FOUR STEPS TO ‘WISDOM’. . .OR IS IT ‘HEALTH’? – PART I

A number of years ago I had a spiritual guide and a therapist invite me to consider four steps I could take that might lead me to ‘wisdom’ or was it ‘health,’ or was it both?  What remains intriguing to me is that they both offered me the same four steps; oh, the words each used were a bit different but the essence was the same.  This morning, gentle reader, I will offer us the first two steps and tomorrow or the next day or the next day after that I will offer steps three and four.

By the by, the impetus for this topic was provided yesterday by my friend, George, who sent me the following quotation from DeMello (check out his book: ‘Awareness’): Wisdom is to be sensitive to this situation, to this person, uninfluenced by any carryover from the past, without residue from the experience of the past.

The first step is to, to use more of DeMello’s words, wake up and become aware of and experience the negative feelings that you are not aware of having.  For example, there have been times when I was feeling depression or anger or resentment or envy and I wasn’t aware of the feeling.  I cannot manage a physical ailment if I do not know I have the ailment; the same is true for my negative feelings.  Sometimes these feelings manifest themselves physically or spiritually; pay attention.  Sometimes others will mirror these feelings back to us; pay attention.  Sometimes the very negative feelings we despise in others reside deep within us; pay attention.  Sometimes these feelings are manifested in our behaviors or in our choices; pay attention.  Do I really want to become aware of these negative feelings?  Pay attention to your response to this question.

The second step is to realize that the feeling is in you; it is not in reality – it is ‘in here,’ and not ‘out there.’  In a sense, wisdom has to do with unlearning or relearning; wisdom also has to do with ‘knowing what we don’t know’ – Socrates was deemed by the Oracle at Delphi to be the wisest person in the world because Socrates knew that he did not know.  It is a challenge for some of us to believe that changing the other or the situation will not change one’s self.

I cannot tell you the amount of time and energy I have used these many years in trying to get another to change or in trying to change a situation over which I had little if any control.  The other is not responsible for how I feel; no one can ‘make me’ feel anything.  Yet, our culture seems to believe that the other is responsible for how we feel; if the other would only change then all will be well (I will be well).

For thousands of years the mystics have been telling us that ‘reality is good,’ that ‘all is good.’  Reality is not the problem.  Take all of us humans away from our planet and reality in all of its goodness and in all of its natural violence would continue; life would go on.  No problems, no worries.  We create the problems, we create our own suffering (emotionally and spiritually) – we are the problem and we are the creators of our problems (some paradox).  We identify with our negative feelings; we become them (especially our emotional and spiritual feelings) and this ‘becoming’ causes us no end of suffering.  I have the feelings AND they are not me; they are ‘in me.’  This leads us to the next steps which will appear in PART II.