Intelligence lies beneath all those layers.

In so many ways I have been spared the decaying crusts of traditions and beliefs that layer so many aspects of human life. I believe I have not been completely spared and my mind has been compromised in many ways. Yet, the more I observe, the more I realize that I am quite fortunate. The act of observing, by itself, keeps the mind fresh, and the fresh mind in turn helps to make further observations which allows one to finally be aware of what constitutes the layers that encrust us with dullness and weighs us down with the suffering we bring upon ourselves.

Now and then, people wonder where I'm actually coming from, what's my background, my agenda, my 'qualifications' or training as if it's supposed to be illustrious or an indication of 'intelligence'. If that were true, I should've felt some kind of achievement, for intelligence is associated with a superior accumulation of knowledge and facts. I feel this thinking is actually contradictory because I am a witness to myself that I have never applied any of the widely accepted standard methods of knowledge accumulation, at least not consciously.

If I were to describe the experience of how i know what I know, it would feel more like a type of absorption or cessation/reduction of the pace of outward movement instead of a type of external movement often associated with knowledge accumulation which has become synonymous with 'learning'. The change will take place without you actually feeling it and then, like a rain cloud, it pours out like rain in the form of some epiphany...and the awareness of one leads to another and another like the rain cycle. Each rainfall drenches the mind and refreshes the environment and makes the mind, the soil, more fertile. Precipitation never cakes the mind dry......but makes it hungry enough to hang out patiently and to forget about it completely, until the clouds get heavy enough, and they know when they are.

In observing this, I came up with an analogy encouraging myself to discard old habits and old fears - to empty my cup. I told myself that a lot of people are like onions with the dirty layers on the outside. As we age, we accumulate more and more of these unfresh layers which encrust us. Beneath all these layers that we have accumulated around ourselves actually lies our natural, intelligent self. This intelligent self exists throughout. It is only the accumulation of all those crusty layers that hides that intelligence from ourselves.

When I doubtmy own Intelligence as a Being, I ask myself to observe nature and the Intelligence of plants and animals - beings that have a lot less brain-matter than us. I ask whether it were not possible that we were more intelligent than the plant, the pigeon, the cat? I ask if it were not possible that it is the many crusty layers upon their mind that has cast them in so much self-doubt, low self-esteem and enveloping us in the fear and diminishing joy of life? And these layers are keeping us from identifying the Intelligence within.

I think it is completely useless to idolize intelligent people since we are all intelligent beings. Idolizing the intelligence of others, be it in one specific field or another is merely surrendering a personal responsibility to observe, notice and peel away the layers which hides our Intelligence. It takes away the responsibility of needing to look within in order to bring our Intelligence to surface.

All patterns of authority have that in common though - to remove accountability of being able to find intelligence in oneself by surrendering personal authority to a third party. Religion, schooling, traditions, rituals, customs, superstitions, peer pressure, trends,....in one way or another, they create layers upon us and then it gains enough momentum to run an auto-pilot self-perpetuating crust layering existence. There are primary, secondary layers and then layers that are a few times removed from the original layers but is a consequence of. It is a wheel, a chain-reaction, a self-perpetuating mechanism that gains momentum by the mere adoption of existing layers as a part of oneself, as a part of living.

It might sound condescending to tell another person that one is only as intelligent as the layers one has shed. We live in a world of quick fixes and dummies for anyone that we have to also label self-transcendence and spirituality in the same way we do everything else. But it is the application of the same ways that eludes us of the transcendence and clarity we seek. Using the ways of a living that dulls and creates emptiness, that encrusts us with deviated truths, methods that spin ourselves the web we find ourselves in is not going to release us. Before any form of transcendental happiness can be achieved, before enlightening epiphanies can arrive, there must first be a conscious knowing about the state one is in. To have a conscious knowing requires one to drop the spindle, to allow the smoke to clear, to find a stillness where crusty layers peels itself off to reveal bit by bit. Any ambition to speed up the de-layering is again a reincarnation of the spindle-effect that encrusted us. Being able to identify ambition and then set it aside is the giant step.

Clarity can only come when you do not seek it - because the act of seeking creates smokescreens for ourselves. The ambition to seek is the product of the way we were brought up - we were brought up by people who were also brought up to want to achieve more, better, faster, etc. We are merely photocopies of photocopies because we lost our originality the moment culture, traditions, parenting, invasive nurturing stripped us of the freshness and originality we were born alight with and dressed up in the clothes our environmental conditionings find ideal.

If you are wondering how is it possible for us to not conform or to know whether it is right or not to reject tradition, you would have witnessed a product of conditioning in yourself. A baby does not question a lot of things in order to be able to figure out which things comforts it and helps it blossom. The original light in us does not require thought for it is capable of internalizing truths. If something leads to correctness it will gravitate towards that in a natural way, as if following a rhythm. It will crave what it lacks and will reject what doesn't feel right.

If you ask how is it possible that we know something as the Truth without questioning the way towards the Truth? If you can for a moment imagine yourself, as a baby, born with light and truth within you, you would be capable of following the natural rhythm of Truth because you are a part of it. You would be able to follow it the way your thirsty mouth turn towards the nipple and sucks vigorously at it. You will know It because it is You. Truth was you until conditioning tucked it away, wrapped it up, layer upon layer.

That which I call conditioning is simply the collective of the unquestioned mind. I see clearly now what the Buddha means by, to question. It is not to question Truth, or to ask questions to eliminate things so as to arrive at some destination. It is simply to question what YOU have come to accept as the truth! Truth itself does not need to be questioned because it Is. It is the untruths which have been accepted or thought of as Truth that needs examining.