[Jungian Cognitive Functions] Ni - What the hell is it?

[Virtual ghost]

When and how do I experience Ni ? (at least INTJ version of Ni)






When I on regual basis see the outcomes before they happen. Some times long before they happen.

When most of my life is spent on preparing for the future.

When I insist that I understand the whole picture. Past, present and future.

When I play with long term trends in order to realize where in space and time those trends will meet/clash.

When I am bothered by events that are vastly outside of my life span.

When I knew more about the universe at the age of 5 than the average person knows in adult age.

When all the time I have this though bubbles coming out of my unconciousness and offering me solutions that I could not figure on the spot.

When I in a matter of seconds determine the best path out of 30 scenarios. (xNxPs do not believe me regarding this).

When I redefine term or I am redefining term based on circumstances. (If it is in position A than it has X effect but if it is in position B then it has Y effect). Si and Ti heavy users usually hate when I do this.)

When I get exausted from extensive brain usage even if from the outside it looks as if I am wasting time/resting.

When I can completely space out and ignore environment entirely.

When I completely take away the feeling of journey from people by defining the desired/probable outcome.

When my speech patterns and usage of words most people describe as "strange". Not wrong, just strange.

When people see me as the elder/prophet on the group and come to me for opinion on regular basis.

When I believe that everthing can be explained in more complex manner but there is just no enough time for that.

When I am careful regarding safety becuse I have a mission to accomplish and I do not want to compromise it with pointless mistakes and stuff I do not really care.

When people see me as very talented but stubborn. (since they do not see what I do)

When I cut off details in order to make point of the story much more obvious.

When I make classification of scenarios of how the human history may end.

When I finish peoples sentences with great precision.

When I can see nothing but how to get to the goals from your current position.

When I hide dark and morbid side of yourself even if I like it very much. Giving the other people feeling that they know me well.

When I am certain that the ends simply have to justify the means if progress were to be made.

When there are two parallel thinking processes in me, one is focused on environmet and the other is focused on doing something completely unrelated to the current events.

 

[Mademoiselle]

Oh dear, ..
Kurdistan will be soon split to more pieces

Iran will adopt few cities and turkey will take the others..
I bet life would be harder at turkey with hospitals stealing organs from kurdish patines when they're not even dead


Aaaand ISIS continues more humiliation of course, when there'll be two kurdish forces in the northren part turkey will sire use them both to protect their own

Not to mention the kurd countdown at the ISIS battelfields with iraqi' national force aka 7ashd-el-sha3be watching it like football matches and capturing picture with the dead for the eyes of the media..

And some countries making drama and harsh using kurdish forces symbols to creat a civil war

The youth are leaving to europe by thousands hoping for this blood line to take the hit so as to survive this evolution.

The question is how many kurdish souls are left for you to take?

 

[VagrantFarce]

Another way of looking at it:

Intuition is electricity, sensation is groundedness. Dominant-intuitives by their nature are in danger of becoming "ungrounded" in their lives - but depending on orientation, that "groundedness" is found differently.

• Ni finds groundedness "out there", in the outer world (Se) - the world around them offers a chance to erode and weather their thinking, grounding them in objectivity and ever-changing circumstances.
• Ne finds groundedness "inside", in the inner world (Si) - they detach themselves from the whirlwind of possibilities and suggestions that exist outside of themselves, and allow an "inner" concreteness to anchor and take hold.

 

[uumlau]

Another way of looking at it:

Intuition is electricity, sensation is groundedness. Dominant-intuitives by their nature are in danger of becoming "ungrounded" in their lives - but depending on orientation, that "groundedness" is found differently.

• Ni finds groundedness "out there", in the outer world (Se) - the world around them offers a chance to erode and weather their thinking, grounding them in objectivity and ever-changing circumstances.
• Ne finds groundedness "inside", in the inner world (Si) - they detach themselves from the whirlwind of possibilities and suggestions that exist outside of themselves, and allow an "inner" concreteness to anchor and take hold.

This is an awesome and concise description!!!

 

[Duffy]

Another way of looking at it:

Intuition is electricity, sensation is groundedness. Dominant-intuitives by their nature are in danger of becoming "ungrounded" in their lives - but depending on orientation, that "groundedness" is found differently.

• Ni finds groundedness "out there", in the outer world (Se) - the world around them offers a chance to erode and weather their thinking, grounding them in objectivity and ever-changing circumstances.
• Ne finds groundedness "inside", in the inner world (Si) - they detach themselves from the whirlwind of possibilities and suggestions that exist outside of themselves, and allow an "inner" concreteness to anchor and take hold.

