Getting wise can be an "I" opening experience! Wisdom lies within each of us, but getting to it may not be easy. Almost from the time we are born, barriers are placed in the way. People around us imprint and teach what they think is wise, which -- even though it may be necessary and useful for a time until we reach puberty -- interferes with our natural ability to discern what is right for us. This innate gift is sometimes referred to as intuition, but it goes deeper than that. We are born with the knowledge of who we are, what our purpose is in this life and, therefore, how to live. It is one of the tests of the Creator that we forget this after we are incarnated. Sometimes, I think of it as a dirty trick. It is hard work uncovering layer upon layer of other people's opinions, digging through piles and piles of emotional garbage representing our reactions to their opinions and actions, to reach the wisdom that has been there all along.
Nevertheless, that is how it is. And those who pretend or preach that it is easy -- that all we have to do is make affirmations, perform rituals, eat right, sleep well, exercise and meditate in order for wisdom and joy and peace to be ours -- are deceiving themselves and others. The path to wisdom requires a deeper commitment than that -- although all of those things are important along the path. The commitment I am referring to is the commitment to the truth. The truth about ourselves, and about others. (I do not think we can know the truth about others until we know the truth about ourselves.)
When I say, getting wise is an "I" opening experience, I mean just that. We need to open up our perception of ourselves to include all the little and big lies we tell ourselves and others, every day. A recent study showed how early we learn to lie -- as early as three or four years old. The psychologist reporting on the experiment caused me more alarm than the children and parents who were the subjects. His opinion was that it is OK to lie, that lying is a normal part of socialization and we must continue to lie to some extent, to avoid hurting feelings -- ours or others'.
After thirty years of helping repair the damage caused to others by lying, and sixty years of repairing the damage done by my own and others' lies to me, this widely broadcast statement by a "mental health" professional confirmed why I am leaving the mainstream counseling profession. In my wisdom, I know that I cannot counsel what I am not living.
Traditional mental health services have become part of a social milieu that encourages lying on all levels. In order to get reimbursed, practitioners must fit their findings into categories defined by the insurance companies which reimburse them for their services. Inevitably, this means lying about the real problem whenever it does not fit one of these categories, and the patient needs help, and the practitioner wants to be paid for helping them. When helpers are lying in order to obtain services for the client, how can they properly confront the client with the dishonesty which is at the root of practically every disease? As a parent, I know that it is who I am more than what I say that serves as a role model. As children, we all have experienced the shock of realizing we have become just like one or both of our parents, despite the fact that they told us never to make the same mistake, and preached us endlessly about different ways of behaving. When our society models dishonesty -- from the daily, well-publicised court hearings to the weekly accounts of punishment for "whistle blowing" -- how are any of us to get wise?
Wisdom is about truth-telling. And the truth about truth telling is that the only truth that is not relative is spiritual truth. And spiritual truth rarely comes in the form of words or sentences or symbols that have the same meaning for any two people. Because the essence of spiritual truth is abstract, human translation of spiritual truth is necessarily distorted by language and by the person or persons interpreting the language. The written word is a human way of communicating -- an effective and necessary one but one which is subject to a lot of error with regard to the truth. The spoken word is even more vulnerable to lies and distortions, based on the intonation and other non-verbal clues of the communicators and the various ways in which these can be "read" by the listeners.
The manipulation of lies and distortions and prejudices drives our economy, our politics and much of our social life.
How, then, is one to get wise?
Commit to total honesty with yourself. Start a journal, a private record in any form you wish, of your true experience of yourself in the world, free of censorship. It will be difficult at first, because we carry so many censors in our heads, but with practice in depending more on your senses than you censors, you will become more and more truthful. Use the self-judgements you uncover in yourself as a gauge of your wisdom. What is behind this self-judgement? Is it applicable in the present? What is the purpose of continuing to judge yourself in terms of the past? Don't ask "Why am I doing this'' -- whys are not wise -- but rather, how is it serving me? Then make some choices, As you become more honest with yourself, being truthful with others will be easier and easier.
Polonius, in Shakespeare's Hamlet said it best: "To thine own self be true, and it follows as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man."
Lisa Raphael, MS, AM, is a writer, healer, seminar leader and a Florida licensed mental health counselor facilitating emotional and spiritual self-actualization. St. Petersburg ,Florida,(813) 327-7528.