Why Cats Don't Bark

Why
Cats
Dont
Bark
Unleash Your
PowerZone
Intuitive Intelligence The Other
Edie Raether,
M.S., CSP
Liberty Publishing Group

Raleigh Frederick Egg Harbor
http://avaxhome.ws/blogs/ChrisRedfield
I.Q.
Copyright 2002 Edie Raether

All rights reserved.
Reproduction or translation of any part of this work beyond that
permitted by Section 107 or 108 of the 1975 United States
Copyright Act without the permission of the copyright owner is
unlawful. Requests for permission or further information should
be addressed to the author..
This publication is designed to provide accurate and
authoritative information in regard to the subject matter
covered. It is sold with the understanding that the publisher is
not engaged in rendering legal, accounting, or other professional
service. From a Declaration of Principles jointly adopted by a
Committee of the American Bar Association and a Committee of
Publishers.
Publishers Cataloging-in-Publication Data

(Provided by Quality Books, Inc.)
Raether, Edie.
Why Cats Dont Bark : unleash your power zone :
intuitive intelligence-- the other I.Q./ Edie Raether.
-- 1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 1-893095-14-2 (soft cover)
ISBN 1-893095-17-7 (hard cover)
1. Intuition. 2. Self-actualization (Psychology)

I. Title.
BD181.R34 2002
153.44
QBI02-701949
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Dedication
I dedicate this book to those wise souls whose wisdom,
enlightenment and empowerment allowed me to explore,
discover and express my truth:
My mother, Mildred Kirchman Rabas,
who has no conception of defeat and magically turned
problems into possibilities.
My father, James John Rabas, Sr., who through his
passion, charisma and uniqueness left his mark.
All the heroes - victims and survivors - of September 11,
2001, since I began this book the week of September 11th and
completed it on the one-year anniversary.
Acknowledgements
The continual support, encouragement, and caring
confrontation of Matty Mathison, teacher and coach extraordinaire, gave me the "push" and persistence to sing my
song.
J.L. Moreno, the father of Psychodrama, and Jean
Houston, researcher and author, both unleashed my
PowerZone, my intuitive intelligence.
I also want to thank Sam Horn, Diana Booher and
other authors in the National Speakers Association who
made writing a book seem so possible and rewarding, as
well as Bil Holton, my editor, whose excitement and
expertise brought me to the finish line.
I am also grateful for my hometown, Algoma,
Wisconsin, which gave me roots to grow and wings to fly.
Table of Contents
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9
10.
11.
12.
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .ix
Cats Leave Their Marks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1
Intuitively Hijacked . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .9
Our Multiple Intellects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17
Ignite Your Intuitive Intelligence . . . . . . . . . .27
Listen to Your Intuitive Nudges . . . . . . . . . . .41
Toxic Logic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .51
Dreams Your Intuitive Mirror . . . . . . . . . .61
Liquid Intuition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .69
Intuitively Speaking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .79
Seeing From Eye to I . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .85
Intuiting Your Life Purpose . . . . . . . . . . . . . .93
Intuition Workout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .101
Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .117
About the Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .119
Other Products by Edie Raether . . . . . . . . . .120
Contact Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .121
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .122
vii
Introduction
eing a psychotherapist for over 25 years, Ive always

been interested in the discovery of personal truth,
human potential, lifes purpose, our authentic self, our true
biography, our fate and our destiny. My search has led me
to ask myself questions like: Who am I? Why am I here?
What is my lifes purpose? Am I living a life written by
genetics or environment (nurture or nature), fate or destiny
or something more elemental and mysterious? What
would I be doing if I knew I couldnt fail?
This book answers those questions.
The psychotherapist in me lures me into observing the
world around me. I process reality through my six senses:
sight, smell, taste, touch, hearing and intuition. It has
occurred to me that what we know determines how we
think, what we decide, what we do and how we act.
This book is about that sense of intuitive knowing.
I have discovered that it is our self-expression, not our
selfhood, which evolves. We have always been who we are.
Each of us has a true self. Unfortunately, most of us learn to
conceal our true natures as we fall victim to societys
imprint. Our personal truth is the gateway to personal freedom and joy.
This book is about recovering our true nature.
ix
Why Cats Dont Bark

I do not pretend to know all of the answers to lifes
pressing questions. There is much more to life than mere
theories, lab tests and statistical analysis. So where do we
go to find the answers? How do we know what we know?
How can we find out who we truly are? How can we find
and then express our uniqueness? Are we defined by our circumstances or are our circumstances defined by our
character flaws? The answer to all of these questions is:
because cats dont bark, dogs dont chirp and birds dont
meow. Animals dont know how to be anything other than
themselves. They are true to their unique natures.
This book is about why cats dont bark.
I believe we all have a life purpose, a special calling
that is ours and ours alone. It may be repressed, postponed,
delayed or avoided altogether but hopefully, after reading
this book, it will not be denied expression. To the degree we
do not express, we depress. Sooner or later it will come out.
The Romans called it our genius; the Greeks referred to it as
our daimon; the Egyptians believed it was ka; the
Sumarians called it atom. Other names for it are guardian
angel, free-spirit, breath-soul and monad. Emerson called it
the over-soul; James Hillman calls it the souls code; and I
call this core genius our PowerZone. The question is: How
do we access it?
The central principle of this book is that you will be
truly alive and joyful when you ignite your intuitive
intelligence to discover and express your inner guru and
unleash your PowerZone.
I believe my father had phenomenal intuitive
intelligence. He had a love affair with steam engines. He
built them, collected them and became a legend because of
them. When he died, there was a pouring in of poems and
eulogies expounding on "the man and his machine."
Although my father had only a grade school education,
x
Introduction
many people said he was an engineering genius. His
mechanical inventions had to be intuitively guided.
Coincidentally, it was intuition that brought me to write
a book on intuition, and unleashed my PowerZone
writing. A few years ago I had nearly finished writing a
book, Shattering the Glass Handcuffs, but had lost interest.
Perhaps the sequence was wrong. My "gut guidance"
whispered: You must write something else first. That
something else was this book, which came to me during
the week of September 11, 2001. I had heard stories of some
of the World Trade Center survivors who had listened to
their gut guidance, and either stayed home that fateful
day, delayed their arrival to run an errand before they went
to work or ran to safety after the first plane hit. I resolved to
write a book on my chief occupational specialty: Intuitive
Intelligence. The book you are holding in your hands, Why
Cats Dont Bark, is my tribute to the heroes, victims and
survivors of September 11th and a reaffirmation that all of
us need to develop and express our intuitive intelligence.
I suspect you have been intuitively drawn to this book.
You may have plucked it from its shelf because its title
intrigued you; perhaps a friend told you about it or maybe
you are the kind of person who is interested in books on
intuition and self-development. Whatever prompted you to
read this far has influenced you before. I believe it is your
intuitive intelligence, your inner guru, your core genius that
whispers: Theres something here for you that will
contribute to your soul growth. Read it and apply it.
If something I say in this book contributes to your life
calling, it will have achieved its purpose. So delve in and
discover!
Discover why cats dont bark.
xi
Chapter One
Cats Leave
Their Mark
This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose
recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap
heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish,
elfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining
that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.
George Bernard Shaw
nce upon a time there was a cat named Freda. Like

most cats, she was quite independent and freespirited. She had a mind of her own, and pleasing her master
was not at the top of her priority list, as it was for her friend
Fritz, the neighbors dog. Freda would not fetch balls, wag
her tail or leap for joy when her master returned home. She
would not bark at strangers or chase letter carriers. She
seemed to have a strong personal cat agenda and only did
cat things.
1
Why Cats Dont Bark

Although she could be quite affectionate and the purrfect young lady, she knew her place and kept you in your
place. She was teasingly adept at brushing her agile body
gracefully against your leg, inviting you to pet her.
However, any attempt to pick her up for a quick cuddle or
put her on your lap would be flatly rejected.
Her owner wanted Freda to be more like Fritz, who
would obediently sit, beg and roll over on command. So he
enrolled Freda in obedience school. Her owner read all of
the motivational books and pet-training how-to manuals. He
listened to all of the pet psychology tapes and CDs. He
showed his support by attending every pet training session
with Freda. After years of trying to get Freda to bark, he
decided that neither he nor his stable of pet trainers would
ever get Freda to act like Fritz, or any other dog. She just
didnt have any canine in her. She was quite simply a cat. In
fact, he noticed that the more he forced Freda to act like a
dog, the more resistance, anger and rebellion she displayed.
She had become aggressive, neurotic and aloof. She had
adopted extreme feline behaviors such as biting, scratching
and hissing.
He was distraught at losing the good cat he once had
and, although his intentions were good, he was paying the
penalty for forcing Freda to be something she was not. He
had wanted Freda to live up to his expectations. He had
failed to appreciate and accept her true cat nature. The
changes he wanted to force upon her were inconsistent with
her feline spirit. He had robbed her of her cat identity.
This story captures the essence of this book. Like Freda,

so many of us are forced off track by well-meaning friends,
2
Cats Leave Their Mark

family and colleagues who have their own notions of how
our success and happiness should look. Like Fredas owner
discovered, we all have our own life calling. Each of us has
an authentic self which must be expressed, or like Freda, we
retreat into defensiveness, anger and neurosis.
Catnip for the Mind

To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing
its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human
being can fight and never stop fighting.
e. e. cummings
It is my belief that we are all victims of scientific,
academic and therapeutic paradigms which ignore the sense
of calling that makes each life unique and mysterious. Our
individuality, sense of purpose, self-concept and intuitive
intelligence illustrate what many people call the Acorn
Theory, which holds that each of us bears an innate
uniqueness that asks us to be expressed, nurtured and
honored. In the language of Plato, we each embody our
own authenticity.
Etymologically, the word acorn actually goes back to
the Old English word, acern, which in turn goes back to the
Indo-European root meaning fruit or berry which was ripe.
In Greek, the related terms, age or agete, originally meant
to move or get going. Our pushy acorn nature, it seems,
encompasses both of these meanings: our acorn nature
pushes us to achieve our full potential our ripeness.
We are much more than bundles of DNA. We are
spiritual beings in somatic spacesuits. We are filled with
mystery and myth. We have qualities that transcend our
3
Why Cats Dont Bark

genetic code because we are the products of a spiritual code
as well. It is from the realm of spirit that our intuitive
intelligence springs. And it is our intuitive intelligence that
protects our divine essence and reminds us who we are.
I have chosen to begin my discussion of intuitive intelligence by using Freda and Fritz to illustrate the importance
of honoring your life narrative. Animals, like children,
present the best evidence for an acorn theory. You no doubt
have heard amazing stories of cats falling from high ledges
without harm, or dogs buried under tons of earthquake
debris or falling into deep wells and surviving. The incredible resilience and spirit of animals in these situations
remind us that the survival instinct, the will to live, to accept
ones fate, to exercise the patience and courage to live out
ones destiny are beyond comprehension. It is important for
us to be able to nurture our nature and to be who we are. We
can do that by listening to our intuitive intelligence.
Animals are so accepting of themselves, their instincts,
abilities and surroundings. Cats dont bark, dogs dont chirp
and birds dont meow. On the other hand, we humans can
do all of those things. We can bark, chirp and meow to our
hearts content. We mimic animals and we imitate each
other, sometimes to our own detriment. Unlike animals, we try
to live two lives at once the one we are born with, our
souls code, and the life socially and culturally imposed
upon us.
Individuality, self-expression, acceptance, resilience
and independence are all primary characteristics of acorn
behavior. Our acorn essence is also our potential essence.
We are what we become and we become what we are. Both
Freda and Fritz know this instinctively. Freda is happy as a
cat. Fritz loves being a dog. When Freda meows, arches her
back and visits the litter box, she is exhibiting acorn behavior. Every time Fritz barks, relieves himself by a fire hydrant
4

and wags his tail, he demonstrates dog acorn behavior. We
can learn a lot from our pets, dont you think?
One of my acorn teachers was a black poodle mutt
named Pouka. His face was so full of hair you had to search
for his eyes. He taught my children and me daily lessons
about values, loyalty, passion, determination and survival.
Weighing in at a whopping eight pounds before a haircut
Pouka epitomized an acorn who thought he was an oak.
Im not sure if it was his inflated ego, courage or ignorance,
but he had the David-and-Goliath thing down perfectly. He
would take on dogs ten times his size and win the standoff! I believe his barely audible but passionate bark
conveyed the message You may think Im just a tiny acorn,
but I am a mighty oak!
Catnip for the Mind

Like an ability or a muscle, hearing your inner
wisdom is strengthened by doing it.
Robbie Gass
Perhaps we underestimate ourselves and our abilities to

overcome what appears to be insurmountable obstacles. An
obstacle is something we see when we take our eyes off our
essence. Like Pouka, we need to think big and believe big.
We need to leave our mark on every situation in which we
find ourselves. Whatever we do, we must be true to our calling. In the words of Pearl S. Buck, ...a writer must write, a
dancer must dance, a painter must paint and a musician
must play. If we do not joyfully express who we are, but
instead suppress our true selves, we will become unhappy,
depressed and physically ill.
Why Cats Dont Bark

All of us are answerable to our acorn selves. We
become irrevocably tied to our own biographies because we
are our biographies. Like you, I am discovering my own
acorn nature. As a psychotherapist, I have been trained to
understand human nature, to uncover emotional baggage
and to help people recover their true selves. Of this I am certain: we are all here for a reason. And because we are here,
our mere existence requires growth so we can get from
where we are to where we choose to be. My question to you
is: What would you be doing if you knew you couldnt fail?
Ill be asking you that same question throughout this book,
because it is central to intuitive growth and development.
So, how do we find our oakness? That is the question
which prompted the title to this book. It is a question which
causes us to look further into human nature than mere
genetics and environment. Psychology today is moving
back to its philosophical, metaphysical, spiritual and religious roots. I want to lift the pall of superficial genetic and
environmental explanations for understanding the human
personality and take us a step closer to our oakness. I
believe our intuitive intelligence is the mechanism to help
us reclaim who we really are. The rest of this book takes
you on an intuitive journey based on a growing body of
scientific knowledge which suggests we are more spirit than
matter and as much mystery as fact.
Paws to Reflect
1. What would you be doing with your life if
you knew you couldnt fail?
2. What does the expression we are spiritual
beings in somatic spacesuits mean to you?
3. What three things will you immediately stop or
start doing to clear the path and continue your
lifes journey, so you can leave your mark?
4. To what extent are you the author of your own
personal biography?
5. After removing the filters of social and cultural
conditioning, what is your lifes purpose or
soul's code?
6. Who or what are the obstacles to the expression
of your essence?
The truth is that the average bottom-ofthe-ladder' person is potentially as creative

as the top executive who sits in the big
office. The problem is that the person on
the bottom of the ladder doesn't trust his
own brilliance and doesn't, therefore,
believe in his own ideas.
Dr. Robert Schuller
Chapter 2
Intuitively
Hijacked
One of the most striking differences between a cat and
a lie is that a cat has only nine lives.
Mark Twain
here is in each of us a longing to see beyond our normal

physical sight. We sense an invisible world just beyond
our visual reach. There is something within us that says we
are different from everyone else, that we have a specialness
that cannot be replicated. In light of the previous chapter,
we know that this something is our acorn nature, our oakness. It constitutes the real us our PowerZone.
Awakening to our acorn nature and hearing it speak
through our intuitive abilities is the primary purpose of this
book. How do we recognize its voice, our true voice? How
do we know that a particular intuition is a message from our
own unique oakness? How can we get tuned in to our oakness? How do we know which intuitions to trust, or when it
is worrisome or wishful thinking and not intuition? Each of
these questions has to do with recognizing our intuitive
9
Why Cats Dont Bark

potential. We have been intuitively hijacked by many of the
antics of modern science and technology, which cause a loss
of inner hearing or intuitive deafness. It is hard to get
through our thick 21st Century heads that we can get messages from someplace else more beneficial to our health and
well-being than what comes from TV and the Internet.
I learned a valuable intuitive lesson when my youngest
son turned 16 and had just received his driver's license. I
remember thinking, it was not a matter of IF he would have
a car accident, but WHEN and how bad it might be. Just a
few weeks later, the time had come, and the accident was
very bad. In fact, after seeing the mangled car, it is truly a
miracle anyone survived it. Although I had been only a few
blocks away at the time of the accident, I began my journey
from Green Bay to Milwaukee, not knowing what had happened. However, I had an incredibly gnawing feeling in my
gut and an intense "pull" to turn around and return to Green
Bay. But with no logical explanation for the urge to return,
I continued my two-hour journey and, upon arriving in
Milwaukee, received the phone call every parent dreads.
When I picked up the phone, I tensed inexplicably even
before I heard the news. My intuitive instincts told me
something terrible had happened to my son. Fortunately,
after several surgeries and great medical care, my son, Tory,
is fine, and he and his lovely wife, Jean, have two beautiful
children.
Cats are wonderful role models for listening to internal,
instinctual messages. For example, cat owners face their
pets acorn nature every time they prepare their cats for a
bath. Every cat owner knows that cats and water dont mix.
Its in their you guessed it acorn nature. Cats intuitively
know they dont like water, and they will prove it to you.
Although cats have the advantage of quickness and lack of
concern for pushy humans around water hazards, humans
10
Intuitively Hijacked
have the advantage of strength and planning thats part of
our oakness.
Savvy cat wrestlers know that it is best to corral fussy
felines for bathing by putting them in tubs with sliding glass
doors. (A simple shower curtain simply will not do. A
berserk cat, true to its acorn nature, can shred a three-ply
plastic shower curtain in ten seconds or less.)
Your own clothing and body are not immune to such an
attack, so you may want to wear hockey gear or a football
helmet. Anyone who has ever bathed water-aversive cats
knows what I am talking about.
Once youve washed the cat, the rest is easy. All you
have to do is drain the tub, fluff the paranoid feline dry and
go about your business. In a few days, your beloved cat will
relax enough to pry itself from your leg.
In a few more days, perhaps a week, your fluffy feline
may forgive you and purr its way onto your lap or caress
your leg affectionately by waltzing to and fro against it
(classic cat behavior). Of course, as cat lovers know, try to
bathe the independent rascal again and its anti-water acorn
nature will kick (or should I say scratch and claw) into high
gear. Thats the way cats are. They are true disciples of their
cat calling.
Catnip for the Mind

