Category: Wisdom

I had another interesting conversation with my friend Joseph. This particular exchange left me quite a bit perplexed. We were talking about the concepts of universal intelligence, innate wisdom, intuition.

Joseph doesn’t believe these things exist as anything other than human conceptual constructs. I would have agreed with him, had we had the same conversation about five years ago. Strangely, I can’t remember exactly when my perspective shifted or how.

As we dissected these concepts, I found it difficult to explain or justify my belief in them.

When I talk about these things with other people, they almost immediately know what I’m referring to and don’t question it. Occasionally, someone might accept the concept but not the way it relates to themselves. Meaning, some people accept the idea of universal intelligence or innate wisdom, but don’t tend to extend the idea to themselves. Universal intelligence is out there, but somehow they aren’t part of it.

Joseph, on the other hand, knew what I was talking about but simply does not believe universal intelligence represents anything real.

These concepts often sound spiritual or woo-woo. However, they do represent easily observable phenomena grounded in science – an acorn turns into an oak tree; a sperm and egg become a human; birds migrate; leaves change colors in the fall.

“Intelligence” implies there is a designer, a god, a universal force. But there doesn’t have to be.

“Universal intelligence” doesn’t have to mean anything cosmic or spiritual, it don’t have to have any great meaning at all.

I think it’s crazy amazing that an acorn turns into an oak tree, that billions of hearts are beating in this moment, that I have two children who grew from a few cells, totally on their own, without any input (beyond the initial) or thought or planning or project management on my part. Of course, these phenomena themselves are entirely neutral, they don’t have any inherent meaning on their own. But to me, they’re amazing.

I feel profound awe and peace, knowing I am part of whatever it is that makes these things happen. That I am made of that. That I am that. It doesn’t matter a bit where that comes from. It doesn’t have to come from anywhere or anyone or anything. Just that is enough – just the fact that all these things happen, all the time and everywhere, and I’ve been part of it all along. Without any effort at all. Not because I’m special – but because I am that. We all are.

We have even a stranger idea: that we will finally fall in love with ourselves only when we have become the totally efficient organized organism we have always wanted to be and left all of our bumbling ineptness behind.

– from Crossing an Unknown Sea by David Whyte

We’ll love ourselves only when.

What we’ve forgotten is that we’re already and will always be a totally efficient organized organism. We are already and always creative, resourceful, and whole.

A tree doesn’t spend hours and years and lifetimes examining and analyzing its leaves, picking at the ones that have strange shapes or browned before fall.

We don’t look at a tree and decide it’s unlovable because some of its leaves are strangely shaped. A tree isn’t any less tree if its bark isn’t perfectly bark or its shape isn’t some specific shape. A tree is a tree, a totally efficient organized organism, precisely because of its infinite potential variations.

You’re already the totally efficient organized organism you have always wanted to be.

You’re already creative, resourceful, and whole.

You’re already in love with yourself, you just forgot for a moment. You can fall into that feeling again.