This is pretty much why I suspect I'm Ni-dom. Also Naomi Quenk's book "Was That Really Me?" which goes into length about the inferior of the types.

 

[Eric B]

I'm thinking S= "the substance of things" N="the idea of things".

So for Ni, it would be "awareness of ideas of things inferred from individual impressions" (where for Ne, it would be "ideas of things inferred from the environment").
This should hopefully help simplify what exactly it is.

 

[Mal12345]

"In Boise, Idaho, I was an hour away from conducting an [paranormal] investigation of the Old Idaho State Prison when black storm clouds blew in from the west and the temperature suddenly dropped. That wasn’t significant by itself, but two gaping holes in the sky opened up over the prison like eyes looking down on us. It was a meteorological phenomenon, but it still gave me a feeling that something memorable was going to happen during the night." Zak Bagans, "Dark World."

Can there be any more beautiful example of the Ni function in action?

Actual picture:

 

[Mal12345]

The Ni function produces, of itself, something internal and perceptible, such as a feeling or an image. Although the source is internal, its source is often externalized.

If Bagans was more of a mystic and less of a pseudo-scientist, he might say that the source of the cloud formation was an air elemental rather than intellectualizing it as merely a meteorological phenomenon. It is that, but it could also be something else, as his own feelings were trying to tell him.

 

[uumlau]

Actual picture:

There's a name for this kind of cognition, but I forget it. It's where you can look at just about anything random, and see patterns such as faces or animals or anything else recognizable, even though you know it's just clouds, or a curtain with a flower pattern on it.

I don't think it's an example of Ni, per se, because it happens for everyone. I will say, however, that it's a good example of "what Ni feels like" for those who don't have it as a dom/aux function. Ni will "just see" patterns that no one else sees. The main difference with the face in the clouds example is that there is no face in the clouds - it just looks like it.

For Ni, Ni will see the pattern, and the pattern indicates something real. E.g., it's more like seeing a funnel cloud and concluding that there's a tornado - except no one else can see the funnel cloud and they think you're crazy until the tornado hits, and then they say you were just "lucky" to be right about the tornado. They think there is no real way we could know that there is a tornado coming, because they cannot see the funnel clouds that the tornadoes make.

 

[Mal12345]

There's a name for this kind of cognition, but I forget it. It's where you can look at just about anything random, and see patterns such as faces or animals or anything else recognizable, even though you know it's just clouds, or a curtain with a flower pattern on it.

I don't think it's an example of Ni, per se, because it happens for everyone. I will say, however, that it's a good example of "what Ni feels like" for those who don't have it as a dom/aux function. Ni will "just see" patterns that no one else sees. The main difference with the face in the clouds example is that there is no face in the clouds - it just looks like it.

For Ni, Ni will see the pattern, and the pattern indicates something real. E.g., it's more like seeing a funnel cloud and concluding that there's a tornado - except no one else can see the funnel cloud and they think you're crazy until the tornado hits, and then they say you were just "lucky" to be right about the tornado. They think there is no real way we could know that there is a tornado coming, because they cannot see the funnel clouds that the tornadoes make.

Pareidolia. I totally agree that anybody can make scary eyes and a frowny face out of the cloud formation in the picture. I'm not talking about that. I'm taking about the feelings they invoke.

"...but it still gave me a feeling that something memorable was going to happen during the night."

 

[uumlau]

Pareidolia. I totally agree that anybody can make scary eyes and a frowny face out of the cloud formation in the picture. I'm not talking about that. I'm taking about the feelings they invoke.

"...but it still gave me a feeling that something memorable was going to happen during the night."

No, I don't believe that Ni isparticularly attached to feelings, even for INFJs. It's something that PeaceBaby noticed and remarked on in her blog, that for her with Fi dom, she's always getting "feeling impressions" of the world around her, kind of like listening to a symphony ... and because it's a symphony, she can hear what is in tune and out of tune. The Ni doms in that exchange (including myself) had noted that we really don't have a feeling until the end of a thought process, where we finally get that "oh!" or "ah ha!" kind of feeling. Until that point, things are held in a kind of detached state, w/r to both T or F judgments.

 

[Mal12345]

No, I don't believe that Ni isparticularly attached to feelings, even for INFJs. It's something that PeaceBaby noticed and remarked on in her blog, that for her with Fi dom, she's always getting "feeling impressions" of the world around her, kind of like listening to a symphony ... and because it's a symphony, she can hear what is in tune and out of tune. The Ni doms in that exchange (including myself) had noted that we really don't have a feeling until the end of a thought process, where we finally get that "oh!" or "ah ha!" kind of feeling. Until that point, things are held in a kind of detached state, w/r to both T or F judgments.

