Most people live their daily lives with little understanding
of their actions and behavior. Life seems to push them around and they feel confused
and wonder how circumstances appeared as they do. The reason is that we are not
taught the basics of living intelligently, or the Art of Wisdom.
Wisdom is different from Knowledge. In school, we remember learning facts and
other tidbits of knowledge of our society. This is important, but this doesn’t give us
any clues on how to live. We think that wisdom grows with age, but we do not
have to wait this long. Wisdom, or the act of living intelligence, is an actual skill,
which can be learned, just like any other skill - at any time.
There are three types of Wisdom: Cultural, Universal and Self-knowledge. The
first type, cultural, is through experience in certain areas of life, such as learning the
wisdom of relationships, career, health, etc. Universal Wisdom, the second type, are
broad theories about life, God, experience, phenomena, etc. that we learn from other
people, secular institutions or in sacred books. The third type, Self-knowledge, the third
type, is based upon your contact with a deeper part of you being, and does not necessarily
involve any knowledge whatsoever. Many people have great wisdom in one or two
spheres of life, but area confused with everything else. Experiential Wisdom, or Self-
knowledge enables you to act intelligently in all facets of daily life,
in order to feel joy, clarity and freedom.
This third type of Wisdom is the ancient Art of Self-knowledge, understood by
Socrates and other wise men and woman throughout the ages. It involves methods of
observing the self and helps us discriminate between material in our minds (thoughts and
feelings) that are real and that which are illusory and brings confusion. The method
involves learning to train the mind and body in a certain way to enable you to understand
your own experience clearly and with little distortion.
One of the methods of self-knowledge is to apply self-observation to the many
thoughts and feelings that are part of the normal motion of your mind. When you learn to
look or observe these thoughts and feelings, you will discover that there are Spaces in
between them. It is through these Spaces that you can contact Wisdom, for there is a
deeper intelligence ‘hidden’ within this Space. Finally, through this Space in our minds,
we can contact deeper qualities, such as freedom, clarity and confidence, which enables
us to transfer this intelligence into daily living.
Besides the internal Spaces between thoughts and feelings, we also have to
understand the thoughts and feelings themselves, particularly if they continue in the
psyche as distractions. Distraction is what blocks the natural Wisdom
of our primal mind, which is Pure Awareness. Therefore, when our minds string together
thoughts and feelings in a very compelling manner, we need to look at what is really
going on. If not, then we will, more likely that not, get carried away
with our self and not act intelligently.
How do we eliminate distraction? Distraction is not only what prevents us from
being in the moment, but prevents a truly focused clarity from emerging. We cannot
eliminate distraction through the power of Will; it will just rear its ugly head in a manner
of time. What we do need are important trainings which allow us to move into a different
level of being, thus allowing us to observe distraction better. This quality of observation
will enable us to get to the heart of our personal distractions.
William Edwards, Author and Trainer
The Skill of Wisdom, Workbook on Self-knowledge
email: wisdomskill@gmail.com
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