Zen intuition could be considered twofold: first, it's the
ability to perceive a situation as a whole; and, secondly, the ability
to anticipate the future (usually it's about your future.) In fact, these are two sides of the same coin:
i
The
ability to perceive a situation as a whole is what distinguishes a
mature person: first of all, it allows you to
highlight the essence of the information you're receiving, gives
you acumen, and the ability to distinguish any attempt to manipulate
you. Whereas fatigue, absent-mindedness, the transition to a
more infantile level usually lead to tunnel vision, which very often use
all sorts of rascals.
To perceive a situation as a
whole means that you're equally aware of all the things you're looking
at, but this doesn't mean that while doing this, you don't see the
essence of what's happening - quite the contrary - this means that your
attention doesn't stick to the details. I came across tests for
attention where you're offered to read some text containing, among other
things, some figures, and then you're asked to repeat them from memory.
Something more stupid is difficult to come up with: in this way you're
picking up the habit of focusing attention on the details and not seeing
the main things. When you're reading, it's important to see the essence: what
happened in the story? Has the situation changed for the better or for the worse? And
so on. The figures listed there are as a rule completely unnecessary
for you: usually it's just a matter of etiquette to look more
convincing.
Sometimes being too mindful can even be harmful
It's
equally important to be able to highlight the essence during a conversation, if only because in this case it's
often important not
what they say, but what they mean. Then if you direct all your
attention to what you were told, there is a high risk that anything they say
you'll start to take literally and thus become susceptible to
deception and manipulation. During a conversation, you should rather
understand the true intentions of people: what is behind their words.
Here's a test:
https://goodwithpeople.uk/
for how skillful you are in recognizing fraud (
from professionals, by the way); their method is about
analyzing details - for me it never
worked. Even more, deception is often accompanied by suggestion, and if
you focus all your attention on the details, then to suggestion you'll
become
especially susceptible. In my experience, a deceiver or manipulator is
often impossible to catch just by looking at the details - every single
trait of his or her behavior may not cause any suspicion - in this case, you should look not at the details, and not even at the very
interlocutor but at
the whole situation; ie, use the technique described
here: assess
the situation through
the point Seika no itten - that is, your intuition is
mu:
the sense of reality of a professional, shall we say. Then you can go
further and try to see the pure female aspect of your interlocutor, as
described
here and
here, and then
to understand what is behind it. And remember that people often lie
without any rational purpose - just to make an impression.
But my advice, don't try to be (and especially to seem)
very insightful during a conversation and leave the analysis for
later. A conversation is a game: at times you should be attentive, at
times, a bit vague. It's better to seem a bit vague while being
skeptical inside. Try to stay neutral and remember well what was
discussed and then come home, restore the conversation from memory, and
analyze it - for me it works best.
Another important
thing you you should keep in mind whenever you try to identify who is
standing in front of you is that there are, roughly
speaking, two types of people: those who act on their own behalf, and
those who act on behalf of some group or corporation (religious
propagandists, for example), which often allows them to look pretty
confident and convincing (of course, such a division is very arbitrary,
and sometimes media exposure, watching a movie, for instance, is enough to make a person fall under the influence of some idea.) Communication
with people of the latter type can be especially difficult for you since this mentality is opposite to the mentality of a Zen
follower, but in the long run, that reliance which
gives them confidence at the same time is their weakest spot -
ancient Chan masters were right: ultimately, the lack of support, independence and self-reliance
provide much more advantages than dependence and availability of support.
See also Zen Intuition: The Ability to Perceive a Situation as a Whole 
