In my school days I learned that intelligence had to do with logic and reason and it involved the ability to recall numbers, dates, facts, quotes, names, etc., and then add these together in a calculated, logical way, which led to certain assumptions and conclusions. It was all about producing a certain result that was anticipated and often left me feeling stupid – not quite able to grasp what seemed to be right at my fingertips.
The body was almost seen as a disturbance in that process of thinking as it seemed a nuisance that I had to stop with my ‘important studies’ to feed, hydrate and move it. Intelligence seemed to have everything to do with the brain and nothing much with the rest of the body. The idea being that my thoughts are produced in the brain and me owning them and finding identification in my capacity to create them.
And whilst we were taught that many great philosophers, innovators, scientists, etc. actually did not play by the rules of their time and thought ‘outside the box’ so to speak – pioneering a new way – we were asked to think inside a set of rules and stereotypical approaches that were taught, learning to fit our thinking into a box. This did and does not make sense to me unless we want to avoid having too many great human beings walking the planet.
Nowadays in my studies with The Way of The Livingness, the focus has shifted and I am understanding that intelligence is something I can access from different sources and that my body plays an important role as a recipient in my ability to access higher intelligence. So today it is all about my body and I understand my brain as part of a whole that needs to be taken care of in many ways, just like the ancient Greek philosophers placed great emphasis on exercise, diet, walking, pondering and contemplation as well as group discussion, celebration and societal life.
I also understand that intelligence has zero to do with recall and everything to do with call, meaning intelligence is given to me according to what the call, the request or the needed purpose is. Therefore my livingness, the way I walk, the way I talk, the way I move and my entire lifestyle, from what I eat, to whom I meet, to how I treat my family and friends determines the level of intelligence I will access thereafter. This has changed everything for me as now intelligence for me is about my entire life and every choice I make and not merely about my mental capacity, how many books I can read or how many things I can memorise. To the contrary I memorise less and have access to more.
The interesting bit is that our forefathers knew that, which makes you wonder why this knowledge was lost, or where did it go?
In my studies I learned that every single human being has the ability to access great intelligence and we are all potentially as great as Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, Leonardo da Vinci and more in our own ways. What determines whether we access this potential or not are our movements and the way we know to treat our bodies as the receivers of a greater divine intelligence.
So this includes the openness to consider and attempting to feel that there is such a thing as divinity and God and a greater whole that we call universe, which holds a stupendous intelligence, one that we cannot even fathom with our little human brains, but nevertheless are part of. If we are willing to play our role in that great universal plan we can access an intelligence that is succeeding the greatest thinkers and philosophers that have ever walked this planet, from those that built the pyramids, to the ancient Greek philosophers, to Buddha, to Jesus. All those great beacons of light had access to a source far greater than human life.
