Intuition - Any Ting! Can Happen

My book Ting! was an unplanned surprise. It happened when I set out to write a “serious” book about intuition in business. Serious, because the book I was writing, an integrative perspective on the topic, considered the scientific implications, social significance, according to Western views anyway, and the organizational linkages for the application of intuitive thinking. So I wrote dutifully and edited seriously and at other times more humourously as per my true nature. 3 drafts and 2 re-positioned proposals later, of this very serious book to be taken seriously by North American business and mainstream readers, my New York agent would begin look for a buyer for the manuscript among the elite publishers in North America.

While I was writing this “serious” book, I became light-heartedly captivated with the theme of a story that came alive for me complete with real characters, some borrowed from neighbours and others that seemed to invent themselves for the purpose of the book. The concept was good, the flow was right, so I decided to follow the story and see where it led. It was an amazingly easy process and to my surprise some of the science and other historical information seemed to neatly slide in their place as the story unraveled. So I sent it to my agent with a happy and hopeful heart and waited for his reponse. He didn’t think the concept would fly in the market. Instead he suggested another rewrite as a self-help book complete with the currently popular quizzes, questionnaires, self-help guides, and so on.

In the meantime though I thought about some correspondence I’d received from Mr. Shobit Arya of Wisdom Tree, who’d read some of my writing and had asked me if I’d be interested in writing for them on a subject close to my heart. Wisdom Tree’s name was related to the Boddhi tree under which the Buddha had attained enlightenment and the symbology of the tree being an old symbol for spiritual learning and truth, which respresented WT’s imprint and speciality. I had considered to do a book on creative imagination, which I will still do….later. But the thought kept coming to me to give this book to him. So I did. He liked it. The result is that Ting! - A Surprising Way to Listen to Intuition & Do Business Better was published, and has sold briskly in India, and at the time of its official launch on October 18, 2006 was actually going for its second printing. From here it has launched into the North American market as well as Singapore, U.K., South Africa, Europe, Malaysia and other countries.

I thought ultimately, with my many ties to India, all from “apparently” different sources, it seemed intended that I come to India and get published here. And for good reason. No other country in the world today has a legacy for intuition and spirituality like India, who can trace her knowledge back to the time of the Vedas. And publishing is changing too. It makes sense to go directly from India to the world, rather than just in North America, where it would have likely stayed if I had gone forward with a North American publisher. So I figured, “Go to India and get the world!” Everything has a reason. I’m sure that I don’t even know all of the reasons yet.

And so a couple weeks ago, I set out for leaving and experiencing a taste of India for the first time. I decided that I wouldn’t study beforehand and instead I would let my experience unravel in a natural way without comparison to my obviously Western and Canadian upbringing, coloured with a Northern Italian heritage.

“What would it feel like?” I wondered whether landing in the obvious motherland of some other time for me would seem somehow strange or familiar. Instead I felt nothing perceptible. Which was not a surprise to me. Because even my Sat-guru who is from India is generally invisible and imperceptible to other people. So that was it; it was imperceptible.

But since that moment onwards, everything inside me has seemed to shift and deepen and consolidate as one and I’ll be forever changed by it, for the better.

Why did I choose to write about intuition? In the west, this is risky. Personally I don’t enjoy risk, but this felt necessary because as a strong logician all my life I’ve felt like I’d only been living half a life, all the while working very hard, raising a family and so on. The west has been conscientiously and increasingly engaged over the past few decades in a completely head-oriented intellectual mind-set approach to everything. Everyone is trying to work harder, faster, accumulate more, be more successful, keep up, learn, acquire, move up, move on…. And in the most paralyzing fashion the litany of corporate policies, rules, operating procedures, and most extreme due diligence information requirements given the extremely litigious business environment in North America and particularly in the U.S., continues to be absolutely overwhelming. And it could also be, in spite of massive capitalization and creative and industrial capability, their global downfall.

