Bladder Intelligence: Healing the Winter Mind

This is a very small excerpt from my CEU offering, Intro to BL 1-2. This is the perfect time of the year to heal the Bladder meridian, starting right at the beginning…

There are many kinds of intelligence. Bladder meridian intelligence encompasses the fathomless ‘I don’t know’ that surrounds data. It dwells in the infinite spaces between the stars. The Bladder meridian points on the head have a lot of resonance with the night sky. Bladder intelligence is like rays of light going out into the darkness, to map the most distant stars. This is intelligence that can construct meaningful constellations out of just a few data points, turning knowledge into wisdom. The Bladder meridian specializes in facing the vastness of the unknown, and deducing practical philosophies out of what we do know.

Bladder intelligence is also like rays of light coming in from the darkness—otherwise known as inductive insight. This is starlight entering the darkness of the open, silent mind. Only when we turn off the flashlight of our intelligence and stop trying to figure it out, the light from the stars can come in… like flashes of insight in the dark. But we cannot have flashes of insight in the dark unless we have dark! If what we have in our minds is the equivalent of urban light pollution, we do not have these starlit insights.

Having lots of data is so different from having intelligence, especially Bladder intelligence. Intelligence moves in the spaces between the data. Think about it: what good does it do you to have lot of data, but not much intelligence? On the other hand, only a little bit of data but a lot of intelligence can get you much further than a whole heck of a lot of data but no space between the stars. When the data-stars go streaming by too fast as your cognition zooms like a rocket at warp speed, then you are blinded by the light in an organ that is really supposed to be about darkness. We are actually designed for maximum functionality with a lot of unknown and a little bit of data, a.k.a. a lot of space between the stars.

The intelligence of the Bladder cognitive functions of forming constellations in the night sky of our minds is not about putting two and two together, like the Spleen’s workaday thoughtfulness. This is a different kind of intelligence. This is an ability to deal with knowledge the context of the much greater unknown. Of course, we are always facing an unknown that is much greater than our knowledge—but we are not always aware of it. Without the felt experience of that fathomless unknown, our Bladder meridians suffer from an overload of data.

Bladder intelligence works in the space between the stars. On a practical level, Bladder intelligence needs to be left hanging in the silence for a while. Between the stimulus and the response, we a palpable lag time, a little bit of time where we are left to search in the darkness—not a bombarded with even more input! We need to settle into the darkness surrounding the stars in the night sky, so that we can feel the constellations forming in our minds. It’s about the connections we make in the stillness, in the silence, in the dark.

This is different than the vision of Wood’s imaginative possibility: the vistas from the mountaintops, looking out over the country side where you can see far and wide, and get the big picture.

It’s also different from the cognitive processing of Earth, where you work with the bananas and the eggs and the flour and make the banana bread.

It is also different than the insight of the Heart which is about radiance and light. Oh, the clarity, the radiant clarity of the Heart! Fire insight and intelligence is not about the kind of insight that has a backdrop of darkness to it. It’s radiantly obvious. You don’t have to connect the dots. It is not about mystery; it is about revealed-ness.

Bladder intelligence is about mystery and darkness and a shaft of light piercing that darkness, like a single star casting its rays over the ocean at night, or like a vast connecting of the dots, like detectives with a few clues. The more distant the points of data, the more we need the Bladder’s capacity to deal with vast unknown in order to be able to hold that much night sky, and such a far span of stars.

There is a sense that with each Water insight, there are now better questions. There is a satisfaction in the insight, but it is a satisfaction that takes us deeper into the night and deeper into the mystery, more full of faith that the answers that we don’t have are doorways to questions that we don’t yet even know to ask, and that the questions keep getting deeper.

Good education, I say, is learning enough to have better questions and a more profound awareness of how much we don’t know. The great teachers often experience that the more they teach and the more they learn, the more they realize that they don’t know. That is Bladder intelligence speaking: Knowing how much we don’t know. Opening to it in awe. Receiving it into the darkness of the open mind. Not trying to diminish the darkness; trying to become part of it. That’s the Path of Endarkenment.

How are you tending your Path of Endarkenment in these precious pre-Solstice days? Where and how can you open to more healthy darkness, less glaring, distracting light? HINT: Try walking away from the computer and turning off the phone! Try going out at night to look at the stars…