Like an iceberg, the lion’s share of our accessible intelligence remains hidden from our consciousness and access. The situation is analogous to the two forms of visual processing which are active in the brain. The foveal processing is what we are consciously aware of. The peripheral processing is performing crucial tasks without which we would not even be able to move safely.

As this relates to our intelligence, our foveal intelligence is obvious and self-aggrandizing. Our peripheral intelligence is too busy performing miracles to show up for praise or attention. But it is this ancient asset, vastly older and more sophisticated than our common intellect, which hides the impossible treasures which comprise our most astonishing human birthrights.

If you can awaken the awareness of your peripheral intelligence, you will experience modes of insight which render our wildest imaginings mundane in comparison. This is our natural state, but our long relationships with knowledge and language have obscured it beneath countless layers of formal structure. The experience of this intelligence (which is related to and associated with intuition) is less like thinking than a form of directed dreaming with nonhuman inputs.