WISDOM

" We don't receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us." - Marcel Proust

The ultimate destination of your life path is wisdom. Wisdom is the highest and deepest degree of knowledge, insight and understanding. It provides you with the broadest perspective on life, its purpose, and the lessons you learn throughout your lifetime. When you find your wisdom, you are living in the light.

Wisdom is not a state to be achieved, but rather a state to be recalled. You arrived on this planet fully equipped with the boundless wisdom inherent in all humans; you only need to access that place within you that connects you to the infinite divine source in order to remember it. You are every bit as wise as the Buddha, Aristotle or Confucious - they have simply accessed places inside themselves where perhaps you have not yet journeyed.

Wisdom is not intelligence. It has nothing to do with the level of your IQ or how well you did in school. Rather, wisdom is the highest level of emotional, spiritual and mental evolution, at which you value intuition as much as information, willingness as much as ability, and inspiration as much as knowledge. It is where you synergize your deepest understanding with your everyday actions.

The most direct path to your wisdom is paved with your life's lessons.  By learning the lessons presented to you everyday, you continually bring yourself closer to aligning with what Emerson called "the oversoul" and Carl Jung called " the collective unconscious." These are the universal forces that tie us all together and link each of us to the bottomless source of wisdom. It is quite simple: learn your lessons so that you may find your link to that source and remember your wisdom.

The true beauty of wisdom is that once you recall it, you will then be inspired to pass it along. You will recall the lesson of abundance and know that there is no lack or limit to wisdom. It is like love; the more you give away, the more you get back. Your capacity for wisdom increases each time you share it with another. Those who are celebrated for their wisdom are those who have shared it freely to help others grow.

Elisabeth Kubler- Ross is one who used her wisdom to help millions of people cope with the process of dying. By coupling her wisdom with compassion, she has raised others to her level of understanding and allowed them to see that how we die is as important as how we live.

It is not everyday that we encounter people who we would label as wise. A grandparent, teacher, mentor, someone who emanates a way of looking at life with a broad perspective - for some, way beyond their years. You know someone like this. It may be someone close to you, or someone famous like Mother Teresa, the Dalai Lama, Alber Schweitzer or Jonas Salk. I was fortunate to know Willis Harman, the president of the Institute of Noetic Sciences, who for me, possessed this type of wisdom.

When I interacted with him, I felt as if we took a mental helicopter trip above the earth to address conditions below. I felt blessed to be in his presence. I was inspired when he shared his points of view with me. His absence of personal agenda, his complete lack of need or want and his freedom from dependence upon material possessions gave him incredible power. His reflections gave pause from the daily momentum of life. He wrote, "... we are likely to find ourselves involved in a self - transformation that leads us to ultimate trust in the deep Self and in "inner knowing", bringing to awareness the deep sense of purpose and the source of wisdom and direction to be found there, confirming the intention to find our life work and do it..." It was refreshing to bask in his philosophical musings and stretch into the shoes of a reality that I could not yet fill. I am continually grateful for my relationship with him, because through him I experienced those principles to which I aspire.

Think of the person in your life who gave you a peek at wisdom. Ask yourself what attributes you noticed. Then see what you want to emulate within yourself. You will gain a bit of wisdom each time you view your life from a macro-perspective - distancing yourself enough to see what is really going on, beyond the apparentness of the situation.

Finding the wisdom inside you and reaching your highest levels of evolution can be one of the most selfless lessons you can learn. It is the one that will elevate you and propel you along your own path so that you may contribute the results of all your other lessons to the rest of the world.