There are two means of refuge from the miseries
of life: music and cats.
Albert Schweitzer
Cats and their cousins (dogs, horses, chimpanzees,

foxes and bears, to name a few) exhibit what we call instinctual behavior. Their need for structure, routine, protected
11
Why Cats Dont Bark

territory and survival expresses itself in antisocial behaviors
such as possessiveness, paranoia, hypervigilance and
aggression. According to Paul MacLean, an evolutionary
neuroanatomist and senior research scientist at the National
Institute of Mental Health, we also have instinctual
complexes resembling our nearest primate relatives.
Although our human neocortexes are specialized versions
of our primate cousins, we are prone to exhibit self-serving
patterns of behavior whenever we feel threatened. When we
are under stress, we downshift into our rudimentary, instinctual selves and adopt selfish, impulsive and even ruthless
self-protective behaviors. However, we must soar deeply,
for deep inside our instinctual self we discover the core of
our spiritual wings.
The problem is we live in denial of who we really are
and what our lifes purpose is, because we fail to listen to
our oakness. We neglect our true calling, when we allow our
insecurities to bathe us with doubt, fear and depression.
Unlike our feline friends, we relinquish our power to others
who want us to subscribe to their values and belief systems.
We do not scratch and claw our way to selfhood. Our
passivity and blind obedience perpetuates their comfort
zone, making us predictable, compliant and hollow. We will
never find the inner peace, balance and harmony we seek
unless we turn their comfort zone into our PowerZone.
In the early eighties, I had decided to move to Salt Lake
City, Utah; however, I had mixed emotions about the move.
I had placed a large sum of money in my bank account,
which was the amount needed to close on the home. I
believe intuition unconsciously guided me, because I
deposited the money into the wrong account. I never moved
it, and the misplaced funds could have averted a financial
disaster. Unfortunately, the banker saw what seemed to be
an obvious error and took the liberty of transferring the
money so the house would close as scheduled, eventually
12
resulting in a loss of the entire sum of money. Did I
unconsciously or intuitively know something that the wellintended banker did not know?
More recently, I had the opportunity to put some of my
beach property up for sale. As I was thinking about the sale
price of the property, an incredibly large figure came to
mind. A week later I received an offer on two ocean front
properties which had received no attention since Hurricane
Fran rendered them worthless back in 1996. Coincidentally,
the combined selling price of the two lots was the exact
figure I had seen. Our thoughts are magnets for the realities
we create. For example, I was fortunate to turn another
piece of property around. The book you are holding is a
tangible manifestation of an intellectual property which was
intuitively conceived in 1975.
Catnip for the Mind

No matter how deep a study you make, what you
really have to rely on is your own intuition and when
it comes down to it, you really dont know whats
going to happen until you do it.
Konosuke Matsushita
Until we learn to nurture our acorn nature and express
our true selves, we will continue to be disillusioned with
work that has no meaning, friends who have no substance
and free time that has no depth or joy. Argue for your limitations, says Richard Bach in his book, Illusions, and
sure enough, theyre yours. I have found that people who
express their acorn nature have several things in common:
they have freed themselves from their past; they plan for the
13
Why Cats Dont Bark

future but live in the moment; and they have a confidence
and composure that permeates everything they do.
The Course in Miracles puts it this way:
To be born again is to let the past go, and look without condemnation upon the presentyou areasked
to let the future go, and place it in Gods (capable)
Hands(then) the past will punish you no more, and
future dread will now be meaningless.
You may not need a spiritual teacher, guidance counselor or motivational speaker to tell you how to erase your
past and move beyond your personal limitations. These
well-meaning human potential gurus can, however, help
you appreciate yourself and offer techniques to improve
your life. If they can help you get out of your concrete boots
and excited about improving your life, they have met their
calling. My calling is to ignite your intuitive intellectual
potential so you can unleash your PowerZone.
I hope the only scratching and sniffing you do is digging deeper into your acorn nature. And if you must cling to
something, hold on to the belief that your intuition is an
unfailing inner compass that will guide your choices and
open the doors to your true purpose in life.
And open the doors I must, because just as a cat has
nine lives, we have multiple intelligences. We are multidimensional beings who possess many aspects of
emotional, mental, physical, spiritual and intuitive intelligence. How we succeed or fail in life is determined by all of
our fully functioning intellectual selves.
14
Paws to Reflect
1. What special qualities do you have that are
different from everyone else and cannot be
replicated?
2. How have you been intuitively hijacked?
3. When you are under stress, what rudimentary,
instinctional impulses do you downshift into to
protect yourself?
4. To what degree do you believe your own
intuition is an unfailing, completely trustworthy
inner compass?
5. What environment best allows you to hear and
listen to internal, instinctual messages?
6. What limitations have you been arguing for and
defending that must now be released through
forgiveness or simply letting go?
15
A few can touch the magic string,

And noisy Fame is proud to win them;
Alas for those that never sing,
But die with all their music in them!
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Chapter 3
Our Multiple
Intellects
The cognitive scientists who think an exploration of (multiple intelligences) has no place inscientific inquiry
have been seduced by the computer as the operative
model of mind, forgetting thatthe brains wetware is
awash in asubstantive puddle of neurochemicals, and
is nothing like the sanitizedsilicon thatfails to
explainhow the mind works.
Daniel Goleman
o the casual observer, cats may seem detached, nonchalant

and a bit disinterested in fulfilling their social
responsibilities when it comes to pleasing people, pet-owners
included. They have an air of arrogance and aloofness, and
give the impression its their way or the highway as they
prance, purr and parade around the house.
17
Why Cats Dont Bark

Their multi-intellectual natures are not fully apparent
until you discover how they, not you, run the house. For
example, they can quickly determine which guests hate cats
and manage to jump in-and-out of their laps several times
during visits, just to emphasize their presence. What makes
cats invariably cuddle next to you in your line of sight
whenever you attempt to read a book in their presence? If
they really want to make their point, theyll lie across the
book itself and expect to be comforted for interrupting your
reading. One of a cats favorite mind games is to jump
quickly on the bed you are making and curl up in the center, or pounce on the sheet you are holding in your
outstretched hands.
How do cats know when to do these things? Their timing is usually impeccable, their playfulness is disarming,
and their control of the situation is absolutely amazing. If
anything gets knocked over or spilled, its the humans fault.
Are cats really that good at manipulation and counter-intelligence? Are they that good at misdirection? Do they know
us that well? I know I speak for all cat owners when I say,
Yes, cats are really that smart! They seem to have multiple
intellects to go along with their multiple lives.
Catnip for the Mind

If we listened to our intellect, we'd never have a love
affair. We'd never have a friendship. We'd never go
into business, because we'd be cynical. Well, that's
nonsense. You've got to jump off cliffs all the time and
build your wings on the way down.
Ray Bradbury
18
Our Multiple Intellects

Howard Gardners extremely influential book, Frames
of Mind, proposed that we have not just one kind of IQ, but
a wide spectrum of intelligences. According to this highlyrespected researcher, we have verbal, mathematical-logical,
spatial, kinesthetic, musical, interpersonal and intrapsychic
intelligences. The operative words in his view of intelligence are a wide spectrum and multiple.
Gardner believes we have multiple intelligences, and so
do I. And Im not the only one who holds this view. Richard
Herrnstein and Charles Murray wrote a controversial book
entitled The Bell Curve, which acknowledges the importance of other kinds of human intelligences besides math
and verbal skills. Aymus Sawaf and Robert Cooper, authors
of Executive EQ, have introduced the concept of emotional
intelligence (EQ). According to the authors, Emerging
research suggests that a technically proficient executivewith a high EQ(will) pick up more readily, more
deftly and more quickly than others conflicts that require
resolution; team and organizational vulnerabilities that need
addressing; hidden opportunities; and the murky, mysterious interactions that seem likely to prove golden and
profitable.
Yale researcher Peter Salovey says we should not see
emotion and intellect as contradictory abilities. One of the
founders of IQ research, E.L. Thorndike, proposed that the
ability to understand others and make good social choices
was in itself an aspect of intelligence. Another Yale psychologist, Robert Sternberg, asserts: People still count IQ,
but IQ doesnt count (as much)We must never lose sight
of the fact that what really matters most in (life) is not (one
kind of) intelligence.
Dr. Paul MacLean has argued that the human brain is
comprised of three distinct sub-brains: the reptilian brain,
the limbic brain and the neocortex.
19
Why Cats Dont Bark

The reptilian or instinctual brain is the oldest and is
steeped in the physiology of survival. It controls the vital
body functions: heart beat, respiration, digestion, temperature, etc. It still functions when a person is brain-dead.
The mammalian or emotional brain is the limbic gray
matter that registers rewards and punishments. It is the seat
of emotion and controls the bodys autonomic nervous
system.
There is an interconnection between the reptilian and
mammalian brains. The reptilian brain is the source of our
instinctual responses and gut reactions, such as fightflight behavior. Our intuitive intelligence has roots in our
instinctual brain, but is processed in our emotional brain.
The third brain is the neocortex, or thinking cap.
Reading, planning, analyzing and decision-making occur
here. The neocortex decides what information we should act
upon or store in our long-term memory. It helps us make
sense of our world.
Sigmund Freud described the necessity to control our
emotional intelligence (although it wasnt called that then)
in his book, Civilization and Its Discontents, when he
observed that society is forced to create rules to subdue
emotional excesses for the good of society. Also, some path
finding research by Joseph LaDoux suggests that various
emotional reactions and memories can occur without any
conscious, cognitive awareness at all.
I believe our intuitive intelligence works much the same
way. It may even be a form of invisible math. Mathematician
Morris Kline, in his delightful book Mathematics: The End
of Certainty, sees mathematics as a series of great intuitions
carefully sifted, refined and organizedinto rigorous, logical
structures. I have often thought of music as a lyrical form
of math. Perhaps our multiple intellects have interchangeable characteristics.
20

Intuition, says Horace and Ava English, is direct and
unmediated knowledge. It involves the immediatecomprehension of complex (information). Researcher Howard
Warren reflects that intuition seems to be spontaneous and
occurswithout any known process of cognition or reflective thinking. So intuition seems to operate on gestalts
(fields of information) and sees beyond the limitations of
rational thinking. It is direct, unfiltered logic.
In my forty years of research on intuition and mental
diversity, I have come to the conclusion that we can add
intuitive intelligence (our gut guidance) to the other kinds
of thinking. Like the other multiple intellects, it is innate
and independent of left-brain, logical thinking. No one
knows exactly how we get intuitions, but we do know when
we get them and how powerful they are in transforming our
lives. If the mind were so simple that the brain could understand it, the brain would be so simple, it couldnt.
This point was reinforced recently in an interview
when the singer, Cher, was asked: What is your greatest
gift? She replied, My brain. The interviewer continued:
What is your greatest curse? Her reply: My brain. How
might this be true for you?
The lopsided scientific interest in rational, logical
thinking over the last forty years is gradually recognizing
our intuitive abilities as the inspiration for innovative and
creative thinking. So the timing for this book is important.
It brings my two chief research interests together: intuition
and life purpose. Our intuitive intelligence sends us mental
faxes (neuro-lightning bolts) to help us solve problems,
make decisions, avoid or take risks and gain insights which
transform untapped potential into peak performance.
All of us from time to time have felt a sense of imminent danger or a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. A sense of
nervous certainty occurs which prompts us to do something or refrain from doing something. These intuitive
21
Why Cats Dont Bark

indicators come to us unannounced. For example, four
months after the Federal Building bombing in Oklahoma
City on April 19, 1995, which killed 168 innocent people,
CNN aired a poignant interview with one of the survivors.
She was a young woman who was learning how to walk on
an artificial leg. She had also lost her two children in the
blast. CNN aired the report to show the nation how the victims were adjusting to a life quite different than what they
had expected a day before the blast.
Out of her shock and continuing despair, the woman
said something that, I am sure, has haunted millions of
Americans who heard the interview. She said she wished
she had followed her instincts that day. She had had a sudden intuition to pick her children up from the day care
facility two floors down and leave the building. She tearfully told the reporter that she had dismissed the intuition as
a silly notion. Thirty minutes later, her world exploded.
I have heard similar stories from the families of the victims of the World Trade Center disaster. Account after
account described intuitive impulses to stay at home or
leave the building that day. Some had acted on their premonitions, others were not accustomed to listening to their
sudden inclinations or gut guidance. I call these intuitive
flashes intuitive markers. These automatic alarms are
deep inclinations that call our attention to potential danger
by warning us about something in advance. I am convinced
that if we valued our intuitive intelligence (our gut brain) as
much as our mathematical and verbal intelligence, we could
protect ourselves better from such catastrophes. We could
also avert another, more wide-spread catastrophe: not
knowing or manifesting our true selves, our acorn nature.
Psychologists are taking intuition more seriously.
Unlike the familiar IQ tests, there is, to date, no simple
paper-pencil test that yields an intuitive intelligence score
and there may never be one. However, if there is one thing
22

I know about psychologists, once they identify something, they want to test that something. Perhaps the
research community will one day test for such things as
hunch acuity, gut feelings accuracy or inclination
proneness. However, new measurement tools, without
numbers or timelines, will be necessary.
Catnip for the Mind

In oneself lies the whole world and if you know how
to look and learn, the door is there and the key is in
your hand. Nobody on earth can give you either the
key or the door to open, except yourself.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
Recent breakthroughs in cognitive research are redefining intelligence testing and expanding the traditional
concept of IQ itself. One lesson we can learn from intuitive
insights is the crucial role they play in helping us navigate
the endless stream of choices we face every day. While
strong intuitions can confuse us and create havoc in our
thinking, not paying attention to them can also be disastrous, especially in weighing life and death decisions.
We must learn to listen to our intuitive intelligence
because change has changed; the velocity of change has
changed. We cant wait for all of the information to arrive
anymore. We need a turbo-charged system of decisionmaking and problem-solving, which I discuss in Chapter
Six, Toxic Logic.
We have many opportunities to listen to our intuition.
Every day we are faced with decisions which affect our destiny: what career to pursue or leave, whom to date or marry,
what fork in the road to take, whether to get on a particular
23
Why Cats Dont Bark

plane, and so on. The answers to all of these important life
decisions require more than rational thinking. Their solutions need as much gut guidance as they do career advice,
road maps or dowries. Formal logic and reasoning alone
will never work for these kinds of decisions. Without intuitive intelligence, rational intelligence is blind.
We have much to learn about intuitive behavior, and I
believe our house pets can teach us a lot about listening to
our gut reactions. In the aftermath of tragedies like the
Oklahoma City bombing and World Trade Center attack,
there have been interesting stories about pets reactions to
their owners deaths. It seems that the invisible bonds between
pets and their owners transcend geographical distance.
Cats, for example, show unmistakable signs of nervousness and distress for which no immediate reason is
evident. It later turns out that their owner experienced an
accident or a fatal injury at precisely the same time the cat
was exhibiting its strange behavior. There are hundreds of
documented cases where cats make unusual sounds such as
howls or guttural meows, or they whine uncontrollably.
Some cats change their sleeping places, maintain silent vigil
near their owners bed, sit in the same window or occupy
the owners favorite chair for days.
These empathic responses by cats reacting to their
owners injury or death some distance away is a kind of
intuitive knowing that springs from the depths of their
intuitive intelligence. These premonitions seem to suggest
that cats, like humans, have a capacity for multiple intelligences. Feline intelligence, then, seems to include abilities
in premonitions and telepathy. The bond between the intuitive nature of pet owners and their pets is the emotional
channel through which intuitive communication is stretched,
not broken, despite geographic separation.
The same bond is present in human-to-human relationships and is made possible through, as yet unexplained,
24

intuitive connections. According to physicists Paul Davies
and John Gribbin, Once two particles have interacted with
one another, they remain linked in some unknown way,
(becoming) parts of the same indivisible system.
If we expand the particle analogy, taking it from
physics and placing it in a psychological framework, we can
refer to each of the various human intelligences as particles
of intellect. Paraphrasing Davies and Gribbin, we can say
that once our multiple intelligences have interacted with
one another, they remain linked in some way, (becoming)
parts of the same indivisible (mental) system.
Our intuitive circuitry, then, is interlinked with our logical wiring, which is connected to our spatial terminals.
Those people who have tuned themselves into their life purpose, their acorn nature, are able to harmonize their
multiple intelligences and keep their circuits static-free.
25
Why Cats Dont Bark
Paws to Reflect
1. How intuitive do you think you are and what
percentage of the time do you listen to your
intuitive markers?
2. Is your logical wiring more developed than
your intuitive circuitry? To your own
satisfaction, examine your actions over the past
three months and determine whether it is logic
or intuition that rules your life.
3. If we could test your gut feeling accuracy,
how high would you score on a scale of 0 to
100? Why?
4. When it comes to assessing your abilities,
which ones do you value the most?
26
Chapter 4
Ignite Your
Intuitive
Intelligence
It is always with excitement that I wake up in the morning
wondering what my intuition will toss up to me.
Jonas Salk
nlike traditional IQ, with a century of research

behind it, intuitive intelligence is a new concept. It
is a different kind of intelligence. In recent years, it is
gaining in respectability largely because psychologists are
recognizing it as a natural mental skill which helps us make
decisions, solve problems, generate creative ideas and even
forecast future events. We are beginning to realize that
intuition is not just a mysterious gift or an accidental
insight.
27
Why Cats Dont Bark

