Intelligence is the ability to process and store information in meaningful and relevant ways of interpreting the world.
We must distinguish between mind (brain), intelligence, and consciousness. Realistically speaking, a brain is any set of connected nodes through which energy flows coherently. A computer is a brain; a mycelial (fungal) network is a brain. They differ only in their form factor and perceptual apparatus, both of which determine their ability to "think"—to process the data they perceive.
The efficiency with which energy organizes itself in such a network comprises its intelligence, which includes algorithms and memory, just like a computer.
The structural result of this efficient organization is the brain. The capacity to process and organize the patterns of energy moving through it constitutes its intelligence.
Taken together, we call this a mind.
What we call consciousness is the result of pure awareness moving through a given mind—any network consisting of nodes of information arranged in coherent, logical arrangements.
This is why "consciousness" is so hard to define. It's not a thing but a process—the interaction between pure awareness and organized structures of information.
Mind itself is also conscious, but it's not self-conscious. It can only choose within the parameters that its structure affords, whereas self-concious (or self-awareness) has the ability and the desire to transcend its own parameters.
In esoteric Christianity, this desire for self-transcendence is called the "Holy Spirit." It is the unceasing desire of the Universal Creative Intelligence to know Itself.
Awareness is different from consciousness because in its native state, it is devoid of content. It's only as it moves through the mind's nodes of organized information that it picks up content, thereby forming patterns of intelligence as it processes and stores information in meaningful and relevant ways of interpreting the world.
This definition of intelligence as the ability to process and store information in meaningful and relevant ways of interpreting the world is consistent with many scientific definitions of intelligence, which focus on cognitive processes such as perception, learning, reasoning, and problem-solving. The concept of efficient organization of energy in networks as a basis for intelligence is also consistent with some theories of neural and computational processing.
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I'm not sure I am intelligent anymore. I always thought I was but I'm suspect now. I am a programmed
magnet for what I like and tend to reject what triggers me, which is a lot lately. But I sit in awareness feeling what is triggered, knowing it will move through - avoidance is no answer anymore but forcing myself to ingest something "just because it is good for me to face reality" has been overdone. I'm kind of over "processing."
I like this "awareness" space. I sat observing people in Walmart as I got my taxes done the other day
and I didn't analyze anything - I just came up with a question "How does God think up all these people?" It was just a joy to watch passerby - each with their own business in process, none looking at me to connect - a relief just to observe life passing by for no other reason than sharing the same space at the time. I do like "new" but mostly life at this time seems "recycling the unnoticed."
Feeling just seems like the new thing to me. I never realized I felt so much in a day. When you retire there's no more compartmentalizing and roles- just indolence from "what today?" Yet, I feel more alive
than when I was busy just because I notice when I stop breathing. But as I get out and about more
observing my thoughts as I observe the world - more impersonal than when I took everything personally. My "intelligence" says "produce, produce, produce" and awareness says "what?"