“One of the big traps we have in the West is our intelligence, because we want to know that we know. Freedom allows you to be wise, but you cannot know wisdom, you must be wisdom. When my guru wanted to put me down, he called me ‘clever.’ When he wanted to reward me, he would call me ‘simple.’ The intellect is a beautiful servant, but a terrible master. Intellect is the power tool of our separateness. The intuitive, compassionate heart is the doorway to our unity.”
— Ram Dass
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Tim Ferriss recently included the above quote in his weekly newsletter. Since I’m a quote hoarder, I snaffled it to add to my collection in order to share with you.
If words were things, my house would have piles of pithy maxims you’d have to navigate your way through. To sit down you’d have to shift a stack of quotes to carefully place on top of another wobbly mountain to create space for your person. To make coffee, you’d have to find mugs under a mound of short sentences, emptying said cups of lost syllables.
Ah, today is going to be poetic.
Some people just have a way of saying things with very few words that mean so much. I aspire to such depths of wisdom in so few words; and maybe, as the previous paragraph shows, I have a way to go.
But practice makes perfect, doesn’t it?
And so – wisdom and Ram Dass.
Wisdom is essential. It tells us when we’re being courageous or stupid; it informs us when we’re being accepting or a door mat; it means we laugh at ourselves versus getting resentful at others.
You want to find your source of wisdom. I’d say it’s got to be a priority in life – nothing good can happen from a lack of wisdom; everything good comes from plenty of it.
Call it what you like – instinct, intuition, gut … it’s all the same stuff; and approached skillfully we all have access to it.
So, read what he said once again:
“You cannot know wisdom, you have to BE wisdom”.
Which, for many of us in the West, is terribly confusing. We want to think our way to wisdom, and it’s the very thing we can’t do.
What can we do?
Don’t think. Instead, be simple. Be present. Allow wisdom to come to you. Allow the need of the moment to present itself. You’re just there to receive.
You want to honour wisdom.
You honour wisdom by acting upon it when it requires action – and that takes courage and giving up control because it’s so often a leap of faith.
Yet the willingness to act upon it (or not, because often the wisest course of action is to sit, and wait, and do nothing) is the thing that clarifies and strengthens wisdom; that stops it being shy and brings it forward, out of the murk of our busy thinking minds.
How many times have you been visited by wisdom and yet not followed through? How many times have you said, after the fact, “I knew that was going to happen?”; or “I should have said something …”?
Being prepared to not doubt, but dance with, wisdom means it’ll come back, a little more obviously, a little more clearly defined than before.
Now – just like a dance – the harder we try and capture or claim it for our own, the more the whole movement collapses.
For we are never wise, it is something that visits us. Just like the breath – wisdom is something that comes and goes, moves close and then vanishes away. Yet the whole point is that it’s the movement that sustains us.
The more you try and hold wisdom, the more you try and grab it, the more you only cut yourself off from its sustenance.
Do you see?
You are wisest when you empty your cup of being clever and get – as my teacher often says to me – stupid in a hurry.
I know this kind of Taoist opposites, “Do without doing” approach drives our Western brains cuckoo. But isn’t it worth the experiment?
At some point you have to wake up to what a mess our minds can create. Witness our world and our lives and the muddle ego, pride, control and close-minded “I know” can manifest.
We prize our intellects, we prize thinking about things over and over again. And while our minds and certainty can be a beautiful tool, thinking and knowing is the cause of so much suffering – not to mention separation from all that is good – as well.
It’s worth giving dancing with wisdom a chance.
You can always go back if the experiment doesn’t work. Right? But for me, I’ve seen time and time again that the best things aren’t created by me, they come through me.
Ready?
And thank you for being willing… that makes all the difference. In your own life, and to the world.
Go well,
Arjuna