Essential intelligence is more innate, more intuitive. It is very intelligent, and it is organic intelligence in the sense that it is different than a computer kind of intelligence-it’s not simply associating this with this, that with that, and then putting all these things together and arriving at an outcome. But it is not illuminating or exploding in a haphazard way. This constant illumination, or exploding, is the functioning of intelligence. The presence and the illumination are one and the same, like the sun and its light. The illumination that is always and continuously illuminating is the presence of the aspect itself. The aspect of intelligence is a constant explosion or illumination. We are told from the beginning that whatever light, whatever intelligence, whatever illumination, whatever goodness arises is always a blessing, is always grace. They make it clear that we are always at God’s mercy, that whatever good we derive is from God, that we are in a state of paucity and insufficiency. The theistic traditions have useful measures to counteract this human tendency to appropriate. We are appropriating the light of true nature, its intelligence and clarity and awareness. When we side with this delusion, we are appropriating the liberating power of true nature.
This perspective of the dynamic of realization-the relationship of practice and awakening-is an antidote to the delusion that we are liberating ourselves through our own individual efforts and capacities. When this illumination happens in a more total way, we call it awakening or realization or enlightenment. Every single time we experience and understand something about reality, it is true nature illuminating itself. I don’t mean that at the beginning we are responsible for realization and that, at some point, true nature steps in. Even though I am mentioning the progressive view of the teaching, when I say that realization or awakening or enlightenment is nothing but the self-illumination of true nature, I mean that this self-illumination is happening from the beginning of spiritual practice.
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