

Lent 2025: day seven
On consciousness: Pt I

Lent 2024: Day seven
Spirituality for Our (New) Age (Pt II)

Lent 2023, Day seven
A Universe hand-crafted for us all

Lent 2022, Day seven
Monism, dualism and non-dualism

Lent 2021, Day seven
How much spirituality do we need in our lives?

Lent 2020, Day seven
Build your own Religion – the Trappings of Faith