Was it my Ni or my Ne that did it? | INFJ Forum

Was it my Ni or my Ne that did it?

crystaluni

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Dec 30, 2009
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I've had a number of RL experiences that have left me wondering whether it was extraverted or introverted intuition that did the magic for me. Since I get so many of them, maybe discerning the difference between the two will help me pin down whether I am Ni or Ne dominant. Here are a few of them:

a. One Christmas, my older sister was excited about a gift she bought me. It was wrapped in Christmas paper and placed under the tree. Without my even peeking, I burst into laughter and told her that her present was staring at me with black beady eyes.

My sister gave me a curious look. "How did you know it had black beady eyes?"

"Because it's a stuffed bear."

And it was. But I never told her I wanted one, but I did.

b. My mother told me the story of a friend, a man who, every year, always received a Christmas gift of cooked noodles from a lady friend. That Christmas, after receiving his gift in a wrapped box, the man placed it in the refrigerator.

At that point in the story, I burst into laughter.

My mom looked at me curiously and asked if she had told me the story already.

She hadn't. "So why are you laughing?" she asked me.

"When you got to the part where the man placed the slippers in the box inside the ref, I laughed."

"How did you know it was a pair of slippers?" she asked me again.

"Because that's what I saw when you were telling me the story."

Well, it was a pair of slippers. And mom said I was creepy.

c. One of the tutors I'd been working with posed me a word riddle. I didn't get the answer immediately, but that night, the answer came to me visually in a dream. The next day, I answered her riddle and she told me that I got the answer right.

d. Long ago, I was taking an algebra exam on systems of linear equations. I was stuck on one problem, and couldn't find the solution set using any of the strategies we were taught.

Then I remembered what another teacher advised me to do whenever I get stuck on an exam item. Close your eyes and the answer will reveal itself. So I closed my eyes and quietly asked for the answer. The answer revealed itself as a single digit number in an aural imagination. I plugged that number into x in the system of equations, and the problem was solved.

e. One morning before going to school, I had a mental image of a blanket with red and blue stripes. A voice in my mind told me, "Take that to school, a classmate of yours will need it." That day in school, one of my classmates asked our class if any of us had a long piece of cloth with stripes. She said she needed it for props.

f. Recently, while I was strolling across the fifth floor of a mall, I suddenly had an imagined vision that as I was going down the escalator, a man ran down and snatched my bag.

I looked around me to see if anyone was looking at me, but there was nobody nearby. So I went down to the fourth floor using the escalator, without incident.

I took the next escalator down to the third floor. I was half-way down the next escalator when I felt a rapid thumping on the escalator. A man was running down the escalator toward me.

Immediately, I jumped off the remaining steps and turned around to look at the running man get off the escalator. He stopped dead in his tracks and looked at the display window of the art gallery in front of the escalator.

So what was the rush going down the escalator, huh?

I backed away slowly, watching him and clutching my bag.
 
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those cases of synchronicity, I would say it is Ni that does the trick

Ne is more about seeing all sorts of possibilities and oportunities. Having a wight view on the future. While Ni is knowing what is going to come.
 
Cool. Thanks Morgain. I have so many synchronicity stories like these.
 
Those are really cool. Have you checked out the synchronicity thread?

Between the two, I'd wager Ni.

To be honest, I wonder about categorizing these kinds of events according to a cognitive process. Sometimes I think they have a spiritual/supernatural basis and little to do with cognitive processing in the way we talk about these functions. I've long wondered about this and I'm curious if someone might be able to explain it. It just doesn't make much sense to me to say that these are Ni/Ne functions, that seems very limiting. I wonder if Ni/Ne stood for a word other than "intuitive" or the word "intuitive" was something else, if the cognitive processes would be considered as explanations for these more 'unexplainable' occurrences, especially for events involving extremely strong intuition, telepathy, or other forms of unexplainable knowing.
 
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I'd agree -- sounds like strong Ni.

Ni is being able to come up with a single, distinct truth without seeming to have to "think" about it -- it's a jump to the correct conclusion through unconscious patterns.

