About the Book
Beyond Intellect: Journey Into the Wisdom of Your Intuitive Mind
Current Book Reviews:
Review of: BEYOND INTELLECT: Journey Into the Wisdom of Your Intuitive Mind
In addition to being endowed with a reactive/emotional mental process and a thinking/planning/reasoning/ intellectual mental process, we humans are also blessed with a behind-the-scenes intuitive process. Always there to help us in our attempts at creativity and living wisely, it is a soft-spoken process. It is, in fact, so soft spoken that most of the time its subtle promptings are way below the noise level in contemporary minds dominated by intellectual and emotional content.
What can be done about this? How can we gain access to those wise and helpful messages from the intuitive process? Several writers on the subject have recommended adopting a meditation practice to help quiet down those competing processes. My own experience has been along these lines, and if one is willing to put in the necessary time and effort, it works.
In Beyond Intellect, Susan Velasquez offers us another approach — or more correctly, a whole basketful of approaches. For many years she has led personal development seminars. In the process, she has seen a host of different ways in which we get in the way of that oh-so-beneficial connection with the intuitive mind. One by one she addresses each of these unhelpful, unskillful ways of being, and advises us on how to deal with them. The result is a book that is likely to speak to each individual reader differently. The author acknowledges this, in the Introduction saying:
Remember to simply give yourself permission to be open and receptive to the information that seems to talk specifically to you. Then listen, gently and patiently, for your intuitive guidance, always through the basic method of cherishing, honoring, and respecting yourself and others.
The chapter headings give one a good sense of the book's scope and focus:
- Going Beyond Intellect to Discover Your Life Path
- Defining What You Long For
- Courting Intuition
- Revitalizing Your Soul
- Sparking New Possibilities
- Walking Through Doors and Coming Home
- Thriving: Living Fully and Loving Well
For Susan Velasquez, as for other writers on this subject, quieting the mind is part of it. At one point she says:
To establish a substantial, full, rich, and abundant inner core you must learn to redeem your inner calmness and peace by seeking time to muse and dream, to contemplate, to learn, and to uncover and discover the forgotten, the disowned, and the disused aspects of yourself.
I'm sure that many readers will find Beyond Intellect an insightful guide on the road to that wiser, fuller, more peaceful way of being that the author calls thriving.
Copthorne Macdonald
www.wisdompage.com
Unleash the Power of Your Intuition. From Striving To Thriving.
This is a warm and welcoming self-help book aimed at the reader who seeks not just to survive, but to thrive. What author Susan McNeal Velasquez means by thriving, is going beyond what we already know and allowing ourselves to dig deeper into our hidden heart’s desires, unleashing the creative energy within each of us that so easily gets buried by the pressures of daily living.
As she says in the preface to the book, “The major benefit of my years in this field is that I have witnessed the miraculous healing power of hearing the truth told simply and profoundly. When our mind is open and our heart swells with understanding and compassion, it is because we have found our intuitive voice.
In clear and simple language, Ms. Velasquez guides us into exploring how the breakneck pace of today’s living, with its endless focus on problem-solving, seals us off from the inner wisdom and untapped resources that lie within each of us. Offering many visualization exercises, Ms. Velasquez gracefully entices us into exploring this inner richness, and in so doing opening ourselves up to making new choices and living a richer life.
The book is arranged in short, readable sections, with titles that will instantly spark your interest. I heartily encourage you to accept the author’s invitation to open at any page and begin your journey. You’ll be glad you did.
Marion K. Jacobs, Ph.D.
Author: Take-Charge Living: How to Recast Your Role in Life…One Scene At A Time
www.take-chargeliving.com
Lic. Psychologist
Adjunct Professor, UCLA
High Praise From Other Helping Professionals
Every one of my own group of Quantum Touch Women healing practitioners as well as the friends to whom I've given the BEYOND INTELLECT book, have commented when we've talked, how much they're appreciating and are learning from the exercises and explorations you share.
These are women whose lives/practices are grounded in their intuitive gifts. They know and appreciate the honest discussion and processes of going Beyond the Intellect: It requires knowing and discerning what's real and what's fluff from all the materials out there, because they live in it!
Your writing is so fluid, clear, and evocative. Reading becomes a fascinating experiential inner journey and not just a knowledge-gathering trek!
Someone new to inner growth would find Beyond Intellect a perfect introduction, while the person who's done much inner exploration would find the book opens new vistas, while validating the depths of her experience.
It' is a gifted author who can serve both the novice and the experienced traveler!
Judith Reitz M.A. Retired M.F.T.
Inner Visions Healing Arts
This Book Will Transform Your Life, Whenever You Are Ready
If you want to learn to use the intuitive gifts you were born with to live a richer life, read Susan Velasquez’s book.
This is not a typical “new age” book on intuition; it is intended for those of us who live mostly by thinking and are not completely happy with the results.
She guides us through a journey of rediscovery, and inspires us to recapture the joy and energy we’ve lost. Her book is tightly written, engaging and challenging. Definitely worth reading!
