WHEN we discuss the whole area of intelligence, we could very easily end up down a bottomless pit.
Brian O’ Driscoll (of rugby fame) once asked the following question. “What is the difference between intelligence and wisdom?” The answer was as follows;
Intelligence is knowing that a tomato is a fruit.
Wisdom is knowing not to put it into a fruit salad.
I’m not so sure if Brian is the originator of this observation, but sure we’ll give him the credit for it anyway.
For my own part, I often regard Intelligence as that being connected with the thinking mind and all of the emotions that can result from those thoughts (emotional intelligence), whereas I regard true wisdom as arising from within the body away from the thinking mind.
An example of this body intelligence would be as follows. Supposing you were out for coffee with a friend and an old classmate, that you haven’t seen for a few years, comes up to the table to say ‘hello’!
You would absolutely love to introduce her to your friend but feel a little overcome with embarrassment as you cannot for the life of you remember her name (do you know what I mean?).
Anyway, you manage the situation with a bit of chit chat – your classmate moves on and you turn to your friend and explain what had happened and that you had just blanked on ‘The Name’ otherwise you would have introduced them formally.
Your friend says ‘no problem – just relax don’t try to think of it – and I bet you it will come to you.
You know this to be true also – so you go back to the chat, relax and all of a sudden – hey presto – the name pops up into your head – ‘It was Monica’.
This is an example of body wisdom at work and is often called an ‘Aha’ moment.
Supposing you cut your thumb on your right hand while making a sandwich.
Aside from the initial mess and no doubt frustration, things begin to settle down pretty quickly with a little tissue paper (or plaster) and some T.L.C.
Your body begins the healing process immediately and within about two weeks the scar has gone.
Now, do you mind if I repeat that statement again?
Your body begins the healing process immediately and within about two weeks the scar has gone.
Now, can I ask you to do something at this stage?
Could you close your eyes – be still – (e.g focus on your breath and don’t think for a couple of minutes? Could you use this time to reflect on the above ‘repeated statement’?
To get the real value of where I am coming from, you really have to do the above exercise before reading any further.
Now that you have reflected please answer the following questions.
1. How does your body know that it was your right Thumb and not your Left toe?
2. How does it know how much albumin, serum, white blood cells, red blood cells etc (and chemicals and factors that even scientists are not yet aware of)? How does your body know?
The answer is because it knows. Every single cell in your body has its own unique intelligence and memory (and there are millions if not billions of them!) all working in unison for the common good of healing your body and it gets it right every time.
Please reflect on the wonder of your own body wisdom – it has all of this natural knowledge stored but do we really appreciate it.
This is what I call true gratitude. This is why I had to repeat the above sentence twice to get us to stop from our own busy lives and in order to drive this message home this is why I asked you to reflect.
All our body asks for in return is a little acknowledgement of what it does for us on a daily, hourly and minute by minute basis and the best way to do this acknowledgement is to reflect in stillness at the truly amazing wonder of our own bodies.
Thank you body – you always know what to do. I need to reflect on the wonder of this on a much more regular basis.
Next week I am going to write about Gratitude
• Roger Harty is a life coach and can be contacted on 087-6128336, on twitter at @Innerjoyz1 or by email rogharty@gmail.com
