Two Kinds of Intelligence

Hi, and welcome to your Daily Mindfulness. Today I'd like to talk about the two kinds of intelligence we all have. So you could say we have these two basic forms of intelligence. The first is intellectual understanding and the second is wisdom. So intellectual understanding is the kind of knowledge we usually acquire from others.

So this might be from reading a book, from a conversation with someone. It might be knowledge or concepts imparted from a teacher who's giving a talk or a sermon, or a course. It might even be the meaning or story that we have in the mind about what life is all about, what spirituality means or what mindfulness is. It's knowledge, in other words, in the form of understanding things through logic, reasoning, stories, and concepts. Then we have this other kind of intelligence we might call wisdom.

So wisdom is when we experience insight and truth directly for ourselves. It's firsthand experience. So wisdom is mostly experiential rather than conceptual. There's a well known analogy for this when it comes to training in awareness. So you might meet a man who knows all about honey.

Hee knows all about bee behavior. He can tell you about the creation of honey. He can tell you about the molecular structure of honey. He's actually even done a PhD on honey. He could fly around the world doing impressive talks all about honey.

He has intellectual understanding about honey. But if you ask this man, have you ever actually tasted honey? Have you ever seen it? Have you ever touched it? He says, no. Hmm. Another person, no PhD, but he just regularly touches, tastes and smells and eats the honey. If you ask him to explain it, he say, tell me all about honey.

This man might not have much to say, but they know honey, very, very well. I share this because it's common for people who are drawn to mindfulness to get really caught up in just intellectual understanding. And this is understandable. Look this is how we learned in school and we learn other skills in this way too, right? We read memorize, and then we repeat what we've heard. But mindfulness is different.

It's only through repeated direct experience of mindful awareness that we gain the deepest insights. And it's only through wisdom, through tasting or knowing our deeper nature directly that we grow a lasting sense of peace and wholeness within. So of course, still go ahead and read about mindfulness, take courses and retreats and chat to others about it. It can be really, really helpful and also very enjoyable. But expect the real change, the most profound understandings to come from sitting down, tuning in and tasting awareness for yourself.

So let's do that right now. If you care to settling in for today's meditation. And as always thank you for your practice and your presence here with us.