I don't see any distinction between "feelings" and "feeling-impressions." I stated above that feelings aren't the same thing as emotions. A feeling is an impression which is a type of sensation generated internally, but not an emotion. So yeah, that's what I'm talking about, feelings (or feeling-impressions if you will), but not emotions, as I said above.

As for Bagans, he doesn't go into great detail about the feeling he got from the cloud-formation, he only said he felt that something momentous was going to happen - meaning, the formation had future-predictive capacity for him. I don't think that's the same thing as the "oh!" or "ah ha!" kind of feeling. However, I wouldn't try to claim that the Ni function only produces one kind of feeling-impression.

 

[uumlau]

I don't see any distinction between "feelings" and "feeling-impressions." I stated above that feelings aren't the same thing as emotions. A feeling is an impression which is a type of sensation generated internally, but not an emotion. So yeah, that's what I'm talking about, feelings (or feeling-impressions if you will), but not emotions, as I said above.

As for Bagans, he doesn't go into great detail about the feeling he got from the cloud-formation, he only said he felt that something momentous was going to happen - meaning, the formation had future-predictive capacity for him. I don't think that's the same thing as the "oh!" or "ah ha!" kind of feeling. However, I wouldn't try to claim that the Ni function only produces one kind of feeling-impression.

Let's just say these "spooky" kinds of descriptions of Ni are what made me initially strongly doubt that I was Ni dom and look serious at INTP even though the descriptions for INTP didn't quite match up. INFJs seem to frequently get these kinds of impressions and relate them as such to others. For me as an INTJ, Ni is the ability to just "look at a problem" and know the solution, even though I've never encountered the problem before. The trick is that such problems have earmarks that make them look very similar to other problems, and once I see the pattern, I can figure out the rest without much effort. There is zero notion of a "feeling" or "feeling-impression" in my head when this happens. It's instantaneous; it works "without thinking".

Once I realized that this was Ni, and it wasn't "spooky" or "mysterious", the INTJ typing as an Ni dom and aux Te fit me perfectly, and the INTP version with Ti and Ne did not fit. Both Ni and Ne see abstract patterns, but Ni sees particular kinds of patterns that aren't so visible to Ne (and vice-versa!), and seems to be a storehouse of these kinds of patterns, which are recalled as needed based on observations.

tl; dr - Ni is not some sort of weird impressionistic cognitive function.

 

[Mal12345]

Zak Bagans commonly uses feeling-impressions, only they aren't 'ah-ha' moments which is the traditional form of intuition. The 'ah-ha' moment is, in my experience, more than a mere impression at any rate, but a strong, suddenly realization that is part feeling and part thought - the metaphorical light-bulb over the head.

Bagans sees himself as a spiritual sensitive, meaning he has tuned his feeling-impressions of the world around him so that they present evidence of the unseen presence of spirits in his immediate environment. These are just a variety of common feelings, such as feeling cold, getting goose bumps, feeling the hairs raise up on your arm, etc. etc. - feelings commonly considered to be spooky. But these feelings do not carry with them the idea that there are ghosts. Ni gives the idea that there are ghosts. Any common thing, such as feelings or clouds, will be converted into ideas that are not derived from the empirical, objective, or scientific.

 

[Mal12345]

Let's just say these "spooky" kinds of descriptions of Ni are what made me initially strongly doubt that I was Ni dom and look serious at INTP even though the descriptions for INTP didn't quite match up. INFJs seem to frequently get these kinds of impressions and relate them as such to others. For me as an INTJ, Ni is the ability to just "look at a problem" and know the solution, even though I've never encountered the problem before. The trick is that such problems have earmarks that make them look very similar to other problems, and once I see the pattern, I can figure out the rest without much effort. There is zero notion of a "feeling" or "feeling-impression" in my head when this happens. It's instantaneous; it works "without thinking".

Once I realized that this was Ni, and it wasn't "spooky" or "mysterious", the INTJ typing as an Ni dom and aux Te fit me perfectly, and the INTP version with Ti and Ne did not fit. Both Ni and Ne see abstract patterns, but Ni sees particular kinds of patterns that aren't so visible to Ne (and vice-versa!), and seems to be a storehouse of these kinds of patterns, which are recalled as needed based on observations.

tl; dr - Ni is not some sort of weird impressionistic cognitive function.