Ne is being able to immediately lay out many possibilities from an event -- it is visions of all that could be, which is why Ne dominants tend to be great at inventing and coming up with unique solutions.
 
Those are really cool. Have you checked out the synchronicity thread?

Yup. I'll probably be posting there too.


To be honest, I wonder about categorizing these kinds of events according to a cognitive process. Sometimes I think they have a spiritual/supernatural basis and little to do with cognitive processing in the way we talk about these functions....

You may have a point there.

But first of all, it's quite possible that it's the whole brain with all the cognitive functions working together that generate these images in my head.

Secondly, I've been reading something on the quantum model that states that whatever might happen in the future of this universe already happened from the point of view of a "mind" that sees everything. The mathematics of the space-time of our universe only comes out right in quantum theory by viewing all future occurrences as something that has already happened. So in a sense, the laws of physics are the mind of such a god. Maybe, "seeing into the future" is God's way of letting us see the past as he has seen it.

It's possible that both cognitive processes and that inexplicable kind of knowing work together. That the whole mind - the brain with all its cognitive powers serves to filter this kind of inexplicable knowing in a way that we can make sense of it - through dreams and visions and premonitions and gut feel.

I'd agree -- sounds like strong Ni.

Ni is being able to come up with a single, distinct truth without seeming to have to "think" about it -- it's a jump to the correct conclusion through unconscious patterns.

That was definitely the case when I came up with the single-digit answer to that algebra test item and when I dreamt of the answer to a word riddle.

Ne is being able to immediately lay out many possibilities from an event -- it is visions of all that could be, which is why Ne dominants tend to be great at inventing and coming up with unique solutions.

I have another experience which might have straddled the border between Ni and Ne. More on this in a follow-up post.
 
You're totally right. I should have included that in my post. We make sense of it cognitively somehow, so I agree completely with what you said. Still, something about the Ni/Ne thing doesn't make sense to me.. I need to think about this some more.

I've read that too, that everything exists in a 'now' time-frame vs. the linear reality of time we experience! I'm fascinated by quantum mechanics and in complete awe of what scientists are able to figure out. It's incredible.

I'm looking forward to reading your stories :)
 
You did it.
 
Exactly!
 
it's all skillz :p
...too bad i don't work like that... :D
 
1) There are times when I can see how a comedic situation is going to build up and it's based on the quirky patterns of people. Like let's say person A walks into the room and person B is doing something, I already know what person A will ask person B and how person B is going to respond and so forth... Would that be Ne or Ni?

2) There are times, I can see exactly what the parties involved are going to say.

Like I had a dream the night before a job interview where my interviewer asked me, "How is your father?" To which I responded in my dream, "Getting older and fatter." And in my dream my interviewer asked, "Are you your father's only son?" (I'm a girl-LOL!)

The next day, when I had my job interview, the company VP asked me these two questions. He said he had met my father who was a speaker at a business conference. And then he of course apologized after remembering that he was talking to a girl. And like I was fully made-up, wearing huge pearls, a short pencil cut skirt, and a feminine blouse!

For some time, the man was bewildered at his own question - why he forgot he was talking to a female! I just found it so surprising that I dreamt of that bizarre conversation the night before!

Well, number two strikes me as more of Ni-related than number one, but I could be wrong...

I think both are Ni, especially the first scenario imho.
 
Thanks Res! I wonder if there are any more Ni-dominant folks here that would agree with you precisely. :)
 
Too bad my prescience doesn't work on anything other than knowing a movie will come on tv soon ._.

Its not controllable either for me, and it seems that way with you too tiger. If only we could point our prescience at something we'd like to know or just at the future in general. Then we could maybe plan our lives with better results. Working off hunches I dont notice till the event happens is fun and interesting, but rarely useful.
 
Wow that's amazing! my mind doesn't work like that at all, you are like a superhero.:D That's either NFJ or NFP because there are strong intuition and feeling involved. It's intuition doing the trick and these stories are warm and connected to people. That sounds more like Ne to me. Ne reads quickly the visible clues of the environment and jumps to connections. Ni is like slow machine unconsciously ticking in our head eliminating the most unlikely options and telling the final answer when it's ready. Your mind seems to move hundred miles per hour, picking the information and updating it all the time. INFJ's pick the information much more slowly and let Ni some time to process it. Ni's result is more deep and holistic, Ne is more quick and unfocused. Ni sees the answer, Ne sees the possibilities.

