Sixth Sense: Gut Feeling

Growing up, I used to always hear people talking about what their heart says or what their

head says and which one they should listen to. I used to try to figure out what that meant and which one I should listen to. When I was little and faced with the difficult choices a six-year-old might face, I tried to think of what my heart would want and what my brain would want. My heart might want that piece of chocolate, but my brain knows that the extra piece might make me feel sick. Later on in life, I figured out I don’t really tend to listen to my heart or to my head. Instead, I trust my instinct. One might call it a “gut feeling” or my “sixth sense.” 

I am very passionate about my gut always being right. I always trust my gut feeling even when that “feeling” is mild. Why? Because when my brain is going 5,000 miles per hour and is distracted through the other five senses, my gut is there to guide it. Some people might say that my gut and brain are the same things, but I think they just work together. However, it's often my head that tries to reassure me by saying that I'm probably "thinking crazy" when my gut says "you should not be in this situation." As someone who suffers from anxiety, my brain can be really overwhelmed sometimes. That's why I rely on my gut. 

It is known that our intuition is part of our past experiences, but I do not think it is set in stone. Our past experiences are set in stone, we can’t change them. However, we make new experiences that change how we react and how our gut reacts. 

This made me recall how David Abram wrote in his book Spell of the Sensuous about how our bodies have conversations. He wrote, “The sensing body is not a programmed machine but an active and open form, continually improvising its relation to things and to the world.” (Abram 49) Everyone’s intuition, or sixth sense, develops over time. It is not a programmed machine but is learned through experiences and how tuned in you are to your other senses. People get better at reading people through their body language, the words they say, how they say it, their tone, and how they present themselves. I kind of describe it as this vibe that is in the air that my gut feels and interprets. It then shoots my brain a message saying, “Hey, you might want to be cautious.” 

Abram also writes, “the body's actions and engagements are never wholly determinate,

since they must ceaselessly adjust themselves to a world and a terrain that is itself continually shifting.” (Abram 49) Thinking about this with the sixth sense in mind, the body and intuition have to always adjust to the world and the situations they are in. It isn’t a script that it is reading. It is using their senses to continuously scan the environment that the person is in to help them read clues and be able to give them that funny feeling of something not being right. This then allows the person to think that a bad thing might happen in the near future, so they might decide to leave or be extra cautious. 

I think there are multiple ways one could look at the sixth sense. For me, the sixth sense I think I possess is one strong intuition that has kept me safe multiple times. My sixth sense is continuously working with my other five senses to give me the ability to predict if something bad is about to happen.