8
Katharine Donovan Kane
We’ve all lived in this world awhile. So, I know that you have a story to tell about what being smart means to you. Do you remember getting advice to “use your head” when “thinking” through a problem. “Keep your head in the game” and get good grades in school. These were criteria for having the advantage. But there is something that school didn’t teach about intelligence: inner knowing.
We were taught that being smarter was better. Don’t get me wrong. I love learning; I always had a book in my hand. That said, it took me a long time to unlearn believing that knowledge only came from those books.
I didn’t recognize until much later in life that there is knowledge and there is inner knowing. Experiencing a sense of knowing came from within. It wasn’t the same as information I received from the outside: family, society, or school. Yet, I had no idea how to read my “book” of inner knowing. This awareness I needed to discover over time.
It all started for me in school during the mid-1960s. There were a mind-boggling 60 students in my class. The Catholic school teacher sat us in six rows of 10. She started with the first seat in the first row nearest to the door and began sitting students according to their grades. Highest grade sat first. At the head of each row was the row monitor. This student was in charge of the other students sitting behind them.
Where was I sitting? Well, you could find me in one of the last seats in the last row nearest to the window. Actually, I liked it there. Overwhelmed by all the noise and energy in the room I found myself gazing out the window a lot. I wished that I was flying around with the birds. They looked happy out there. I was an avid tree climber in those days. If you wanted to find me look up into one of Long Island’s tall White Pines and you’d see my legs wrapped around the thickest branches perched somewhere near the top. I was more interested in being outside than the mayhem of the classroom.
Finding My Place
Occasionally the teacher would ask a question and look for volunteers to answer. I remember one such day when I was in the seventh grade. The school had decided to try an experimental math program for two years. It was called Chicago New Math. Looking back, I remember lots of decimals, numerals and computations.
For me, it wasn’t so much the math itself that I liked. It was the program’s self-directed learning style. You’d read a math chapter at home and work out math questions based upon examples in the book. Then, the next day you’d come to school and the teacher (hopefully) would confirm you were on the right track and that your computations were correct. Or not.
My teacher that year was one of the many critics of this New Math. She asked if we did our homework. Then she asked who understood it and who worked out the problem. Both times I raised my hand.
Keep in mind, I sat in the back. So, chances were she or anyone wouldn’t see my hand up. Much to my surprise I saw her incredulous look staring at me.
“Hmm,” she said. “Well then Miss Kane. Go to the back chalkboard and show us the math problem and how you solved it.” Typically, I was one of those shy, never-said-a-word kids. That day though I felt confident. I liked this math especially because we had to teach ourselves. I liked that I could work it all out by myself in my own time. I got up and as I walked to the chalkboard she said, “And remember to speak up when you explain how you solved the problem.”
I’m not sure how loudly I spoke but I reached up as high as my short arms could go and began doing the math. I talked about the decimal points and the numerals and wrote out each line of math until I reached the bottom. And there it was, the solution. I solved it. No one (including me) could doubt that I did the work. It felt good. With little fanfare I sat back down.
Having my moment at the board, I held onto a feeling of triumph for most of the day. Soon enough, though, I was back to my place gazing out the window and half listening to the teacher counting the minutes until I could go home.
Hindsight
From our vantage point today, we see an older learning model and an understanding of knowledge that made assumptions based upon traditional factors: test scores, grades, student performance assessment. Clearly, the educational system was still learning about itself and has since made a few changes in those modalities. What I didn’t understand at that time is that I had a highly sensitive, intuitive nature. As a seventh grader I was much more interested in deeper knowing based upon sensory perception than memorizing raw data for measured outcomes.
I come from a bright, very creative family. I have lots of siblings as well as children of my own. We are artists, computer wizards, professionals, and a number of us received higher education degrees. All of us were persuaded that our success was essentially based upon a head-centered intelligence. And, if by chance, our other intelligences (in our whole person ecosystem) asserted their presence we often learned that was best to ignore or generally suppress this wisdom in deference to intellectual rationalizations.
What About Those Other Intelligences
So, it’s understandable that in our complicated, busy, and stressed-out world we use our intellect first. It’s the way we were taught. We “think” that we need to keep our head down, focus, and get the job done.
Yet, at the same time our emotional intelligence, our gut intuitive sensations, our energetic subtle body, as well as the flow of those elusive heart-centered feelings are operating in the background. All of your centers are actively trying to communicate.
In moments when we relax the internal dialogue, valuable insights from our deeper ecosystem penetrate the over-thinking mind. Our body celebrates these incidences with goosebumps, tingly sensations, or a sudden intake of breath. And, by the way, it takes a lot of energy to manage our internal messages. All this interaction can be tiring.
It took a while, but I finally understood that I wasn’t an under achieving child but someone who approached knowledge in a different way. I can appreciate now that I’m what psychotherapist Elaine Aaron calls an HSP. She wrote the book The Highly Sensitive Person which helped me love the intuitive way in which I view life.
When I gazed out the window so long ago, away from all the activity in the overcrowded classroom, it was no accident. There was nothing wrong with me nor did it mean that I was less smart. Instead, it was a gift waiting to happen.
Another great book is Whole Brain Living by neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor. Through Dr. Taylor’s guidance I came to a greater awareness of the interplay between my thinking and emotional centers. And I learned to name my four brain characters. What a beautiful thing to make friends with who I am.
Wisdom in the Dreamscape
I have a passion for dreams. In fact, the branding on my website is Deepen Wisdom with Dreams. I am an intuitive life coach with an expertise in this area. We all dream, and we all experience them in our own way. The important thing is our dreamscape is a unique vantage point to our deeper selves.
Remembering our dreams, waking visions or intuitions is quality time spent. Too often we tell ourselves that there’ll be time enough later to record those strange, quirky images. Or, if by chance we do recall a dream we may find ourselves rushing to interpret a meaning. This, of course, is what our head-centered brain wants us to do.
The beauty of dream exploration is that it allows our whole self to have a voice. With my individual clients or in my Dream Circles we begin by centering ourselves in the present. We do this by intentional refocusing exercises. The key is to get out of our heads for a time. This allows the internal dialogue to quiet down a bit, so we begin to notice what else is there.
My process of dream exploration feels safe and calm. It’s like a meditation. It prepares the ground of your being to clarify your insights and trust your inner knowing. You learn to trust your intuition which is trying to communicate. It’s like coming home to yourself.
If we dedicate even a little quality time with our whole anatomy of awareness, then we can hear what our inner wisdom is telling us. In this way we can add our inner knowing to our acquired knowledge.
