Insight vs Intellect

Life can be understood intellectually and although you may be alive, without insights that allow you to go beyond the intellect it doesn’t mean you know how to live…

Having insight into something is very different than having an intellectual understanding of it. Growing up I didn’t have much understanding of what life was about nor was there awareness of the self centered view I developed. This created a delusional existence and although I was alive I didn’t understand how to live. Fast forward to my late twenties and because of dire circumstances I was forced to change the way I was living; for me this meant stop relying on destructive coping mechanism. Granted just by doing this my outer life changed and my intellectual understanding of life became different, but the self centered view that was developed did not; thus the only thing that really changed were my outer circumstances.

This went on for forty nine years at which time something happen that allowed me to look deeper into myself and a shift occurred that produced insights which changed the developed self centered view. This is when my intellectual understanding of life began changing to heartfelt insights and I truly started to change; from the inside. One of the insights allowed was seeing how the self centered view was at the core of all my delusions. This insight was so powerful that to this day it’s the base of every insight; when the self centered view is in place nothing new is allowed. I had a very basic intellectual understanding of the self centered view for many years prior to the shift that occurred when I was forty nine, but this knowledge produced very superficial and limited results. It wasn’t until my mind started settling that these insights began manifesting. They changed me from an intellectual understanding, and although there’s nothing wrong with intellect, if it’s not incorporated with inner insights life will be superficial and limited at best…