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Trusting Instincts: Stories of Intuition
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This talk explores the theme of intuition through shared anecdotes and an elaborated personal narrative, illustrating how intuitive feelings can guide actions in critical situations. The discussion includes experiences where intuition countered logical reasoning, ultimately proving correct, highlighting a reliance on innate perception over analytical thinking.
- Educational Intuition:
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Personal reflection on intuitive decisions in childcare against conventional educational advice, suggesting a deeper, instinctual understanding often holds true.
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Forest Fire Experience:
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A recount of the Las Pedras National Forest fire event where intuition led to a crucial decision to retreat, avoiding potential disaster when the area was later napalmed.
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General Intuition:
- Comparative analysis of intuition in everyday and life-threatening situations, emphasizing its value when traditional reasoning falters.
Referenced Works and Their Relevance:
- None mentioned: The discussion focuses on personal experiences and insights rather than specific texts or teachings, centering on the practical application of intuition in life events.
AI Suggested Title: Trusting Instincts: Stories of Intuition
Although we don't have much time, we have to end. Maybe we have time for a report from one group. Who wants to be first? Andreas, okay, you can do it. We have tried to talk about intuition in our group. We try to speak about intuition in our group. First about something people have experienced, where we thought it were experiences of intuition. And actually all of us had experiences about intuition. Often it has been just retrospectively turned out to have been an intuition.
[01:01]
And you act in a certain context, but much later you say, why did I do that? For example, bringing up a little kid, a baby, and reading a lot about education, how you should do this and shouldn't do that, and let the child cry. And Maureen had... against that, taking up the baby, and it had always turned out to be right. That's right too, I think so too. Educational books. I think so too. Once upon a time, we were at a children's playground, two children came up, they were running around, and it was night, and at some point I didn't know what to do, I didn't find them. I experienced when I was together with some kids and two kids got lost.
[02:22]
And I was alone, it was dark, and I couldn't find them. And so I breathed, I breathed deeply, and said, I looked at the sky and said, it will be all right, become all right, and it will settle, regulate it on its own. It came to me as a perception, and the normal consciousness spoke against it, no, you have to call your parents, what should you do? And yet something calmed down in me, and I could sleep. The normal consciousness said, oh, you have to phone the parents, and you have to do this and that, but something else in me, sort of like a bit like a boy, said, no, you can calm down, everything will be all right. You lucked out. What? You were lucky, maybe. No, but if you have a strong feeling, I understand, yeah. Okay? The children actually, in fact, went, it was very dark in Czechia, and they had just... The children were actually what? It was very dark there, in Czechoslovakia, where they were.
[03:58]
The children among themselves had had an argument, but the two kids who had run away just went to the next hotel. That's what happened. Just to end, maybe, I'll tell you an anecdote. Once or twice I've told this story. But it was one of the strangest things that ever happened to me. And clearly strange. There was a big, the second biggest fire in California history at that time burned in the Las Pedras National Forest. And the force service and the police evicted us. And we followed their instructions. So they felt better. And then we went immediately back in. And we fought the forest fire.
[05:15]
And it was heavy duty forest fire. 250,000 acres burning. And for two weeks it was just dark. At midday it was dark with smoke all the way halfway up the California coast to San Francisco. But we had finally had one forest ranger come in and he helped us. We backfired in several directions. And And the fire came in, and it finally came in, came in three directions at once, and we were able to save Tassajar. And to just show you how scary it was, and dangerous, with two vehicles, we heard that Jamesburg, which was this little house where we stayed,
[06:16]
went in and out from over the 14 miles dirt road. The fire could burn Jamesburg, so we decided to go out set up a way to defend Jamesburg. So first we drove out in two vehicles full of people and we had chainsaws and all the stuff you need. And we get up to the top of the ridge, which was about 5,000 feet, which is pretty high along the coast of California. I'm driving in, and at one point I drove... this four-wheel-drive vehicle right across a burning log as long as from you to me to you. And I think about it now. It sounds pretty stupid that I did that.
[07:33]
Because it could have exploded the car. But I went right across it and I got about 200 feet past that and there were just so many logs across trees across the road I couldn't get through. And trees were burning over our heads and so forth. I hadn't slept really for two weeks except naps and I was in quite a state. And the road is so narrow you can't turn around because there's a thousand foot cliff right there. So I had one car wait back and I was checking so only I went over that log. But I had about eight people in the car.
[08:44]
But since the road was so narrow, I couldn't turn around. I had to back up over the log. So I backed over. Somehow then I turned around and we went back in. And somebody had hiked in from the coast and brought us cold Coke. I hadn't had a Coke in 20 years at that point. And boy, did it taste good. And then we immediately packed up and we decided to hike out inland because we knew we could get out that way and Okay, so with a young guy, what the heck was his name? Leland Smithson.
[09:54]
Not that it makes any difference what his name was. He had been a logger. His father was a logger. And he was a very alert, skillful kid. He was 18, I think. And one of his jobs had been when logs come down a chute or something, you have to jump around and unchain them or something. One of the most dangerous jobs in logging. So he was full of energy and he... He was really good with a chainsaw. So I think there were, I don't know, maybe 10 or 12 of us or so that hiked out a different way. Forded a stream.
[10:57]
Walked through a stream. Now we were carrying all the stuff we needed. And we went across another stream and then up a... up a ridge where we hit a dirt fire road and we started walking out. And we got about 10 minutes along or 15 minutes along that road. And I can't explain it at all, but it was suddenly unearthly silent. Whether it was really silent or not, I don't know, but I felt this unearthly silence. I looked at the grass and everything, it seemed weirdly still.
[12:05]
And I said to everyone, we're going back. Everybody said, well, we're only about six miles now. We can go the rest of the way. I said, we're going back. And Leland, of course, said, I'm going ahead. And I'll carry all the chainsaws and I'll do it myself. I said, you're not going. I mean, I don't care. At this moment, I'm the boss and you're not going. And if we lose Jamesburg, we lose Jamesburg, but we're not going. It was not a matter of thinking. It was just absolute certainty I had to do this. So Leland agreed and we all turned around and went back and we went down to the stream and we sat down to kind of rest and eat, I don't know what, an orange and a candy bar or something.
[13:09]
And suddenly airplanes came over, four surveillance airplanes, and napalmed the whole area where we were. The entire area where we were just went up in a roaring flame because they were backfiring and they thought nobody was there. Das Flugzeug warf Nabheim ab, genau über der Stelle, wo wir gewesen waren, weil sie waren natürlich, sie machten ein Gegenfeuer gegen den Waldbrand. And if I had continued, you'd have a little ash, a cinder here, a relic. Relics. Relics. Und wenn wir weitergegangen wären, dann hätten wir jetzt eine kleine Relikte hier. Ein bisschen Asche. I can't explain. I mean, maybe I was just lucky. I don't know. But definitely, my whole body said, we're not going forward. We turned around. Twenty minutes later, the entire thing was... miles were in flame. Funny, huh? It's probably similar to your feeling. You somehow knew what it was. Most intuitions are not that dramatic. But that one was pretty dramatic. Okay, let's sit for a minute.
[14:52]
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