wisdom
Wisdom Staff Development
In late 1990 there were meetings in Burkina Faso for a "Council of Wise Men". This was a group of people from different countries and backgrounds who wanted to encourage the development of wisdom in African culture. A useful meeting and a good starting point for this theme, was the identification of four levels of development of wisdom:
• Potential for SAGES includes almost everyone. These are busy people who have the potential to be wise, but have never felt the call to intentionally develop wisdom.
• SAGES in intent have come to understand what wisdom is, realize that they have the potential to be wise, and they decided, as the Council had to "follow the path of their potential."
• developing SAGES are actively participating in the wisdom, the development of activities.
• The establishment of the wise are those who are recognized by others as wise people.
Since I have come to understand, we become wiser people in two ways: by exposing ourselves to wisdom, encouragement influences, and devote energy to aid practices. That is, intentionally practice, effort, behaviors and attitudes hope someday to become deepest expressions of our effort, I have more real. If we want to become wiser people, we get to be "wise in their intent," then "Elders in the making", and develop the characteristics of wisdom – relevant perspectives, and values, and intellectual knowledge – and incorporate them into our lives. Let us consider some tools that can help us do that:
1. An understanding clear what wisdom is. There are many opinions on the subject. Read about them. Having an idea of the characteristics of wisdom you'd like to develop and begin working on it.
2. COUNSELING and various types of psychotherapy. Becoming a wise person is an exercise in inner development, and there are things that can help us in the road. Counseling and various forms of psychotherapy can, if necessary, help us reach the starting point for advanced work we might call responsible adulthood or mature ego. A person at this stage is free of psychosis and neurosis, paralysis and has developed emotional control and empathy to an ordinary degree. There are many forms of therapy, including counseling, life management, therapies to help us overcome fears, therapies to help manage anger, therapies to help us overcome the compulsions and addictions, and others.
3. KNOWLEDGE FOR INTELLECTUAL wisdom KND are trying to develop. Read about the inner development can be very useful for anyone who wants to be wiser. To go beyond the normal, healthy adult – "the starting point for advanced work" – many people turn to the writings that deal with the further reaches of human rights development. These writings, in turn, lead us to do-it-yourself practices: calm mind-practice, practice self-knowledge, self-transcending practices and practical realization of unity. Reading about these things is not a substitute practices themselves, but reading can help us understand and perhaps motivate us to deal with them.
Novels and biographies are valuable resources for development of practical wisdom, as we have countless examples of rational behavior and prudent, skillful and unskillful handling life situations. Biographies of the wise people can be particularly useful. How do they differ from their everyday behavior? What values guide your life? What prospects and interpretations of life situations is what we make use of?
For those who want to develop spiritual wisdom, existential metaphysics, literature intellectual spiritual world is a vital resource. There is an extensive literature on certain go-see-for-yourself spiritual practices that lead the practitioner to levels deeper understanding of reading can be. Also useful in the development of the "Big Picture", "view are books about nature of physical and mental reality, the cosmos and evolution.
In order to be effective change agents, then we must select the relevant resources to the types change we are trying to achieve. Among the possibilities are the "new disciplines", including the sciences of complexity, the Cosmos-wide developments, and human brain / mind system. Important for many would learn more about human cultures, economic systems, and biosphere. Of general importance is the understanding ethics and techniques for changing ethical perspectives, the probability as a tool for decision-making techniques and effective conflict resolution persuasion and information on current activities of transformation.
4. Experience full and varied life. If we are open to learning, life itself teaches us. Having many different life experiences obviously teaches us more. We not only need to structure our lives so we have many kinds of experience, But we also need an open, curious, inquisitive, grateful mindset so we can get the most out of every experience we have. Travel; know people with different skills, perspectives, values, participation in different types of work, taking a variety of pastimes – all these things enrich our life and possibly lead us down the path toward wisdom.
5. COMMENTS and advice of wise people. Hang out with people who are already living the values we like to do our own may be more useful. Where do you find these people? Groups such as Unitarians, Quakers and Buddhists who focus on growth personal and do good in the world is a better option. Local discussion groups and online activists are another possibility. Some of them focus on psychological or growth spiritual. Others focus on social issues. We can experience, and when we meet with groups that feel good, get involved.