I did read. The Ni function operates a little differently for INTJ. Zak Bagans is an INFJ - THUS, there will be more of a mystical or supernatural bent to his thinking. But thinking - in general - adds a skeptical element to the judging process because thinking is a process of deriving a truth, a concept, a principle, etc. Intuition however derives nothing, it simply senses. Thinking processes those feeling-sensations and does indeed filter them. This filtering adds a strong impression to others that the INTJ person is repressed (as also with the ISTJ).

The INFJ, on the other hand, gives free reign to feeling-impressions. Case in point - a young lady of my acquaintance who tested as INFJ, and agreed with INFJ as her type - who told me that she collects these feelings and even gives them names.

So in many ways the INTJ and INFJ are opposite sides of the same Ni.

 

[Mal12345]

From a Ghost Adventures forum:

'My fiancé had some family pass away tragically in a car accident. Two weeks ago I was driving down the highway when the Carrie Underwood song "Temporary Home" came on the radio. I got cold and goosebumps; I knew that they were there' [cleaned up for grammar]. In other words, she believes the car accident victims were there with her in the car as ghosts.

Chances are this person is either an ISFJ or an INFJ. Because when an introverted perceiving function is dominant, it gives irrational conviction to the belief; and when a Feeling function is secondary, it is far less likely to question the belief than a Thinking function would.

 

[FemMecha]

What makes Ni different from a introverted judging function like Fi or Ti is that it is more detached and in its pure form does not pass judgment, but merely observes. Ni has more of a drive than Ne to have a sense of order imposed on reality, so it looks for core principles that account for patterns that are observed. In its pure form it is quite detached from reality making observations and connections, without the primary concern of whether those observations and patterns are moral or logical, but that they just are. Perceiving function can be more open to the true nature of reality, because they are less likely than the judging function to have a preconceived notion of what data "should" be dismissed for not matching the internal framework of assumptions. Ni is more ordered than Ne, but its order is very different from Fi or Ti because it dismisses nothing. Everything observed is taken in and viewed from every conceivable angle until it can find some resting place in the pattern.

Imagine all the introverted functions as a tree. Fi and Ti take care of the tree by pruning away the branches, or adding in supports to help the tree grow straight, and removing any branches and leaves that do not promote the overall health and structure of the tree. Ni and Si observe the tree growing watching as the dead leaves and branches fall off, watching as its growth twists and turns to reach the sun. It keeps watching to understand the natural system it observes to see why the tree grows as it does.

You can also imagine the introverted functions as puzzles. Fi and Ti will organize all the pieces and when they discover pieces that do not fit the picture of the puzzle, these will be thrown away to maintain the correctness and completeness of the picture of the puzzle being constructed. Ni and Si will take the odd pieces that don't fit the picture and place these into another pile for future reference. Everything has meaning, everything exists in connection to everything else. The only thing the observers does is to understand *how* it connects and fits and not *if* it connects and fits. So, the unwanted puzzle pieces remain in another pile for years until more pieces come in and hopefully complete that picture as well one day. The puzzle pieces came from some place, and they exist for some reason, so one must wait to understand how.

Edit:One more metaphor. Image all the introverted functions metaphorically processing the incoming calls at a police station that is searching for an individual. Many of these calls are mistakes or pranks, so the police in true Fi or Ti form find systems to most effectively dismiss the false calls in order to focus on the correct ones. When these functions work well, they can optimize an interaction with reality because too much information is distracting. The downside is that they can at times dismiss pertinent information. Ni or Si would take in all the calls because each call happened for someone reason that might be useful information later. No call is dismissed, but instead the challenge is to make sense of the nature of each call and organize it based on whether it applies to this case, whether a batch of calls coming in might actually help find a second person who happened to look similar, or if a cluster of calls might help identify an area that has a characteristic that tends to produce false information. There is a reason each call came in, so the judging function dismisses anything not relevant to the task at hand, while the perceiving function takes in everything and makes sense of the reason why false calls are coming in as equally important to the reason correct calls are coming in.

 

[FemMecha]

From a Ghost Adventures forum:

'My fiancé had some family pass away tragically in a car accident. Two weeks ago I was driving down the highway when the Carrie Underwood song "Temporary Home" came on the radio. I got cold and goosebumps; I knew that they were there' [cleaned up for grammar]. In other words, she believes the car accident victims were there with her in the car as ghosts.

Chances are this person is either an ISFJ or an INFJ. Because when an introverted perceiving function is dominant, it gives irrational conviction to the belief; and when a Feeling function is secondary, it is far less likely to question the belief than a Thinking function would.

