Try this:

• Pick up a dictionary.
• Ask a question.
• Close your eyes.
• Open the dictionary at random.
• Keeping your eyes closed, run your fingers up and down the page.
• When you feel that your finger has landed on the correct word, open your eyes and read.

For example, I’m asking the Dictionary right now, what is the purpose of the dictionary game?  And the answer I blindly placed my finger on is:

in-dic-a-tive adj. serving to indicate

I promise on all that is dear to me that I didn’t make that up.  Isn’t that weird???

You too may be shocked and surprised at how well the words answer your questions.  I have been playing the dictionary game for several years and it has lead me on a rollicking journey into the nature of intuition.  I’ve come to believe that intuition usually speaks most clearly through the body.  When my finger is over the right word, my body speaks up and my fingers sense something a little different.  For me, it’s usually warmth.

There are many ways to make contact with your intuition through your body.  For example, a friend of mine told me about her process when out in the wilderness of deciding which direction to go.  She extends her hands out, palms up, and if one of her hands feels heavier, she will turn that direction.  If neither feels heavy, she will continue walking straight.  She told story after story of amazing wildlife encounters she enjoyed through the use of this method.  I decided to try it out as well when I was camping.  I woke up early and headed out on a trail.  There were several side trails leading off of the main trail.  Each time I came to a trail I would extend my hands and feel for which way to go.  I passed several trails without feeling the urge to diverge from the main trail until I came to one in which my left hand felt heavier.  I then followed the trail to the left.  It lead me to a bluff that overlooked a tidal plain.  I sat down to enjoy the view for a few moments.  I wasn’t sitting for very long when I suddenly heard rustling just below me at the bottom of the bluff.  I looked down and watched wide-eyed as a coyote emerge from the tall grass just below me.  It walked out into plain view and seemed to sense me, though it took a while for it to discover me at which point it trotted off and away.  I was amazed and joyful.  I began employing this method whenever I was unsure of which route to take or direction to travel.

I recently discovered another way to tap into this kind of body wisdom.  Now, whenever I have a decision to make, I open my palms and touch the center of each palm while visualizing putting a different option in each palm.  I then weigh my options.  Whichever feels heavier, I choose.  I have had amazing success using this method as well.  However, it is good to keep in mind that our own logical mind can influence things so it sometimes helps to have someone else touch your palms for you without telling you which option they put in which hand.  I often have my husband do this for me when I’m afraid of tainting the results with my preferences.

It’s an amazing world out there with plenty of mystery and secrets to delight in and play with.  Just ask the dictionary…

I think Pablo Neruda knew a secret or two about the dictionary as well.  This poem of his knocks my socks off every time:

Ode to the Dictionary

Back like an ox, beast of
burden, orderly
thick book:
as a youth
I ignored you,
wrapped in my smugness,
I thought I knew it all,
and as puffed up as a
melancholy toad
I proclaimed: “I receive
my words
in a loud, clear voice
directly from Mt. Sinai.
I shall convert
forms to alchemy.
I am the Magus”
The Great Magus said nothing.
The Dictionary,
old and heavy in its scruffy
leather jacket
sat in silence,
its resources unrevealed
But one day,
after I’d used it
and abused it,
after
I’d called it
useless, an anachronistic camel,
when for months, without protest
it had served me as a chair
and a pillow,
it rebelled and planting its feet
firmly in my doorway,
expanded, shook its leaves
and nests,
and spread its foliage:
it was
a tree,
a natural,
bountiful
apple blossom, apple orchard, apple tree,
and words
glittered in its infinite branches,
opaque or sonorous,
fertile in the fronds of language,
charged with truth and sound.
I
turn
its
pages
caporal,
capote,
what a marvel
to pronounce these plosive
syllables,
and further on,
capsule
unfilled, awaiting ambrosia or oil
and others,
capsicum, caption, capture,
comparison, capricorn,
words
as slippery as smooth grapes,
words exploding in the light
like dormant seeds waiting
in the vaults of vocabulary,
alive again, and giving life:
once again the heart distills them.
Dictionary, you are not a
tomb, sepulcher, grave,
tumulus, mausoleum,
but guard and keeper,
hidden fire,
groves of rubies,
living eternity
of essence,
depository of language.
How wonderful
to read in your columns
ancestral
words,
the severe and
long-forgotten
maxim,
daughter of Spain,
petrified
as a plow blade,
as limited in use
as an antiquated tool,
but preserved
in the precise beauty and
immutability of a medallion.
Or another
word
we find hiding
between the lines
that suddenly seems
as delicious and smooth on the tongue
as an almond
or tender as a fig.
Dictionary, let one hand
of your thousand hands, one
of your thousand emeralds,
a
single
drop
of your virginal springs,
one grain
from
your
magnanimous granaries,
fall
at the perfect moment
upon my lips,
onto the tip of my pen,
into my inkwell.
From the depths of your
dense and reverberating jungle
grant me,
at the moment it is needed,
a single birdsong, the luxury
of one bee,
one splinter
of your ancient wood perfumed
by an eternity of jasmine,
one
syllable,
one tremor, one sound,
one seed:
I am of the earth and with words I sing