Intellect, Intuition, Instinct.

“Treat every moment as your last. It is not preparation for something else.” ― Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind

Intellect is a good start...

The rational faculty of mankind is a beautiful gift. As natural as flowers blooming in spring.

Thought arises, dances, plays, and passes.

A truly remarkable phenomenon. Propelling humanity into evolutionary domains previously unseen in the history of life on Earth, and potentially the vast cosmos.

But the intellect is only one part of the bio-psycho-social organism you are. When making effective decisions, having more information is helpful; it's only reasonable.

While the mind is necessary, strong, and brilliant, it must also realize that it stands to benefit from using all of the information and intelligence available to it.

Intuition brings your whole being into the game...

Intuition unites the holy trinity of heart, gut, and mind. With increased sensitivity, intuition offers profound guidance, deeper direction, and a Gestalt of the whole picture that none of them could get on their own.

The brilliance of the mind, the wisdom of the heart, and the 'second-brain' stored in your gut give you a much greater picture of reality, even if the intellect can't put it into language.

Sometimes, the vibes are off. Sometimes, things in the world glimmer in a way you can't verbalize.

The intuitive sensing of the body combined with the fierce intelligence of the mind gives you a better read on reality, more information to work with, and offers greater guidance through this world.

Instinct activates the ancient intelligence of the entire web of life...

Beyond (or beneath) intuition, there is instinct.

The ancient intelligence of your cellular memories, codified into the living programming of your DNA. Deep, foundational interconnectedness with the entire web of life.

The fundamental difference between intuition and instinct is that instinct can act.

Instinct allows the part of you always in fundamental harmony with the entire cosmos to get in the driver's seat.

Here’s an important thing to recognize that's pretty hard to see until you’re aware of it:

You only know you bit your tongue or touched a hot stove after it has already happened.

By the time you realize you’ve touched a hot stovetop, you’ve pulled your hand off of it. You only realized you’ve bit your tongue after your mouth has opened in response to biting it.

At what point did your intellect make the decision that you should take your hand off the hot surface? When was the great wisdom of your intuition consulted to stop the downward force on your tongue?

Never.

At no point was your intellect or intuition consulted; the processing speed and feedback loop are too slow.

Instinct took over, made the decision, and acted on it. Your instinct acted before the mind could process the sensory information, and your heart could intuit it.

In the hot stove example, the recoil impulse is initiated by nerves in your spine. It’s a spinal reflex arc—a neural shortcut. Sensory neurons in your arm detect pain, the spinal cord gets the message, and the muscles pull back instantly.

All of this is done before the message even reaches your brain.

Instinct can act.

What if you lived your entire life from this ancient instinct?

Instinct has access (because it lives there) to the entirety of your ancient ancestral intelligence. It has access to the entire field of reality that cannot be processed by the thinking mind. The conscious rational mind processes only a tiny portion of the available information in any given moment.

The rest happens under the surface: the realm of subconscious instinct.

Instinct has access to greater, richer information AND more capable, successful operating protocols.

You can live like this.

Ever tried to do a complex task while 'overthinking' it?

• Hard to swing a golf club properly when you're micro-managing every moment.
• Hard to submit a sparring partner when you're stuck in your head thinking about every move.
• Even conversations are worse when you're thinking about what you're saying as you're saying it.

Every athlete knows this. You drill the technique until it becomes an instinct. You no longer need to think about it.

In my opinion, this is Zen.

Zen is the cultivation of instinct as a primary Way of Being.

Immediate, instinctual, unfiltered action. Acting from the part of you that is never separate from the origin-moment of existence.

This is—in a direct way—the goal of koan practice. Koans are designed to dismantle and disorient the rational faculties of the mind, where the answer is a single, spontaneous, instinctual act.

Koans rewire and recenter the locus of identity down into the instinctual level of the human being.

Zen–particularly its Taoist/Ch’an roots–views this primary nature as fundamentally good. Instinct is natural. Natural is good.

Original Mind–human nature–is a positive force in the world. Worthy of further cultivation and greater embodiment.

The path of Zen is the return to Original Mind. To root yourself back in the center of the sacred union between Consciousness and Cosmos.

A return to instinct,
EB.