When it comes to the different intelligences we rely on, most of us lean most heavily on our rational intelligence, our left brain thinking using analysis, data, concrete facts and tangible evidence. Society, education, the workplace and even family life trains us in this way. As we gain more life experience, we likely add to that with our gut brain – the part of us that having travelled through life has a sense of instinct based on past encounters with situations that enable us to trust something more primal.
A smaller percentage may place some value on the heart brain. All too often this gets reduced to simple emotions and feelings and all too often dismissed as low level and unreliable and even downright scary.
It’s fair to say that our emotional brain, like all parts of us has to develop from a more ‘juvenile’ state where it simply reacts freely and spontaneously like an unencumbered child to any situation, to one where we filter those responses ensuring that we share our emotions and feelings in a way that do no harm, to us or others. Developing our heart brain to a useful level of emotional intelligence is a lifelong journey for most of us.
We have though another part of us, also housed in the vast embrace of the heart and that we might call the wisdom brain, often referred to as the soul. The wisdom brain or soul provides access to a deeper resource, a limitless library of insight, perspective, philosophy, practise and practical guidance that can transform the way we use all other intelligences.
This higher intelligence invites us into a space of synthesis where we are able to hold the apparent dualities of a situation, whether seen through the rational, emotional or instinctual mind and seek a higher point of understanding and solution. This higher point takes the ‘best’ of all aspects of a situation and invites a new level of creative thinking – not through analysis but through felt sense.
As we open to this inflowing resource we find that we enter a process – a process where the answers to our dilemmas and questions emerge. This emergence can be gradual or sudden but when it arrives, we sense the new wisdom in a deep and powerful way. There is a ‘truth’ about it that seems so obvious and powerful, we might even say ‘right’.
The wisdom brain is patient and supportive. It’s not pushy, though it is always available and showing us new information if we have the eyes to see it. The challenge comes in our willingness and readiness to value its presence and open the door to allow that information in. This is supported by the quality of our inner mind – the more we are able to still the inner mind and chatter and come to a receptive place, the more likely we are to open to this higher intelligence.
Our world needs leaders who are guided by this higher intelligence to help address the many seemingly intractable challenges facing us. Maybe today is the day to open that door.