10 years ago I said, “Stop the rat race, I want to get off.” I was in mid-career, with two choices, either move into Senior Executive Management or sideways into a different career. But with a 3 year old at my side, who I dearly loved, my heart said no to the former. And I left my position with a small retirement package and an opportunity to work for myself and set my hours and pace in balance with my other commitments.

But there was something else. An intuitive event preceded this one year before. It was an unexpected event where I was somehow given by direct perception a set of intuitive tools that I realized had the potential to help people by enabling them to become more self-aware. And I began work on my company Intuita with this program on mind, The Intuita Program, as it was known then, taught participants a simple 3 step process to tap into intuitive information on demand in response to almost any question. This program was successfully taught in India to executives and managers several times by my former Intuita licensee Sukhdeepak Malvai who was showcased in both Life Positive Magazine and Business Today India in Feb. 2003. Mr. Malvai then went on to pursue other business initiatives of his own interest. Meanwhile I retailed the program as Intuita MindWare, a packaged self-learning product in North America and conducted seminars for several companies but it was obvious that North American companies were not ready for this yet.

In fact 10 years ago if you mentioned intuition in the context of business, most North American managers and professionals would look at you like you were green and had just landed here on a spaceship. It’s improved since and much of my writing that has helped to position intuition as a valued skill and innovation asset has been showcased in top trade publications. But there is a long way to go yet for North America. People are not as integrated and more apt to be armed with facts, figures, data, justifications, not only in substantiating business but also in conversation; which is for the most part overtly intellectual.

Mention intuition in the workplace in India and the response is quite different. It’s much more like an obvious thing, something we just do. And that is the crux of the difference between North America and India. Here in India you can feel the spirituality. People are more whole, more together in their mind and heart.

The pace of the workplace in North America which is typically fast and frenetic. Everything is in hurry mode. Not so in India. A retail store transaction which would take one to three minutes in North America, usually on a 4 or 5-stop chore-list, can take 10-20 minutes here. Our streets are orderly and fast-moving; our 16 lane highway corridor at the 401 in Toronto moves more vehicles per minute than any other spot in North America, Los Angeles included. Contrast that with the Delhi streets of auto-rickshaws, vehicles vying for every lane, bike-rickshaws, cows and pedestrians where everything moves at different speeds, most of them slow. I find the streets are not as crowded as Toronto and there is much much less traffic; it’s just slower because it’s unorganized.

But I luxuriated in being spoiled. Freed from the endless housework, cooking and chores beyond my work, here in India I was utterly spoiled by neighbours and family friends. I learned how good parathas could be and enjoyed by far the best food in my life and probably the healthiest.

And at the launch of Ting! I got to meet the honoured Kiran Bedi, who was the first female police commissioner in India and was both respected and feared among her peers and the privileged few who were the recipients of her fairly administered justice. I’d heard of her reputation even before landing in India so I was prepared to meet one very tough woman. Instead, this diminutive, caring, wise and very very alert person who hosted my book launch was every bit a mother, a human, a true professional with the presence of a sage.

Kiran talked about the first time she entered the notorious prison at Bihar.

“The job” she says, “was inside the prison, you had to go in to work there.” She described her first day when she entered the central courtyard which openly separated two walls of prisoners, held back from the bars by guards, all staring at her.

“They looked at me. I looked back at them. I had no experience in this, I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to say something, but what? Namaste? No, it wasn’t in my heart. I didn’t feel that. These were bad guys. I knew this from my days as a police-woman. So I reverted to instinct.”

“I stared. They stared. I stopped. Then I asked, “Do you pray?”

Silence. No response. Blank stares.

“So I repeated this. Do you pray?”

Still nothing.

“So then I went up to one of the gates where prisoners were standing and I looked at them directly and asked again. Do you pray?”

“Finally a few hesitant heads began nodding affirmatively, others nodding no.”

Then I asked them. “Would you like to pray?”

“They all nodded yes.”

“So I asked them to join me in saying a prayer and they did. 1000 inmates prayed with me that day.”