The advances in transpersonal psychologies, brain
research and the remarkable acceptance of Eastern medicine and philosophies have led many researchers to believe
that there are untapped powers and wisdom deep inside of
us. They are beginning to agree that there is something
inside of us that understands who we are, what our purpose
is, and what is necessary for our protection, growth and
development. As psychologist Jerome Bruner wrote in The
Process of Education, The warm praise the scientists lavish on those of their colleagues who earn the label
intuitive is major evidence that intuition is a valuable commodity in science. Eighty-seven of 93 Nobel prize winners
who were interviewed claimed that intuition was primary to
their success.
Our canine and feline friends, Fritz and Freda, would
say its time to define intuition, and my intuition tells me
they are right. Derived from the Latin word intueri, which
means to look uponto see withinto consider or contemplate, Webster defines intuition as quick and ready
insightthe act or process of coming to direct knowledge
without reasoning or inferring. Psychologist Carl Jung calls
it one of the basic psychological functions that explores
the unknown and senses possibilities and implicationsnot
readily apparent. It is unconventional wisdom, or a direct
knowing, that provides sensory feedback and is, in fact, a
sensory fact-finding system. Buckminster Fuller called intuition cosmic fishing. Here are some other definitions:
Intuition is the primary wisdom, the last fact
behind which analysis cannot go. (Emerson)
It is an extrasensory way of knowinga
clairvoyancetelepathy. (Frances Vaughan)
It is a superior way of knowing ultimate truth
without using prior knowledge. (Spinoza)
28
Ignite Your Intuitive Intelligence

Intuition is a suspension of logic due to
impatience. (Rita Mae Brown)
Intuition is reason in a hurry. (Holbrook Jackson)
Intuitions are psychic telegrams from the
subconscious. (G.W. Casper)
Intuition is the mind turning in on itself and
apprehending the result of processes that have
taken place outside awareness. (Philip Goldberg)
Intuition is Gods telephone. (Kenny Loggins)
Intuition is that something in the body
which hears messages and knows how to
respond to them. (Dr. Bernie Siegal)
There are as many definitions of intuition as there are
breeds of cats, but the definitions serve to make a point.
Intuition is difficult to quantify. It applies to a broad range
of human sensory experiences. The good news is all of us
have intuitive abilities. Until recently, many people thought
of intuition as the domain of a privileged few, despite evidence to the contrary. Intuition has been shunned by its
association with Ouija boards and the occult. Millions of
women were once burned at the stake as witches because of
their misunderstood gift of intuition. Now we realize intuition is a reliable cognitive tool within each of us. More
importantly, it is a skill which can be refined and developed.
I am not advocating an impulse revolution which
would only create a world full of greater chaos and confusion. What I am suggesting is that we persist and persevere
with vim and vigor the ultimate manifestation of who we
are. Igniting your intuition will automatically provide you
with the energy, drive, determination and discipline to cre29
Why Cats Dont Bark

ate your destiny. The fulfillment of your dreams and goals
will become so self-rewarding that without conscious will
or effort the patterns of success will become self-sustaining.
You will become spiritually intoxicated.
As you get rid of the emotional cataracts and your
vision becomes clear, you will find the walk upon your path
effortless as you proceed with ease. Fears will dissipate as
you relinquish yourself to a greater cause or your reason for
being. You will feel in sync, not out of touch. You will experience your work as an extension of your self or your very
soul, feeling one with the process of becoming. You will
achieve a level of unconscious competence where excellence and peak performance feels effortless as the energy is
allowed to flow through you.
Perhaps that is why Michael Jordan refers to this state
as being in the flow. Other sports use different buzz
words, although the experience is the same. In golf, it is
referred to as being in the zone. Tiger Woods would qualify. In the current world of musicians, Wynton Marsalis
seems to become one with his instrument, as does any
exceptional musician. The question is, can we all achieve
this supreme level of mastery? I believe the answer is yes,
if we are in sync with our instincts and we learn the mindempowering strategies that provide access to the inner,
unconventional wisdom of our intuition and instinctual
intelligence.
Catnip for the Mind

Intuition becomes increasingly valuable in
the new information society precisely
because there is so much data.
John Naisbitt
30

Estee Lauder, founder of the giant cosmetic company
which bears her name, was famous for her intuitive ability
to pick bestselling perfumes. She could out-predict market
research every time. Wayne Gretsky, famous hockey star,
said he would skate to where he knew the puck would be on
the ice. Linus Pauling, Nobel Prize winner, realized the
shape of the protein molecule when he noticed a string of
paper dolls resembled the shape of a helix.
One fall evening in 1893, James Couzens, a clerk in a
Detroit coal company, passed one of the noisy contraptions
that sputtered down the street. As bystanders laughed and
pointed skeptical fingers at the bizarre, motorized vehicle,
Couzens sensed that the eccentric sitting behind the wheel
knew something more than first impressions dictated. He
bought a hundred shares for a total of $10,000 his life savings. In 1919 Couzens sold his stock in Henry Fords auto
company for $35 million. His hunch to invest all he had
earned him a fortune 25 years later.
These are only a few of the stories of people who followed their hunches. I share many more amazing stories in
the next chapter. The important thing to remember is in
order to ignite your intuition, youve got to recognize the
value of an intuitive hunch when it occurs. Evidence is mounting that intuitions come to us when we have to make important
choices and consider competing options. People who have a
good intuitive sense have these things in common:
They trust their gut reactions. They go with
their feelings even if they dont understand
why they are feeling uneasy, tentative or
unduly excited. They know the reasons will
become clear in the future.
Intuitive people keep records of their intuitive activity. They analyze their insights and
31
Why Cats Dont Bark

hunches to see if a reasonable number have
proven to be good hunches.
They value experiences more than concepts
or theory. Jerome Bruner of Harvard
University says, People who have extensive
familiarity with a particular line of work or
activity appear more often to leap intuitively
into decisions or readily see solutions
which later prove to be appropriate.
Intuitive people do not force intuitive
insights because they know that hunches,
insights and sudden inclinations are not
under conscious control. They do thorough
spadework whenever they face problems and
challenges because they know that the Muse
rewards hard work.
People who trust their intuition know that
dreams are the royal road to the subconscious and a fascinating mental environment
for producing intuitive flashes of insight.
They keep a dream journal and analyze their
dreams every three or four months.
In addition to a rich dream life, intuitive people generally have abundant prayer life as
well. Prayer, meditation and visualization
are all excellent aha generators. Each of
these practices forces you to sit quietly and
take time off from busy work schedules.
Noise chases intuitions away. The best intuitors know it is best to be still and know to
invite intuition.
32

Certain types of physical activity create a
shift in consciousness, which invites intuitions.
Many intuitors engage in aha-producing
activities like: running, walking, swimming,
hiking, gliding, exercising, dancing, gardening, painting, taking a shower, traveling,
vacationing, and fishing. (My parents would
often dance four days a week, including allday marathons. They came home with plenty
of ideas!) It is quite common to experience
intuitive flashes of insight whenever you are
engaged in any of these activities. You dont
need to spend a lot of money or travel to
exotic locations to court the Muse.
Catnip for the Mind
A hunch is creativity trying to
tell you something.
Frank Capra
Sometimes naps and daydreams are wonderful incubators for intuitive insights. Thomas
Edison and John F. Kennedy were famous
for taking naps whenever they were stuck on
a particular problem. In fact, Kennedy took
his naps in a reclined position, which, according to research, stimulates the adrenal glands
and restores energy. Of course, pet owners
arent surprised at nap power at all. Thats
why dogs and cats are so innovative they
sleep a lot!
33
Why Cats Dont Bark

People who are serious about harnessing the power of
their inner wisdom have learned how to ignite their intuitive
intelligence. The specific intuition-friendly environment
may be different but the outcome is the same: Voila! A sudden insight comes which gives them direction and guidance.
Seasoned intuitors are very comfortable with their intuitive
abilities. Lets see what your hunch quotient is, so you
can get a sense of your natural intuitive powers.
Your Hunch Quotient

Check yes or no for each of the following questions.
Yes
No
1. Have you ever had a premonition (when you were

awake or asleep) of an event that occurred shortly
thereafter?
2. Have you ever answered the phone or the doorbell

and instinctively known who was calling or ringing
the doorbell?
3. Have you ever met a person whom youve never met

before and sensed that you had met before?
5. Do you have vivid, colorful dreams?
6. Has the solution to a problem or answer to a

challenging situation ever come to you in a
flash of insight?
7. Have you ever sensed someone staring at you

and found out that you were right?
8. Have you ever thought of someone, only to have

that person contact you unexpectedly?
9. Have you ever had a sudden urge to leave someplace

or not go somewhere, and then discovered it was
in your best interest to follow the urge?
4. Have you ever traveled somewhere or attended a

particular event and thought: Ive done this or
been here before?
34

Yes
No
10. Have you ever taken a chance and helped someone

you didnt know very well, and learned later that
you did the right thing?
11. Did you ever expect the arrival of some piece of

correspondence (check in the mail, gift package,
important announcement) which was actually
delivered on the day of your hunch?
12. Have you ever found something you lost, or helped

someone else find something they lost, on a hunch?
reason, only to find out later that something negative

happened to someone you love?
14. Do you invariably know the correct time (within a

few minutes) without consulting a watch or clock?
15. Do you consistently awake just before your

alarm clock goes off?
16. Have you ever found yourself singing, humming or

whistling a tune, and then turned on the radio and
heard the exact same song playing?
17. Have you ever bought something on a whim at a

yard sale or flea market, and found out later it was
a valuable antique or collectors item?
18. Do you have a good sense of direction in

unfamiliar territory without a map?
19. Have you ever had the feeling that you should save
what you have typed, and then found out later that
it was a good thing you did?
20. Have you ever gotten lost while driving your

car, and followed your hunches until you got
back on the right route?
13. Have you ever felt saddened or depressed for no apparent
35
Why Cats Dont Bark
HQ Score
Total your number of Yes responses and rate
yourself using the following table:
0-5 Yes responses: You tend to rely on logic and
deduction. You are probably skeptical of anything
you cant see, feel, hear, taste or smell. Igniting your
intuition will take some work, especially in the
areas of spontaneity, change, creativity and using
your imagination. (Freda and Fritz both scored
higher than this!)
6-10 Yes responses: You are beginning to appreciate
your intuitive intelligence. This probably isnt the
first book on intuition you have read. You are open
to exploring your intuitive potential, and have some
exciting growth ahead!
11-15 Yes responses: You probably pay attention to
hunches and gut reactions to events in your life.
While you recognize intuitive skills in others, chances
are you fail to appreciate your own intuitive intelligence enough. Begin paying more attention to the
times you hear your intuition, and record the impact
of either following or not following it. You will be
amazed, and strengthen your ability to use your intuitive intelligence to your advantage!
16-20 Yes responses: You already have a highly developed awareness of the role intuition plays in your
life. Your next step is to take your intuitive prowess
seriously, and act on every hunch, premonition and
sudden inclination you feel. Keep a journal of the
results and enjoy the journey.
Performance PLUS
36

This 20-item paper-and-pencil test gives you an overall
feel of your intuitive awareness. It is not meant to be a
rigorous assessment of your intuitive potential or aptitude.
What I hope you gain from it is an increased interest in
developing your intuitive intelligence. Whatever your belief
is about your inner source of power, you have access to this
deep subconscious pool of wisdom that resides in your
acorn nature. It is the seat of your truth and the seat of your
soul. Your intuitive intelligence can summon the answers
from the place that houses your souls code, and help you
live your life fully and with a clear sense of purpose and
direction.
After researching the keys to open the doors of intuition, I realized that the lessons had been learned many
years ago from a book called the Holy Bible. Here are the
steps to getting in sync with your intuitive instincts so you
can raise your Hunch Score.
1. Be ye as children. Be open, curious and attentive. See
the world through the unfiltered eye with the awe and
wonderment of the child.
2. Be still and know. Take time to pray, meditate and listen to your inner guide. Silence is more than golden, it
is essential to our spiritual growth and provides fertile
territory for moments of inspiration and creativity,
which are crucial to thriving in today's competitive
marketplace.
3. Seekand ye shall find. Our eyes must be open to possibilities. We must expect miracles and positive outcomes.
We must also be focused and clear on what it is that we
seek. Be a possibility thinker. The power of positive
expectation is so well stated by the following: "When I
was a boy, my mother said, if you are a soldier, you
37
Why Cats Dont Bark

will be a general; and if you are a priest, you will be the
pope. Instead, I was a painter and became Picasso."
4. Ask and it shall be given. Questions shape our destiny.
Questions also activate the brain into an automatic
retrieval of information and subconscious processes.
It is imperative to first ask "what" questions, which
stimulate visionary, big-picture thinking. Then ask
"why" questions to gain an understanding of purpose
and meaning. "How" questions address the skills necessary for the achievement of your vision.
5. Knock...and the door will be opened. We must be
proactive and take meaningful action. As Jack London
said, "You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go
after it with a club.
6. Oh, ye of little faith! Trust and belief in the intuitive
process only makes it more active and accurate. St.
Augustine said, "Faith is to believe what we have not
seen, and the reward of that faith is to see what we
believe." Research has proven that intuition is more
accurate with a state of positive belief and activity. In
other words, if you don't use it, you lose it!
I believe our intuition is a gift from God. I also believe
that pure intuition is 100% accurate when it does not
become contaminated by cultural override or confused with
worry or wishful thinking. The best way to ignite that purity
is to trust in the divine nature of our intuitive abilities and
have absolute faith that God speaks to us through our intuitive
intelligence. It is through our personal alignment with our
divine nature, our acorness, that we can remain in sync with
our instincts.
38
Paws to Reflect
1. When do most of your intuitive insights come and
under what circumstances?
2. What questions would you like answered by your
hunch log or dream journal?
3. How did you score on Your Hunch Quotient on
pages 46-47? What did you learn about yourself
that you would like to improve?
4. What spadework is ahead of you in terms of
developing your intuitive intelligence?
5. Pure intuition is 100% accurate because it comes
from God. Knowing that your intuitive nature
comes from your divine nature, how can you
increase your trust in your intuitive abilities?
39
If a man is called to be a streetsweeper, he

should sweep streets even as Michelangelo
painted, or Beethoven composed music or
Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep
streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and
earth will pause to say, Here lived a great
streetsweeper who did his job well.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Chapter 5
Listen to Your
Intuitive Nudges
When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone,
and of good cheer say, traveling in a carriage, or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot
sleep; it is on such occasions that ideas flow best and
most abundantly. Whence and how they come, I know not;
nor can I force them.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Sufi master stopped along a busy thoroughfare. He

lit a very bright lamp and then walked some distance
from it before he stopped to light a candle. Then he sat by
the candle, made room for his lovable cat in his lap, and
read a book. His disciples and passersby were confused.
Why dont you read by the bright lamp instead of the flickering candle flame? they questioned. The Sufi master
smiled and explained, The bright lamp attracts all the
moths, leaving me free to read in peace.
41
Why Cats Dont Bark

Idries Shah tells this wonderful story in A Perfumed
Scorpion. This important teaching highlights a special point
in mastering the art of intuitive development. People are
often attracted to brightness, glitz and noise instead of peace
and quiet. Intuitive nudges come to us when we are relaxed,
peaceful and soulful. Our wise acorn self sends insights to
us when we have opted for a few cubic feet of silence.
Observing the world around you, paying attention to
patterns and trends, and listening to your inner voice are
important skills for developing your intuitive intelligence.
An old Egyptian proverb says, The archer hits the mark,
partly by pulling, partly by letting go. When it comes to
intuitive insights, the same logic applies. There seems to
be a direct connection between effort, interest, time-out and
intuitive insights.
Catnip for the Mind