Let me use this an example of how the perceiving dominant function deals with that information. The judging function will hear the story about ghost and dismiss it for not being logical. It doesn't fit the preconceived notion of reality and therefore has no meaning.

I hear that story and become curious about why this person experienced "ghosts". It is relevant information, although without using a judging function it has no inherent meaning. Without adding the judging function, it is neither true nor false. It isn't about the credibility of the existence of ghosts. I see an individual with an experience and there is some reason for that experience. Letting go of all morality and logic, the reasons could include the existence of ghosts or it could be a psychological phemonmen. Regardless of whether it is a tangible fact or not, it is interesting that a human being would have that experience. I would take that and draw no conclusion, but just tuck it away. I've had similar "feelings" at various times in my life and being a strongly Ni- perceiving dominant person, I don't pass judgment on those experiences. They do not make me believe in ghosts and they don't make me not believe. It provides another instance when a human being believes they have perceived a loved one in a non-tangible form. That's interesting to me because I don't have an explanation as to why people keep experiencing such things. It doesn't prove that their perception and manner of describing it have any basis in concrete fact, but that doesn't mean it has nothing to do with reality. Imagination is part of reality even though it is intangible. Such information ends up in my metaphorical pile of puzzle pieces that don't fit into the internal frameworks that make sense to me. I'm equally interested in the intangible, metaphysical, abstract, and metaphorical as having meaning and information about reality as I am interested in the measurable and verifiable. Different sorts of data require different tools to process. Some tools deal with identifying concrete "facts', other tools are useful for processing speculation.

 

[Mal12345]

Let me use this an example of how the perceiving dominant function deals with that information. The judging function will hear the story about ghost and dismiss it for not being logical. It doesn't fit the preconceived notion of reality and therefore has no meaning.

I hear that story and become curious about why this person experienced "ghosts". It is relevant information, although without using a judging function it has no inherent meaning. Without adding the judging function, it is neither true nor false. It isn't about the credibility of the existence of ghosts. I see an individual with an experience and there is some reason for that experience. Letting go of all morality and logic, the reasons could include the existence of ghosts or it could be a psychological phemonmen. Regardless of whether it is a tangible fact or not, it is interesting that a human being would have that experience. I would take that and draw no conclusion, but just tuck it away. I've had similar "feelings" at various times in my life and being a strongly Ni- perceiving dominant person, I don't pass judgment on those experiences. They do not make me believe in ghosts and they don't make me not believe. It provides another instance when a human being believes they have perceived a loved one in a non-tangible form. That's interesting to me because I don't have an explanation as to why people keep experiencing such things. It doesn't prove that their perception and manner of describing it have any basis in concrete fact, but that doesn't mean it has nothing to do with reality. Imagination is part of reality even though it is intangible. Such information ends up in my metaphorical pile of puzzle pieces that don't fit into the internal frameworks that make sense to me. I'm equally interested in the intangible, metaphysical, abstract, and metaphorical as having meaning and information about reality as I am interested in the measurable and verifiable. Different sorts of data require different tools to process. Some tools deal with identifying concrete "facts', other tools are useful for processing speculation.

I've read Bagan's book and he was the same way until he "came face-to-face" with a ghost. Until that time he didn't think about ghosts. I've read his personal ghost story and what could make it more convincing is the fact that these strange events went on for a week before they finally came face-to-face with each other. The same goes for the person who felt an invisible presence in her car. She's a believer anyway.

So while I'm not negating anything you say at all, there is a difference between those who are convinced and those who are unconvinced.

 

[Destiny]

Once upon a time, there is a murder case that nobody is able to resolve.

Then came along this great detective who is an Ni dom. He went to the crime scene, looked around the house for evidences, and then he came across this book that has a red strand of hair in it.

He immediately started saying, "I know who the murderer is."

"Who???!" Everybody started asking out of curiosity.

"His brother, Sam, is the murderer," he replied.

"How did you know?"

"Because I was walking pass the victim's bedroom earlier and I saw this family portrait with Sam in it, and his hair was red inside that family portrait. He is the only one with red hair in the family. And I actually found his red hair in the diary book of the victim. And then I looked at the handwriting of the "suicidal entry" in the diary book, and I compared that handwriting with other handwriting in that diary book, and I realized that it's a different handwriting, it's written by 2 different people. Then I went into Sam's bedroom and I found one of his literature poem that he wrote during his high school days. I compared the handwriting of that poem with the handwriting of that "suicidal entry" in the victim's diary, and I realized it's the exact same handwriting. Somehow, I managed to connect all the dots together and therefore, conclude that Sam is the murderer."