Let me use Dr. Henry Reed’s magnificent Intuitive Heart discovery process as a way to give you a clue about his book.

The process asks me to draw upon a memory to awaken my intuition. My memory is of walking along the Paradise Island Beach in the Bahamas. I walk toward the calm, blue- green water and stand by the water’s edge, watching the small waves that are gently breaking on the shore. They carry with them a bounty of beautiful shells that are deposited at my feet. Some look like castles, pine cones, and even a snail shell or two. As I stand there, I retrieve another memory of a favorite saying from Dr. Jonas Salk: “I wonder what my intuition will toss up to me like gifts from the sea.”

As I stand there wondering what gifts from the sea will be given to me, I think of Henry’s impressive book, which you are about to read. The parallel is so striking. As part of your intuition training, you will be retrieving memories, tossed up to you from your infinite sea of consciousness and that will connect you with your intuition, leading you to the perfect guidance. Your connections with others will be deepened, and a broad perspective provided for any career, personal need, or troubling issue, will be retrieved. What a gift! All of this comes from learning how to fish in the waters of your own inner reservoir to retrieve intuitive insights.

How privileged you are to have Dr. Henry Reed, an outstanding researcher and teacher, show you how to cultivate your intuition by honing your storytelling skills. With a story, you are using an example to show and then teach an inspiring lesson to reveal an underlying truth that will trigger a deeper wisdom from the soul.

Let me share a story about Henry and myself that will show you how intuition works for me. In 1991, Henry and I were among the eighty-five attendees in Honolulu at the first annual Global Intuition Network conference. I was one of two individuals being presented an award and had to demonstrate my gifts as a practicing intuitive to the audience. For my presentation, I had planned to have a member of the audience find a resolution to a burning issue by using my intuitive problem-solving technique. In the weeks leading up to this moment, my logical mind occasionally went into overwhelm because my intuitive process, which usually requires privacy for centering, would be so publicly witnessed.

My intuitive mind calmed me and showed me the image of “a dark blue shirt” which was the key to a successful intuitive demonstration. From that image, I knew I had to look for a person in a dark blue shirt. The intuitive process, as you will learn throughout the pages in this book, is all about trust. And I trusted right up until the moment that I asked for a volunteer from the audience. Hands shot up everywhere, and I quickly found my man in the blue shirt—Henry Reed. An enlightening experience resulted as we embraced each other in this adventure of the heart. The wisdom from the intuitive mind, of course, provided the wisest answer.

Notice the lessons in my story as I share this 1991 memory with you. My intuitive mind, embracing the larger picture, gave me the blue shirt image way in advance of my attending this event. I didn’t have a verbal description of a person, but simply saw a picture of a blue shirt. Though I didn’t understand what the image meant, I felt very comfortable in my body and trusted that I was given a significant key. I also trusted that my intuitive mind could accurately foreshadow a successful outcome just by my connecting with the blue shirt. Otherwise, I would have diminished my intuition by imagining many failure scenarios. I simply counteracted any fear thoughts with my trust. Finally, I had a heart connection with another person and knew that the wisdom coming to us from a higher source would be in the best interest of all concerned.

Here’s our connection from my story to your upcoming learning experience. Dr. Reed will show you how to ignite your intuition as you start with a memory and then graduate to images and thoughts. You, too, will learn to trust the wisdom implicit in this memory as you make a heartful connection with another person to retrieve an invaluable insight.

The best-kept secret is finally being exposed! Everyone has intuitive ability. This is not a gift bestowed upon a chosen few. As you go through the pages in this book, keep reminding yourself that you are already intuitive and now have the opportunity to hone this precious inner resource. Henry Reed is a consummate teacher with passion and heart. You could not ask for a better guide to lead you into his Intuitive Heartland. This skill will be perfected as you refine your awareness and listening skills. As Henry points out, by “paying attention to the thoughts, feelings, and images that come to mind, you are learning to tune into your intuition. “ As memories surface, you will discover the significant clues they provide for guiding you in your day-to-day activities. Intuitive input for healing a relationship challenge, for example, is given when you receive a memory of the time you answered the door bell to find a delivery person handing you a bunch of balloons. This unexpected gift came from a client thanking you for your advice. You transfer that memory to your wounded relationship situation and realize that sending a gift to this injured friend without waiting for a special occasion will provide just the right healing balm for your strained relationship.

As a teacher and author of books on intuition, I applaud so many of the features in this book. For example, what could be more important than a focus on the breath as a way to initiate the intuitive process? Yet, this is often omitted in other training programs. As we take our shallow breaths for granted, we remain in a limited perspective, which shifts when we deepen the breath and grow into a more expansive space. Another feature I laud is the focus on gratitude. According to the well-known Course In Miracles, the prayer of the heart is gratitude. And gratitude, as suggested is so needed to elevate our consciousness. The treasured value of making the heart connection allows us to step away from our own concerns to help another, which also helps us develop empathy.

I so appreciate that Henry is training you to develop your intuitive ability so you can really penetrate to the core of any difficulty and retrieve a larger perspective on the issue in need of healing or understanding. Too often, the aim of an intuitive development class is geared toward developing predictive skills. “Taint necessarily so,” says Dr. Reed, who leads you, the reader, into a deeper excursion through the layers of the psyche to find buried treasures that may reflect stuffed grievances, unresolved conflicts, unrealized hopes and wishes, as well as acute pains. This drilling deeply into the psyche is so needed to retrieve the memories that can benefit from the healing.

Any time I teach through my books, classes, and lectures, I always alert my audience to the culprits that distort intuitive input. Coming from the limited ego space, these false pretenders are wishful thinking, fear, and projection. Dr. Reed leads us higher into the heart to connect with the higher emotions that help us make a genuine heart connection, so we may fully open our eyes and appreciate the unlimited possibilities in the situation.