Introverted Intuition as "spiritual gift"?

[Eric B]

My wife and her friends are all SJ's, yet having become rather "charismatic" in their beliefs, seem to have taken on some Ni-like behaviors, such as premonitions of the future, and "prophetic words". One of our friends, who seems to be ISTJ, seems to have always had this strong vision ability or "knowings", from growing up in a background of Catholicism mixed with witchcraft. (Called "brujeria" in Spanish). They even tried to make her a bruja!

They otherwise do seem more like SJ's (strong reliance on the past to learn from and need for familiarity). My wife thought she was good with Ni when I first described it to her, yet when I handed her a page of my various symbolisms of things in life (which I now recognize as my own shadowy use of it, and would have been right up the alley of an NJ), she was like "that's crazy". This would be more like a reaction to one's "trickster" process, instead of good parent, and what she "parented" with was what she learned in psychology (hence, how crazy it all sounded).

Myself NOT being Charismatic, I tend to question a lot of these so-called "gifts" (though I believe they are hypotheticaly possible. They don't seem to quite line up with the original Biblical uses they are patterned after, however).

So is this feeling of a spiritual gift (whether actually supernatural or just psychological or even outright imaginary something) able to lift the Ni process out of the depths of the shadow and make it strong, positive, trusted and effective like that?

 

[vince]

I think visions are domain of intuitives. And then I mean visions comming forth from certain ways of reasoning (psychological), ie. thinking ahead etc., rather than supernatural. I have a hard time believing that foresight of sensors is anything more than imagination.
I'm not very sure what you are asking though.

 

[Eric B]

What I'm doing for one thing is making sure I'm right about them being SJ's and not NJ's (Or SP's) in the first place.
So I imagine, that the quasi-Ni they are displaying is either a special gift, or possibly imaginary as you said. I'm just wondering if it is possible for religious beliefs like that to develop the function, which otherwise should be in the shadows.

 

[vince]

I see. Well perhaps it is possible. I do think certain environments or influences can trigger the shadow. But what you described sounds more like new age / religion / imagination to me than intuition.
I think the shadow is overrated too btw In the realm of psychology, I don't think much ever changes.

 

[Totenkindly]

I found in my immersion in conservative Christian circles that there were solid instinctive Ni types and then there were SJ types that dabbled in intuitive areas without having a great understanding of pattern and impression coherency/consistency. I guess sometimes it might be hard to articulate which is which; when I was still young, it was more a sense of "This person is a fruit loop" vs "This person is painting a visionary but still plausible picture of the world" and I wanted to know the difference.

Basically they use their own values coupled with J-closure to translate their own desires into intuitive images that they would then parade as spiritual vision. (And I don't say that in a caustic or derogatory way -- it seems to me based a big-picture view to be what was happening.) Remember that textbook intuition for textbook sensors is like an out-of-control animal, they want to have it at their beck and call (and is appealing as such) because otherwise it can be terrifying with all the fear images it can conjure up; still, just because something is abstracted does not mean it isn't supposed to be logically consistent.

You also get into the pattern where they take the "spiritual rules" of their cultural faith and start reading hard data (coincidences, events, people's comments, etc.) as having special significance beyond what can be justified... since their intuition is NOT trained, they fail to see all the other things that COULD have happened or other ways that their experience COULD just as reasonably by interpreted, and they use this very simplistic pseudo-intuition instead, believing that they have some sort of spiritual gift. It's basically their personal values being given mystical significance (not much better than astrology or kaballah numerology) and projected outward as manifestation of some universal truth, it's not the opposite of either collecting data suggesting possibilities or having some internal mystical vision that is still kept in realistic context.

Intuitives (who are weaker by nature in raw data collection and assimilation than sensors) think in terms of patterns instinctively and have a more coherent sense of them, everything has to be kept in balance with each other or the vision is faulty.

 

[Eric B]

Thanks. That makes sense.
The ISTJ I mentioned seems to have this "gift" the most, but it still could be confirmation bias, and then, there is the sense that to question these things is to dismiss the spiritual. Sometime after 9-11, he had some premonition in which she described some dome shaped thing, and a lot of water. We scrambled to try to figure out what it could be, and later, when Katrina occurred (whth the Superdome figuring prominently). that seemed to fit. She also "knew" that a friend's teenage was pregnant. I don't know that many NJ's other than another close friend, and aside from the common "Cart the Course" (Melancholic) style in common between ISTJ and INFJ, from what I gather, she is more concrete in focus. (And plus, being fully "Melancholy", would fit being SJ as well). So inasmuch as these premonitions are usually about disaster or other negative things, it probably does fit into the description of the daemonic Ni ("may make dire predictions with detailed certainty"), though it is strong, and not necessarily tied to stress.

I myself have been more and more recognizing the role this process plays in my own life. I had before focused on the "predicting the future' aspect of it, which I have absolutely no strength in. Yet it is also about symbolizing things, and I have always done that, though I have never known what to do with these symbolisms. They just often get me depressed. I for one was very upset about the pregnancy, because the "loss of innocence" has always had some sort of symbolic meaning to me. And then comparing it to my luckless youth, and what it all means in the overall scheme of things. In fact, as I struggled to weigh between Fi and Ti, I see that alot of these inner emotions are triggered more by Ni than Fi. (and elfinchilde had even associated witch Ni with "getting overemotional" or something like that in her "dissection").

 

[iwakar]

I believe I have experienced several premonitions in my life. I also believe I have experienced supernatural phenomena a few times in my life. One premonition in particular rattled me.

I make no pretentions that I fully understand the science or spirituality behind such events, or whether or not there is even a difference between the two (doubtful) --because I cannot.

My skepticism has traveled so far over my experiences as to redouble back upon itself. I am at a loss. But inexplicable things have happened that I cannot ignore and will not dismiss. I note them, I nod, and I carry on. There's so little to be done with an ability that cannot be controlled other than look upon it with wonder and confusion.