Jan B. King
Author of two books: Business Plans to Game Plans
Smart Women Publish
http://www.janbking.com
Comments From A Former CEO and CEO Coach
Pick up this book, open it at any page and be drawn into the world of intuition. Really, try it. I have, and I loved the experience. Susan Velasquez has taken an almost unimaginable subject and brought it front and center so that even my business addled linear male mind can understand. Most of all, the world she illuminates is full of learning, understanding and self-acceptance. Go ahead, just open the book and dive in; you'll be glad you did.
Walt Sutton
Author of: Leap of Strength Poet
Allow Your Heart And Intellect To Be Co-Partners In Your Life
Great book, excellent art illustrating the concepts. Susan’s work is brilliant and subtle. We often operate with our intellect in the driver’s seat, while our heart is saying, “What about me?”
Allowing yourself to “not know” and simply open the book to a page that chooses you, will send you on a journey of self-discovery. I find it taps into something that causes me to dig deeper and access some hidden/unknown truth about my life.
In my busy life, this allows me to take some time for myself and focus on an important aspect of my life, in depth. I am so taken with Susan’s book, I bought ten copies to share with family and friends.
One friend was visiting my home when I gave her a copy. She sat right down and opened the book to a page that invited her to quiet her mind and pay attention to what was around her.
She sat quietly for several minutes, then said to me that this was so important to her and such valuable information. She had been feeling out of sorts with herself and this allowed her to focus inward.
As we walked out of my house, she turned and looked back in the entryway, asking me if the painting hanger there was new. I said, “ No it’s been there for five years.” She said, “I’ve really never seen it before.”
Sheila Ivary Marsh
Newport Beach, Ca.
Artist Review
As an artist, it is essential for me to move beyond intellect. I find this book a wonderful guide to a world available to us all.
Richard L. Fleming
San Clemente, Ca.
I’m Big On Sharing Books But This One Is A Keeper
This book is really amazing – whether you open it periodically to see if what’s revealed on the page happens to speak to you (weird how that really works!); or if you’re working the practical exercises the author provides, there’s real inspiration and guidance to glean from it’s pages.
I’m enjoying reading this for a second time because it was so incredibly helpful to me and a friend who was going through a crisis while I was reading it the first time around.
This is a really cool book that can provide inspiration or guidance on little niggling stumbling blocks or big lifelong obstacles.
The processes Susan McNeal Velasquez introduces can be used over and over again – this isn’t a one-time read because with each exploration there’s something else to which it speaks.
I think this is one that will get tattered for use, and I’ll buy new ones for friends. Highly recommended.
L. Beggins
Houston, TX.
"Real”
This book can be compared to no other. It doesn’t really belong in the pop-psychology or new age section of the bookstore, but if there was a section called: “Real”; that is where you would find BEYOND INTELLECT.
I have been to dozens of seminars and hours of therapy, only to experience a temporary “high” fueled by unrealistic expectations for changing my life overnight.
The problem is that one or two years or even six months later, old patterns of behavior and unconscious habits resurface.
The genius of Susan’s work is that through very subtle but powerful shifts of energy, you make life changes that really stick.
While going along living your normal everyday life, suddenly you realize that you just handled an encounter with someone or something in a way that caused your energy (and everyone’s around you) to expand instead of shut down.
And as you start noticing these changes more each day, all of a sudden you realize that you have not only profoundly changed your own life, but other’s as well.
This book will not give you the “high” that you want to justify buying the $100,000 car that you can’t afford, but if you are committed to living a real and authentic life…IT WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE!
C. Parks
Orange County, Ca.
Beyond Intellect Is An Invitation To Live More Purposely And Fully
Beyond Intellect is an invitation to dare to live more purposely and fully than your present day existence. Susan gently guides your unacknowledged self into the light of acceptance.
I find Beyond Intellect speaks to me and my friends, as 20-somethings, and is just the sort of gentle guidance to assist us in living deep and enriching lives.
Life can get crazy sometimes, but it is nice to be able to take Susan’s suggestion and “hold the book between your two hands. Ask this question: “What specifically do I need to know at this time?”
Susan is correct, Beyond Intellect provides the impetus for the answers I need – whether the thought provoking questions within the text, or just a moment for me to stop and listen.
Sara C. Velasquez
New Zealand
This Is What This Work Has Done For Me. Give It A Try!
This work has allowed me to build a broader and stronger base to stand on and live my life from.
It has assisted me to let go of the outdated, false or inappropriate and limiting belief systems (known and unknown) which had been running my life.
It has brought me to a place where I can be more honest to and about myself and to where I can finally give myself a break.
It has helped me to let go of old emotional wounds and upsets which have been coloring my life experiences.
It has allowed me to respect and love who I am by fashioning appropriate boundaries. I am finally comfortable and solid with saying "No" when I need to.
Peter Larsen
Peter Larsen Design