If a person is locked into his intellect and over-thinking everything on a human level, then yes, the intellect can definitely be a hinderance. It is blocking the subconscious thoughts from coming to the forefront and helping create new, higher experiences in life.

Spiritually is more of a 'feeling,' an 'inspiration' and an experience of 'letting go.' "Let Go and Let God" is a very popular saying and belief.

One of my favorite quotes from Emerson which is also relevant to your question is, "Get your bloated nothingness out of the way of the divine circuit," and what he means is that the ego is human based and divine circuit is spiritually based. Spiritual is infinite and, as such, will always know and see much further than we can ever comprehend on a human (finite) level.

Bottom line: You are a spiritual being having a human experience and not the other way around and as such, you are here to prosper in every area of your life.

Your life is created from within. "As within, so without." If you do not like your life as it is right now, you must change your inner life/thoughts to experience change in your outer life. That is a Universal Law.

A simple ancient principle: "Everything is always created twice. Once in mind. Then in reality."

I feel this might clear some things for you :)

http://www.ascendedmastery.com/methods.html

I think Stingray may be alluding to a book I once read entitled, "How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci: Seven Steps to Genius Every Day" by Michael J. Gelb. (see it at Amazon.com ) It would be a worthwhile read. I agree with everything Stingray said.

The only points I would add are: 1) in addition to "Develop all your senses especially your ability to see," work on being more attuned to how you feel emotionally about the topics of your studies, and try to identify what it is about them that makes you feel that way; and 2) spend some time practicing meditation or some other spiritual discipline. These practices help to integrate the left and right brain functions as we follow courses of study or experiences for our personal growth.

I don't see an analytical or intellectual mind as a hindrance at all. In fact, a well-balanced, full use of the whole mind is to be preferred on our spiritual journey. The artistic mind may miss things the analytic mind notices, and vice versa. It is best for our spiritual growth to get all we can out of life, and that means using the whole mind.

An spiritual journey to me is about connecting to God, Jesus Christ, for others it might be universal consciouness, or other. You do not connect with all of your thinking you connect with your spirit. The spirit within you connects to the all powerful God and you know because you feel it. You must first ask Jesus into your heart and your life.

So I always tell people to talk into the air and say God I have heard so much about you are you real if so reveil your self to me by talking to me or showing me something or answering my questions anyway let me know that you hear me.

The intellectual mind cannot comprehend what the spiritual mind can conceive so when you are on an spiritual journey it will be your spirit within your body that you will be relying on the most. Yes, you are going to use your conscious mind but it will be your spiritual soul who you will get your most understanding and guidance from. For God is connected directly with your spiritual being. We all know their is an superior being for we feel it for it was put into us by our creator and that is why we go on an spiritual journey to find out who he is or find more information about who he is and maybe the why and how of us in this spiritual equation.

theory and practice are 2 different thing as for having analytical mind is very good the problem is not to analyse but what you do with it! if you meditate having analytical mind will help you to analyse what you find there! so you read book it is good! but do you do other thing then just theory? example: you can read book about mechanic and understand what you read but when you do mechanic on car(practice) it can be different then in the book or doing it you can understand some stuff you did not when reading the book! so you might lack some practice! that is why you have so many question! and your mind try to answer from what it knows! does that make sense to you? well good luck enjoy the experiance!

if you get stuff that you don't know that fill those gap that is from the spirit!

I see as some of the great answers above as I write this that the integrated whole brain thought is the superior thought as opposed to left or right brain thought. This is taught is the S.O.S. whole brain thinking is best, this solves problems far better than one or the other side of the brain.

If I feed the left brain then give it to my right brain to work out the details an answer comes that is very applicable and seems to have just popped into thought.

Likewise if we experience or take in thought from the right brain then give it to our left brain to think over we get very useful information revealed to us similar to those moments we feel we found it!

Conclusively this comes to a substantiation of the claim when examined and exercised.