Listen. Make a way for yourself inside yourself. Stop looking in that other way of looking.
Rumi
In my story of the Sufi master which I used to open this

chapter, I included a cat. In many accounts of intuitive people, there appears to be some sort of idiosyncratic preference
or behavior which helps ignite the intuitive insight. For
example, Samuel Johnson claimed he needed a purring cat,
an orange peel and a cup of tea in order to write. Proust
needed a soundproof room. Kipling couldnt write unless he
had jet black ink. John Steinbeck needed the atmosphere of
a bar in Key West. Dickens slept with his bed turned to the
north, believing that magnetic forces would pull ideas into
42
Listen to Your Intuitive Nudges

his sleeping noggin. Some of Abraham Lincolns insights
came while he chopped wood.
I was taught lessons in intuition and trusting an inner
guide when my father taught us how to dance. My parents
were hailed as the king and queen of polka dancing and
exhibited the essence of "flow." The synergy they created as
they graced the dance floor mesmerized those who chose to
straddle the sidelines. Dancing was not a choice, it was an
essential, for it seemed we were dancing before we were
walking. When given our daily dance lesson, rule number
one was: Don't look at your feet! Actually, it was the ONLY
rule, and we all are quite agile when the music plays.
Those instructions were words of wisdom far beyond
the dance floor. They taught me about personal alignment,
body-mind-spirit, what "flow" was before I could spell it,
and how to be in sync with my instincts. It also gave me a
dose on how to develop unconscious competence. It taught
me that by having fun we release tension and negativity,
which obstruct positive intention and peak performance.
Catnip for the Mind

We dont receive wisdom; we
must discover it for ourselves
after a journey that no one can
take for us or spare us.
Marcel Proust
Stepping out of the hustle and bustle (bright light) and

into a relaxing environment (candle light) has rewarded
many people with breakthrough moments. In those magical
moments, everything falls into place. If we pay attention to the
subtle intuitive lightning bolt, the puzzle is complete.
43
Why Cats Dont Bark

Here are a few more stories about people who preferred
to be with a candle instead of the bright lights.
Emerson took time out each day and meditated near
brooks or streams. For Darwin, it wasnt the road to Damascus,
but a carriage ride through the countryside that inspired his
natural selection idea.
Norman Vincent Peale cleared his head when he visited
mountain tops for relaxing afternoon breaks. He often
commented that there was nothing like peace-drenched
mountains in their deep, sun-bathed, pensive valleysOur
minds clear and our ability to think intuitively returns.
George Burns visited Gracies grave every day for solace
and inspiration. Winston Churchill recommended painting
as a way to court insights.
In 1947 Elisabeth Kubler-Ross visited Maidanek, a Polish
concentration camp. Inside the barracks which once housed
hundreds of thousands of prisoners, Elisabeth could see the
graffiti on the walls. The crude graffiti was a graphic signature
of human pathos and tragedy. Suddenly she spied something
that touched her deeply. Scratched into the wooden beams
along one section of a sterile wall were images of butterflies
symbols of hope and resurrection.
Beautifully exemplified in the desperate and brave lives
of those concentration camp victims, waiting for a miracle,
yet brutalized at the hands of monsters, was the symbolism
of hope. For one brief moment in time, a young Swiss
womans soul was touched by the significance of the butterfly
symbolism. In a flash of insight, she adopted butterflies to
symbolize her lifes work.
Newly wed cartoonist, Walter Lantz, took his wife to an
idyllic cottage at Sherwood Lake, California, for their honeymoon. To their dismay, a persistent and obnoxious
woodpecker began to stir up quite a racket. Despite the
Lantzs valiant and ingenious efforts to frighten the bother44

some creature away, the daring woodpecker continued his
noisy assault on the roof of the cottage.
The Lantzs named the feathered intruder Woody
Woodpecker, and before the honeymoon was over, Walter
had made preliminary sketches of the noisy tapper. A spontaneous fit of laughter by Walters wife, Grace, during their
memorable honeymoon produced the wacky laugh that has
become Woodys patented five-note cartoon signature.
Catnip for the Mind

When one door closes, another opens, but
we often look so long and regretfully upon
the closed door, we do not see the ones which
open for us.
Alexander Graham Bell
Levi Strauss felt that a local woodcutter needed an

extra-strong pair of duck-twilled trousers. The new trousers
quickly attracted a booming working-class clientele. The
heavy blue denim 501s were born.
Candido Jacuzzis intuition helped him introduce a
whirlpool therapeutic bath for home use. His son suffered
from Rheumatoid arthritis and he felt he could relieve his
sons pain using hydrotherapy. The Jacuzzi whirlpool bath
was an instant success.
Csikszentmihalyi, in his groundbreaking book, Flow,
talked about the power of flow the state of being
completely in alignment and in sync with our core being, so
that our efforts seem effortless, purposeful and timely.
Successful athletes and musicians such as Wynton Marsalis,
Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan and Sarah Hughes are examples
of the power of "flow" and having fun. In fact, Sarah
45
Why Cats Dont Bark

Hughes said it all as a very young child. When Sarah
Hughes won the gold medal at the 2002 Olympics, they
showed a video tape where Sarah, at age six, told the world
that when she grew up she was going to go to the Olympics
and win the gold medal. Note that Sarah did not say she
would TRY to go to the Olympics, but that she WOULD go
to the Olympics. Now that's confidence and commitment.
Sarah also exhibited a state of "positive knowing" which is
a deeper level of conviction than just positive thinking,
when she said, "I can't wait for it to happen." No doubt in
this girl's mind! To the degree that we are totally positive,
there can be no negativity. My question to you is: What
would you be doing, if you knew you could not fail?
One of my favorite stories about intuition shows how a
single hunch can help us move beyond tragedy and defeat.
Right before graduation, a young French Naval officer
who had just qualified for flight school was seriously
injured in an automobile accident, sabotaging his dream of
flying. For eight months he struggled to recover from his
life-threatening injuries. Doctors recommended amputation
of his paralyzed arm, but he refused.
His flying days were over, of course, so he took to the
sea for physical therapy on his useless arm. In the process,
he experimented with swimming and diving techniques. He
became so absorbed in aquatic healing experiments that he
found he needed more time in the water. He created masks
from inner tubes and snorkels from garden hoses. Fueled by
boundless curiosity and an irrepressible spirit, Jacques
Cousteau felt he should invent a career that involved underwater exploration and study. Cousteau successfully rehabilitated
his arm, and as a result, invented such water-related paraphernalia as: turbo-sail windships, underwater cameras,
electric sea scooters, a small submarine, sea masks, snorkels,
aqualungs, undersea research stations and hundreds more.
46

As all of these cases illustrate, intuition cannot be
ordered, commanded, contrived or predicted. We simply
have to be ready for it. Anti-intuitive attitudes like skepticism, pessimism, fear of change, intolerance of ambiguity
and uncertainty, rigidity, excessive trust in logic, inflexibility, and a resistance to rest all conspire to push your intuitive
intelligence deeper into your subconscious. Many of us,
says researcher Philip Goldberg, work against intuition by
taking ourselves, our work, our dilemmas and our problems
too seriouslyPlayfulness and a certain appreciation for
absurdity favor intuition.
Catnip for the Mind

(We are) most nearly (ourselves) when we
achieve the seriousness of a child at play.
Heraclitus
Rest, quiet and relaxation siphon off the busy chatter of

daily distraction and point the way to hear our inner wisdom
which seeks conscious expression. Our intuitive weather
is dependent on our inner calm, and like our pets, does not
like loud, obnoxious noises.
Listening to intuitive nudges takes practice. You have to
slow down long enough to catch up to yourself. We can
learn a lesson from cats who have made an art out of snoozing. Cats have a built-in snooze alarm that allows them to
doze, but awaken quickly. They have a third eyelid (the
translucent nictitating membrane) which is a thin membrane
that picks up the merest shadow that crosses it, sending the
cat into alert readiness. Thats how Freda and her feline
cousins can go from zero to sixty in a few seconds.
47
Why Cats Dont Bark

We humans dont have a third eyelid, but we do have
what the Eastern religions and ancient philosophers call a
Third Eye (spiritual eye) in the center of our forehead
between the eyebrows. It is the center of our intuition and
the psychic connection for our intuitive intelligence. Jesus
spoke of the spiritual eye, saying, When thine eye is single,
thy whole body is full of light (Luke 11:34).
When we listen to our inner signals, we can hear the
world around us in magical ways. The following wellknown story illustrates the power of listening to your
intuitive intelligence:
A man and woman were strolling along a crowded
sidewalk in a downtown business area. Suddenly one
of them exclaimed, Did you hear that meow?
They both stopped and listened intently. There it is
again. Didnt you hear it? asked the one who heard
the kitten a second time.
How can you hear that kittens meow in this frenzied
city?
The companion, who was a veterinarian-turned animal rights advocate, smiled but did not explain. She
simply took a quarter out of her purse and dropped it
on the sidewalk, causing a dozen people to look
around for the loose change.
We hear, she said, what we listen for.
Learning how to tune in to your real self, your higher
self, will bring you unbelievable balance and awareness,
allowing your inner intuitive light to brighten every aspect
48

of your being. So keep one eye peeled for novelty, for that
something extra that is not immediately recognizable by the
five ordinary senses. Your patience and focused practice are
necessary to achieve cat-like awareness of the world around
you.
Catnip for the Mind

One's mind has a way of making itself up in
the background, and it suddenly becomes
clear what one means to do.
A. C. Benson
49
Why Cats Dont Bark
Paws to Reflect
1. To what degree are you attracted to brightness,
glitz and noise instead of peace and quiet?
2. In what ways do you commit "soul sabotage"
of your own intuitive abilities?
3. How tuned in are you to your inner voice?
4. If you could change one thing about yourself
that would guarantee you a lifetime of success,
what would you change and why?
50
Chapter 6
Toxic Logic
I did not arrive at my understanding of the fundamental
laws of the universe through my rational mind. The intellect has little to do on the road to discovery. There comes
a leap in consciousness, call it intuition or what you will,
and the solution comes to you.
Albert Einstein
cat-loving couple spared no effort taking care of

their two-year-old Tabby. They spoiled the cat to no
end. However, they were tired of letting her in and out of the
house whenever she wanted to roam the neighborhood. The
couple decided to install a small cat door in the kitchen
door, so Tabby could come and go as she pleased without
bothering them. Several months later, when Tabby had kittens, her owners proudly cut a second, smaller hole in the
door.
Edward deBono tells this light-hearted story in his
book, New Think. He uses it to illustrate how our thinking
51
Why Cats Dont Bark

can be too sequential and logical at times, causing us to
make inappropriate and even absurd judgments.
Another quick story, which involves a frightened lab
psychologist, shows what happens when our logic leads to
false assumptions. It appears in William Haneys thoroughly
interesting book, Communication and Interpersonal Relations.
According to Haney, a psychologist had been keeping his
experimental white mice in the attic of his universitys psychology building. One afternoon, the psychologist discovered
that several of the mice had gotten out of their cages. Some
of them were dead and partly eaten. He immediately
recalled that several months earlier, a couple of students had
reported seeing wild rats in the building. They had set traps,
but were not successful in catching anything.
Realizing the danger the wild rats represented, the psychologist raced downstairs to retrieve a tennis racket he had
noticed earlier. When he returned to the attic, tennis racketweapon in hand, he saw to his dismay a wild gray rat sitting
directly in front of one of the cages. The rat appeared to be
trembling. The psychologist took a few steps toward the
rodent to improve his aim, then hurled the tennis racket at
the defiant rat. When the rat did not move, the psychologist
became angry and threw a book at the bold creature. (What
an awful way to treat a book, dont you think?) When the rat
still didnt budge, the infuriated psychologist stamped his
feet, flung his arms and made all of the noise he could as he
charged the rat only to discover that the rat was a crumpled piece of gray paper.
His prior belief about the existence of wild rats running
amok contributed to his assumption that the harmless gray
piece of paper was a cannibalistic rat. He had initially
expected to see healthy, caged white mice. When he
encountered the dead mice outside their cage, he naturally
assumed they were killed and eaten by their wild gray
cousins. His deductive intelligence leaped to the conclusion
52
Toxic Logic
that the crumpled gray paper must be one of those renegade
wild rats.
In this seeming innocuous self-deception lies one of the
most fascinating and perhaps awesome aspects of human
nature: We see what we expect to see, and what we expect
to see is what the rational mind does to eliminate or reduce
ambiguity and uncertainty. To make some kind of sense out
of our experience, we seek immediate closure to our problems, even if that closure is delusional.
Because we are literally bombarded with stimuli, we
select what we choose to pay attention to, and base our
assumptions on the data we interpret from our five senses.
In human behavioral terms, the eye can handle approximately five million bits of information per second. So
selection is inevitable and necessary.
Catnip for the Mind

The eye of a human being is a microscope, which
makes the world seem bigger than it really is.
Kahlil Gibran
All of us see through selective perceptual filters. The

problem is many people are like the lab psychologist I
mentioned earlier, who reacted on false assumptions. As
Howard Gardner, in his groundbreaking book Frames of
Mind, warns us:
Little by little, preoccupation with method, technique
and procedure gains in subtle dominance over the
whole processHow it is done becomes more important than whether it is done. Means triumph over
ends. Form triumphs over spirit. Method (and logic)
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Why Cats Dont Bark

are enthroned. (People) become prisoners of their
proceduresand their (own) obstacles to their goals.
This is not to say that reason, practicality and logic do
not have a proper place in our thinking process. They most
certainly do. We would be lost without rational thought. If
we lacked the ability to think rationally, we couldnt function very well in most situations because we would have
difficulty thinking clearly enough to solve even the simplest
of problems. Our decision-making ability would be severely
impaired. We need to have a critical eye when it comes to
organizing and planning our life experiences.
The word critical comes from the Greek word
kritikos, which means to question, to make sense of, to
analyze. Rational and critical thinking aid us in reaching the
best solutions to our problems and human dilemmas.
However, it takes both critical thinking and intuitive
intellect to help us synthesize our experience so we can see
through clear lenses to make sense of the world in which
we live.
For example, when people are presented with what
behavioral researchers Weisberg and diCamillo call The
Charlie Problem, they make immediate assumptions and
generalizations based on initial logical judgments. The
Charlie Problem goes something like this:
Tom came home and found Charlie dead on the floor
and Mary in the same room. On the floor beside
Charlie was some broken glass, a puddle of what
looked like water, and a phone that was off the hook.
How did Charlie die?
It is amazing how the majority of people interpret this
story. Most people assume that all three subjects in the scenario are human, and that the pieces of glass and water
came from a drinking glass or bottle, presumably broken
54
Toxic Logic
over Charlies head (or Marys, depending on your point of
view). The phone off the hook suggests that perhaps Charlie
(or Mary) had discovered an intruder (you pick the intruder)
and was attempting to call for help when he/she was victimized by a blow to the head.
To be fair, these assumptions follow logically from the
way The Charlie Problem is presented. Each character
has a human name; however, no information provided suggests that the characters are human beings. Letting first
impressions dictate your course of thought, without considering alternative scenarios, is what I call toxic logic. Its the
kind of impulse thinking which comes with blinders. People
who think out-of-the-box consider the possibility that the
two characters Charlie and Mary may not be human at
all. A more intuitive solution goes something like this:
Mary, a cat, knocked over a small fishbowl which fell,
knocking the phone off the hook. The fishbowl shattered as
it hit the floor. Charlie, a goldfish, suffocated from lack of
oxygen. Mary is still stalking the noisy telephone, deciding
between the insistent buzzing noise and the tasty treat of a
goldfish, when Tom enters.
Catnip for the Mind

Feelings are not supposed to be logical. Dangerous
is the man who has rationalized his emotions.
David Borenstein
I included this chapter on the negative effects of logic

so you could see how assumptions and faulty judgments can
handcuff our intuitive intelligence. As far as I know, there is
no way to face uncertainty and the unknown with all of the
answers readily available. There will probably never be a
55
Why Cats Dont Bark

time when we have the luxury of having every conceivable
piece of information at our disposal. Waiting for all the
information to surface before making intelligent and
informed decisions is like waiting to hear cats bark and dogs
meow neither is going to occur.
Catnip for the Mind

There are two sorts of curiosity -- the momentary and the permanent. The momentary is
concerned with the odd appearance on the surface of things. The permanent is attracted by
the amazing and consecutive life that flows on
beneath the surface of things.
Robert Lynd
Human curiosity, intuition, practicality and logic are

the fulcrums of personal and professional achievement.
They are the revitalizing forces for converting raw human
energy and potential into sound judgments and creative
ideas. Managing our logical side and our intuitive nature
will take all of the cunning, patience and open-mindedness
we can muster. Sometimes we will have to make tough, gutwrenching decisions. Our thinking will have to be precise,
accurate and logical at times. It may need to be rational,
realistic and regimented. But if we are to be fully intellectual beings, if we are to experience those leaps in
consciousness that Albert Einstein believed are necessary
for bringing solutions to us, we will need to develop our
intuitive nature as well.
Many of these leaps are, in fact, intuitive connections
that smooth out the rough edges in the reasoning process.
Oftentimes we analyze something, only to have a sponta56
Toxic Logic
neous hunch or insight that helps us leap to another track
entirely which shows us an alternative that we had not previously considered. Sometimes we decide, for no apparent
reason, to move in another direction. Other times we sense
that something just doesnt feel right, so we change direction or stop to consider our next steps.
Decision-making and problem-solving are usually portrayed as straight line, rational steps which lead to the right
solution every time. The formula goes something like this:
define the problem; set objectives; gather information; redefine the problem if you have to; modify objectives; gather
more information; identify alternatives; test for the best
solutions; evaluate consequences; choose best solution;
implement the best solution; monitor results, etc.
Unfortunately, when this process is followed too
mechanically, it can lead to what I call intuitive suicide,
caused by the kind of mental rigidity that leads to paralysis
by analysis a.k.a. toxic logic.
Catnip for the Mind

