Living in the Deep Brain: Connecting with your Intuition; Book Review

If I turn your book into a Cliff Note’s version just for me, it’s a good one. I’m always looking for a way to be more competent, think faster, and be smarter. 

Rory Miller, who wrote a book I mention often called ConCom about conflict communication, has a new book on training your intuition. I’ve reviewed one book of his already and mentioned this one in Triggered? 

I enjoy his work that much. 

Living in the Deep Brain: Connecting with your Intuition

“Rory Miller, the author of “Meditations on Violence,” tackles the subject of the care and feeding of your intuition.”

I could copy and paste my notes, but really, you need to read the book. I will tell you the foundation of it. 

The Conscious Mind

 Is everything I am consciously aware of

The Subconscious Mind

 What’s being processed without my awareness. (The process of almost all of my thinking is subconscious until it’s kicked up to my conscious) Actively in control.

The Unconscious Mind

 Background noise, passively noting things

The Intuitive Brain is the subconscious brain given control.

The 4 Levels

Level 4: Social: Get the stimulus, question it, name it, ask what others will think, react to it.

Level 3: Comparative: Get the stimulus, question stimulus with prior experiences, name stimulus, react to it.

Level 2: Naming: Get the stimulus, name it, react to it

Level 1: Intuitive/Base/Primary: Get the stimulus, react to it.

Here are some quotes to explain intuition, and I’ll give an example of a favorite training tool I use for mine. 

“Intuition, as most people understand it, is just a bubble of information floating up from the subconscious. “Knowing without knowing.” Hunches. Feelings with no apparent source.”

“When we talk about training any part of the subconscious, we are really talking about three things. First, getting the conscious mind out of the way. Second, feeding your intuition good information. And finally, cleaning out toxicity. More about those below.”

“Distinguish between intuition and awareness. Perception is what your senses pick up. Awareness is what you notice. Intuition is about letting your subconscious take the wheel. At low levels, it is about getting your subconscious mind to shift more of what you perceive to your attention, to your conscious mind. But the part of your brain that is intuition is not just for sensing. It also acts more efficiently than your conscious brain, depending on your ability to let go.”

“The second aspect of training is to feed your intuitive brain good information. To see, hear, and smell with minimal cognitive interpretation. This is the other half of the same problem. Your conscious mind can not only suppress or twist information from your intuition, but it can twist and pollute the initial input as well. Your deep brain can’t always distinguish between what you perceive and the interpretations you attach. The better you get at experiencing without irrelevant interpretation, the closer your cognitive and intuitive brain will align.”

“The third aspect of training intuition is to clean out toxicity. We are all products of our environment. Many people want to believe that intuition is a magical force that is always pure and always right. It isn’t. If you were raised in a toxic family, your intuitive mind learned toxic signals. The baseline established by your experience absolutely colors your intuition.”

This is probably where our presupposition biases come from. 

“Intuition is what your brain and senses are already doing ALL THE TIME. Your social conditioning acts as a filter to suppress your natural way of perceiving. It is so good at it that we are amazed when our brain occasionally functions the way it is meant to. This is the part where I say, “Stop getting in your own way.” End of the book. Easy-peasy. Nope.”

One training tool is Articulating Your Hunches. 

An essential exercise. When you get a hunch, and it pans out, play it over again in your mind and look for clues and find what the intuitive brain saw.

Driving is the right environment for it. Why did you slow down at that moment? What did the other car do to make you react before thinking? 

This next tool is my favorite. 

Spend Time Alone

Mode 1: Acting—Don’t sit alone and introspect, do something alone. Sink into the situation, think in words as little as possible. Trail running is perfect for it. Running is excellent.

Mode 2: Introspection—First, think of a question and puzzle it out, playing with ways to change it. Second, do it again, relax, silence your mind, and listen for what comes up. Let your intuitive brain play with the problem. After a few answers come up, go rational on the solutions and new perspectives.

Mode 3: Every so often shut down your conscious mind and just see what your intuitive mind wants to play with. Let words and images drift across your consciousness w/o interfering or trying to understand. It can be used when you cannot go to sleep. 

Mode 1 I use when I run now instead of listening to podcasts. It is hard since my inner monologue is hard to shut down. When I can shut it down, all I’m doing is being present. 

I imagine that’s what it’s like for my infant son. I watch him look around and key on different sounds or sights. He has no language to explain anything yet. 

Samuel is just sensing and reacting. So as I run, I sense, and I respond. The environment comes alive. 

Mode 3 is fun at bedtime. I see some trippy stuff.

This book is a must-read for everyone—5 out of 5 stars. The part on toxicity led to the Triggered post and made it great for people that grew up in toxic environments and clean out their minds.  

Enjoy.