The Unfolding of Wisdom: Going With The Flow
Wisdom is inherent within us but it takes a concerted effort to learn how to listen deeply for what life is speaking. By following the thread of inner truth which is available in whatever we experience, we connect more and more deeply both with what is so and with who we are.
Wisdom is not abstract. It reveals itself in insights, both large and small, as well as in the answers we discover for our deep questions and in the resolutions we find for our most vexing problems. Wisdom is a path, not a destination.
Wisdom is also a practice. By bringing alert receptivity to what we experience moment by moment, we increasingly discover whatever we need to see in what is going on; the meanings implicit in what is happening. In this way, we can endeavor to receive life: to open to life instead of struggling against it.
In cultivating wisdom, we attune ourselves to the simple truth of experience, including emotional experience. Wisdom unfolds naturally as we inquire about what is happening, and why; our deepening wisdom expresses itself in our ability to be increasingly present with ourselves and others.
In inquiry practice, we attune ourselves to finding the dynamic intelligence in the flow of awareness. To ‘go with the flow’ of life as an unfolding wisdom process means to align ourselves with what is happening. Literally, we aspire to be like water – to flow in and around the events of life. Going with the flow is a kind of letting go in which we allow life to carry us downstream; surrendering to the currents of our life energy, whatever they may be, we heed the intelligence of our body, heart, and mind. In other words, we allow ourselves to evolve.
Ultimately wisdom reveals itself in a felt sense of the existential coherence in life, inclusive of all of its thematic complexities. In the words of the famed Gestalt therapist Fritz Perls, we learn not to push the river; it flows by itself.
Life has a mind of its own.