Choice of attention - to pay attention to this and
ignore that - is to the inner life what choice of
action is to the outer. In both cases, a man is
responsible for his choice and must accept the
consequences, whatever they may be.
W. H. Auden
I am not suggesting that we disregard critical thinking

or ignore data collection and analysis. What I am suggesting is that rigorous rationality and healthy logic actually
feed the intuitive mind by giving it the information it needs
57
Why Cats Dont Bark

to draw inferences, connections and associations. Our intuitive intelligence uses facts as if they are the pin placements
in a pinball machine by ricocheting off each pin (fact) to
form new perspectives which lead to insights. (If youve
ever seen a cat bat a ball around on the floor, youve seen a
live version of the pinball effect!)
Psychologist Philip Goldberg, author of The Intuitive
Edge, warns us: We are told to formally plan and outline
each step from problem to solution. But in reality, problems
are often ill defined, causes are unidentifiable, goals are
abstract, and the routes to them are fogbound. Imposing a
predetermined or arbitrary structure can often prevent the
intuitive mind from operating freely and finding a better way.
Jack Schwartz has a theory that at the moment of indecision, there is simultaneously a solution. However, it may
take years for us to discover that awareness and act on it.
The result is learned helplessness or mediocrity. People stay
confused and unfulfilled, victimized by toxic logic. That
happens when we take the maxim look before you leap to
absurd extremes. Sometimes we just have to take an intuitive leap, trusting that the net will appear.
58
Toxic Logic
Paws to Reflect
1. Recall a situation in which you cut a
second, smaller hole in the door to solve a
problem. What important life lesson did you
learn from that experience?
2. Metaphorically speaking, when was the last
time you attacked a crumpled piece of gray
paper to rid yourself of a pesky problem?
How often have you made similar mistakes?
3. When was the last time you were a prisoner
of procedure and what did you do about it?
4. How courageous are you at facing uncertainty
and the unknown without readily available
answers?
59
Your most brilliant ideas come in a flash,

but the flash comes only after a lot of hard
work. Nobody gets a big idea when he is
not relaxed and nobody gets a big idea
when he is relaxed all the time
Edward Blakeslee
Chapter 7
Dreams Your
Intuitive Mirror
If we meditate on a dream sufficiently long and thoroughly if we take it about with us and turn it over and
over something almost always comes of it. This somethingis a practical and important hint which showsin
what direction the unconscious is leading us. Carl Jung
veryone dreams. A normal nights sleep is always

filled with periods of rapid eye movement (REM)
which signals dreaming. Normal sleep in all human beings
follows the same rhythms. These natural rhythms run in
cycles called circadian rhythms, a biological process which
occurs regularly every 24 hours.
These rhythms affect our body temperature, heart rate,
blood pressure, blood cell count, kidney function, respiration, metabolism and many other bodily functions. One of
61
Why Cats Dont Bark

these rhythms, REM, makes the dreamer appear to be
watching something beneath rapidly moving eyelids. Most
of our vivid dreams happen during REM sleep, which
occurs in four-to-five 90-minute cycles every night.
Some people claim they dont dream, but in reality they
simply are unable to recall the dreams they experience. A
few individuals have almost complete recall of their dreams
and are able to report every detail. Most of us remember a
few sketchy remnants of our nocturnal videos, which are
called dream fragments. We sense that our dreams have
something very interesting to say to us. This sense of something special about our dream life comes from our intuitive
intelligence. It is telling us to pay attention to our dreams. A
whole new world of self-awareness opens up to us once we
allow our intuitive intelligence to speak to us through our
dreams.
Catnip for the Mind

Reality is wrong. Dreams are for real.
Tupac Shakur
The general view held by dream researchers the world

over is that dreams have meaning, even though some may
come to us distorted and seem unintelligible. They are messages (intuitions) from the depths of our personality,
psychic faxes from our authentic acorn self. These REM
intuitions are one of the chief sources of internal information and guidance about who we really are and what we can
achieve if we pay attention. They penetrate the veneer of
our social and cultural environments and give us glimpses
of what we need to do to become more like ourselves.
62
Dreams Your Intuitive Mirror

There is another aspect or cycle of sleep which I must
touch on lightly, because it relates to intuition. In addition
to REM sleep, we enter into periods of NREM sleep (nonREM dreams), which is not characterized by jittery eyes.
Oftentimes there is no eye movement at all. Researchers
have found something very interesting about NREM sleep.
It has been shown that NREM dreams tend to be verbal,
ruminative and intellectual dreams. Dream researchers have
asked NREM sleepers whether anything had passed
through their mind during their light sleep, and most
admitted they had been thinking about something or that
they had received some kind of important message in
their dream.
Experimenters have not gotten a similar reaction from
REM sleep dreamers. Wakened from deep REM sleep,
dreamers tend to report they are doing something or
watching events unfold. They have more action-filled,
adventurous dreams than the NREM sleepers. It is widely
accepted that the rapid eye movement which occurs during
REM sleep indicates that REM dreamers really are watching and looking around at something in their dreams.
During NREM sleep, it appears we are capable of
learning things in our sleep and receiving solutions to problems. There are many interesting examples of dreams doing
just that bringing solutions to lifes problems. Id like to
share just a few.
Robert Louis Stevenson dreamed the plot of Doctor
Jekyll and Mister Hyde. Imaginary brownies appeared in
his dream and helped him write the plot. Senator Chauncey
Depew, who gave Theodore Roosevelts nomination speech
for the governorship of New York, had received his entire
speech after he fell asleep on his verandah.
Chemist Friedrich August Kekul worked for years
analyzing structural theories of the carbon atom and its
compounds. One night, sitting in an armchair in front of his
63
Why Cats Dont Bark

fireplace, he fell asleep and dreamed of the formula for benzene. In Kekuls own words:
I dozed offThe atom danced before my eyesThe
smaller groups remained in the background. My inner
eye saw long rows, densely joined, everything in
motion, contorting like snakesOne of the snakes
took hold of its own tail and whirled derisively before
my eyes. I woke up as if I had been struck by lightning.
Albert Einstein recounted that the idea for his Theory
of Relativity came to him in a dream. He saw himself riding
on a sled. As the sled accelerated, going faster and faster
until it approached the speed of light, the stars began to be
distorted, producing many colors and patterns before his
inner eye.
Edgar R. Burroughs got the idea for his Tarzan of the
Apes stories from a dream. Renowned mystery writer,
Agatha Christie, got the characters and many of her plots
from dreams. Jack Nicklaus changed his golf grip as a result
of one of his dreams, and improved his waking golf game
by ten strokes. Psychologist Carl Jungs dreams helped him
produce his theory of the collective unconscious.
Another influential psychiatrist, Fritz Perls, developed
a dream recall strategy called the empty chair as a result
of one of his dreams. The idea is to place two chairs facing
each other and then sit in one of them. You are to look at the
empty chair and hold a question/answer session with it.
Psychologists today have expanded on Perls original dream
recall intent and use this method to help patients deal with
anger, confrontation, resentment, self-doubt and many other
personal issues.
Several of Mother Teresas dreams showed her where
to go to get much needed funds for her ministry. Edgar
Cayce was called the sleeping prophet because of his
ability to dream specific remedies for peoples physical ail64

ments. Carl Sagan often commented that his dreams
brought him clues and answers to important astronomical
questions. Through dreams, Walt Disney saw avenues to
help him get out of one of his bankruptcies. Farrah FawcettMajors, the popular actress of Charlies Angels, had
dreams during her TV series and off-Broadway plays that
helped soothe her emotional wounds.
Even nightmares come to guide us through problems
and difficulties. A nightmare sends us a message that is
vivid and memorableit is essentially saying, Pay attention to this! A perfect example comes from the experience
of Elias Howe. His original idea was to invent a sewing
machine that duplicated the motions of his wifes hands as
she stitched a pair of his trousers. Idea after idea failed, and
his frustration mounted. Over the next two painstaking
years, Elias Howe experimented with various machine
designs. In every case, however, he had difficulty with the
eye placement in the needles stem. The answer came to the
weary inventor in a fitful nightmare.
Howe dreamed that he had been kidnapped by a band
of savages who threatened his life. As the spears of the savages descended upon him, Howe noticed that each spear
had eye-shaped holes close to the spear tips. Just before he
was poked by the razor sharp spears, he awoke. Howe
leaped out of bed, ran excitedly over to his wifes sewing
machine, and examined the needle point. He knew exactly
where to place the eye of the needle. In April of 1845, he
secured his patent and on September 10, 1846 began selling
his sewing machine.
At the level of dreams, we are all one. Dreaming is a
universal human phenomenon which unites us all, even
across the boundaries, barriers and limitations associated
with age, culture, social class, religion, political systems,
wealth and poverty. Dreams remind us of how much work
we need to do to improve ourselves. No matter who we are,
65
Why Cats Dont Bark

they come to us to remind each of us of our oakness, our
own uniqueness, of the inseparable relationship our deep
self has with our Creator. From her own well-developed
acorn nature, Mother Teresa said it best: We are all pencils
in the hand of a writing God, who is sending love letters to
the world.
Catnip for the Mind

If a little dreaming is dangerous, the cure for
it is not to dream less but to dream more, to
dream all the time.
Marcel Proust
I hope you are one of those people who wants to take
your dreams more seriously. There are many good dream
books in the marketplace today which are excellent
sources for igniting your interest in dreams. The books you
will find in bookstores will only get you started. If you are
really serious about dreamwork, take a class or two at your
local college or university, or purchase a textbook from a
university that offers classes in dream analysis and interpretation.
In the meantime, you may want to use the dream appreciation hints that follow to interpret the dream you had last
night or the ones you will have tonight or that persistent
dream that continues to show up periodically during your
sleep cycle. Discover what these faxes from your subconscious are telling you.
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A Dozen Dream Appreciation Hints

1. Recognize that the content in every dream is sent
to you to help correct, modify or mend a behavior,
attitude or action that is getting in the way of your
soul growth.
2. Interpret dreams literally at first, by examining signs
of objective truths such as warnings, reminders,
health issues, eating habits, relationships, etc. Then
look for deeper, more metaphorical and symbolic
meanings.
3. Consider the relationship of the dreams theme, if
one is apparent, to some event or preoccupation you
have experienced lately.
4. Take note of the emotional tone of the dream and its
relationship to your current situation.
5. Realize that recurrent dreams are repetitive warnings
to resolve long-standing issues.
6. Because they come from your acorn nature, all
dreams come to expand, heal and transform us, not
to diminish or frighten us.
7. Believe that the best interpreter of your dreams is
your higher self your own unfailing guru within.
8. Realize that you dream every night, whether you
remember them or not.
9. Appreciate the fact that each of your dreams has several levels of meanings.
10. Recognize that a series of dreams, or dream fragments, which occur during the same nights sleep
have a unifying theme.
11. Nightmares usually indicate poor or inadequate diet.
They are also serious messages from your real self to
clean up your act NOW.
12. Dreams are filled with symbolism and have a language all their own. You can improve your dream
interpretation by learning some of the universal
meanings of the symbolic language.
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Why Cats Dont Bark
Paws to Reflect
1. When is the last time you dreamed in color?
2. What can you learn from your most vivid
dream or nightmare?
3. If the next dream you dreamed predicted your
future, what would you dream?
4. What recurring themes seem to be present in the
majority of your dreams? What unconscious need
might those themes be expressing?
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Chapter 8
Liquid Intuition
Each morning,all of us come awake by way of dream
thievingSystematically, but quite subliminally, we steal
from ourselves every (dream) remnant. We have all
learned to carry out this exercise in self-impoverishment
with precision andthoroughness. The alarm rings, and
instantly an axe falls across the continuum of consciousness, sharply dividing awake from sleep. For most of us
the dreams are gone (in an instant). Theodore Roszak
call insights that come to us through our dreams liquid

intuition. They flow into our sleeping consciousness
from the deep well of our acorn nature, and seep into our
dreams, bringing us reflections of ourselves. In a very real
sense, our intuitions are liquid gold because they bring us a
rich load of psychic deposits from our buried natural selves.
This stream of consciousness has a language all its
own. Our dreams are filled with universal symbols and sensory impressions which serve as clues for enriching our
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Why Cats Dont Bark

evolving personality. Although many of our dreams have a
universal language, their interpretation varies in light of our
individual differences and life experience. Based on this
universal language, there are a number of themes which
seem common to the majority of people the world over.
The insights we gain from each of these major themes
are significant barometers for our continued growth and
development. All of us have, at one time or another,
dreamed of falling or being pursued; flying or drowning;
dying or traveling to an exotic location; being late for an
important engagement; or being unable to remember something extremely important, such as test questions or the
words to a speech. Some of the themes occur in frightening
circumstances; others take us to peaceful or joyful settings.
They come as nocturnal flashes of color and movement. The messages they send us may last seconds or
minutes. Each dream fragment rushes by, mouse-like,
across our mental screen. If we dont do something to
catch the dreams content, we will lose the message our
inner guru is trying to send us. Weve got to be quick as a
cat to capture the dream material before it gets away.
Experienced dream catchers pounce on their dreams
as expertly as Freda might pounce on a mouse. Just as cats
are equipped to hunt at night, we can equip ourselves to
recall our dreams by pouncing on these nocturnal flashes
with a few well-timed dream recall techniques. In order to
capture fast moving dream material, we humans have to
have special night vision of our own. Id like to draw an
analogy between human night vision and cat vision.
The marvels of feline vision have to do with the cats
ability to see in very dim light conditions, which is important for nocturnal hunters, and their incredible ability to
detect motion and distance, the purr-fect skill to have to
track and pounce on unsuspecting prey. The night vision
cats enjoy is made possible by some rather unique evolu70
Liquid Intuition
tionary wiring. A special layer of cells behind their retina
enables cats to see objects in darkened conditions with laser
accuracy.
We are no match physically for cats when it comes to
seeing in the dark. When light such as a flashlight or headlight hits the back of our eyes, we reflect red from our blood
vessels, which limits our ability to see objects in the dark.
Cat eyes, on the other hand, reflect a golden or green flash
created by these special layers of cells called tapetum
lucidum. But we are more than a match mentally and intuitively when it comes to seeing important dream material in
the dark.
Catnip for the Mind

All (people) dream: but not equally. Those
who dream by night in the dusty recesses of
their minds wake in the day to find that it
was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are
dangerous, for they may act their dream
with open eyes, to make it possible.
T. E. Lawrence
Of course, having the ability to recall dreams and the

skill to effectively do so can be two different things. As
Sigmund Freud wrote in The Interpretation of Dreams,
people oftentimes forget what they dream for two reasons:
they either dont have the interest or the courage to recall
something that might lead to self-improvement, or the
memory of a dream may be repressed and prevented from
coming into conscious awareness by one of the dreamers
defense mechanisms such as denial.
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Why Cats Dont Bark

Erich Fromm, in his book The Forgotten Language,
gives us a little more insight:
if all our dreams were pleasant phantasmagories,
we might feel friendlier toward them. But many leave
us in an anxious moodothers disturb us (because)
they do not fit the person we are sure we areRather
than be confronted with such overwhelming proof of
the limitations of our understanding, we accuse dreams
of not making sense.
Those who fail to recall their dreams are missing out on
a very important and enlightening part of their inner life,
and are negatively affecting their psychological growth and
development. Psychological tests show that so-called nonrecallers may be reluctant to remember their dreams
because they may lack the courage to face the responsibilities of their own surging growth impulse, which
accompanies their heightened self-awareness. According to
dream researcher, Anne Faraday, non-recallers are less willing to confront this dimension of experience. Some call it
self-awareness, which manifests a close interest in their
inner life.
Dreams, as we have seen, are psychic telegrams from
our subconscious self to spur us into action. Just as we are
selective about the facts and perceptions we allow into our
conscious awareness during daytime hours, we appear to
censor dream material too. We censor dream input for the
same reasons we censor waking stimuli we fear knowing
ourself. We are hesitant about self-knowledge because we
are anxious about self-development and the courage change
requires of us.
It is important to remember that dreams tend to be an
elusive phenomenon. Dreams are liquid. They flow through
our conscious grasp quickly and without warning. They
fade as fast as they come unless we are prepared to capture
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Liquid Intuition
them in our waking thoughts. Dream researcher Arthur
Koestler was so impressed with our dreams vanishing act
qualities that he called it oneirolysis, or dream dissolution.
Capturing important dream material is essential for
understanding our true nature. Dream recall helps us access
our true colors. Recall is not so much a mechanism for
helping us discover who we are, but to recover who we are.
It would be a great mistake to see dreams as mental images
which bring only unpleasant material to us. Some psychologists and psychotherapists have done a disservice to the
therapeutic value of dreams by concentrating solely on the
negative and frightening associations found in dream material. Frightened by what their dreams may reveal about
themselves, many people hesitate to recall their dreams.
Catnip for the Mind

