I have also been reading "Steve Jobs" by Walter Isaacson. I came across this amazing quote from Jobs last night about intuition. It is a rather long passage but I find it very insightful for today's busy world.
Coming back to America was, for me, much more of a cultural shock than going to India. The people in the Indian countryside don't use their intellect like we do, they use their intuition instead, and their intuition is far more developed than in the rest of the world. Intuition is a very powerful thing, more powerful than intellect, in my opinion. That's had a big impact on my work.
Western rational thought is not an innate human characteristic; it is learned and is the great achievement of Western civilization. In the villages of India, they never learned it. They learned something else, which is in some ways just as valuable but in other ways is not. That's the power of intuition and experiential wisdom.
Coming back after seven months in Indian villages, I saw the craziness of the Western world as well as its capacity for rational thought. If you just sit and observe, you will see how restless your mind is. If you try to cal it, it only makes it worse, but overtime it does calm, and when it does, there's room to hear more subtle things--that's when you intuition starts to blossom and you start to see things more clearly and be in the present more. YOur mind just slows down, and you see a tremendous expanse in the moment. YOu see so much more than you could see before. It's a discipline; you have to practice it.
Zen has been a deep influence in my life ever since. At one point I was thinking about going to Japan and trying to get into the Eihei-ji monastery, but my spiritual advisor urged me to stay here. He said there is nothing over there that isn't here, and he was correct. I learned the truth of the Zen saying that if you are willing to travel around the world to meet a teacher, one will appear next door."
I have been watching "The Men Who Built America" with my wife. I have enjoyed seeing how Vanderbelt, Carnegie, and Rockefeller gained their fortunes. As the show keeps stating with these men it wasn't that they lacked the ability for great rational thought. They all had the intuition to see a new service and product that they could offer.
I just read that passage last night. I am going to work to implement intuitional experiences onto my day. My Dad once told me he knew I was going to be a good engineer because my intuition was there. I don't think I had an appreciation for that like I do know. Thanks Dad.
