I believe that you are always operating with intuition.

This intuition is very much like the instinct in animals. If you watch the TV program "The Dog Whisperer", the dog trainer "Cesar Millan" describes the dogs as being focused on the "Now moment", where the animals respond to our every movement in consciousness by reflecting back or mimicking our expectations in the "Now".

Watch that show & you will get what I am trying to convey here. It's a great demonstration of how consciousness really works.

We operate in this instinctive level constantly, however we have two other distractions that are also coming along for the ride.

One is our access to events outside the "Now Moment" in the form of past & future memories (for the soul it is either "Now" or "Not Now", so it's OK to describe the future as a memory)

The second is the continuous commentator or sportscaster of our mind that constantly keeps translating our intuition into a spoken word experience of thought.

You can do everything that doesn't require the speaking of words without thinking a thought. It's hard to get to that point overnight. It is not an intellectual exercise. It is a thoughtless exercise.

And when you eventually figure out a way to experience this "Thoughtless" way to operate, you can only do it in very short bursts of "Non focus".

The longest I have been able to hold that attention while normally going about my business is only about 30 seconds & then the mind interferes almost like gasping for air, as if it is afraid of being annihilated.

When you manage to hold this "thoughtless attention" nothing miraculous or incredible happens in that moment. All that you experience is that you are, in fact, operating on a purely intuitive mode almost all the time.

The ego, or what ever layer that likes to take responsibility for everything, then seems to add this, "other", layer of constant thought after thought after thought of a running commentary of your own intuition.

I feel intuition is an innate knowing or awareness of something without actual evidence of it. It is not something we can force but rather something that comes to us from a higher place when we release resistance and let our Source work through us. When we listen to our intuition we are guided in a direction that is beneficial to us or we are presented with a solution to a perceived problem. I think in those moments when we just trust our instinct about a person or situation we are listening to our intuition, and we just know we made the right decision without any evidence being presented.