Nothing contains more of (our) own worth than
(our) dreams! Nothing belongs to (us) so much!
Substance, form, duration, actor, spectator in these
human comedies (we) act as (our) complete selves.
Friedrich Nietzsche
People are also victims of what I call cultural override, which creates a bias and misperception of intuitive
information. Cultural override comes from parental and societal messages that create psychological clutter and debris
which distract us from our true purpose and life mission.
These same societal messages derail us from our personal alignment with our intuitive abilities, whether they
come to us in dreams or hunches.
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Why Cats Dont Bark

One of my favorite stories about peoples misconception of dreams is illustrated in the famous cartoon strip,
Peanuts, in which Charles Schultzs two main characters,
Charlie Brown and Lucy, are playing the game of psychiatrist and patient. (Lucys consultation fee of 5 is a far cry
from the fees charged by my colleagues!) Charlie Brown
asks his psychotherapist friend Lucy about the value of
recalling dreams, and she replies, The dreams of the night
prepare you for the dayIts at night when youre asleep
that your brain is really workingtrying to make you see
who you really are. Charlie Brown turns away and says
dejectedly, Even my brain is against me!
Although dreams may bring us material related to our
anxieties, fears, and vulnerabilities, it has been my experience that they also show us how wonderful we are. They
urge us to recognize our uniqueness, our self-worth and our
ability to express who we truly are. Undoubtedly, our
dreams do ask us to face up to our shortcoming, especially
those we are trying to bury, but they also emphasize the
possible us, the real us that has a purpose to fulfill and
contributions to make.
In his classic book on dream interpretation, Dreams,
psychologist Carl Jung puts it this way:
In each of us there is another whom we do not know.
He (she) speaks to us in dreams and tells us how differently he (she) sees us from the way we see ourselves.
When, therefore, we find ourselves in a difficult situation to which there is no solution, he (she) can sometimes
kindle a light that radically alters our attitude the
very attitude that led us into the difficult situation.
I firmly believe we can access our true nature through
the liquid nature of dreams. Those who think of themselves
as poor recallers are often surprised to find that once they
develop a few dream-recall habits, they discover the rich74
Liquid Intuition
ness of their dream life. The dream recall hints outlined here
will help you improve your ability to turn liquid intuition
into liquid gold.
Twenty Dream Recall Hints

1. A conscious commitment and desire to remember your
dreams is probably the single most important step in
dream recall.
2. Decide what means you will use to record your dreams,
and place all writing and recording materials next to
where you are sleeping.
3. If you awaken during a dream, immediately record a
few key words, or if you remember it, the entire dream.
Do not procrastinate.
4. Join a dream appreciation group. Attend dream workshops.
5. Before drifting off to sleep, visualize yourself waking
and remembering clearly several dreams or dream fragments.
6. Keep a dream diary. Date your paper or dream journal
in advance as evidence of your readiness and intention
to dream.
7. Read articles about dreams. Chapters 7 and 8 in this
book are a good start. Listen to audio cassettes and
CDs, and watch TV shows and documentaries about
dreams.
8. Eliminate dream thieves like late night eating, alcoholic beverages, sleeping pills, poor or inadequate diet.
9. Never dismiss a dream or dream fragment as too trivial
to record.
10. Once you have recorded your dream, relate it to an
event or significant events which occurred on the previous day. Oftentimes this will give vital clues to the
meaning of your dreams.
11. Look for components such as the setting, the people,
special colors, feelings, words, the type of action or
things which seem out-of-place.
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Why Cats Dont Bark

12. Confront unrealistic fears and expectations about the
nature of the dream. Recognize that uncharacteristic
behavior, sexual fantasies and dreams of falling, flying
and death are common themes.
13. Welcome many levels of dream interpretation. Dreams
can stop coming to you if you are locked into a philosophical bias that seeks to force its own meaning on the
dream content.
14. Relax immediately before you go to sleep. Concentrate
on your breathing and reduce your shoulder and neck
tension.
15. If you have difficulty remembering the chronological
order of your dream, try recording your dream in
reverse order.
16. Once you awaken and record your dream, invite the
next dream to come to you.
17. Before drifting off to sleep, tell yourself to remember
the last dream of each night.
18. Recurrent dreams generally indicate resistance to
change.
19. Dreams direct your attention to errors of omission and
commission, and offer guidance for self-correction.
20. Dreams are the mirrors of your soul and invite you to
express your true self.
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Liquid Intuition
Paws to Reflect
1. What is it about human nature that makes it
difficult to take dreams seriously?
2. If dreams are liquid intuition, what are
nightmares?
3. How are you like the cartoon character
Charlie Brown when he says dejectedly,
Even my brain is against me?
4. How many dream thieves are there in
your life, and what steps will you take to
eliminate them?
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There is no chance, no destiny, no fate that can

circumvent or hinder or control the firm
resolve of a determined soul.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Chapter 9
Intuitively
Speaking
Your word is your wand.
Florence Scovel Shinn
hat do you say when you talk to yourself? How

good of a conversationalist are you when it
comes to self-talk? How often do you say positive things
about yourself? Do you fully understand the power of words?
How often do you talk to yourself? What does your mental
dialogue sound like when you make a mistake or disappoint
someone? When did you first hear the word NO?
The answers to these questions relate directly to how
you feel about your self-worth. How you feel about your
self-worth directly affects how you view your capabilities,
including your intuitive abilities. The guiding tenet of selftalk psychology is that the words we use to describe our
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Why Cats Dont Bark

feelings and experiences plant the seeds for our future feelings and experiences.
Catherine Ponder put it a little more succinctly when
she said that the words utter and outer have similar
rootswhat we utter becomes outer in our world. What
gets impressed on our brain gets expressed. What we verbalize appears to be what we get. To paraphrase Florence
Scovel Shinn, our word is our wand. Read that last sentence
again, only this time substitute I for we and my for
our as you read it aloud: What I say is what I get because
my word is my wand.
Since self-talk has a way of becoming self-fulfilling
prophecy, we must be very careful with what words we use
to describe ourselves. For example, read the negative words
below as if they applied to yourself:
abrasive
annoying
arrogant
inadequate
incompetent
failure
klutz
lazy
loser
reject
repulsive
scuzzy
You probably dont have a good feeling about what you

just read even though you know this was just an exercise
and believe none of these words really apply to you. The
nature of negativity has a diminishing tone to it. If any of
these words have applied to you at one time or another, you
would probably have a negative opinion of yourself. Words
like these, with negative connotations, sap energy and confidence out of us.
On the other hand, positive words strengthen and
empower us. Positive self-talk is therapeutic. It is a proven
morale booster and innovation catalyst. Repeating positive
words and phrases called affirmations long enough can
literally change the way you think and feel. As a matter of
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Intuitively Speaking
fact, there is compelling evidence by brain researchers and
physicists that repetitious thoughts, words and actions create grooves in our consciousness which become fixed
pathways. Physicist David Bohm has this to say:
When experiments have been done with radioactive
tracers to see what happens in the brain, every idea,
every feeling creates a radical redistribution of blood
in the brain. More cells grow on these pathways and
the synapses get fixed, strengthening the grooves and
creating powerful thought pathways in the brain.
If the very physiology of our brain is affected by our
long-held thoughts, feelings and self-talk, then we have the
power to program intuition-friendly grooves of thought and
action. In my seminars, tapes and CDs, I provide strategies
for people to reboot their brain and reprogram their mind
for optimal performance and success. By programming positive self-talk into your vocabulary, you can become a
legend in your own mind. It will take time for the daily
deposits of positive thoughts, words and phrases to reap
mental and attitudinal benefits. That is when you will begin
to experience the confidence and openness to increase your
hunch quotient we talked about in Chapter 4.
At the beginning of this chapter, I asked you to react to
the list of negative words as if they applied to you. Since
optimism is learned, Id like you to do a similar thing with
the following list of positive words:
awesome
memorable
committed
competent
good-looking
perceptive
honest
successful
intelligent
powerful
intuitive
wise
lovable
wealthy
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Why Cats Dont Bark

Each of these words has the power to lift your selfesteem and heighten your intuitive intelligence. You can
even turn these positive words into affirmations simply by
adding the words I am to the beginning of each one. For
example, I am awesome; I am intuitive; I am successful; I
am wise. Repeat positive phrases like these to yourself as
often as you can throughout the day. If you recite them long
enough, youll begin to notice a distinct difference in the
way you see yourself. Carl and Stephanie Simonton (with
whom I have studied) are world-renowned researchers specializing in visualization for the treatment of cancers. In
their book, Getting Well Again, they report that hope
increases ones immunity, while despair reduces it.
Catnip for the Mind

The words I am are potent words; be
careful what you hitch them to. The thing
youre claiming has a way of reaching back
and claiming you.
A.L. Kitselman
Saying positive things about yourself to yourself may

seem a little childish, even a little silly, but the changes in
your overall disposition and health will speak for themselves. Affirmations can become strong, positive mental
blueprints that build your intuitive architecture and help
you realize your fullest potential. They are words that truly
can change your life. They are the language of possibility
and the micro-biology of hope. Their purpose is to remove
the static caused by negative thinking and create a more
expansive, abundant sense of your self-worth.
Psychologist Carl Jung said:
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Intuitively Speaking
People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in
order to avoid facing their own souls. They will practice yogaobserve a strict regimen of diet, learn
theosophy by heart, or mechanically repeat mystic
textsall because they cannot get on with themselves
and have not the slightest faith that anything useful
could ever come out of their own souls.
No matter how intelligent, attractive, rich or talented you
are, if you do not feel good enough about yourself to say
enough good things about yourself, you may never be able
to, in Jungs words, get on with yourself. Using positive
affirmations is one way to ready yourself to see your inner
light.
Giving yourself lip service through the power of
affirmations is the best endorsement you can give yourself.
What would you affirm if you knew you could not fail?
What negative static would you rid yourself of so you could
become more intuitively in sync? How could you turbocharge your personal alignment with your intuitive
intelligence?
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Why Cats Dont Bark
Paws to Reflect
1. How often do you use negative words to describe
yourself? Under what circumstances are you
most likely to use them?
2. If your word really is your wand, in what ways
does the quality of your life speak for itself?
3. How deep are your intuition-friendly grooves?
4. What kind of lip service do you need to give
yourself to, as Jung says, get on with yourself?
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Chapter 10
Seeing From
Eye to I
There is a powerful and mysterious force in human
nature that is capable of bringing about dramatic
improvement in our lives. It is a kind of mental engineeringIt has caught the attention of doctors, psychologists
and thinkers everywhere, and a new word has been
coined to describe it. That word is visualization.
Norman Vincent Peale
isualization is a mental imaging technique which can

bring us amazing intuitive insights. It is analogous to
a special kind of home movie or mental video which
presents us as a screenwriter, producer, director, star and
cameraperson. We can take our mental videos with us
anywhere and unreel any scenario or drama we want to
view. We can stop and start our visualization at any time.
We can even pick up where we left off without detracting
from the message contained in our mini-production.
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Why Cats Dont Bark

Conscientious practice in applying visualization techniques helps enhance our intuitive abilities and allows
immediate access to our acorn nature, our PowerZone.. All
we have to do is open our minds eye to discover our true
nature by producing images that can help reveal our souls
code. According to Hillman, this image or pattern is our
inheritance, our souls portion in the world order and our
place on earth, all compacted into a pattern that has been
selected by our soul before we even get hereThus the soul
has an image of its fate. Once that picture is crystallized in
your mind, you cannot not make it happen.
For Hillman, this image or pattern is the essence of
each of our particular lives and is imprinted with our destiny, just as a mighty oaks destiny is embedded in a tiny
acorn. I believe we can get a glimpse of this image, and perhaps our own destiny, through consistent use of a variety of
visualization techniques. Philosophers, priests and shamans
in every ancient culture used visualization as a tool for personal growth and transformation. Today, Western medicine
is rediscovering the incredible transforming power of visualization as a healing technique. Know that what the mind
sees, the body believes. In other words, your body is a pull
toy to the mind.
Catnip for the Mind

When an idea exclusively occupies the mind, it is
transformed into an actual physical or mental state.
Sivananda
The American physician, physiologist and father of

progressive relaxation, Edmund Jacobson, proved that when
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Seeing From Eye to I

we imagine ourselves doing an activity such as running,
golfing or playing tennis, the muscles associated with those
particular types of movements contract in small but measurable amounts. Neither Freda nor Fritz, nor my own
poodle, Pouka, has ever read Jacobsons research; however,
Im sure they would agree they have noticed their muscles
tense every time the refrigerator door opens at home.
Ive included this research in this chapter to show you
that our body, mind and spirit are connected, not only at a
physical level, but at emotional, intellectual, spiritual and
cellular levels. Jerome Frank, a psychiatrist at Johns
Hopkins Medical School, believes there is a direct relationship between visualization and healing. Carl Simonton used
visualization techniques to treat and heal his patients for
years. He believes that the mind can influence our ability to
strengthen our immunological responses to disease. He
instructs his patients to see themselves as cancer-free. A
personal account by one of Simontons patients illustrates
the power of the human mind in combating illness, even
serious disease:
I visualized my cancer as a snake or some vicious animal. I visualized the cure as white husky dogs. It
would be a confrontation between good and evil. The
dogs would grab the vicious cancer cells and shake
them, ripping them to shredsThen the cancer cells
would shrink and eventually disappear. The army of
white dogs would lick up the residue and clean my
abdominal cavity until it was spotless.
That patients courage, discipline and determination are
praiseworthy and heroic, but more important are the results.
After this patient visualized three times a day for 10-15
minute intervals for six weeks, an examination revealed his
tumor had shrunk by 75%. After two months, there was no
trace of the disease left in his body.
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Why Cats Dont Bark

The implications of Simontons work, and thankfully
hundreds of other researchers, are staggering. There is convincing evidence that with the combination of good science,
medicine, technology and visualization, we can literally
heal ourselves. Endocrinologist Deepak Chopra believes we
can even alter, and possibly slow down, our aging process
by visualizing healthy cells replacing old, damaged cells. In
his fascinating book, Ageless Body, Timeless Mind, he said:
If you examine old cells through a high-powered
microscope, the scene is as devastating as a war zone.
Fibrous streaks, deposits of fat and undiscarded metabolic wastes form unsightly clumpsdark, yellowish
pigments called lipofuscin accumulate to the point
where they litter 10 to 30 percent of the cells interiorwe can help clear that up through visualization.
According to Caroline Myss, author of Anatomy of the
Spirit:
Our biography the experiences that make up our life
becomes our biologyAs our lives unfold, our
biological health becomes a living, breathing biographical statement that conveys our strengths,
weaknesses, hopes and fearsChanging our biography (through visualization) can change our biology.
In the extremely interesting book, The Cells Intelligence,
we read that if the cells of the brain do not get to express
their mission and purpose in a balanced way, theyrebel
by manifesting diseases such as tumors.
We are much, much more than biochemical machines
and mere bundles of DNA. We are spirit and matter. We are
specks of Divine Intelligence in human clothing. We have
the power to visualize and to imagine ourselves happy,
healthy and whole. We have the ability to discover ways in
which we have been holding ourselves back, blocking our
88

progress and fulfillment. Once we see from eye-to-I we
can create the best, most beautiful and worthwhile lives we
can imagine.
Since the mind is the software for the brains hardware,
visualization is how we reboot the brain and reprogram our
mind for health and healing as well as peak performance
and success. It is a visual representation of our intuition. It
is a mental rehearsal or tool to become that to which we
aspire. What the mind sees, the body believes, and with repetition of desired mental images, our goals and dreams
manifest into reality. Practice these simple steps of visualization and mental rehearsal to unleash your PowerZone.
1. Get into a relaxed body-mind state through meditation, prayer, or
deep relaxation;
2. Bombard the sensorium. You must see it, hear it, touch it, taste it,
smell itand of course, know it.
3. Think big and be 100% positive. To the degree that we are totally
positive, there can be no negativity or emotional interferences.
4. See your desired goal or vision as if it has already happened. It
tricks the brain into thinking its a done deal.
5. Know that you deserve it. We are only open to changes that we
truly believe we deserve.
6. Be grateful for the change you have so vividly visualized. God or
the universe only continues to give to those who are grateful.
Since we have talked about your life purpose and souls

code in this chapter, the following guided visualization is an
excellent technique for helping you get in touch with your
higher self, your acorn nature. You may want to record the
script, or have someone with a soothing voice record it, so
you can focus entirely on the process. Revisit it as often as
you need to unlock your intuitive intelligence and discover
your souls code.
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Why Cats Dont Bark
Find a quiet place where you will not be interrupted by the phone, doorbell or needs of others. Seat
yourself or lie comfortably so you can relax.
Close your eyes and listen to the sound of your
breathing. Take a deep breath to the count of ten, hold
the count for a few seconds, and then exhale slowly to
a count of ten. Repeat the process twice and return to
your normal breathing.
Relax your whole body. Let this relaxation flow
from your neck and shoulders to your arms, hands,
legs and feet. Breathe slowly and comfortably. Now
take a slow, deep breath and exhale softly. Breathe
naturally, taking notice if you are still relaxed.
You are walking down a long, wooden boardwalk to a very beautiful, expansive beach. It is
surprisingly deserted and stretches off into the distance as far as you can see. The sand is very fine and
dry, almost white in appearance.
As you step onto the sand in your bare feet, you
notice how warm the sand feels. It is not hot, and it
feels good as it sifts through your toes. You walk
slowly toward the waters edge and marvel at the
methodical nature of the roaring surf as it breaks over
the sand. The sound of the waves crashing along the
shoreline is soothing as you walk just out of reach of
the surf.
The ocean itself is a beautiful shade of blue cast
against a pale blue, cloudless sky. As you scan the
horizon, you can see a couple of hundred yards or
so offshore several sailboats with their multicolored
sails moving in concert with the tides and wind.
90

