Intuition VS Imagination: 3 Ways To Test Your Intuition
Article: Intuition vs. Imagination. How Do I Know If What I Psychically See Is Real? Image: Railway ties in an autumn misty forest from Pixabay.
Updated 2021.12.07
What if I’m making it up?
This is one of the most commonly asked questions when working with clients in intuitive development, we thought it would be time to address it here, on the blog.
In our modern western world, with a civilization mostly based on numbers, logic, and sensible decisions, we rely heavily on our left brains.
We look to balance things out, make sense of things, get the numbers right, do things that make financial sense and seek evidence in what is tangible, what can be recorded and measured.
The intuition, the voice of the Self and the voice of Spirit, however, works primarily in your right brain. The side of your mind that also focuses on imagination, creativity, and dreams.
The intuitive mind is the seat of the third eye, and it's centered in the part of the brain that also houses imagination.
Whether we are talking about daydreaming and wishful thinking or getting great psychic information, this type of information process and knowledge tends to be valued differently in our modern society than left brain information.
Going by interpreting dreams and hunches alone is something that may give people people, and many feel like it’s not best to make decisions based on your dreams alone. This all can change in a single night with a single dream, same with when you rely on an equation to give you information.
It's considered acceptable to make decisions just on reason and logic alone.
I think there's room for both, and that the best decisions come when both sides of the brain and body are working in unison.
So often we use the left brain to manage decisions and rationales, that our right mind gets very little attention in day to day life, so when it speaks up, we ask, are you even real? Where have you been? Aren’t you my imagination?
Since intuition and imagination often originate from the same part of the brain, when you listen to your right brain, how do you know if your intuitive mind is for real... or if it's just wishful thinking?
3 ways to cross test if your intuition is real
3 ways to test your intuition text over railway ties in an autumn misty forest from Pixabay
#1. Pay attention to the heart and start believing In yourself
Cheesy I know, but yes, this is step one and bear with me here.
Especially true if you have spent years being told you were wrong by others who did not want to be found out - as truth maskers surround many intuitives in their early years.
These are people who live in self-denial, whether they are boyfriends, girlfriends, friends or otherwise, they can be detrimental to your self-trust.
As you develop your intuition and start to weed these people out, it gets easier to believe in yourself.
You are the expert in you – in your own life.
There is no one else more specialized or qualified than you to know what is best for you, decide what makes you feel good, what makes you feel bad, what hurts your feelings, and what doesn’t.
You know when your desires and beliefs are being stepped on and you know when you are standing your ground and stepping forward.
You know all of your histories, and you know the details of your present intricately. You are a specialist in you. And a really good one. As you should be, given all that experience you have to show for it.
The next time someone suggests they know better, that your ideas may not be as good as theirs, that you should do what they say, instead of what you feel – ask yourself:
Really? Is this in my higher and highest good, or is this what they would do, as a specialist in themselves?
Ask yourself if you deserve better.
Start standing up for how you feel, start telling people the truth of your perceptions.
You are an experienced specialist in life.
Your impressions, interpretation preferences, places where you get your insight from Spirit or wherever, are just as valuable as the tools that they use, too. Stand your ground and start pushing back and believing in yourself.
#2. Gather some reference points for your intuition
To know whether your intuition is real, helpful, and works as it should – you need to test drive it and cross test it.
Imagine you are buying a car – someone has told you how beautiful their car is, how much they love cars, how valuable their vehicle is to them in their life, how reliable it is, how convenient... and you start to think, man, I could use a car.
Even though you just found out cars existed, a car sounds really great right about now. You could see yourself in a car.
So, you go to the car lot. There’s a beautiful, blue car there, waiting for you to take home. It’s so shiny and fabulous, you start to think to wait – I’ve never actually **seen** a car before, how do I know this car isn’t something I just made up?
How do I know this car isn’t my imagination, a figment of wishful thinking?
You stand there for a while, gazing at the car from a distance, then you decide, once and for all, that since no one has ever shown you a car, and you’ve only heard about them second hand, that cars aren’t real.
Especially not this one. You walk away. Forget cars and all their glory.
Cars are a desert oasis, as far as you are concerned. What a wash!
This happens all the time with visions.
Why didn’t you walk over, get in and test drive the car? Take it home for a week and see if you even like it. Why not test out a bunch of different vehicles and get inside before buying one?
To know if the car is genuine, we often have to experience it fully before giving up on the idea of it to get to know it.
Same with intuition. So many times we look at it, but don't get into it, don't give the vision a full chance, a full day's drive.
Before you give up, try a bunch of intuitive techniques and practices, and see if any are for you - take them for a test spin.
To decide if a car is right for you, you need to test it out.
To determine whether a car is reliable for you, you need to drive and own it for at least a year. How does it do in the rain? Does it break down a lot? If so, can you get a better car, a better method of tapping into your intuition?
You need a history with cars. You need to test out a bunch of cars to get a full assessment of what all the cars can do.
Before you give up on intuition, likewise, give it a test drive, find out what your most potent abilities are, see if it improves your life and if it does, you can make it more reliable and convenient by trying out a bunch of different intuitive practices, techniques, and methods of receiving guidance.
#3. Create a journal for all the times you were right
In some circles, this is called a validation journal, and you need one. Go to Barnes and Noble, or Borders, or Amazon.com, or call up your friend that makes cool things out of leather. Get yourself a notebook, and begin to write things down.
Write down your dreams, write down your hunches, write down that time you thought to call someone and two seconds later, they called you. Write it all down.
If you are anything like I think you are, you’ll have something to put in that journal at least every day, so keep it close and with you, and a pen nearby.
Start backlogging things too – times in the past when you thought something would turn out a certain way, and then you found out later it did – or that time you didn’t trust a sleaze at the bars, and turns out, he was a sleaze after-all.
Write all of this down.
As you move through your journey, you’ll begin to see how right on the target you really were, and you’ll have a record to prove it.
to recap, to get started testing the reality of your visions
Pay attention to your dreams.
For the next week, I ask you not to turn it down, deny your dreams, whispers of your heart, as these may be messages from our Loved Ones and Angels.
Whether we are talking daydreaming or night dreaming - dreaming is one of the best ways to stimulate and strengthen the real intuitive mind.
Try for one week to see things through your other logical mind - your imagination center, your dreams, and your right brain and denying the pushes of others.
And write, write, write it all down so you can cross test the information after the facts.
Externally validating information helps too - by sharing what you receive with others, you may find out other ways your intuitive hunches have and do ring true, and you'll begin to discern what is wishful thinking and how that feels, with what is intuition, and how that feels.
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