It is well documented that great thinkers have put many of their ideas down to an intuitive knowing. Yet sometimes what you know intuitively can be overlooked because it comes to you in such a ‘Durr, no brainer, like obvious, who wouldn’t know that’ that you can overlook your genius!
I just attended a talk by English biologist and author of ‘The God Delusion’ Richard Dawkins. In this talk he explains how Patrick Matthew (20 October 1790 – 8 June 1874) published the principle of natural selection as a mechanism of evolution in 1831, over a quarter-century earlier than Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace. However, Matthew failed to develop or publicise his ideas because he didn’t see the full significance of what he had discovered. As it wasn’t a discovery… it was an intuitive knowing.
Matthew is quoted as saying “To me the conception of this law of Nature came intuitively as a self-evident fact, almost without an effort of concentrated thought. Mr. Darwin here seems to have more merit in the discovery than I have had; to me it did not appear a discovery. He seems to have worked it out by inductive reason, slowly and with due caution to have made his way synthetically from fact to fact onwards; while with me it was by a general glance at the scheme of Nature that I estimated this select production of species as an à priori recognisable fact—an axiom requiring only to be pointed out to be admitted by unprejudiced minds of sufficient grasp.”
In my book ‘You Do Know – Learning to act on intuition instantly’ there is several revolutionary ideas I am passionate and yet also finding it frustrating as the book hasn’t been out long and I am jumping the bite to get it out onto the world. You know when you have a great knowledge that will change the way people see their lives, yet because you didn’t pop it out of a test tube its often overlooked by the media which is of course the platform you need to reach a tipping point in the masses to make it become a ‘knowing/understanding in our society. We living in a noisy world shouting with ideas, and the money making ones are the loudest. Are we losing brilliant ideas under the volume?
Richard Dawkins has a platform for his ideas. In his talk he said a line and I nearly jumped out of my seat to shout ‘I can explain that, I know why that happens!’ luckily for everyone in the room especially the security guides I didn’t yell give me the MIC! (Even though I likely wouldn’t need it with my yell!) What Dawkins said to cause my reaction was: ‘The Origins of species (Darwin’s work) hit the Victorians hard in the solar plexus’. In my book ‘You Do Know’ I explain that the solar plexus chakra brings on board information in energy form and it is translated by the brain in the gut. Which is why Dawkins is using a description from his own feelings when ideas hit him with volume, Dawkins may very well use his gut brain intuition. Of course he will dismiss what I am saying as he dismisses Rupert Sheldrake work too. Yet here we have a documented historical moment when someone dismissed their intuition to their detriment. If my book would do as well as ‘The God Delusion’ it would be making the world a much better place, where we solve the problems, and don’t overlook the inner genius.