Going from smart to intelligent…
In this article I am biting off more than I can chew… So it will probably make more sense to people who are in my programs, and will make sense once I learn how to speak/write it coherently. ((I was just checking what the dictionary (Tree of Knowledge says about intelligent vs. smart. Turns out that probably intentionally, just to make you less intelligent, lol, not funny, they use the two terms opposite of what they actually measure.
here is just one of the definitions on the internet:
- The difference between smartness and intelligence is mainly behavioral. (truth value of this statement: 20%.)
- While an intelligent person can be smart, but a smart person may not be intelligent. (truth value of this statement: 80%.)
- Intelligence means the ability to acquire information rather rapidly. (truth value of this statement: 30%.)
- Intelligence is a trait a person has since birth. (truth value of this statement: 10%.)
As you can see, there is no clarity, their is no usable knowledge floating around on the internet… and what is is both misleading and useless…
OK, for the purposes of our conversations, I call what you are born with smart… and what you develop I will call intelligence.
Ultimately what intelligence measures is the structures you have built in your brain that make it possible to learn new things and use them. This is how the behavior effects the number you get.
I have raised my intelligence (my measures, not some test… muscle testing!) from 100 at age 16 to 150 today. Did I get smarter? No. I am as dumb as I was at age 16. But I can do a lot more with that brain of mine… due to all the structures I have built in my brain, intellectual and practical knowledge combined.
The structures are scaffolding, also called furring strips, and in the Learning how to learn course, they are called chunks… these are invisible information structures in the brain making it possible to learn more.
The first such structures develop in the early years, while you are in theta brain state… Depending on how much exposure, stimulus, challenges you had during those years, you got a good head start, or a poor head start.
Being protective or disciplinary about a child, you make the biggest difference in what they are going to be later in life… smart with no intelligence, or smart with amazing intelligence. It is, at this point up to you.
If you are smart but not intelligent, you’ll probably end up with a child like yourself… not happy, not successful, not able to grow.
Many of my students have a higher number for smart than they have for intelligence. One of my students has 100 for smart, and 70 for intelligence. Another student has 100 for smart, and 110 for intelligence. That is the direction you want to move to… your smart measure is fixed… but you can increase your intelligence with tenacity, and persistence.)) What’s missing? Why are so many smart people less than successful?
This is going to be a series.
- This part deals with learning… The brain state conducive to learning…
- Then, in coming parts, we’ll talk about why you can’t learn something, even though you are smart…
- Why you can’t use something that you thought you learned…
- And what you can do so you can go from smart to intelligent.
Intelligence is the ability to get results with the knowledge you got… as opposed to smart: able to get a lot of knowledge…
I just finished the Learning how to learn course
Here are some observations and thoughts that will raise that course’s truth value to 60%. Without these, it is 30%. Not bad… but not good either.
Important distinctions of the course: (there are more, but these are the most important barriers to learning.)
Focused state learning vs. fuzzy state learning
Like with everything, there are distinctions that are in the visible domain of reality, and distinctions that are invisible until they are distinguished…
In the visible domain, the difference is your brain’s attitude about the material, the brain’s approach.
In order to get into the focused state, the brain needs to first force itself to exclude everything else, so it narrows your cone of vision, your cone of hearing, it tries to ignore your back itching… because it is HELLBENT to get what you are intending to get.
I used to get into this mode occasionally, especially when I saw a questionnaire to fill in, a quiz… fear. Fear of making an ass of myself.
And it was, predictably, a self-fulfilling prophecy: in that focused state I could not get the question right (the context), so my answers were predictably wrong.
Or I just simply could not fill out the form… And had a lot of punishments in my life.
At some point, since I started doing this work, and connecting to Source much of the day, this attitude towards questions has disappeared.
So what is there for people who cannot learn despite their efforts to learn?
This is the question I had on my mind when I did some back and forth with one of my students who hasn’t been able to learn the foundations of the Playground course, despite her spending a lot of efforts to do so.
Our exchange ended with me saying “it took me years to get it… so there is no hurry”, and her answering “Oh dear!
Well, at least that lessens the fear of falling behind…”
Another one of the distinctions of the Learning how to learn course is “project vs process”
She was, obviously, in project mode. I will get this done, no matter what!
And although she used tools of process learning, she was HELLBENT, and that made her do all the things hellbent people do: force, force, and force some more.
In that state learning is impossible. Literally no new knowledge goes through.
It is like trying to convince a mad drunk that the other person, he is fighting and hellbent to kill, didn’t mean to insult him. He will turn his fury towards you, kill you, and then kill the offending other.
Yeah, and most of you, who even make efforts to learn, do that.
Forceful, beating the material into submission.
You can see it in your breathing. You can see it in your posture. And you are tired, and you are used up, and you are wrong, and an underachiever.
The course, Learning how to learn, has two other distinctions that you try to benefit from: focused brain state, and fuzzy brain state. In essence, how my students interpret it, is…
Narrow cone of vision, nose to the grindstone, and wide cone of vision.
Obviously, like everything on the Internet, the creators of the course approach everything from the visible… and get stuck there.
I don’t know about the focused state, but if I had to rename it: I would call it the hellbent state… forceful.