As you continue walking down the beach, you
take a deep breath and fill your lungs with the smell
of fresh ocean air. You take another deep breath as
you close your eyes, pausing for a moment to enjoy
your oneness with the ocean. You feel the warm
breeze against your face and enjoy the sensation of
the soft wind blowing through your hair.
You remember you have come to the beach to
contemplate your lifes purpose. You want to know
who you really are and what your future holds. You
lift your eyes toward the heavens and sigh deeply.
It would be nice to know who I am and why I
am here, you say to yourself.
When you open your eyes, you spot something
lying on the beach, some distance away. As you
approach the object, you realize it is a treasure chest
of some sort.
As you stand before it, you notice an envelope
fastened to the lid hinge, which isnt locked. You are
surprised to find your name is on the sealed envelope.
You look around, but there is no one else on the
beach. You reach down and untie the note. When you
open the note, you are surprised to find that it is your
own handwriting. The message informs you that when
you open the chest you will find your lifes purpose.
You pan the beach area again. You are alone. You
take a deep breath and lift the treasure chest lid.
Inside, next to a book entitled Why Cats Dont Bark,
is a 3x5 notecard. Scrawled on the notecard is your
lifes purpose. You pick up the notecard to get a closer
look. In your own handwriting, the note says
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Why Cats Dont Bark
Paws to Reflect
1. How would you define your souls code?
2. All of us have some type of physical
challenge. It could be a weight issue, diet or
illness. Pick your challege and answer this
question: How can I visualize this thing
away?
3. How is your biography your biology? How
do you choose to change it?
4. What do you think seeing eye-to-I means?
5. How will you incorporate visualization into
your daily routine to access your
PowerZone?
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Chapter 11
Intuiting Your
Life Purpose
We are less under the influence of nature and nurture and
more indebted toour own original giftWhen our calling, character and fate have become more inescapable,
then too, (our) intelligence and all it serves belongs more
to the code of the soul than to that of the genes.
James Hillman
There must be something representing tree-ness in an

acorn. Thats why cats dont bark! And thats why none of
us will ever be completely happy or fulfilled unless we represent the we-ness in us. Our pets have no problem
representing themselves. Kittens get away with all their
goofiness because they are endearing fur balls of playfulness, but there is a distinct catness in their nature. Puppies
are cuddly and clumsy bundles of joy, but there is an obvious dogness in their wolf-like nature.
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Why Cats Dont Bark

All living things grow into their nature with a supportive environment. For example, while a dog enjoys paddling
across a lake, a cat scratches to get out of a bath tub! In each
case, they seek an environment which allows them to
express their oakness. Our purpose as human beings is to be
more human-like every day, to be the person we were meant
to be.
Violating our souls code often results in depression,
addictions, obesity, lack of motivation, stress, disease or a
feeling of empty existence. Research indicates that dolphins
taken out of their natural habitat and trapped in pools for our
amusement may be holding their breath to commit suicide.
George Bernard Shaw so well describes our purpose:
This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the
being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on
the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of
a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances
complaining that the world will not devote itself to
making you happy.
We must have the courage to be different to make a difference; we must transcend from success to significance.
However, the inspiring words of George Bernard Shaw
show us how easily we can dismiss our acorness. To know
ourselves authentically means growing into our natural
selves. It means getting a clearer picture of who we are
through our thoughts, actions, and experiences, sensing
intuitively what we must do to express our oakness, our true
essence.
Lets take this analogy one step further. When you open
acorns, youll find nothing which resembles a tree. All
youll find is a glob of brown stuff, air and dust. If you peel
through the layers of acorn stuff, youll find you can pull it
apart. Further examination with a high-powered electron
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Intuiting Your Life Purpose

microscope reveals distinctly acornish molecules. Then
youll find atoms, electrons and subatomic particles, all of
which become so small that its impossible to tell the acorn
particles from the oak particles. There is an invisible connection between what the acorn is and what it will become.
Wayne Dyer in his book, Manifest Your Destiny, describes
the process as it relates to us:
We can go back to (your) conception and explain
(your) creation as one drop of human protoplasm colliding with another, resulting in your appearance in
the form of a tiny speck that grew into the body that is
you today.
But if you delve further into those drops of human
protoplasm and turn up the magnification on the
microscope, and if you do the same with the speck that
was your first experience of form, you discover the
same truth that described the acorn. Its original self
(exerts) a future pull that comes from an invisible
something.
That future pull is our present self becoming our
future self, for we gravitate toward our own uniqueness.
Singleness of purpose means avoiding exterior clutter like
power, prestige and possessions, which interfere with the
chief purpose of our lives.
Catnip for the Mind

Every time you dont follow your inner
guidance, you feel a loss of energy, loss of
power, a sense of spiritual deadness.
Shakti Gawain
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Why Cats Dont Bark

Activities and life experiences which derive from our
purpose are not burdensome because there is harmony
between what we feel we are supposed to do and what we
want to do. We often are living in someone elses comfort
zone other than our own. Our parents often encourage and
coerce us to manifest their own unfulfilled wishes and destiny. When we find our purpose, all of our experiences ring
true. There is no gap between our acorness and our oakness.
Henri Nouwen, author of a jewel of a book called Out of
Solitude, puts it this way:
A few years ago I met an old professor at the
University of Notre Dame. Looking back on his long
life of teaching, he said with a funny twinkle in his
eyes: I have always been complaining that my work
was constantly interrupted, until I slowly discovered
that my interruptions were my work.
We live in a world full of distractions. Our lives are
filled with work and family responsibilities, our own desires
and goals, community concerns and global pressures. Most
of us get caught up in the demands society places upon us
and end up in the center lane of the rat race. On the surface
we may appear happy, confident and in control, but inside
we suffer from the tensions imposed by 21st Century living.
We move so fast that we lose opportunities to discover
and express our acorness. We grow out of touch with ourselves and settle for just going through the motions. We lose
sight of our purpose. We become strangers to ourselves. If
were not careful, we will dilute our oakness to the extent
that our lives will become more shell than substance or
more bark than bite!
Having a clear sense of your acorn nature is what this
book is all about. It is the answer to the riddle why cats
dont bark. Knowing yourself what you do well and what
you dont do well, what motivates you, what you value, who
96

you want to spend time with, what makes you happy or sad
is your chief occupation in this life. The purpose of life,
said Eleanor Roosevelt, is to live it, to taste experience to
the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer
and richer life experiences.
Until we do the work of excavating, claiming and
expressing our uniqueness, we run the risk of putting our
life script into someone elses hands. Joseph Campbell, in
his book Myths to Live By, warns, The world is full of people that have stopped listening to themselves or have
listened only to their neighbors to learn what they ought to
do, how they ought to behave and what the values are that
they should be living for. Unfortunately, for many people,
Campbell is right.
Catnip for the Mind

If you advance confidently in the direction of
your dreams, and endeavor to live the life which
you have imagined, you will meet with a success
unexpected in common hours. You'll put some
things behind and pass an invisible boundary;
new, universal and more liberal laws will begin
to establish themselves around and within you -Old laws will be expanded and interpreted in
your favor in a more liberal sense; and you will
live with license of a higher order of things.
H. D. Thoreau-(paraphrased)
If your real self, your acorn nature, is still hidden from

view and remains invisible and inaudible, it is due to its
being cloaked in the interpretations of others and your own
inability or disinterest in wanting to find out who you truly
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Why Cats Dont Bark

are. Mandy Aftel puts it a little more succinctly in her book,
The Story of Your Life: As you begin to pay attention to
your own stories and what they say about you, you will
enter into the exciting process of becoming, as you should
be, the author of your own life, the creator of your own possibilities.
In her companion book to The Artists Way, Julia Cameron
gives her interpretation of why we must express our purpose. She says, in Vein of Gold:
All of us are far richer than we imagine. None of us
possesses a life devoid of magic, barren of grace,
divorced from power. Our inner resources, often
unmined and even unknown or unacknowledged, are
the treasures we carry, what I call our spiritual
DNAthe stamp of originality, which is the blueprint
of our unfolding.
Our intuitive intelligence is the gateway to discovering
our true nature, our acorness. Anything which blocks that
awareness is an unnatural thwarting of our selfhood. If you
have blocked the flow of your true self from expression all
of us have to greater or lesser degrees you will need to learn
how to get out of your own way. The intuition workout
techniques in the next chapter will help you do just that.
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Paws to Reflect
1. There must be something representing youness in you what is it?
2. What is your manifest destiny, and if derailed,
how can you get back on track?
3. If interruptions are your real lifes work, how
would that change your perception of why you
are where you are today?
4. In what ways have you stopped listening to your
inner guide, and what will you do to be more
tuned in?
99
One of the strongest characteristics of

genius is the power of lighting its own fire.
John Foster
Chapter 12
Intuition
Workout
Your work is to discover your work and then with all your
heart to give yourself to it.
Buddha
ll of the exercises and activities in this chapter are

designed to ignite your intuitive intelligence your
other IQ. Our intuitive intelligence is the gateway to our
authentic self and our passion, which unleash the other 90%
of untapped potential and transform it into peak performance. Intuition, like any other natural ability, must be
developed. Since it comes from deep inside us, intuition is
an inner knowing that comes from an invisible realm.
Psychologists call this inner realm our subconscious.
The Romans called it genius; the Greeks believed it was
our daimon; and the Egyptians referred to it as ka
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Why Cats Dont Bark

energy. Whatever this something is (genius, daimon or ka) it
envelopes both our conscious and subconscious natures. It
knows everything about us and controls our destiny.
Our intuitive intelligence works on our behalf by catalyzing creativity and providing a competitive advantage,
whether it comes to us in dreams, visualizations, flashes of
insight or even nightmares. The exercises in this chapter
will help you gain an intuitive edge, not only over everyday
challenges and concerns, but over the forces which block
your access to your authentic acorn nature, your
PowerZone.
You owe it to yourself to find out who you are and how
much intuitive power you have. Spend some quality time
with this chapter. The intuitive dividends you reap will
make the exploration of your other IQ one of the wisest,
most intuitive moves you have ever made besides buying
this book!
With a few exceptions, most of the following exercises
and activities can be practiced in 15 minutes or less. For
example, the hemispheric visualization Mental Tennis,
adapted from Jean Houstons right-brain, left-brain studies,
requires an audiotape or someone to read the exercise to
you, but it is one of the best intuition warm-ups you will
ever experience. Some of the other activities require pencil
and paper to record your insights. Others will stimulate your
thinking, like the Paws to Reflect items you found at the end
of each chapter in this book.
You may want to read through the entire workout first,
and then intuitively select the activities you want to start
with, depending on your time and energy. I encourage you,
however, to build each one into your workout schedule. Plan
to spend 10 to 15 minutes two or three times each day for
the next three months to maximize the benefits of your intuitive development.
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Intuition Workout
Catnip for the Mind
Nothing splendid has ever been achieved except
by those who dared believe that something
inside them was superior to circumstances.
Bruce Barton
Burn It or Flush It
Release any of your old mental and emotional tapes
that replay negative, self-defeating thoughts, keeping you
stuck and unhappy. Release these shackles symbolically by
taking the following steps:
Write a letter to your negative thoughts, illnesses, emotional baggage, doubts, or fears.
Tell each of these enemies what you think
about them. Be explicit. Be straight forward
and to the point. Explain why you no longer
want them in your life.
Read the letter aloud to yourself.
Then burn the letter or flush it!
Close your eyes, take a deep breath and
relax.
Record any thoughts that come to mind.
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Why Cats Dont Bark

Coin Flip
Think of an important decision you have to make. If
youve already begun the decision-making process identified the key issues, collected information relevant to your
decision, asked for help from friends and experts, taken a
few steps toward resolving the issue, explored a number of
alternatives, etc. add an intuitive coin flip to the mix.
Use a quarter to decide your course of
action.
Determine which side of the coin (heads or
tails) represents which decision point (i.e.,
heads means you will take the job, or relocate, or go on the blind date, or stay in an
important relationship; tails means you
wont).
Flip the coin and look at the result.
It doesnt matter which side comes up for
the purpose of this exercise. What does matter is how you feel about which side comes
up. That feeling is your intuitive IQ at
work. Pay attention to it!
Swelled Head
Close your eyes and relax. Hold your hands, palms facing each other, in a prayer position. Position them in front
of your face, nose high, and at a distance of 12 inches or so
from your face.
Now, keeping your eyes closed, separate your hands
slowly, until you sense you have measured the width of your
head, including your ears and hair. Now stop. Keep your
hands in that position and open your eyes.
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Intuition Workout
How close was your measurement? How accurate were
you? Most people tend to have swelled heads based on
their measurement. This exercise helps you become aware
of your mind-body connection.
Switch-Hitter
Close your eyes and visualize a cat or dog playfully
engaged in its own game of chase the tail or running in
circles. Notice how care-free and happy the pet is as it rolls
on its back and licks its paws. In your minds eye, become
that pet. Feel its sense of freedom and playfulness, its air of
independence and security.
Remember how easy it was to feel this sense
of freedom, safety and independence as a
child? Remember how you played cat and
mouse, or imitated your dog by kneeling,
cupping your hands and barking for food in
front of your amused parents? You felt free
to be yourself, to be silly, to experiment, to
play.
Think of something in your current life that you would
like to do: something that may seem child-like or even a little foolish, or something that would cause no harm or
inconvenience to anyone. It could be something totally
unlike you.
Complete the following sentence and keep
writing as your intuition motivates you:
What I really wish I could do is
When youve exhausted your thoughts, transfer your
writing instrument to your other hand. Even though your
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Why Cats Dont Bark

writing will be awkward, begin to record any additional
thoughts which push through your subconscious. You may
have to wait a few moments, but convince yourself to wait.
It is not unusual for your other hand (probably your nondominant hand) to stimulate additional awareness from
your right hemisphere.
Mental Tennis
This intuition inducer is an adaptation of a hemispheric
exercise created by Robert Masters and Jean Houston. It is
one of the best intuition calisthenics exercises you will ever
encounter. You will need to tape record this exercise or ask
someone to read it to you. Make sure, whichever way you
do it, that you leave yourself enough time between statements to form mental images.
Seat yourself comfortably with your back
straight and supported, so that you can maintain that
position for 15-25 minutes. Focus your attention on
your breathing and posture. Close your eyes and
breathe easily.
Keeping your eyes closed, look down with your
left eye, then look down with your right eye. Return
your awareness to your left eye and look up. Now
move your left eye in a clockwise direction and then
counterclockwise. Which direction seems easier?
Now look up with your right eye and repeat the
process, rolling your right eye clockwise, then counterclockwise. Which direction seems easier?
Relax both your eyes. Keeping your eyes closed,
direct your attention to the right side of your
brainand now to the left. Shift back and forth a few
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Intuition Workout
times. Speed up the mental tennis and then slow your
motion down again. Back and forthback and forth.
Do not strain as you do this.
On the left side of your brain, imagine the
number 2.
And on the right side, the letter Zwhat
color is the Z?
On the left side, the number 4
And on the right side, the letter Y.
On the left, the number 6what color is the 6?
And on the right, the letter X.
On the left, the number 8
And on the right, the letter W.
Rest for a moment, taking a deep breath as you
do so. On which hemispheric side were the colors
more vivid? Which were larger the numbers or the
letters?
Continuing with your eyes closed, on the left side
of your brain imagine a festive beach scene with sun
bathers, beach umbrellas, blue skies and a volleyball
game.
On the right side of your brain, imagine people
praying.
Let those images go, and on the left, imagine two
alley cats squaring off against each other.
On the right, there is a hurricane sweeping
through a coastal town.
On the left is an acorn.
On the right, a galaxy.
On the left are dogwood trees in full bloom.
On the right, icy streets and bridges.
On the left is a gorgeous sunset.
On the right, a cloudy day.
On the left is a three-ring circus.
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Why Cats Dont Bark

