We’re all familiar with the expression, ‘a gut feeling’, meaning an intuitive or instinctive feeling about something which is not, at that moment, supported by logical rationale. It’s a personal feeling almost amounting to conviction about something which may go against current opinion. It’s hard to justify and equally difficult to explain.
We who seek the answers to Johann Bessler’s wheel must, by definition, be following our gut instincts and therefore justification is hard to provide and our case goes against the commonly held view.
Sometimes our gut feeling leads us up the garden path with nowhere to go, but there is something special about some ‘gut feelings’, which you just ‘know’ are legitimate. These are few and far between but they could put you on the road to success. I’ve experienced that magical gut feeling a few times and I’ve had some ‘light bulb’ moments too, which are related to ‘gut reactions’, but not exactly same, but the instant euphoria is similar and both are incredibly encouraging in this difficult path we tread.
The lightbulb moment is that sudden revelation of the answer to a puzzle which has been hovering at the back of your mind. Gut feeling can sometimes reveal a truth which was previously unknown and it should not be ignored, and in my experience it never is.
‘Intuition’ is another name for ‘gut feeling’ it literally means ‘learning from within’, which seems a pretty good alternative. Intuition is currently understood to be the ‘subconscious processing of information that is too complex for rational thought’, but the word ‘complex’ doesn’t really cover it for me. The subconscious information being processed is disorganised and apparently random. So the organising, refining and clarifying of each particle of data takes place beyond the conscious mind, and in my opinion it is directed by another part of the subconscious which, in seeking an answer to a problem, is analysing all information being received, looking for anything which might have potential relation to one particular puzzle.
The exciting tingling that happens in your brain when a gut feeling makes itself felt seems a strange connection - so how is this possible? It seems that that feeling in your gut also stems from the same cause as ‘butterflies’ in your stomach when you’re nervous.
It has been suggested that when you’re nervous, you’re likely getting signals from an unexpected source: your second brain. Hidden in the walls of the digestive system, this “brain in your gut” is revolutionising medicine’s understanding of the links between digestion, mood, health and even the way you think.
(https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/wellness-and-prevention/the-brain-gut-connection)
“Scientists call this little brain the enteric nervous system (ENS). And it’s not so little. The ENS is two thin layers of more than 100 million nerve cells (200-600 million nerve cells in another paper) lining your gastrointestinal tract from esophagus to rectum, which measures about 9 meters (almost 30 feet) that’s more than in either the spinal cord or the peripheral nervous system.
Unlike the big brain in your skull, the ENS can’t balance your checkbook or compose a love note. “Its main role is controlling digestion, from swallowing to the release of enzymes that break down food to the control of blood flow that helps with nutrient absorption to elimination,” explains Jay Pasricha, M.D., director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Neurogastroenterology, whose research on the enteric nervous system has garnered international attention. “The enteric nervous system doesn’t seem capable of thought as we know it, but it communicates back and forth with our big brain—with profound results.”
This ‘gut-brain’ alliance has raised consciousness and is a contributor to subconscious processing of all data.
In my humble opinion, the gut feeling is induced by the brain’s subconscious, trying to make contact with the conscious. The subconscious is the part of the mind of which one is not fully aware but which influences one's actions and feelings. We should be aware of rumblings, butterflies and other gut actions in case they are our subconscious trying to grab our attention!
“The concept that the gut and the brain are closely connected, and that this interaction plays an important part not only in gastrointestinal function but also in certain feeling states and in intuitive decision making, is deeply rooted in our language.”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3845678/?_escaped_fragment_=po=2.13415
And here also, fascinating!
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/gut-second-brain/
JC 🤔