Daily Insight: The Split in the Modern Mind

There is a brilliance, a light, that shines within each of us. I call it Integrated Intelligence. But you cannot activate it through calculation, dissection, analysis, classification or even through abstract thinking. These things, when not balanced with mindful presence, take you further away from it, and further dim your light. And as I see it, this is the great lesson which our current age must learn. We must learn to be still, to let go, to surrender to an intelligence much greater than any of us as individuals can possibly muster. Even the most brilliant of us cannot match the brilliance of the light. And what about you? Does your light shine in this world, or is it buried beneath piles of data and years of restless thought and distracted activity?

But here’s the catch. To allow the light to shine we have to allow ourselves to be vulnerable; to surrender the illusion of control and power over life itself. A teacher once told me that vulnerability was the key to divinity. 

At the end of his life Darwin lamented that despite all his brilliance, and even despite his elevation to the highest status in science, his own light was greatly dimmed. In his own words, he had become a classification machine. Darwin’s story is the story of modernity. Let us not continue to make this mistake for a second longer. Let’s allow our brilliance to light all our futures.

Marcus