How intelligence is revealed

[Excerpt from HOME]

Between our house and our neighbour’s, is a fence about eight feet tall. I watched my cat, Lottie, at the base of the fence, looking up at the top edge. Her body was poised ready to leap. The calculations that were going on in her brain and body were visible. Tiny shifts of muscles. Micro-shuffling of paws. Eyes intently focused, head tilting slightly from side to side, up and down, gauging distance. She leapt. Front paws, then back paws landing on the top of a 5 cm wide fence, eight times her height. The body absorbing the momentum of the jump so that she remained on the top.

Tail moving as a counter balance. A perfect leap. (She’s a cat, and a Norwegian Forest at that, it’s her thing.) Intelligence in action. Data and information in form. There is a simplicity in the enormous complexity of life taking form. There is absolute straight-forwardness in the infinite bytes of data available. How does the human mind and experience of being settle back into this infinite simplicity and straight-forwardness? How does the miracle of Intelligence that we really are become the lived experience?

One way is through the exploration of what the mind really is. Exploring, not from an attempt to fix the mind, or control the experiences or manage emotions - as that plays straight into the idea that the Intelligence we are is separate from the whole. But from genuine curiosity. This is where psychology can come into its own. This has to be its future. Because the deeper the investigation into the mind, its patterns, beliefs and tendencies, the clearer it becomes that there is no separate, individual self making any of that happen. The concept of the self is not the controller of these patterns, beliefs and tendencies. It is not the originator of them. It is the product of them.

This is fascinating and it is a liberation. It is the ending of the loop of personal identification. Many of us are driven to seeking answers, from the knowing that there is something more, something missing in the way the self and life appear. And the chances are that this seeking was confused. It was always an attempt to fix the ‘do-er’, to find a way to control experience so that the separation could be stabilised. The seeking might have taken us through so many different therapies and interventions. And none of it could work because at its core was the belief that ‘this will fix in place this separate me’ or this will bring about control over this emotion or that belief or that experience. It was circling around an illusion.

Now, though all psychological techniques, can be understood differently. They are a way of understanding and intervening with a psychological system that isn’t being orchestrated by an individual, controlling self. All behaviours and perceptions are the result of learned conditioning and there was no separate learner. The first invitation of this section, therefore, is to pick up books or videos about the mind and behaviour that do not stop at the idea of an individual controlling, deciding self and which instead question what that self really is. In other words, to go so deeply into what the self is that it dissolves before our eyes. Then we can start to look at the world of apparent form. The enormity of this conversation is that it allows for a greater and more open exploration of the world and of reality.

When seen through the lens of the self identity, reality is distorted by the personal delusion. Perception is dictated by what has shaped the evolution of that perception. According to what has been learned, reality will appear a certain way.

Fear, need and insecurity are at the heart of the conditioned idea of separation. We might do everything we can to avoid these feelings but, actually, in the exploration of truth, they are the gateway to freedom. In those moments when it looks as though we are under threat and the body is going into fight or flight, we can ask ourselves ‘Is there actual physical danger right now? Right now this minute?’ The answer is always ‘no’ because if there really was physical danger the system would be dealing with it. The Intelligence would be running the show, moving the body, responding, preserving life in this form. In the same way that Lottie runs from the sound of a car engine starting up or a dog barking. What is really at stake in our everyday fear and insecurity is not the physical body, it is this idea of ourselves as the controller, that has to survive. What is at stake is the thing that gets scared when things aren’t known, or that feels it has to nail everything down, control everything, predict every thing, know what’s going to happen. This is the insanity of all of us. The mind’s fears of its own projections.

And, as that falls away, a sensory playground appears with everything to explore. As the limitations, fears, shames and insecurities of the identity fall away the body-mind is liberated to immerse itself in its relationships and surroundings in a way that might not ever have been possible. There is marvel at the Intelligence of life that we are and what that Intelligence creates. Intelligence is playing in the world of form, responding to it, learning, understanding.

It is that simple. And that can become the blueprint for the rest of our lives. This is complete alignment to truth. It is the body-mind system freed up to deal only with reality, no longer at war with its own confusion. Intelligence responding to now, to what is true. This is a system, now deeply relaxed and aligned, simply responding to reality. This is liberation and intimacy. And in that liberation, we realise this body-mind does the human / non-Norwegian cat equivalent of scaling eight foot fences all day every day.

Effortless.
Natural.
Miraculous.
Intelligence in action.

IN SUMMARY…

Intelligence…

WHAT IS IT?

The universal, organising force. The precursor, pre-requisite and enabler of all intellectual phenomena. What veils it? The belief that I am an independent chooser that is somehow separate from this intelligence. The unquestioned conviction in free will. The on-going attempt to secure the idea of ourselves through control, seeking and resistance. What reveals it?

Curiosity about all behaviour, words and decision making where is that coming from? ‘No-self accountability’ - the recognition that words and behaviours are being generated by this body-mind system even if there is no self controlling them.