I've had a number of RL experiences that have left me wondering whether it was extraverted or introverted intuition that did the magic for me. Since I get so many of them, maybe discerning the difference between the two will help me pin down whether I am Ni or Ne dominant. Here are a few of them:

a. One Christmas, my older sister was excited about a gift she bought me. It was wrapped in Christmas paper and placed under the tree. Without my even peeking, I burst into laughter and told her that her present was staring at me with black beady eyes.

My sister gave me a curious look. "How did you know it had black beady eyes?"

"Because it's a stuffed bear."

And it was. But I never told her I wanted one, but I did.

b. My mother told me the story of a friend, a man who, every year, always received a Christmas gift of cooked noodles from a lady friend. That Christmas, after receiving his gift in a wrapped box, the man placed it in the refrigerator.

At that point in the story, I burst into laughter.

My mom looked at me curiously and asked if she had told me the story already.

She hadn't. "So why are you laughing?" she asked me.

"When you got to the part where the man placed the slippers in the box inside the ref, I laughed."

"How did you know it was a pair of slippers?" she asked me again.

"Because that's what I saw when you were telling me the story."

Well, it was a pair of slippers. And mom said I was creepy.

You may have seen the teddybear and slippers from your sisters and mothers presence and the way they talk to you, the playful glance in their eyes. Intuiting the little clues and forming the possible answers. Much like seeing somebodys aura. That sounds much like the ENFP's I know, they can almost read peoples mind with their Ne and Fi. Ne seeing all the possibilities and Fi reading the feelings and emotions.

c. One of the tutors I'd been working with posed me a word riddle. I didn't get the answer immediately, but that night, the answer came to me visually in a dream. The next day, I answered her riddle and she told me that I got the answer right.

d. Long ago, I was taking an algebra exam on systems of linear equations. I was stuck on one problem, and couldn't find the solution set using any of the strategies we were taught.

Then I remembered what another teacher advised me to do whenever I get stuck on an exam item. Close your eyes and the answer will reveal itself. So I closed my eyes and quietly asked for the answer. The answer revealed itself as a single digit number in an aural imagination. I plugged that number into x in the system of equations, and the problem was solved.

e. One morning before going to school, I had a mental image of a blanket with red and blue stripes. A voice in my mind told me, "Take that to school, a classmate of yours will need it." That day in school, one of my classmates asked our class if any of us had a long piece of cloth with stripes. She said she needed it for props.

f. Recently, while I was strolling across the fifth floor of a mall, I suddenly had an imagined vision that as I was going down the escalator, a man ran down and snatched my bag.

I looked around me to see if anyone was looking at me, but there was nobody nearby. So I went down to the fourth floor using the escalator, without incident.

I took the next escalator down to the third floor. I was half-way down the next escalator when I felt a rapid thumping on the escalator. A man was running down the escalator toward me.

Immediately, I jumped off the remaining steps and turned around to look at the running man get off the escalator. He stopped dead in his tracks and looked at the display window of the art gallery in front of the escalator.

So what was the rush going down the escalator, huh?

I backed away slowly, watching him and clutching my bag.

Weird :D

EDIT: your avatar is as Ne as it can get. It's like the essence of Ne compressed into that pic.
One way to spot Ne is the cuddly and huggable appearance :3
 
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Intuition =/= Psychic


To be honest, you sound like an ENFP, so I am going to go with Ne. Even though Ne was technically not used in any of the examples you gave.

Ni does not just pull information out of no where, it predicts the next step based off of patterns. If you are an Ni user, you should know where that pattern came from, so I really don't think you are. The only way I could see this being Ni is if there is something you are not telling us, some way you could actually predict it.

The descriptions make Ni sound mystical like they "just know" things, but it's all a matter of perspective shifting and looking and things from different points of view.
 
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