People use intelligence wrongly. They push their intellect in front of them and use it to look ahead and predict or plan what will happen and what they are going to do.
It’s rarely correct. If you look at what you predict and what actually happens you will find that when you predict the future you extrapolate from the current situation but, by definition, you can’t take into account anything that is unpredictable. And the unpredictable happens all the time. People who use their intellect in this way become rigid and un-adaptable.
Another issue with this way of thinking is that you cut yourself off from other ways of interacting with the world. People who over-use their intellect become unfeeling and unable to tap into their natural intuitive abilities. I’ve seen this happen to people are very intelligent.
Instead of pushing the intellect in front, a better approach is to use the intellect to run along behind. Interact with the world using feeling, intuition and emotion. Instead of attempting to predict, use the intellect to understand: why did this happen? Why did I do that? What caused him to react like that? and so on.
Of course, when you first do this you’re going to make mistakes. Intuition has to be trained and honed and until then it can mislead you, but as with any learning, you’re going to make mistakes. Learn from them.
By Philip Braham on .