It was in 1991,
at a hotel on the shores of Waikiki Beach in Honolulu, that Marcia Emery, Ph.D., made a public demonstration that
planted a seed for what we might call the intuition revolution.
The Global Intuition
Network was having its first international conference. Weston Agor, of the University of Texas, was the man who
organized the conference. He was the man responsible, in fact, for originating the Intuition Network, which
was a group of people interested in helping the world recognize, accept and use intuition. Marcia Emery was one
of the first members of the network, and possibly an important muse for Dr. Agor's work to organize the network
in the first place.
As a motivating
stimulant for the conference, Agor had announced a contest with a one thousand dollar prize. The contest was for
someone who could actually demonstrate being intuitive. It was a puzzling request. How could you demonstrate actually
being intuitive? Images of a mime came to mind, a fellow covered with white face, with a tall black top hat and
a striped shirt with suspenders, scratching his chin with a puzzled expression on his face, then suddenly snapping
his fingers as a smile lit up his face as bright as if a light bulb had just been turned on overhead.
I can remember
trying awkwardly trying to figure out how I might demonstrate an intuition event. I just couldn't do it. That was
somewhat ironic, because at the conference itself, it turned out I was one of the persons used in the demonstration
that won the prize. Marcia Emery was the prize winner. For her demonstration, she called upon a volunteer from
the audience who was dealing with some issue in their professional work. I was one of many to raise my hand to
volunteer. She picked me. Later I learned that the reason she picked me was because I was wearing a blue shirt.
During her preparation for the demonstration, her intuitive process indicated that it would be someone in a blue
shirt she should choose.
She invited
me up on the stage, and with me came Fred Davidson, my friend and colleague. He had once been president of Atlantic
University and we were contemplating working together on a project. We sat down in chairs as instructed, and Marcia
asked us to describe our project briefly and our question about it. We wanted to develop a new consulting practice
focused on dreams and creative problem solving. Our issue was how to package our idea to present to corporations
in a way that dreams wouldn't be seen as a psychoanalytic or "touchy-feely" item, but a business-innovation
item.
Marcia asked
us to relax and to look upon a geometric design she showed us, simply to clear our mind and center us. Then she
had us close our eyes and see what images came to mind. Fred and I each presented our images and she discussed
them with us. One of the images I got was of a mathematical puzzle where you have to connect the the nine dots
in a three by three array with four connected straight lines. The trick is that you have to draw one line past
the dots in order to be able to draw the next line where it needs to go. The message was "thinking outside
the box." Marcia asked the audience if anyone else got images. Many people shared their images and discussed
what these images implied with regard to our issue. It was a very stimulating discussion that gave Fred and I some
new insights on how to proceed with our project.
That demonstration
was a pivotal point, I believe, in the history of intuition. Marcia had distilled the intuitive process into a
concrete procedure she could demonstrate. It awakened many people in the audience. "Aha! So that's what it
looks like to DO intuition!" Suddenly, many of us realized we too had methods for DOING intuition. Sometimes
it takes only one particle of concrete reality to crystallize many ideas that are floating around to become real
themselves. Today there are countless procedures for DOING intuition, for demonstrating it, for training it, for
evoking it when needed. But Marcia was the first.
What was also
important for that moment was that Marcia didn't play the role of the "intuitive." She could have done
a "psychic reading" on our question. We would have been impressed by her "psychic ability"
but the audience wouldn't have seen a transparent demonstration of the workings of intuition. Marcia's demonstration
was special because she showed how one could use a specific method to help someone else evoke an intuition.
Marcia's demonstration
wasn't just an arbitrarily designed workshop trick. She had done her homework, her research. Besides her own personal
experience, which she surveys in
an interview I conducted with her, she also interviewed many people in
business and elsewhere who claimed to use their intuition in their work. She published that research in her book,
Intuition Workbook: An Expert’s Guide to Unlocking the Wisdom of Your Subconscious Mind (Prentice Hall), a book you may read about in my brief review. In that book, she concludes that
imagery is a very frequent purveyor of intuition. She translated that research finding into the technique she demonstrated
with us at the conference. Later she called that method the "Mindshift Technique:" Have an intention,
relax, center yourself, ask for an image, interpret the image relative to your intention. A clear formula for evoking
intuition, one that invites testing and comparison with others, a foundation for a science of intuition.
After returning
from the conference, I realized that Marcia's demonstration was the only time during the entire event where we
were actually using our intuition. The rest of the time, people were talking about intuition, but were involved
in an intellectual activity, not an intuitive one. So Marcia pioneered in another way as well. Not only did she
make intuition a process that was potentially a publically observable process, but she brought intuition into the
social arena, asking people to contribute their intuitions to a collective effort at problem solving. In the years
since, I've seen many gatherings of people exploring intuition intellectually without actually moving into an intuitive
mode. It reminds me of a group of people standing around a swimming pool talking about how great it is to be in
the water, but without anyone sticking in even so much as a tip of their toe into the luscious liquid.
In a related
vein, I've heard many people work their minds hard to define intuition--I'm sure you've heard many definitions,
such as "knowing without knowing how you know"--but without ever once asking intuition to define itself.
We usually use words to define intuition, whereas an intuitive approach to intuition would probably call for imagery.
Marcia is one of the few intuition explorer I've known that has offered up several intuitive images of intuition.
She has visualized intuition as an antenna that picks up images from the surrounding. She has visualized it as
a compass that provides a sense of direction. She has also visualized it as a piece of a puzzle that falls into
place. I'd like to see her collection of imagery expanded further.
As Marcia continued
in her research, she tackled a very natural area for the personal use of intuition: health. We've heard the phrase,
"The Wisdom of the Body," and we appreciate the validity of this source of knowledge. Today it's popular
for people to advertise themselves as a "medical intuitive" and to offer their services exploring other
people's bodies. But there's something to be said for helping people learn to use their own intuition on
their own bodies. Marcia's second book, The Intuitive Healer: Accessing Your Inner Physician (St. Martin's Press) does just that. I've provided a brief description of that book, along with others
that have since come out on the subject of medical intuition.
It would seem
that Marcia has dedicated herself to helping others learn to use their intuition. As you will read in my interview with her,
Marcia received a grant to set up intuition study groups around the country. Called Inreaching groups, these groups
read books on intuition and discuss them, practice intuition training procedures and compare notes on the use of
intuition in daily life. She has appeared on the PBS program, Thinking Allowed, hosted by Jeffrey Mishlove, director
of the Intuition Network, to share her thoughts on intuition. Debbi Leighton, one of our students at the Edgar Cayce
Institute of Intuitive Studies, has provided a brief digest of this interview.
To deal with
the daily life context for intuitive functioning, Marcia has recently come out with a new book, PowerHunch! Living an Intuitive Life
(Beyond Words Publishing). I have written an essay on this book for Venture Inward magazine and after it appears
on those pages, it will appear here. In the meantime, Debbi Leighton has provided a brief digest of a portion
of the book. Read it and you'll want to get your hands on the real thing.
Intuition is
the real thing and Marcia Emery has worked hard for us to get our hands on it, to appreciate it, to use it and
to benefit from what it has to offer us. Before Freud, dreams were thought to be random visitations from gods.
After Freud, dreams were seen to be natural responses of the psyche to our thoughts and feelings. Before Marcia
Emery, intuition was regarded as a random event, something we could wish for, but nothing we could evoke. After
her work, however, there is no longer any doubt that not only are we all intuitive, but that we can harness it
to our use any time we wish.
For our webazine
tribute to her, we have gathered together the following material:
