By Matthew Stein, P.E., Author of When Technology Fails: A Manual for Self-Reliance and Planetary Survival, ISBN #978-1933392837, published by Chelsea Green Publishing, White River Junction, VT (800) 639-4099  http://www.chelseagreen.com 

The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.

-Albert Einstein

From climate change to terrorism to an economy clouded by the peak in global oil production, we all face a future filled with uncertainty. Whatever actions and strategies we may have used successfully to guide or lives and businesses over the past few decades may not continue to work in this next period of rapid change. Clear intuitive messages can provide the extra guidance needed to navigate the murky waters of an uncertain future. I like to call it The Intuitive Edge, and many businessmen take high priced seminars from intuitive experts to improve their “gut feel” and the accuracy of their business decisions.

The rational mind processes information and reaches conclusions that are based upon an information base that is usually incomplete and imperfect. Intuition appears to give us the ability to move beyond the limits of time and space, to “see around corners” that the rational mind can't breach. Intuitive hunches have been credited with saving many a person's life, and with guiding numerous entrepreneurs and investors on their road to success. I'm sure that nearly all of us can remember times when we received strong intuitive guidance about something. If we listened to that guidance, we usually found that we were glad we did. If we didn't listen, we may have been “burned” in some kind of painful life lesson. I suggest that you use some of the following links and articles to help you develop intuitive tools to assist with your navigation of our changing world.

My father in-law, Joseph Jussen, was a resistance fighter in WWII and a Dutch soldier during the Indonesian revolution. He was credited with saving many Jewish, Dutch and Indonesian lives; and numerous courageous acts of resistance and sabotage. About a year before the end of the war in Europe, he was captured while driving a truckload of smuggled food for the resistance. After weeks of interrogation and torture (he had recurring nightmares of this throughout his life), on the day scheduled for his execution, several resistance fighters disguised as Nazi officers, boldly walked into the prison where Joseph was held and requested to “take the prisoner to the yard for execution”. When he got to the prison yard, instead of the anticipated firing squad, they surprised Joseph by hoisting him to the top of the tall prison yard wall. Joseph leapt to the sidewalk below, breaking both ankles, and was carried into a waiting get-away car. The authorities posted his picture throughout the area, so for the next year, until the liberation of Europe by Allied Forces, he was unable to show his face in the light of day.

Why did Joseph survive numerous close calls, while most of his friends and comrades perished during these perilous times? Was it more than just luck? He had only a third grade education, and was not much of a thinker, but he was street smart and used his powerful intuition to guide him through dangerous situations. That thought or picture that just happens to snap into your mind may be the key to your own personal survival in our changing world.

I remember hearing a powerfully moving account of one woman's survival of the Nazi Holocaust:

On a hot summer's day, when she was a teenager in Germany, her father received a strong intuitive message. He told his daughter to wear her ski boots to school that day. Later in the morning, all the Jewish children were rounded up and forced into railroad cars. The following winter, she was marched, along with 800 other children, through heavy snows for several weeks. While many of the other children's feet froze solid, hers were protected by her ski boots. She was one of less than 100 survivors of the march through the snow.

At some point in our lives, we have all had demonstrations of the power of intuition. The difficulty in dealing with intuitive messages is to distinguish between the different voices. Which is speaking? Is it the voice of fear, ego, fantasy, or true inner guidance and wisdom? Many times I have allowed my strong rational mind to overrule my inner messages, only to regret having listened to this mind that thinks it always knows best!

In recent years, increasing numbers of businesspeople have found that developing their intuition gives them an extra advantage in today's tough business environment. Laura Day and Patricia Einstein, authors of two suggested references on intuition (see below) teach high-priced seminars to Fortune 500 business leaders to help them develop their intuitive business skills. You can develop these skills on your own, using the exercises in their books. In addition to boosting your chances of success in emergencies and survival situations, these skills can help you deal more effectively with everyday decision making.

Testing Your Intuition

My mother in-law, Jackie Jussen, told me the following story: Orphaned at the age of five, Jackie was raised by her grandmother on a remote coffee plantation on the island of Java, Indonesia. Living far from any sizable community, her grandmother relied on natural herbal medicines. When a neighbor's son was deathly ill with malaria, Jackie's grandmother used her herbs to nurse him back to health. The neighbor was a Japanese immigrant and presented her with the gift of a kimono, which bore the seal of a powerful Japanese family.

Years later, during the World War II Japanese occupation of Java, civilians were forbidden to listen to the radio. All radios were registered with the state and fitted with official seals to indicate whether the radio had been used. Jackie's grandmother broke the seal on her radio so she could hear foreign news. When officials discovered the broken seal, she was ordered to appear in court. To maintain order and obedience, Japanese wartime justice was typically cruel and swift. Infractions, such as breaking the seal on the radio, usually resulted in a public beheading in the square immediately after sentencing. As her grandmother prepared to leave for the court hearing, an inner voice told her to wear the kimono. When the magistrate saw the seal of a royal family on her kimono, he asked her how she had come to own this kimono. Upon hearing her story, he reprimanded her, but spared her life.

On many different occasions, I have used the following technique for intuitively “testing” the outcome of a potential action. First, take several deep, slow breaths to calm your mind and alter your consciousness. As you do this, offer a simple prayer asking for guidance.

Once you feel that you have calmed and quieted the rational mind, make a mental picture of the potential action, path, or decision. Check for physical reactions in your stomach area. If you have an expanded, relaxed feeling, your pictured action is probably a good path to follow. If you get a clenched, tight feeling in your gut, it's probably a good idea to avoid the pictured action. If you get nothing, either the choice is unimportant, or you simply are not intuitively in touch with it. I suggest that you practice using your intuition with small, minor decisions before using these techniques to help you with the critical ones.

Intuitive Messages

For over twenty years, I have been receiving occasional intuitive messages and inspiration. As a design engineer, when I was stuck on a problem, unhappy with the solutions that I had managed to come up with, I would often meditate on the problem and ask internally for help. Many times, this method has yielded “snap shots” of creative solutions that simply appeared on the inner screen of my mind. Subsequently, several solutions that I derived with the help of meditation have earned US patents.

In a twist on this creative method, while meditating some time shortly before Thanksgiving of 1997, I made a common request that I have made many times before-- I simply asked for “guidance and direction”. Usually when I make this generic request, I get little conscious direction other than some simple suggestions such as how to improve a family relationship that I have been neglecting. However, this time was very different.  On this day, during my morning meditation I received a title, outline and full holographic picture of a huge book project for a manual to help people become more self reliant, live more sustainably on the planet, prepare for potential emergencies, and cope with failures and disruptions in modern technology. My first thought was, “This is a huge project. I can't possibly complete this!” The inner voice responded with, “Nobody knows all of this information. You have the skills to complete this project, and will receive the help that you need, if you choose to accept this task.” The whole idea certainly felt more like a task assigned to me rather than “My Idea”.

This inspiration became the outline for my book, When Technology Fails: A Manual for Self-Reliance and Planetary Survival. I am definitely not smart enough to figure out the entire outline for this book in an instant. Just writing a college term paper was a major ordeal for me. Unlike most prior inspirations that I had received in meditation, I could not attribute this one to something that my conscious and subconscious mind had already been working upon.  I had never even remotely considered writing anything like the book that had been dumped in my lap in a single instantaneous flash. I do believe that the inspiration for this book came from a higher source, but that source did not tell me who it was (I can't claim it was Jesus, Buddha, or God himself). If it was truly divine inspiration that guided me to write this book, one wonders what is in store for mankind in the next decade? The same source that guided me to write this book indicated that many people will be needing this information in the coming years.

Through a relatively new process that My wife and I now teach and practice, called The 15th Step, we have come to learn that all of us receive help from non-physical beings in the inner world, who inspire us and guide us through our intuition, dreams (generally not literal, but symbolical and metaphorical), and what Jesus refers to as The Still, Small Voice.

The 15th Step

I have experienced the fifteen steps with Josie Stein.  It was glorious, blissful, enlightening, and especially healing. I would recommend this process to anyone who would like to go deeper within.

--Dr. Wayne W. Dyer

Imagine having your own Guardian Angel, that could give you practical advice, seeing things clearly from the spirit world, unhampered by the physical limitations of time and space. Sounds too good to be true, doesn't it? Like a fairy tale that we tell our children, a belief that is promoted by many Christian sects, but not really believed by most adults? It has been my direct experience, gained through practicing a powerful process called “The 15th Step”, that we all have non physical guides, often referred to as Spirit Guides or Guardian Angels, and that these guides may be consciously accessed for practical advice, spiritual guidance and physical healing.

I don't expect anyone to accept my beliefs based solely upon what I write, but encourage you use your own power of intention (“ask and you shall receive”), free will, courage, and divine assistance to develop and modify your set of spiritual beliefs based upon personal experiences and verifiable practical results. With my MIT degree, and scientific training, I used to be quite skeptical and frankly believed that things like this were all fairy tales and naiveties. I t was only through powerful, direct experiences that my mind was changed (see some of the following articles, such as “Tasting the Orange” and  “To My Teacher, I will Always Be Grateful” for more details).  

The 15th Step provides a bridge between the physical and non-physical worlds, and is a process that anyone can learn to do, either by themselves or with a partner. It is not dependant upon religious belief and proves its validity through verifiable, practical results. When it comes down to it, does it really matter whether your physical healing, success, and business/personal guidance come through accessing the hidden powers and inner wisdom of your own subconscious mind, or if it is instead gained with the assistance of the collective Holy Spirit/Divine Masters from the inner world?

