Louise Thompson: Wisdom without words

There is a purity of insight available from a place beyond language. Photo / Getty Images

Ask anyone when their intuition has played a part in their life and you will hear some blow-your-socks-off stories.

"Met my now-husband on a Monday evening, he took me to a bar on the Wednesday evening and there was a white light shining on him and I just knew he would be my husband. When he proposed on the Saturday (yes, five days later) I said yes and introduced him to my parents as my fiance. That was 22 years ago last week."

"Actually last week when I felt a new job wasn't right for me and pulled away and today we get an email saying the company is shelving plans for a while. Imagine if I'd left my current job . . . happy my intuition said no and I listened!"

"In 2011, when I took eight months off work to travel around Southeast Asia, I just knew it was the right thing to do - I was bored with my job and there were so many things I wanted to see and the time just felt right. I booked the trip, willing to resign from work, but my boss gave me unpaid leave, and while I was away, the person doing the job I wanted went on maternity leave, so the perfect job was there for me when I got back!"

There is a piece of us that speaks the most profound truth but it does not use words. There is a purity of insight available from a place beyond language. A mysterious visceral "knowing". What's interesting is that we all have examples of how intuition has weighed in so dramatically on BIG decisions - which person to marry/leave, which country to stay/leave, which house to buy/sell, is she cheating with her boss or no, and so on. That this mysterious knowing was there for the BIG stuff, and when we listened it was spookily spot-on. Sometimes of course, we only know that in hindsight. The classic "I just knew it was the wrong job/man/house/ . . . if only I had gone with my gut I'd have saved myself so much drama". With the big things in life we are aware (hopefully before the fact, but too often after) that we have access to this place of knowing, if only we choose to a) listen and then b) trust what it says.

The thing is though . . . our voice of intuition is actually there all the time, all day, every day, whispering away about the small things too. Which motorway exit to take; to say yes or no to coffee; to leave now or in 15 minutes. It's just that we get so caught up in the left brain busyness of doingdoingdoing that we blast past the whispers of intuition that actually could have made us an impromptu new friend, found us a new client or saved us getting caught up in the bad traffic.

Before you say "Oh I'm just not intuitive", actually everyone is intuitive to some degree. Each and every one of us is intuitive, just as each and every one of us is creative to a differing extent. It's an ability that all human beings are built with - it's just the degree to which you are listening and trusting that it informs and guides your life.

Your intuition is there, if you stop and feel out for the place beyond words where the truth sits. There is always a part of you that knows the answer (even if you don't want to). That knowledge is there. And, believe me it's a lot more trustable than the words in your mind that cause worry, anxiety, analysis paralysis and endless double-guessing.

Can we live a little more from the place below thought, from the place of trust and knowing? I think we can. It comes from believing that we have a spiritual guidance system at our disposal, a Spiritual GPS if you like, and that it has always useful information for us on hand, not just for the big life-altering decisions but for navigating the everyday ones more smoothly too.