What is the True Meaning of "Intelligence?"

While I do pretend to submit to you an authoritative definition of this term since its use is highly debatable and subjective, my personal definition is something like this: The term "intelligence" is one linguistic symbol we can use to describe the individual idiosyncratic beings, or points of consciousness (sometimes called "spirits" or "spirit children" in my spiritual tradition) that inhabit reality; in other words, you and I are "individual intelligences" with the capacity to create and develop eternally.

Below you'll find a statement about the word "intelligence" from a neo-gnostic source which I think adds a valuable dimension to my own definition. I hope you find this uplifting and helpfulin some small way:

"...intelligence is synonymous with the capacity to create. When understood in this way, our modern understanding of the word “intelligence” is revealed as being flawed. Real intelligence is creative power. Genuine intelligence is the ability and the means to create. But this is not the entire definition of intelligence. If we were to state a definition for intelligence, we would say: Intelligence is the intention and the ability to act in a beneficial way.

In other words, intelligence is the capacity to act, to create; but true intelligence—transcendental intelligence, superior intelligence—is creative power that is beneficial. In whatever scenario, in whatever situation, it is the ability to act in a beneficial way.

Another way of looking at this is to say that intelligence is the understanding of how to convert energy into a useful consequence, a result—how to work with matter and energy in order to produce the desired result.

When we look at the miracle of this physical body that we have, we see that it implies the existence of tremendous intelligence. The awe-inspiring sophistication of the many interdependent systems that sustain the moment to moment life that we enjoy, is so enormous that our simple mind cannot grasp it; we cannot comprehend it. Even the top scientists and doctors of these times cannot explain the physical body that we have; they have a limit to how much they can understand.

This is also true when we look at nature as a whole. In the entirety of nature we see an enormous, sophisticated, delicately balanced system of interlocking and interdependent laws, whose beauty and sophistication is beyond the capacity of our simple intellect to truly grasp."

Source:
http://gnosticteachings.org/the-teachings-of-gnosis/lectures-by-gnostic-instructors/689-intelligence.html