Well, the brain is an organ and just like all organs it equips us to navigate our environment – and that includes the spheres beyond our immediate habitat (e.g.: air, space … time). Just like our hands enable us to feel and move things, and our eyes enable us to see and thus side-step impediments so our brain helps us to navigate our way thru life, not just in situ but to even plan and therefore predict our future position.

How does the brain do that? Well, just as our nerves detect cold and with the aid of our brain deduce that we have to wear a sweater or move to a warmer clime so our brain detects the ideas that EXIST and through its own processes, comes up with the best set of actions we can take for results that are most beneficial to us. This comes to us as intuitive ideas, which, unfortunately for most of us, we ignore. In fact it is as if we are impervious to these very ideas the brain creates that even if one idea does succeed in getting our attention, we immediately dismiss it as impossible or explain it away. This is done so quickly that we don't even have time to consider the validity of the process. It's as if we have an inbuilt mechanism that rejects these intuitive ideas before they take root, somewhat like a newspaper editor, the final press being the content of our current consciousness.

Humans have a collective conscience that exists in what I'll call the ether or the 'stream of things', something akin to the internet cyberspace. So every idea that develops is not exclusive to an individual or location but is stored and is accessible to those with associated inclinations.

That is why we find that parents get shocked for example that their children are more adept at handling technology than they were/are (my son of three years showed me this weekend that he could operate a digital camera). But that should not surprise us if we know that this knowledge exists in the air, and children pick it up faster than us coz they have less inhibitions. The adult tends to approach something new with a certain prejudice and trepidation and therefore immediately destines him or herself to failure. This collective consciousness is also the reason why ideas sometimes develop simultaneously in different people in different locations (e.g.: fashion and technological ideas, e.g.: internet voyeurism: Facebook, Hi5 etc). Reason being that that idea has become expedient for certain purposes at that time; and since our brain selects what is best for us in our present moment of existence, it detects the same for similar life-situations even in different locations of our ever-unifying global village.

The 'problem' with human beings is that they never express their true feelings but always try to canvass them in some way – and still expect to get the desired result. We talk in euphemisms, we give flowers instead of saying "I love you," we act like we want to know God but cant stick to any of his ways prescribed in the Bible, Koran or our consciences.

 Lately we've had the phenomenon of brands & branding. Based on the idea that people don't want unreliable/vacillating products but something that is consistent, like a whiskey that's had the same taste since 1773 or a washing powder that makes those stains disappear. Well and good. Now lately public figures have taken on the brand philosophy and have become brand-names themselves. So instead of Helen Zille (the firebrand South African Democratic Alliance leader) coming to a press conference with shabby hair on a Monday morning and looking bright and spritley on Tuesday, she has to maintain a constant and endearing image – which may not be the 'real' Helen Zille, therefore meaning that HZ has a public and private persona, therefore she's not entirely real or her reality is vacillating which is what she was trying not to show in the first place. The thing is we are all involved in this game in one way or another, so the world is like a big stage were everyone is acting out their own drama in mammoth confusion.

So, being humans and being social and imitative creatures we tend to mimic each others' acts and sayings (clichés) and take them for the Ultimate reality. Thus when we get ideas from the Real Reality (the collective human experience), our cultivated prejudices act like a screen to filter the truth and warp it into something as grotesque as our very lives and so we try in vain to succeed.

What is the difference between a successful man and one unsuccessful? To the achiever, nothing is impossible, all heights are scalable. He sits down and works out a plan, a scheduled way forward, a set of successive actions that will lead him eventually to his desired goal. The non-achiever says it is impossible and leaves it at that. This latter is controlled by events and his social environment; he fails to think outside it, to intuit.

Intuition is that first idea that comes to your head, the one you don't listen to, the one you brush off.

When you're stranded and you see someone you know and you raise your hand that moment too late (that he doesn't recognise you) because you were thinking of how embarrassing it would be to ask for his help, and of how he'll react, you've missed your intuitive thought. Or when you see that attractive vacancy and you spend days thinking if you should apply when you know you need it – and when you finally do the post is filled – you've missed your intuitive moment.

We miss these moments because of self-pride, self-doubt, and simple ignorance. As humans, from the moment we a born to the day we vote someone into power and the day we get our first pay cheque we are always held under subjection and continue to think that our ways should be directed by somebody, something other than ourselves, and that we should not be too deviant from the norm – yet the greatest ideas have always sounded ludicrous at first (viz. Galileo's helio-centric postulation. We are happy to live in monotony and without question.

Our brain is the special device that guides us through life, giving us the best ideas, not of itself but from the collective human experience. We should never go wrong in following that. What we need to do is recognise the barriers to understanding that interrupt intuitive thought. Then we can think freely, with a truly open mind.

Intuition is human Instinct.

"The power is Yours! "