Each entry in the Intuitive Experience Database is identified by the Type, Form and Kind of experience. Brief descriptions of the categories within each classification follow. To find out more about these categories, explore the journal topic which discusses how intuitive messages are identified and classified using Type, Form and Kind.

Type of Experience

Message type answers the question: "What was the setting for the intuitive experience?" Generally people find it easier to connect with intuitions in their personal lives. After they have a personal sense of intuition, they more readily recognize it in professional settings.

1. Personal:
An experience is personal when it involves insight about personal circumstances or relationships. Even if the experience takes place in a work setting, it is still identified as personal as long as work related issues are not involved.
2. Professional:
An experience is identified as professional when it involves an insight about career circumstances or relationships. In experiences which have a flavor of both a personal and professional flavor, the dominant one determines the type.
3. School:
This type often falls between the Personal and Professional categories. A person attending school as a personal pursuit may view this as preparation for a career. Given this hybrid quality, School is used for these experiences.
4. Transcendent:
Some experiences have a quality that transcends the first three even though they may have implications for them. Discoveries in these experiences reach beyond the ordinary awareness of daily concerns to the larger meanings in life.

Form of Experience

Message form answers the question: "How did the intuitive message make itself known?" Even though thought is the dominant category, our verbal preference often masks one of the other more subtle forms.

1. Body:
Spontaneous movements of the body. An example would be an unexpected turn the body to makes while walking down the street. It's as if one or more parts of the body take on a life of their own.
2. Sensation:
Hot flashes, cold shivers, hair standing on end, etc. Care has been taken not to confuse sensation and emotion since the latter is often felt as a sensation in the body. Sensations are relatively free of emotional overtones.
3. Emotion:
Joy, attraction, avoidance, sadness, anger, etc. Emotions may be accompanied by a corresponding sensation such as tears for sadness. But the emotional quality is the distinguishing aspect of the experience rather than the sensation.
4. Thought:
A word or phrase that is heard as if it is spoken or as an idea that comes to mind. Thoughts are the verbal form of the mental experience.
5. Image:
A visual picture that is recognized as if seen or as it appears in the mind's eye like a motion picture. Images are the visual form of mental experience.
6. Epiphany:
A body movement, sensation, feeling, thought or image that transcends the normal range of experience. Epiphanies are usually accompanied by a sense of wonder and awe.

Kind of Experience

Message kind answers the question: "How was the information from the intuition used?" Action is often implied, but that is not necessary. The insight may express appreciation for a situation without any action.

1. Decision:
An indication of a specific course of action from among distinct alternatives for a problem that an individual is trying to solve. Here they had previously narrowed the choices in a problem they face, but had not decided which was best until they had this insight.
2. Solution:
A recognition of what a person should do about a situation that has been perplexing them. Here they previously did not have clear alternatives in mind as they would have had with a Decision. This insight offers alternatives and may even point out which is best.
3. Suggestion:
A direction to follow up in some way on a situation that has presented itself. Here the individual had not been considering either a problem to solve or choices to select as they would have with a Decision or Solution. This insight suggests a problem for them to consider.
4. Impulse:
An impetus to suddenly do something for reasons that are not understand. Here a person experiences a compelling need to take some action that they had not been contemplating either as a Decision, Solution or Suggestion.
5. ESP:
An intimation that something has or is going to happen. This category represents "extra sensory phenomena" or ESP. Some of these entries record the first ESP experience that the individual was aware of having had.
6. Understanding:
A realization of the meaning behind or seeing the deeper purpose in life experience. This is when people discern the deeper meanings in life and sense how they fit into the larger scheme of existence.

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