A Bow to Our Primordial Intelligence

As a writer, receiving a reader’s earnest feedback is one of the most satisfying gifts. Here is feedback I recently received from a native Chinese woman reader. Her words reflected the Spirit that has been guiding my writing: a deep bow to the primordial intelligence.

[Her original words were written in Chinese. Below is my translation. I added in additional information in parentheses to provide context to better understand her original words.]

Reading Earth Song, my heart bleeds and hurts. It is a deep pain [associated with our collective trauma] that I have always been familiar with but do not know how to describe. This pain is engraved in my DNA. Rocked by the waves of your words, the ancient, intuitive memories [of Chinese culture and history] surfaced to the horizon, like a newly arising sun.

For the first time in my life, I saw the place where I was born. I was born in rural Shandong province in 1974. My entire family has been farmers and illiterate for generations. I dropped out of junior high school before graduating. But still, I was the most highly educated person in the family. When I became an adult, I wanted to understand more about myself, so I read some psychology and New Age books. Apart from that, I was not interested in reading anything else. In other words, I still am "illiterate" because I know little about Chinese history, culture and religion.

Spring’s writing presents a perspective of Chinese culture that is unique and fresh. After reading her writing, I had a flash of insight. All along, I have been carefully protecting my "ignorance" and "illiteracy". I did not want to be educated [in ways that are incongruent with my core being]. Experiencing "I", and my relationship with the world through this innocent state of not-knowing, is exactly what I want!

In this flash of insight, my lack of education is no longer a “defect”. It protected my innocence, which is my most important attribute. This innocence is my ally.

At this moment, a picture of a person with two faces appeared in my mind. One face is me, representing the simplicity and innocence of not-knowing; the other face is Spring, representing profound knowledge ... And we are ONE! We are two different facets of a shared destiny.”

Reading her comments, tears streamed down my face. I felt my work being validated in ways beyond my wishes.

I want to provide my English readers with some cultural background to understand her words. This Chinese woman is in fact quite knowledgeable. You can tell from the words she wrote. But she calls herself “illiterate” or “ignorant” for two reasons.

One it is customary in Eastern Asian people to be humble about one’s knowledge. Second, in Chinese traditional culture, knowledge is not just about reading words and absorbing what’s in the books. It is also about an embodied, intuitive intelligence coming from a deep respect for one’s naked, direct experience of life, something akin to the primordial intelligence a wild animal has.

From the little I knew about this woman, she is attuned to this kind of powerful primordial intelligence. Each one of us is born with primordial intelligence, the illusory superiority of our civilization’s progress often conditions us to turn away or to suppress this kind of intelligence. The crises in health care, environment and climate change are all manifestations of this disconnection.

The Tao Te Ching opens with this sentence, “What can be uttered in words is not the true Tao.” Lao Tzu, the ancient Taoist sage intuited a larger-than-human life, a pure presence beyond the grasp of intellectual knowledge. Not that intellectual knowledge is not important. Intellectual knowledge provides important and necessary ladders and scaffolds through which we can embrace the Tao. With 5000 words, the Tao Te Ching has served as a ladder, a scaffold for people to experience the Tao for more than two thousand years!

But too often, our human consciousness attaches to these intellectual constructs, becoming obsessed with the ladders, scaffolds and skyscrapers. We are burdened by too much “junk-food” information, while lacking true, nourishing wisdom. Obsessed by the ladders and scaffolds, we often forget to gaze beyond the man-made structures, to breathe  in the fresh air and take in the beauty of the mountains and the clouds moving in the valleys.

I deeply bow to this Chinese woman who holds a profound wisdom that protects her primordial intelligence. She may not know as much as many educated people, but she possesses the exact, right amount of knowledge to stay true to herself.

With Earth Song and my memoir, I bow to this primordial intelligence. Of course, it is just another ladder, a scaffold, born out of my life journey. However, it is much more than my personal story. Through this story, I am exploring where the personal and collective narratives meet and alchemize each other.

In the Resonance Path’s Chinese community, my colleagues and I ran a course where we used my memoir as a seed and invited people to share their own life stories with one another. Earth Song provides a safe and welcoming container where people feel safe to share the vulnerable, the painful, the dark, or even the “crazy” part of themselves, as well as sharing the joyful, ecstatic, and the wild…

When people feel safe and trust one another, that raw, powerful primordial intelligence is welcomed back into the shared space. In the presence of that intelligence, miraculous transformation takes place on its own accord! People became enlivened and less afraid. They are lit by a passion for life that empowers them to embrace the most difficult challenges and support each other. This is something my Chinese community has taught me again and again. 

I hope one day Earth Song in its English version may also serve as a catalyst for such individual and collective transformation. Stay tuned!