And the fuzzy brain state: the only brain state where learning happens while you are awake and aware, is the theta brain state…
I learn to move into that brain state in the Photoreading course… for me it is easy. You put your attention, gently, no forcing, on your tangerine spot… the spot where a tangerine would sit if you had one, and keep it there… balancing the flat bottom tangerine.
Anything and everything coming at you while you do that becomes food for your brain. Concepts just rush in, and you don’t have to do anything to learn.
Little kids are in theta brain state, sucking up knowledge like a sponge. It is by design: to live in this world, you have to know a lot of things.
Of course, the brain will not be able to tell if what you are learning is bullsh*t or worth learning, but once the knowledge is there, you can allow the brain to sort it through, separate the wheat from the chaff. ((
winnowing: blow a current of air through (grain) in order to remove the chaff.))
You can, maybe, see that being in the forceful “focused” hellbent mode, there is no separation going on… all is treated the same way.
I have been teaching people to get into the theta brain wave mode. And while they can, when I am checking it, they promptly enter focused mode a minute later…
So most people cannot learn, cannot stay “loose and yet awake and aware”, they only know two modes, sleepy and forceful.
If you learned to feel your feelings, your physical feelings, you would be able to tell where your brain is at…
In focused mode the gentle pressure is in the front part of the brain, meaning in the front half… not just the forehead… the front half.
That is the mind’s location where all forcing comes from.
And when you are in fuzzy mode, you are balancing a tangerine that is about to slid off, backwards… so the area where the tangerine would be, signals a gentle pressure.
A want time student and friend used to put a rubber band to the tangerine spot, and the small weight on his skull directed his attention. So he managed to be in theta brain state most of the time.
But when, in classes he wanted to answer an question, he slid into mind-mode, and almost always said something stupid.
It was the next step that he could not wrap himself around: stay in fuzzy mode.
It happens that in fuzzy mode, the eyes relax as well, and widen the field of vision, inside and outside, so they can see more than just what is at hand… that is what allows the “winnowing” to happen: other stuff already in the brain informs the brain whether what is new, the incoming, is wheat of chaff.
Of course, most of what a regular person has in their brain is Tree of Knowledge, so 95% chaff… so being it theta mode, and pondering mode, while you walk, while you are in the shower, etc. you can get rid of a lot of the chaff… if your pondering is in theta mode.
I have a student who says he is pondering, but my hunch is that he is forcing pondering, because his view is narrow, and he never even attempts to check the veracity of his convictions.
He is the kind of guy who comes to every call with a new conviction, and doesn’t even have a question why he is so convinced about all of them… and haven’t come to a coherent picture yet.
And he hasn’t… and if he continues to do pondering as a forceful exercise, he never will.
Some soul corrections really struggle with exactly that… being able or being willing to see the big picture where it is obvious, to the brain, what is the direction to go, what is the real issue, what there is to do.
At the end of the connected meditations, the brain calisthenics exercises, I always asked the participants to open their eyes, and gently look around in the room… without naming what their eyes looked at.
In theta brain mode you can do that, in mind brain mode, you have to… meaning: no mystery, no openness, you already know, you are closed to new input.
I am now looking through old articles, to see what else I have been able to see about you that would, maybe, help me to help you to become flexible and become a person who can learn… and enjoy learning.
If you read this article attentively, you could see in the paired distinction, the either/or distinctions above, what states you are unable to learn.
1. focused mode
2. project mode
3. narrow cone of vision/fear mode/concern mode
I didn’t talk much about the project mode… so here it goes. In project mode you are more interested in getting to the other side of the project, than the process of going through it.
I call that mode homework mode.
Full of haste, forcing, and ultimately a definite distaste for the doing part.
If you are in project mode/homework mode, you can’t learn. Because you cannot keep your attention on what you are doing: you only want to get to the other end.
- Most people even eat this way. They go to a restaurant, order some expensive food, and then rush through it.
- Most people drink this way: they just want the buzz.
- Most people have sex this way: just want to have the 3-second experience at the end.
- Most people travel this way: they just want to show their travel pictures to everyone… not go through the experience themselves.
It is an unproductive way to approach life.
Older people say: life got faster… but life is not faster… it goes a minute every minute… except you are not there for the minute, you are for whatever you aim for.
When you go to bed, you just want to fall asleep… so you miss the beauty and enjoyment of the being alone in the dark, finally being able to be yourself phase.
Oh well…
OK, here are the elements of being and staying in theta brain mode:
Entering theta brain wave
1. locate your tangerine spot.
2. put all your attention on it to activate. Press with your attention… it is like a switch
3. you know your tangerine spot is active if and when it buzzes (or you feel a gentle pressure in the bones of you skull).
4. keep it on… if accidentally you lose it, just return, gently, and activate it again.
use this state to
1. listen to videos, audios, lectures, webinars
2. read articles
4. read books
5. in your interactions.
Being in theta state allows you to stay out of your mind, as long as you are in theta state… it’s obvious… the buzzing T-spot.
no labeling, naming, comparing
wide cone of vision
perception mode
the VOR ((Very high frequency (VHF) omnidirectional range))… super awareness: FUZZY focus + wide cone of vision
And a video on my subscribers’ site:
https://free-stuff.by-sophie.com/index.php?/register/AOQbj8
If you are already a member, you can just log in and go to the page.
Read the original article: Why can’t you learn, and how could you? The single most important factor…