There was a post on Yahoo News (from LiveScience.com) this week called “Belief in God Boils Down to a Gut Feeling” by Stephanie Pappas. She reported on a study that suggested a link between thinking styles and the likelihood that someone would believe in a benevolent deity. The study authors noted that those who operated on intuition were more likely to believe than those who operated more on a reasoning or reflective basis.

From the on-line article: “The researchers plan to investigate how genes and education influence thinking styles, but they’re quick to note that neither intuition nor reflection is inherently superior. ‘It’s not that one way is better than the other,’ study researcher David Rand of Harvard said in a statement. ‘Intuitions are important and reflection is important, and you want some balance of the two. Where you are on that spectrum affects how you come out in terms of belief in God.’ The research was published Sept. 19 online in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.”

This article was of interest to me personally because I have been experiencing a shift from reflective to intuitive for the past several years, and concurrent with this my belief in Spirit has moved from questioning to a sense of profound knowing.
I experienced two incidents just yesterday that confirmed the power of intuition in my life. In one case, I realized that I needed to check with my boss about the sponsorship of a community event that we had discussed several weeks ago. I had not yet acted on this thought when, a few minutes later, my boss came into my office with the executive director of the organization that is hosting the event. They had been in his office discussing the sponsorship, and then they came to tell me what had been decided. In the second case, I had been thinking that it would be nice to get together for dinner this weekend with some friends we hadn’t seen for a few weeks. A few hours later, Don called to say that these friends had contacted him about getting together, and we made plans accordingly.

by Karen Chatfield

What has your experience been?