Can You Force Wisdom?

You may have heard a saying, “knowing others is wisdom, knowing the self is enlightenment.” Or “it takes intelligence to know others and wisdom to know self.” These versions are from the Tao Te Ching.

Socrates has offered “to know thyself is the beginning of wisdom.”

The metaphor here can be between muscle and bone. Bone is your core structure, muscle is something that wears out when forced.

Imagine if you “forced” your friendships. What would happen? Imagine if you “forced” your “enlightenment”. What would happen? En-darken-ment would happen (I just made that up).

Imagine if you “forced” your way, love, work, parenting, leadership, contribution, communication….

Now imagine NOT forcing. Anything. What “power” would you use instead? What reserve would you tap into? In what way would you create your outcomes and your impact?

Consider when you stop forcing anything, and you rest into knowing your nature, you achieve the “wealth” of wisdom.

Do you want true wisdom, power, greatness, strength? Master your self. Whoever that “self” is. To endure the nature of your self takes courage, perseverance and strength… not power, not force.

What does it mean to “master self” or “know self” and how does one go about doing that, anyway?

You already “know”. It’s in your “bones”.

This “knowing” is beyond your thinking but includes the intelligence of thought. It’s beyond your efforting (muscling) your way in Life.

Humans are like all the other animals on the planet but with rather clever brains. For all our “cleverness” we can be quite “stupid” or “ignorant” as a species.

You don’t see other species destroying the planet or each other. You don’t see other species manufacture constructs that limit and diminish themselves. You don’t see other species fabricate constructs that create distinctions called “poor” or “rich”, “better” or “lesser”.

Humans, including you, dear human, create these crazy constructs because you do not tune into the wisdom of Life. We find (and rest into) this wisdom in you, others, and the natural world. We find this wisdom in the wholeness of you… thinking, feeling, and responding.

Want to know humans? “Muscle” less and rest more into “you”. Want to create outcomes where you can feel at ease, rest, safe, strong, peaceful, good, creative?… examine your structure (bones) first. Examine your way of operating. Wisdom comes in the examination of you.

How do you do this? The wisdom of self is not new teaching in the world, but it may be new to you, or perhaps the presentation of it here may be new to you.

How you do this is… you study you… wholly. 

Language, Emotions and Urges.

Start with your language (thoughts). Wonder about why you think what you think and say what you say. Ponder your word choices and the landscape of your thinking. Why are you saying what you are saying? Why that word (belief)? To what end? For what goal (purpose)?

Then notice your emotional field and name it. Anger, sadness, fear, joy, excitement, shame. What wisdom does your emotional field hold or inform you of? Ask it. “Hey there anger, what’s the thing I can’t be with (trigger, inner conflict) and where did that come from?”

Then notice your urge to communicate or act, to either re-act or respond. What is the goal (motive) you hold in the communication or action? What (who) do you serve? You, or some hidden goal (motive)? To what end, do you act?

Is that goal serving you AND others, or just you? Is that goal to communicate or act serving fear, anger, shame? Maybe it’s serving wanting to hide, control, or approval. Find out.

It all starts with paying attention to your thoughts and word choices.

Wisdom comes when you stop “forcing” your way in Life and rest into your natural strength of “knowing thyself”. Thy whole self (not just thy head). Wisdom comes in the examination of your (blind) tendencies to think, speak, and act. Wisdom comes by tuning into your emotional body (field) to reconcile and integrate a past that only exists in your thinking. Wisdom comes in “non-action” and yet all is complete.

All humans serve a goal in every communication and action. The question is, do you know what that goal is with certainty? Find out. Tune into thy whole self. Be in the wonder of an animal you call “Me”.

Phillip is someone fascinated by the animal that calls itself human. And so he leads a practice that he calls DearHuman.LIFE. Dear Human serves the purpose of writing, podcasting, teaching, and guiding humans on the nature of being human. So that all humans live in freedom from the constructs they enslave themselves and shift to their natural well-being.