Cynthia Bourgeault says that: “Wisdom is not knowing more but knowing more about oneself”. This opens a fundamental redirection of our efforts to know and understand the meaning and purpose of life. Before, we’ve relied on our rational-thinking brains to tackle life’s big questions. But with the work of Wisdom comes the use of our hearts and our bodies as well.
Wisdom is deeper than any religious expression in a real sense. It is rather the deep undercurrent that connects all the religions of the world and from which flows from the subterranean spring of unitive reality.
Perhaps we can say that Wisdom does not represent the what in terms of the content of a particular belief system, but rather the how in terms of the way things are expressed when they descend to the level of the unitive. However, instead of being linked exclusively to any religious system, the Wisdom is explicitly interfaith. But the depth that marks this Wisdom is qualitatively different from what is found near and above the surface. There, on the surface, the various spiritual traditions are distinguished by significant differences in beliefs, rituals, and theologies. But in the depths of Wisdom all come together through the unitive understanding that unites all life into one profound whole.
As Christians, we could affirm that our religion provides that place where Wisdom comes from. We can have a deep sense that Jesus himself embodied this, Wisdom. In fact, the main title given to Jesus was that of moshelim, that is, a teacher of Wisdom, and he taught in mashal, that is, parables and sayings of Wisdom. He himself seemed the embodiment of Wisdom, moving through life with a heart full of compassion, generosity, and love. However, not everyone caught on to his actions or his teachings. Some of his listeners got it, but the vast majority didn’t. Even the people, who sometimes seemed to get the message he was conveying, were not always able to maintain this understanding.
Jesus, the teacher of Wisdom, does not implore his listeners to be better and more upright citizens; if not, he tries to convince them and begs them to wake up. He never preached a morally upright life to be lived in this life to gain entrance to heaven in the next life. On the contrary, he invited his listeners to realize that the kingdom of heaven is right here, in the present moment.
The friends and followers who seemed to pick up on the Wisdom of the master seemed to have done so because their level of being was raised, at least temporarily, to a point where they could resonate with the frequency of the Wisdom he was teaching and passing on and his truth touched the depths of their hearts. In addition, their presence provided them with a kind of divine alchemy that led to a generalized sense of togetherness. Through this experience they were transformed from the inside out.
Opening to the full depth of Gospel Wisdom requires the receptivity of a certain state of mind or a certain state of being. Without that, the Wisdom of Jesus cannot be received. When you pass into the deep truths of the Wisdom of Jesus only through the small mind, all you get is a deeper consolidation in what you already believed without the accompanying transformation occurring.
This understanding has been tragically overlooked in the West. Beginning with the doctrinal controversies of the third and fourth centuries, the Church has made our faith a matter of mental belief, and our tradition has become overly influenced by creeds and doctrinal statements of belief and not guided by the actual spiritual truth that is born of the experience.
Therefore, the work of Wisdom is an effort to return to the essential foundations of our Christian faith experience.This does not mean that we ignore, deny or underestimate grace, but rather that we must be instruments of reception and transmission of God’s love.
The kingdom that Jesus speaks of requires that we employ a new operating system that can perform operations of an entirely different order. When this system is in operation a whole new way of seeing is possible and where our being can be accessed at a much higher level. We can call this new system the operating system of the heart.
The work of Wisdom involves growing beyond our small minds into our larger minds, or our hearts. Therefore, the work of Wisdom is not to cancel the egoic operating system of the smaller mind, it is rather to help us develop the operating system of the heart of the larger mind, which we already have but which is in a dormant form, and to achieve the integration of these two systems in our being.
[1] Cynthia Bourgeault, An Introductory Wisdom School: Course Transcript and Companion Guide (Wisdom Way of Knowing: 2017), 2.
[2]William Redfield. Notes from the program From Self to Other. September 18, 2022