PROLOGUE
The first temptation to overcome when trying to communicate ideas is not to be too clever. The second is to not be too simplistic. We struggle here with a subject, wisdom, which is at once simple and hard to understand. At some points I may seem to be trying for cleverness and at others may appear simplistic. Please remember, I am doing my best.The subject of this piece is you - or me - or whoever. The predicate of it is becoming fully human. The instant when we realize that what we have been so far is just a caricature of what is possible for us to become, is the instant when we begin traveling a new path in our life.
Many call this the path to wisdom. Others call it becoming conscious or self-aware. Still others talk about attaining higher consciousness. Here is where I will try to be neither cute or clever. I'm pretty certain that it is not an oversimplification to say that most of us have a real sense of what is being talked about when we speak of wisdom. That's the main reason I will use that term rather than some others which may be more precise, but which would require much more in the way of definition and explanation before we could "get to it."
My goal is to start with whatever understanding we have now of wisdom in general, and let the subsequent development of ideas define themselves. You can decide how near I come to that goal.
This is not a work of theology, for then it would begin with scripture. This is more a work of philosophy, which attempts to begin from life's experience. Wisdom, though, separates itself from philosophy by knowing at the beginning that we can trust life's experience only in a limited sense. More about that in chapter one.
The seven discernments which follow are stated as seven different completions to the sentence, "The beginning of wisdom is..." In this study they follow logically from the first through the last. In life, they do not EVER do that.
In our experience, depending upon who we are and how we get to the point where we begin to approach wisdom, we start at any one place in this framework of discernments presented here, and one insight leads to others.
But now, for the reading of this study, I recommend taking the points in order starting at the beginning. After having read through the seven chapters, some find it interesting to read a chapter a week, finding examples of that week's discernment in life as they experience it.
Have fun.
Ch. 1. What is Reality?, Ch. 2. Knowledge and belief., Ch. 3. What is being open- minded?, Ch. 4. Prudence and prejudice., Ch. 5. Simple and simplistic., Ch. 6. Creative and coercive., Ch. 7. Silence and absence