Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
What does it mean to empower our minds,
to empower our beneficial potency,
and to recognize that power
and that beneficial potency as the nature of everything,
as our own nature and the nature of everything we experience.
What is that? Well, if we just take a short moment
just relaxing body and mind, for a moment
so what do we notice?
We notice a little bit of spaciousness;
we notice a sense of a little bit of relaxation.
That’s open intelligence.
Now it’s just a moment, a glimpse, an acknowledging,
a getting acquainted with this relaxed spaciousness.
And what we find is that that sense of relaxation, that sense of openness
that we noticed in relaxing the body and mind,
well that’s also present in the midst of thoughts, feelings, experiences,
people, places and things, everything in our moment-to-moment lives,
all the circumstantial data that we experience from moment to moment.
And in that relaxed moment, we were still aware of everything that was going on around us:
the sounds, and the humming of the refrigeration, and the people next to us;
cognizant of everything and at the same time just recognizing
the common thread that runs through all this,
the unifying force of open intelligence,
the true nature of everything,
the singularity that underlies everything we experience.
And simply by repeatedly acknowledging it,
just for one short moment at a time, it begins to come to the fore naturally,
because it is what has always been there,
fully perfected in every moment, in all circumstances,
it’s just that for most of us it was never pointed out before.
At least for me in my experience growing up,
no one ever said, “Well, yes, you are beginning to learn how to label everything,
read and describe everything, but also just notice what else is present:
this greater comprehensive order of intelligence.”
And so we introduce ourselves to the true nature of our intelligence,
and we empower it by acknowledging it over and over again.
And we become acquainted with it, it becomes more and more obvious,
and then gradually, by allowing it to shine forth
in the midst of the flow of thoughts, feelings, experiences and emotions,
it begins to just outshine all those appearances.
So, not replacing or erasing or avoiding any of those appearances,
but simply noticing this more comprehensive order of intelligence in the midst of everything,
and that’s what we begin to identify with,
rather than identifying with the ceaseless, spontaneous flow of data.
We begin to identify with our true nature,
this wide open, spacious, all-embracing, all-inclusive intelligence.
And then we begin to be able to tap into it: this wisdom, this skillful responsiveness,
and by relying on this, rather than the limited thoughts and feelings,
well, this is how we begin to be able to make decisions,
how to know exactly what to do and what to say and what choices to make in all situations.
And by empowering, revealing and unleashing our beneficial potency,
our power as a human being
we begin to make those choices based on what’s of greatest benefit,
greatest benefit to ourselves and of greatest benefit to everyone.
And so we can see for ourselves, by relying on our own open intelligence,
our own beneficial potency, well, what is of greatest benefit?
If it’s to choose living in community, living in a more conventional lifestyle,
having a job, or maybe there’s some way of integrating all of these things.
So this is where this skillful responsiveness begins to arise naturally:
not from the way we have conventionally looked at decision making,
weighing everything out with a cause and effect perspective,
but by empowering something that goes beyond cause and effect,
something that includes everything.
And this is available for each and every one of us,
it’s simply a matter of becoming acquainted with it
until it becomes more and more obvious,
more and more obvious in our experience.
So it is the innate power that we all house,
and we get to know ourselves as this power
by acknowledging it one short moment at a time.