Our spiritual teacher, Dr. Joseph Costa, Ph.D., developed The 15Th Step process with the assistance (and at their request) of the Divine Masters from the inner world. He has been receiving visitations of non-physical beings since he was a small child in the 1920's. While the rest of his household was sleeping, Joe Costa's room would often light up when ancient saints, such as Joseph of Armithea, would materialize in his room to teach him about the nature of this reality and the spirit world. Throughout his life, these guides would talk to Joseph in his mind, and occasionally appear physically, as they had during his childhood. From landing at the beach on Normandy (taking a machine gun bullet in the steel jacketed Bible he carried under his coat), to fighting in General Patton's army, to homesteading and trapping in Alaska, to running for Mayor of San Diego, Joe Costa has led quite a wild life! When he thought that he had seen and done all that he wished to accomplish in this life, the divine masters asked Joe to stay around a while longer and help them bring a process to large numbers of people, so that conscious communication with the collective “Holy Spirit” could become common place, no longer relegated to the realm of a few saints and spiritual adepts.  

If your heart leaps when you read these words, perhaps this process is calling to you? So, what kind of advice and healing comes through The 15th Step? The advice can be extremely useful and practical, such as the time when Joe's father in-law was trying to sell his construction company and retire. Due to its less-than-perfect financial condition, they were having trouble finding a buyer. The guides were asked for help and provided the specific name for a potential buyer and instructed Joe to look this person up in the San Diego phone book. Joe had never heard of this person before. Based solely upon the advice of The Masters, Joe did as instructed and called him on the phone, making up the excuse that “someone told me you might be interested in purchasing a construction company”. He was quite surprised when this total stranger replied that he “might be interested” and requested a meeting to review the company details and finances. To his amazement, they eventually worked out a mutually beneficial agreement and sold his father in-law's company to the man he had first met on the phone.

Another example of the practical advice from the inner world is the time when my wife was suffering from an antibiotic resistant lung infection and the guides told me to make a tea from the herb Hyssop for her to drink. The tea worked perfectly and through subsequent research in Michael Tierra's “The Way of Chinese Herbs”, I found that Chinese herbalists commonly prescribe Hyssop for the treatment of lung ailments, and that according to Michael Tierra, it is the only herb that he knows of that is effective against active tuberculosis. This could be very valuable information in today's world of antibiotic resistant tuberculosis that has the potential to turn into a global pandemic.

When I related this story to Joe, he told me about a client that had once come to him while suffering from severe gum disease. At the time, this client was scheduled to have all of his teeth pulled and replaced with dentures. When this client met with his guides on The 15th Step, they prescribed the same Hyssop herb that they had suggested my wife use to heal her lung ailment.  As instructed, each day his client tucked a wad of Hyssop between his cheek and his gums, similar to the way a cowboy might hold a wad of chewing tobacco in his cheek. Within a short period of time, his gum disease cleared up entirely, and he avoided dentures and the loss of his teeth.

The guides on the 15th Step may prescribe specific medical treatments, special herbs, physical manipulations, specific dietary recommendations, or they may heal directly from the spiritual plane.  When Josie, and I were doing our student training, we hosted a 15th Step workshop in the Town of Truckee, CA during a heavy snowstorm in December of 2001.  The combination of the stress of hosting the workshop and the turn in the weather had been a bit much for Josie, and on the first afternoon of the workshop, she appeared to be coming down a full blown case of the flu. When Josie started her 15th Step demonstration in front of our class of 15 students, she had a runny nose, a fever, a headache and her muscles were starting to ache. As the rest of the students watched, I guided her to The 15th Step. Forty-five minutes later, when she returned to normal waking consciousness, there were tears streaming down the faces of nearly all the workshop participants. Witnessing Josie's visit to The 15th Step had been a deeply moving and profound experience for all of us. In addition to the compassionate and loving messages she had received from the Holy Spirit for all of the group, Josie's symptoms of flu had completely disappeared and did not return

On other occasions, the healing on The 15th Step has been even more dramatic! In front of one workshop, a participant's hip joint was repaired that had been defective since birth (up to the time of the workshop, she had walked with a severe dragging leg). On The 15th Step, you are conscious and awake, though in an altered state. You will see, hear and experience conscious communication with the divine masters and guides. It will be your own experience, not at all like going to a psychic where you hear second hand information and wonder if it has any validity.

For some, their first trip to The 15th Step is magical and powerful. For others, it may take several 15th Step visits to calibrate their body/being to the point where they have the experience of powerful, undeniable, direct conscious communication with their guides and the Divine Masters. Once you have this experience, you will know beyond a shadow of a doubt, that there really is a place in the inner world called The 15th Step, and that we all have non-physical spiritual beings that we can turn to for guidance and assistance.

Joe Costa's 15th Step web site:  www.15thstep.com   

Josie Stein's Inner Journeys web site: www.inner-journeys.com