You have a natural, spontaneous intelligence inside you. You have tasted it as a child. As a child, you looked at things in a very simple, straightforward way. That is why you were so spontaneous. What took away that spontaneity as you grew up? The societal conditioning that has been telling you right from when you were a child, ‘You are not enough…’ Because of this, you are constantly trying to become something else, to prove something to others. By constantly thinking that you are not enough, you try to imitate others and waste the wonderful natural energy bubbling inside you.

I read a funny one-liner on a company’s notice board:

Death will be accepted as an excuse, but we would like two weeks’ notice, as we feel it is your duty to teach someone your job prior to your death.
Note: this new benefit program began yesterday.

If you blindly imitate another person’s performance or behavior instead of acting from your own inner spontaneity, your own intelligence, you will be cheating yourself out of wonderful possibilities.

Once there was a statistics student who, while driving, would always accelerate before coming to any junction, and then drive fast past the junction and slow down again once he passed the junction.

One day, he was travelling with his friend. They passed a junction in his usual way.

The friend asked him in surprise, ‘Why do you drive so fast across junctions when you are actually supposed to slow down?’

The statistics student replied, ‘Well, statistically speaking, you are more likely to have an accident at a junction, so I just make sure I spend less time there!’

Knowledge is good only when applied intelligently. It is intelligence that gives the real result, not the knowledge itself. When knowledge is applied in the right place at the right time, it is intelligence. Spontaneity is when we easily express our knowledge in the right place at the right time, in other words, using our intelligence. When you don’t use some thing, slowly you start forgetting the very art of using it. In the same way, when you don’t use your intelligence, slowly you start believing that you don’t have the intelligence to handle whatever is happening in the moment and you start relying on others or on your past experiences. Intelligence is the ability to respond to new situations. It comes from your very being, not from knowledge which comes from the mind.

Understand an important thing, when you are deeply aware, you cannot make mistakes!

Intelligence is being aware and spontaneous. Understand an important thing, when you are deeply aware, you cannot make mistakes! With awareness, you don’t rely on what others have taught you. You don’t rely on the past conditioning that has gone on inside you for many years. You act just out of the fresh intelligence that comes with awareness. With deep awareness you are in the present moment. When you are in the present moment, you are alive and alert, what you call as intelligent. Your intelligence by its very nature is spontaneous. There is no training, no learning needed for it. It is only a question of awakening it from within.

The first step is to watch yourself and see how you unconsciously react to situations. See how your actions are rooted in your attitudes and conclusions from past experiences. Watching yourself with awareness is the first step. The good news about awareness is, it is the only step that is needed!

Living every moment in total awareness is what meditation is all about.

Most of the time, we continue to live in the dead past and miss the wonderful dimensions of life, or we get angry over what has happened and feel hurt. Either way, we are escaping from the problem by going to one extreme or to the other. Instead, if we just look with deep awareness into the problem, an energy will awaken, the energy of intelligence which is enough to bring about the solution. The very awareness is enough to awaken and break free even from the past conditioning, and we can act intelligently. This awareness will simply kindle the spark of intelligence that has always been a part of you. The light of awareness is enough to remove the darkness created by years of living by habit. The whole key lies in being aware so that your intelligence can function. Living every moment in total awareness is what meditation is all about.

source: Living Enlightenment