All of us were babies
in our mothers’ arms.
Gazing in her eyes,
seeking out her charms.
Her smile reassured us.
Allowed us to relax.
But disapproving frowns
set off distress attacks.
And so it was as children
we scanned our parents’ faces.
Hoping for approval.
A balmy, calm oasis.
And, likewise, in ourselves
we had no speech to say.
Our bodies were our language.
A primitive display.
We stamped a foot, we wiggled.
We smiled and we cooed.
And when we disagreed,
we likely hissed, we booed.
Life was very simple then.
Split into yes and no’s.
Satisfying happy times,
and times of gloom and woes.
And since our minds were young,
in the process of evolving,
we relied on intuition
to work out our problem solving.
Our cues were from faces
and bodies in our lives
that set up cerebral shelves
in the most basic archives.
And so we went along
registering every sigh.
Postures, gestures, faces,
and other stimuli.
We began to notice signals
that welled up from inside.
The bodily intuition
our senses could not hide.
We listened, saw, and sniffed.
Relied heavily on our tongues
to salivate a message
that we inhaled into our lungs.
And, thus, our very senses
were bridges to our brains.
They helped us make decisions,
select and take the reins.
The system was initialized
with a databank to store
cues both from all around us
and from deep within our core.
Our intuition gave us knowledge.
Revered and trusted friend.
But slowly, unexpectedly
ties frayed, began to end.
We started school, and learning
became the task each day.
To read, to write, to add, subtract,
and all our letters say.
Use your words, our teachers said,
Speak with polish, poise.
Study math and history.
Put away those toys.
So, our minds filled up with facts
to help us to master, think.
To prepare us for adulthood,
The get job—make money link.
Our intuition languished,
shrunken, in disrepair.
While our logic grew and prospered
without a backward care.
Until a time somewhere, somehow,
a problem having stumped us.
We drained our reason to its max.
Shock! Intuition jumped us.
It reminded us of days gone by.
And how it attuned our minds
with bodily sensations
and environmental signs.
So our logic, ever skeptical
but spinning wheels, depleted,
reluctantly agreed to heed
and Intuition greeted.
Intuition set to work
repairing loose connections.
Restoring structures, locking links,
and making all corrections.
Intuition drew ideas
like a light draws fireflies.
Logic was enchanted.
Results materialized.
From that day, it was announced:
Logic partnered with Intuition
to make a union strong and whole.
Initiate a new tradition.
An integration, the best of both.
The conscious links with un,
Solving problems, making plans,
ingenuity, fun.
Now the moral of the story
is simple to comprehend:
Attend to both logic and intuition.
Insight, wisdom will transcend!
Lynn Benjamin
2002
I wrote this poem-story during a period when I was doing workshops on intuition with my brother, Michael. I realized that our intuition was at its peak when we were small children. The educational system, with its insistence on using logic, could easily undo it. But, later in life, we could recapture it. Sometimes intuition might appear unexpectedly while we worked on a difficult problem. Then, with practice, we could re-instate it. At the time I wrote this story, I thought that it would make a cute booklet, perhaps for children, because of the simple rhyme. It needed appropriate artwork to go along with it. Since I never fulfilled that idea, just use your own imaginations to illustrate this story.