6. The behavioral observation – Own and strangers. People around us are fighting for their standard of living – some with skill and success, others very clumsily and unsuccessfully. The world literature and the film offers a host of additional life stories. What can we learn from them? Can we choose the strategies and behaviors that work and the they do not? Can we start to feel a general "laws of life" behind the details? And we can learn to pay attention to our own behavior, and become aware of the underlying values?
7. Practices that help internalize U.S. VALUES. Increasingly clear about the values you want in the center of our lives – the values we want to make our own truth so deep and powerful – is the first step. The challenge then is to pass these values from our head to our heart and our hearts. In psychological terms, we need to internalize so that thoughts are merely pleasant, but that guide our behavior. Doing this requires effort, and during one of his trips to North America the Dalai Lama gave an example of what we have to do. He spoke to an audience on the need to internalize all to the fundamental value of wisdom, compassion. His advice for those who wanted to develop compassion was to put in difficult situations and then despite the natural reluctance to do so, act with compassion. By making the effort to participate in the value-based action – again and again and again – finally internalize the value. Expressing the value in the action gradually has less and less effort until it becomes part of our outlook, part of our way of being natural, part of what we are.
8. BODY aware of practices. In our culture we fill the waking hours with discursive thought. We think in the past. We think the future. We plan. We solve problems. Wisdom, however, we have to spend much time paying attention to what is happening in our immediate situation. Awareness practices such bodies have Hatha Yoga, Tai Chi, Vipassana meditation, and many sports we can help break the habit of mind shot.
9. MEDITATION. The last tool we will mention – but definitely not least – is meditation. In fact, meditation is usually considered the most powerful tool for the development of wisdom. Research psychologist Jane Loevinger was a 9-stage scale of psychological development. The terms used for the two upper stages are "autonomous" and "integrated". It turns out that less than 2 percent of the general adult population have managed to reach these higher levels. However, for people who have had a meditation practice for several years, that number is 38 per percent.
Meditation retreats lasting from 7 to 10 days are especially useful. At first, his mind is full of sound mind normally do same. Pure consciousness is not quiet as the substratum of the mind, but is modulated by a large number of high-intensity – the thoughts, feelings, emotions, etc – content matters a lot. But as the days go by, the contents of the mind – especially thinking – and slowly falls in the amount and intensity. Why Why? Because we can not think discursively and pay close attention at the same time. In a sense, the noisy mind is a habit. A calm mind is a different kind of habit. It turns out that if we spent several days paying attention to subtle bodily sensations – such as those arising in the nostrils when breathing, and those arising in the feet and legs when walking, the mind gradually usual tranquility of noise standard. Usually take 3 to 4 days diligent am night in the effort of an enabling environment for change. But once you've entered the mind silent mode, interesting things start to happen.
For one thing which have become more sensitive to their surroundings. With a calm mind, many people are looking at the natural world around them with a new sense of wonder. And views may arise about our relationship with nature and the cosmos.
"Know thyself," said the Greeks. And when the mind is calm, which begins to occur in a serious way. Normally, identifies strongly with the employed, the content of Buzzy mind which is the melodrama of life. We view this deployment history information as I do. When the mind is calm, however, have a certain detachment. We're not overwhelmed by large amounts of content of mind, and are not as identified with what remains. We begin to see how our minds work, and you can earn a vision that "I" really am.
A quiet mind also opens the door to the subconscious. Mental quiet thins the barrier between the conscious and subconscious mental processes. The messages in our subconscious are better able to bubble up into consciousness. We can begin to see things about ourselves that were never aware of before, things we've been pushing out of consciousness.
Enhancing creativity is another benefit of calming the mind. Under conditions of calm mind, the intuitive creative process is able to communicate effectively with intellect and the global workspace of the mind. The number of Aha! and Eureka! Upload experiences. This is not too surprising if we consider the number of writers and artists that are essential loneliness important work.
Another plus: when the mind is calm, profound changes of perspective occur. Suddenly, implementing a new framework of interpretation to the same old facts and see things in a radically different.
I discuss the benefits of meditation even in my books more to wisdom and issues of importance. And I have put some of this information online. Check Wisdom Page for that, and for information on meditation retreats.
About the Author
Copthorne Macdonald is a writer, independent scholar and long time meditator. His interests include the nature of reality (including consciousness and mind) and the development of wisdom. He has written extensively in these areas, and his published writing to date includes 8 books (3 on the subject of wisdom) and over 130 shorter pieces. Since 1995 he has tended The Wisdom Page — a website devoted to wisdom resources.
Will’s Wisdom
