I am watching the rain pour down the windows, we are in the throws of January’s weather and there is some comfort in the fact I am indoors just watching nature at its work. It made me contemplate and appreciate the wonder and wisdom of the ancient civilizations, who could read nature’s signs and how they incorporated that wisdom into their everyday lives.
We all have our own wisdom, a natural wisdom because we have all lived on the Earth. We have accumulated knowledge and experience throughout our lives. The learning where we have used our minds to acquire all sorts of general knowledge and a variety of snippets of information from here and there, just by living, which we all draw upon every day.
Then there are the emotional experiences we have been through growing up, parental input, friends’ ideas, relationships gained and lost, career paths, loss of loved ones. All sorts of interactions which we as a single soul and as a collective have gathered as a lifelong learning. This accumulated information is a great source of natural wisdom.
However, for me, wisdom is an active and interactive idea. We have accumulated all this experience, information and even today with technology have access to huge amounts of data whenever we need. We discern what information we acquire and hold as part of our own integrity, values and what we indeed allow into become part of this natural wisdom. Yet, whatever wisdom becomes our own natural source it is vital to remember to draw upon it and apply it to help us through the tough times and in doing so allow our previous experiences to increase our resilience.
In my coaching and workshops, I talk to people and we discuss some of the key factors to living a peaceful, happier life, the ideas are not strange to them, their inner being and energy recalls that feeling, that wisdom from their own heart but they need the prompt to activate their wisdom energy to help them through the particular stage they may be at. So, when in the title of this article I address ‘The Wise’, I am talking about all of us, we are ‘The Wise’, wise with our own wisdom energy, we just forget to use it!
So, we have this accumulated knowledge, that’s the mind work, our body knows what is good for us, we know healthy food and exercise is what our body needs, our soul knows what purpose we are here for, what lessons and interactions we are here to experience. Our lives are a whole mind, body, soul experience and our wisdom can be said therefore to be our natural accumulated wisdom.
It is also wisdom of the soul, what has gone before and been held, a connection to the greater world, a wisdom of Consciousness, of the Universe, this is more a spiritual wisdom, a collective wisdom. We not only improve, grow and hopefully apply our own wisdom but add to that on a higher level too and through this applied action and interaction we help expand the wisdom of the Universe. What a store! Too precious not to be used.
My Mother-in-Law, now passed, had a wonderful saying whenever she gave a gift “It’s for use” emphasizing that whatever it was, it wasn’t to be locked away for best, instead to be used every day. I love that sentiment and I think we can adapt that to all our inner gifts too. If we remembered to draw upon all our experiences and extracted the source gem they hold, took that wisdom and applied it to our own lives whenever we needed, well our resilience factor would be through the roof and consequently our happiness and peace factor too.
Let me explain what I mean about the source gem a little more. Imagine you are going through a challenging moment in time, imagine a v shape and that challenging time is expressed as the wide part of the v at the top between the two tips of the letter. As you follow the v down it ends in a single point. Now the bit in between may be similar challenges but maybe not so big but what they have in common is where they stemmed from, the point at the bottom of the v. It may be a lesson, maybe forgiveness or it may be a repetitive action or thinking pattern in a relationship. If you trace it back to its source and you see it and learn the lesson, what it’s about. Asking yourself “why is this happening?” helps to get insights and learning and we don’t have to go there again. We can add that to the wisdom pot and remember it next time.
A challenge equals an opportunity, the same challenge recurring means you’ve missed something so go down to the source, the bottom of the v and find the gem of wisdom within it, find what it is showing you about yourself, that is the key.
Explore the possibilities, then adapt perspective, change behaviour, whatever is needed and add that to your natural wisdom to draw upon another time
In years gone by, there were sacred truths – eternal truths which were accessed only by the high priests and leaders of nations to protect the secret wisdom from getting into the wrong hands or maybe to keep control. Really the secrets are simple, we are part of a Universe much greater we understand, always expanding, and we are growing with it. Nature, and we are part of that, has a pattern, it has a way of always finding a way through, it has cycles of energy, it has its own wisdom.
Those secret wisdoms are available to us and always have been. The place to look is within. We have the resilience we need to achieve a better, more peaceful life; we just must remember to use what we know, what we feel, our gut instinct, our intuition, our mind, body, soul in balance.
We are a resourceful species; we have so many gifts accumulated through our daily experiences. Those gifts you have inside us, they are for use, our wisdom is there to be active and interactive. We all have questions, and we also have the answers too, not always straight away or without a little help but they are there. I believe passionately that it is time to believe, to believe in us and what we can achieve, time to talk Humanity up. That’s my wisdom and I hope these few words to ‘The Wise’ inspire alignment with our personal, natural wisdom but also our collective spiritual wisdom too.
Patricia McDowall
More to Life Elder
Author, Spiritual Teacher and so, so much more.