On the right is a mother cat giving milk to a litter
of kittens.
On the left is the sound of a car starting.
On the right is the sound of a car alarm.
On the left is the sound of your stomach
growling.
On the right is the sound of a tea kettle hissing.
On the left is the smell of bread baking.
On the right is the smell of coconut soap.
On the left, the taste of a juicy lemon.
On the right, the taste of chocolate candy.
On the left, you are sitting with a cat on your lap,
watching TV on top of a mountain in a thunder
storm.
On the right, you are swimming in Kool-Aid,
carrying a black poodle on your back and singing
God Bless America.
Rest for a moment. Then, in the middle of your
forehead, imagine a small yellow Post-it note. Mentally
enlarge the note so that you can see the handwriting
on the note. The message tells you something very
important about yourself. Move closer to it so you can
read it. What does it say?
Remember that message. Keeping your eyes
closed, record the message or ask your reader to
record the message for you. Let that image go.
Coming from the right side of your brain is someone with something important to tell you. Who is that
person and what does he/she tell you?
Record that message, then let the image go.
From the left side of your brain you get a sense
of something you should do in the future. What message are you receiving? Record the instruction and
then let the image go.
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Intuition Workout
Relax and take a few slow breaths. Roll your
shoulders and release any tension in your neck and
shoulders. Keeping your eyes closed, take another
slow breath and smile as you exhale slowly.You have
just made contact with your higher self, your acorn
nature.
When you are ready, open your eyes.
Life Review
In a notebook, diary or journal, make a list of every
single success youve experienced in life, as far back as you
can remember. List accomplishments in areas such as home
life, marriage, work, travel, health and nutrition, hobbies,
business associations, personal development, finances,
friendships and so on.
Read through your list reflectively. Now close your
eyes. Do you have more successes in one or two areas than
the others? In your minds eye, visualize your next meaningful success in those areas.
Record your insights.
Now, close your eyes again, and think about the areas
where you have fewer accomplishments or none. Visualize
your next meaningful success in those areas as well.
Record your insights.
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Why Cats Dont Bark

By Candle Light
Seat yourself comfortably in front of a candle. Stare at
the base of the flame, not directly at the light. Focus on the
flickering light as you listen to the sounds in the room. As
you listen to the room chatter, keep your eyes focused on
the base of the flame.
Ask the flame what you should do about an important
issue at hand. You may address the flame out loud, or simply do it mentally. Wait for its response by keeping your
attention focused on the base of the flame.
Record any impressions which come to you. Close
your eyes and thank the light within you for its patience and
guidance. Act on the information you receive from your
inner source of wisdom.
Give Me Five
Make a list of five people whom you admire. They can
be living or dead, extraordinary or ordinary, man or woman,
rich or poor. Stop right now and create your list. Once you
have put your list in writing, read on.
Take a look back over your list. I have a very interesting question to ask. Are you on it? I didnt say you couldnt
include yourself, did I? The instructions simply read: Make
a list of five people whom you admire
If you failed to include yourself, why not think about
adding your name to the list? Be aware of the feelings you experience as you do this or decide not to, as the case may be.
Starting with the first person you identified, make a list
of all the qualities, attributes and attitudes you admire most
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Intuition Workout
about that individual. What was it about them that made you
include them on your list?
Repeat the inventory for each person on the list, including yourself (assuming you were willing to add your name,
and I hope you did). List at least five qualities for each person.
You can be sure that the qualities you admire most in
others are qualities that you possess, but express to a greater
or lesser degree. They are most likely qualities inherent in
your true nature and are the ones which you are being asked
to develop.
Record any thoughts, questions or feelings you experienced as you worked through this activity. Ask yourself
what you need to do next to build the qualities you most
admire in others.
Going Solo
With your eyes closed, repeat the following affirmation
at your normal speech rate as many times as you can in the
next five minutes:
I am very good at intuiting solutions to every problem
that presents itself to me.
Now listen to yourself answer yourself! Jot down all
the thoughts going through your head as you continue to
repeat the affirmation. Assess your inner comments and
respond to them. If they are negative, record positive comebacks. If they are positive, reinforce those thoughts to
strengthen them. Get very quiet and ask yourself what your
most important learning is from this exercise. Record your
intuitions.
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Why Cats Dont Bark

Metaphorically Speaking
Sometimes solutions to lifes dilemmas come through a
form of writing called flow writing or stream of consciousness writing. It involves writing as fast as you can.
This activity is best done early in the morning. In fact,
I recommend you have a journal and pen next to your bed,
and complete this task before you even get out of bed, as our
wakening state is one of heightened creativity and abundant
insights.
Pick an event in your life which has disappointed or
saddened you. It should be one that still has an emotional
pull, because of its lasting effect on you.
Write about the event. Dont spend time editing your
thoughts or worrying about the grammar, word choice or
sentence structure. Just let the thoughts flow through you to
the paper. Go with first impressions.
Write about the entire event, its causes, the people
involved, the circumstances, your efforts to resolve it, your
feelings, its impact on your life and the lives of those around
you.
Continue writing until you have exhausted the subject.
Now complete the following statements:
Dealing with him/her was like
Trying to solve a problem like that
is like
Confronting those issues is like
Looking back on it now is like
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Intuition Workout
Put the notepad aside and wait until bedtime to re-read
it. Review your responses. Evaluate what you have written
and then ask yourself:
If faced with a similar situation again,
what can I do differently?
Repeat that question several more times and then sleep
on it. Record any messages, including dreams or dream
fragments, that come to you overnight.
Ponderables
Ponder these questions:
1. How high is up?
2. What color is the wind?
3. Where does your lap go when you stand?
4. What is the sound of one hand clapping?
Create a list of your own ponderables, and record your
thoughts and ideas.
Literary Itinerary
Part 1: Go to your favorite books, and ask your intuitive
intelligence to direct you to a passage you most need to read
at that moment. Then open the book and read the first thing
your eyes focus on. Ask yourself what message your intuitive intelligence is sending to you.
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Part 2: Contemplate on the following words of wisdom.
Add quotes of your own. Select one each day and make it
your literary itinerary for the day.
Be really whole and all things will come to you.
(Lao-Tzu)
The more we learn to operate in the world based on

trust in our intuition, the stronger our channel will be.
(Shakti Gawain)
In a dark time, the eye begins to see.

(Theodore Roethke)
When the soul wishes to experience something, she

throws an image of the experience out before her and enters
into her own image.
(Meister Eckhart)
Stop thinking and talking about it and there is nothing

you will not be able to know.
(Zen paradigm)
To know and not to do, is not to know.

(Lao-Tzu)
What we vividly imagine, ardently desire, enthusiastically

act upon, must inevitably come to pass.
(Colin P. Sisson)
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Intuition Workout
Paws to Reflect
1. Which exercises were most meaningful to you?
Why? Have you adopted any as a steady mental
diet? Which ones? Why?
2. What intuitions found their way into your
consciousness after you experienced Mental
Tennis a few times?
3. Which self-defeating thoughts, attitudes and
beliefs did you symbolically burn or flush out
of your life? In what ways have these symbolic
acts translated into practical reality? How will you
sustain your self-empowerment and unleash your
own PowerZone?
4. What has been the most significant, enlightening
and personally transforming information you have
received from this book?
5. How will you pass it on? With whom will you
share the insights and lessons of this book?
6. How will you make a difference and what will be
your mark?
Orison Swett Marden summed up my philosophy perfectly when he said, Deep within (you) dwells those slumbering
powers, powers that would astonish (you), that (you) never
dreamed of possessing; forces that would revolutionize (your)
life if aroused and put into action. By taking the action to
read this book and ignite your Intuitive Intelligence, you
have already begun to revolutionize your life by arousing
those internal forces, your PowerZone.
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Why Cats Dont Bark
As I complete this book, I feel

humbled, privileged and grateful for
the opportunity to be manifesting my
souls code which is to give those of
you who are still searching the courage
to discover and manifest yours.
116
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118
About the Author
die Raether, M.S., CSP, has

been a student of intuition
and the psychology of consciousness since her conception. She is
an international keynote speaker,
author, psychotherapist and performance coach. Edie has also been a
college professor and radio/TV talk
show host with ABC. Helping corporations bridge the gap between
knowing and doing, Edie is a Fortune 50 favorite and has
presented to over 3,000 professional associations and companies such as IBM, General Motors, EPA, Marriott,
S.C. Johnson, Oscar Mayer, and JCPenney. A recognized
authority on Intuitive Intelligence The Other IQand brainbased performance, Edie's seminars provide the power tools
for mastering change and MindShift
Edie has co-authored books on customer service, sales,
leadership, and womens empowerment and is an expert
resource to publications such as USA Today, The Wall
Street Journal, Selling Power, Inc magazine, and Reuters.
A native of Wisconsin, both Edie's masters and bachelors degrees are from the University of Wisconsin. She
currently resides in North Carolina, and enjoys her two sons
and four grandchildren. When shes not speaking or writing
books, you can find her skiing the slopes of Utah or sailing
off the Carolina Crystal Coast.
119
Other Products by Edie Raether

Hypnosis Tape/CD Series:
Weight Control I
Weight Control II
Stop Smoking I
Stop Smoking II
Drug & Alcohol Abuse
Stop Your Worrying!
Panic Attacks & Phobias
Sleep Easy
Pain Control
Anorexia
Bulimia
Self Confidence
Fly Without Fear
Forgiveness for Spiritual
Renewal
Healing Broken Relationships: Reclaiming the Self
Sensuality: The Path to
Spirituality
Presentation Skills: Speak
Like a Pro
Golf: In the Zone
Sales Strategies
Personal & Professional

Development Tape/CD
Series:
Unleash Your PowerZone
Kick Your Dream into
Action: Empowerment
and Vision
Making It Happen: A
Psychological 4th of July
Be Your Own Rainbow:
Affirmation & Visualization
Power Communication for
Impact and Change
Negotiate Like a Pro
Healing Ourselves: The
Mind-Body Connection
Meditation Medley:
Relaxation for Stress
Management
Beyond Parenting:
Unleashing Your Child's
Potential
Wings for Wishes: Building
Childrens Self Esteem
Books:
Fantastic Customer Service Inside & Out
Work Smarter, Not Harder: How You Can Increase
Your Sales in Any Economy!
Life, Work & Money: From a Womans Perspective
Magnetic Leadership
120
Contact
Information
For information on Edies coaching and corporate
training programs, to book Edie for your organization or association, and for information about
her books, tapes, and CDs, write or call:
Edie Raether
4717 Ridge Water Court
Holly Springs, NC 27540 USA
888-RAETHER
919-557-7900
Fax 919-557-7999
edie@raether.com
Visit Edie on the web at

www.raether.com
121
Index
A
acorn nature 14, 22, 25, 37, 66,

69, 86, 89, 96, 97, 102, 109
Acorn Theory 3, 4
Aftel, M. 98
Auden, W.H. 57
deBono, E. 51
Depew, C. 63
Disney, W. 65
dream 32, 33, 34, 61, 62, 63, 64,
65, 66, 67, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73,
74, 113
Dream Recall 64, 70, 73, 74, 75
Dyer, W. 95
B
Bach, R. 13
Barton, B. 103
Bell, A. 45
Benson, A.C. 49
Bohm, D. 81
Borenstein, D. 55
Bradbury, R. 18
breakthrough moment 43
Brown, R. 29
Bruner,J. 32
Buddha 101
Burn It or Flush It 103
Burns, G. 44
Burroughs, E. 64
butterfly 44
By Candle Light 110
C
Cameron, J. 98
Campbell, J. 97
Capra, F. 33
Casper, G. 29
Cayce, E. 64
Chopra, D. 88
Coin Flip 104
concrete boots 14
Cooper, R. 19
cosmic fishing 28
Cousteau, J. 46
Csikszentmihalyi 45
cummings, e.e. 3
E
Eckhart, M. 114
Einstein, A. 51, 56, 64
Emerson 28, 44
emotional intelligence 19, 20
English, H & A. 21
F
Faraday, A. 72
Fawcett, F. 65
flow 30, 41, 43, 45
Frank, J. 87
Freud, S. 20
Fromm, E. 72
Fuller, B. 28
future pull 95
G
Gardner, H. 19, 53
Gass, R. 5
Gawain, S. 95, 114
Gibran, K. 53
Give Me Five 110
Gods telephone 29
Going Solo 111
Goldberg, P. 29, 47, 58
Goleman, D. 17
Gribbin, J. 25
122
Index
Life Review 109
Literary Itinerary 113
Loggins, K. 29
Lynd, R. 56
gut brain 22
gut guidance xi, 21, 22, 24
H
Heraclitus 47
Herrnstein, R. 19
Hillman, J. x, 86, 93
Houston, J. 102
Howe, E. 65
Hughes, S. 46
hunch quotient 34
I
intuition workout 98
intuitive intelligence x, xi, 3, 4, 6,
14, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 27, 34,36, 37,
38, 42, 47, 48, 55, 58, 62, 82, 83,
89, 98, 101, 102, 113
intuitive nudges 47
intuitive weather 47
J
Jackson, H. 29
Jacobson, E. 86
Jacuzzi, C. 45
Jung, C. 28, 61, 64, 74, 82, 83
MacLean, P. 19
mammalian brain 20
Matsushita, K. 13
Mental Tennis 106
mental video 85
Metaphorically Speaking 112
Mother Teresa 64
Mozart 41
multiple intelligence 14, 17, 19,
24, 25
Murray, C. 19
Myss, C 88
N
Naisbitt, J. 30
nap power 33
neocortex 20
Nietzsche, F. 73
Nouwen, H. 96
oakness 6, 9, 11, 12, 66
Kekul, F. 63
Kitselman, A. 82
Koestler, A. 73
Krishnamurti 23
L
Lantz, W. 44
Lao-Tzu 114
Lawrence, T. 71
life purpose 21, 25, 89, 93
Paws to Reflect 102

Peale, N. 44, 85
Perls, F. 64
Ponder, C. 80
Ponderables 113
PowerZone x, xi, 9, 12, 14
Proust, M. 43, 66
psychic telegrams 29
123
Index
Twain, M. 9
REM 61, 62, 63

reptilian brain 19
Roethke, T. 114
Roosevelt, E. 97
Ross, E. 44
Roszak, T. 69
Rumi 42
Woody Woodpecker 45
Sagan, C. 65
Salk, J. 27
Salovey, P. 19
Sawaf, A. 19
Schultz, C. 74
Schwartz, J. 58
Schweitzer, A. 11
self-talk 79, 80, 81
Shah, I. 42
Shakur, T. 62
Shaw, G. 1, 94
Shinn, F. 79, 80
Siegal, B. 29
Simonton 88
Simonton, C. 82, 87
Sisson, C. 114
Sivananda 86
souls code x, 37, 86, 89, 94
Spinoza 28
Sternberg, R. 19
Stevenson, R. 63
Swelled Head 104
Switch-Hitter 105
Vaughan, F. 28
visualization 32, 85, 86, 87, 88,
89, 102
Zen 114
T
third eye 47, 48
Thoreau, H. 97
Thorndike, E. 19
Toxic Logic 51, 55, 57, 58
124

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Why

Liberty Publishing Group

Copyright 2002 Edie Raether

Publishers Cataloging-in-Publication Data

1. Intuition. 2. Self-actualization (Psychology)

eing a psychotherapist for over 25 years, Ive always

Why Cats Dont Bark

Discover why cats dont bark.

nce upon a time there was a cat named Freda. Like

Why Cats Dont Bark

This story captures the essence of this book. Like Freda,

Cats Leave Their Mark

Catnip for the Mind

Why Cats Dont Bark

Cats Leave Their Mark

Catnip for the Mind

Perhaps we underestimate ourselves and our abilities to

Why Cats Dont Bark

Cats Leave Their Mark

The truth is that the average bottom-ofthe-ladder' person is potentially as creative

here is in each of us a longing to see beyond our normal

Why Cats Dont Bark

Catnip for the Mind

Cats and their cousins (dogs, horses, chimpanzees,

Why Cats Dont Bark

Catnip for the Mind

Why Cats Dont Bark

A few can touch the magic string,

o the casual observer, cats may seem detached, nonchalant

Why Cats Dont Bark

Catnip for the Mind

Our Multiple Intellects

Why Cats Dont Bark

Our Multiple Intellects

Why Cats Dont Bark

Our Multiple Intellects

Catnip for the Mind

Why Cats Dont Bark

Our Multiple Intellects

Why Cats Dont Bark

nlike traditional IQ, with a century of research

Why Cats Dont Bark

Ignite Your Intuitive Intelligence

Why Cats Dont Bark

Catnip for the Mind

Ignite Your Intuitive Intelligence

Why Cats Dont Bark

Ignite Your Intuitive Intelligence

Why Cats Dont Bark

Your Hunch Quotient

1. Have you ever had a premonition (when you were

2. Have you ever answered the phone or the doorbell

3. Have you ever met a person whom youve never met

5. Do you have vivid, colorful dreams?

6. Has the solution to a problem or answer to a

7. Have you ever sensed someone staring at you

8. Have you ever thought of someone, only to have

9. Have you ever had a sudden urge to leave someplace

4. Have you ever traveled somewhere or attended a

Ignite Your Intuitive Intelligence

10. Have you ever taken a chance and helped someone

11. Did you ever expect the arrival of some piece of

12. Have you ever found something you lost, or helped

reason, only to find out later that something negative

Why Cats Don't Bark

Why Cats Don't Bark