This was the beginning of sea change for the prisoners and the prison. And Kiran called a film producer friend of hers to film this. “You will never see it again,” she said, “you have to film it.” Now this film of 1,000 inmates praying and later meditating is making the rounds at the U.N.

I thought of all the strong and brilliant North American business women and government leaders I knew. I couldn’t think of a one who would or could so profoundly and naturally reunite these souls with this kind of a self-worth or would be brave enough or natural enough to invoke prayer.

Kiran, like many others, describes her intuition as an instinctual response. But it does not come from the intellect, or the thinking process. Others experience intuition differently; for some it’s a feeling or a flash of insight. It’s different for everyone.

Ting is a made up word that describes what intuition would sound like as it strikes an open mind. The value is in learning how your intuitive perceptual response shows up, and how you can recognize that Ting! of intuition in the vernacular of everyday language. As in “I just got a Ting!”

Ting is a fictional story about an up-and-coming young professional who discovers how to use his intuition better with the help of a company mentor, leading him to discover a new product and revenue source for his company and a more positive energy level for himself.

What’s important and illustrative about Ting! is that it’s the first book to truly legitimize the use of intuition in big business and private organizations by presenting a direct case from an intuitive insight to a tangible business result.

In organizations this is the kind of book that a person could give to his manager or coworker and say “Let’s try this.” Or “What do you think about this?” ting ! says in fairly few words the things that are important to know about intuition in our lives and workplaces in a way that is individual and intrinsic.

All lasting change happens at the level of the individual. Yet in organizations it has become especially convenient to teach as though everyone is one group that produces certain behaviours, and exerts certain actions in certain ways. But although this type of learning or training might bind the mind and body to propel a sense of appropriate action on the company’s behalf, it cannot bind the unrestrained heart, which remains forever free. Only truth and love can do that.

We over here in North America are in danger of becoming very unhealthy and out of touch with our true selves if we continue to go forward in a purely intellectual direction. But intellectual direction has been the “safe” direction of business, because it’s free from the impact of its potential opposite, that of imposing perhaps a religious impact on one’s freedom of choice. And yet we also have the presence of evangelical motivational rah-rah learning gurus in America that are actually manipulating people into believing their extremely positive and charismatic views clothed as company commitments. Speaking truth in organizations that do this is really hard. You would be put in a difficult spot if you disagreed publicly. So, many people simply put on the happy face and keep their own views private. But this is not freedom either and it limits people from giving out the valuable feedback that they could back to their company and colleagues. It’s a false sense of positivism.

“You here in India have great opportunities, because for the most part this sense of intellectual infrastructure that the West has is missing here. You have the freedom to move, to get things done. But not always easily. Here, there seems to be the force of habit, that resists change and the way things have been done traditionally. Those who can move forward into new ways of doing and taking action can and have achieved greatly.”

Also there’s a different sense of business and cultural balance. I believe that here in India if you have the opportunity to create a job or a contract or micro-entrepreneurship opportunity for someone, you will create it. In the west the thinking is all in the name of efficiency and cost cutting. If the job or position isn’t essential, we cut it, out-source it or replace with technology and to hell with the person who lost the job; that’s their problem, go find another one.

Intuition, having the voice of intuition alive in you, is a home-coming. It brings us closer to ourselves, keeps us in close counsel with our heart and spirit and is a reliable guide for the choices and decisions we make and the results of action or potential action. It helps us to keep the meaning in our lives as we carry out our responsibilities. And it is the sense that when there is no precedent for something having happened before, will guide us forward to a new understanding and way of being in a world that is constantly changing.

For the global economic changes are not yet ended, there will be both opportunity and turbulence in the road ahead. We need intuition by our side and imagination in our mind.

Imagination is coming for me too. My next book, also by Wisdom Tree, is called Spark - Raise Your Mind to the Power of Infinity & Create Anything.


Intuition - Any Ting! Can Happen - To learn more about this author, visit Arupa Tesolin's Website.

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