Having True Wisdom vs. Parroting Borrowed Wisdom

Anyone can read a book on non-duality and begin talking like an enlightened person.

“It’s all an illusion. None of this is real.”

“There is no me. It’s all the One doing everything.”

“I am All That Is.”

“Love is all there is.”

and that’s all well and good. It’s a great start. It may begin breaking down old ways of seeing the world, sure. But is this it? Are we limited to just knowing the words and going through the motions? There’s gotta be something more. People who’ve woken up don’t need to learn the language of non-duality. There is a deeper wisdom available which allows them to see Reality clearly as it is.

So what’s the dealio here? How does this work?

Accessing Deeper Wisdom

It seems that there are a great many roles we can play and a variety of styles of relationship that we can have relative to wisdom here in this world of form.

For some people, their path is to have all their wisdom come from within. They weren’t really spiritual or anything, but they went through their own spontaneous awakenings and the realizations all came accordingly. Eckhart Tolle, Byron Katie, and Ramana Maharshi are a few such people.

Then you have people who devoted themselves to various spiritual practices including meditation and whatnot, seeking the wisdom and advice of gurus and sages who have come before. Examples here would include Adyashanti, Gangaji, and Nisargadatta Maharaj.

There’s also people who channel wisdom from other beings by basically allowing their personality to step aside while another presence kind of “steps in” to their body like a new pair of pants. Examples here include Esther Hicks channeling Abraham, Darryl Anka channeling Bashar, and Jane Roberts channeling Seth.

You’ve also got people who sorta channel, but not really. They can effectively talk to God at any time while being fully present in their body and have a dialogue with God within. Examples here include Neale Donald Walsch who wrote Conversations with God and Marie Levit who wrote Healing God.

This lifestream (this Ariel thing here) would fall in the second category listed above including Adya and all. The way it works here, I allow the mind to go relatively quiet and let the words just flow through me, filtering what’s said as little as possible. When I’m “off,” it feels like words come from the struggle and confusion of my egoic mind. But when I’m “on,” it feels like words just flow from silence… from nowhere really. Just.. here. Maybe it’s the energy of my soul, of consciousness, of intuition, of my inner guru or buddhi… I don’t really know, but whatever you wanna call it, there’s a a deeper source of wisdom within.

These are but a few of the many many ways that All That Is has of accessing its wisdom. Something that all these ways have in common is that the beings are able to reach beyond the mind, accessing deeper aspects of consciousness in a variety of ways. They are not limiting themselves purely to the intellect, beliefs, or logic.

Coming from Just Your Mind

One thing that irritated me for the longest time (and admittedly still does at times because I too am still working through seeing how deeply the mind’s roots can ensnare consciousness) was to see people blindly buying into ideas that some famous guru or whatever had said. It’s funny to see people’s entire vocabularies change as they basically become a sort of clone of their guru. Perhaps they even start selling products based on ideas they’ve collected. They may act as cheerleaders promoting and marketing their favorite guru. The words may resonate with a deeper part of them, sure, but the fact of the matter is they actually have no idea if what’s being said is even true. The words have little to no bearing on one’s direct experience or way of perceiving the world.

Isn’t it interesting that whatever it is that we believe, there’s probably people on the planet who believe, just as strongly, the exact opposite to be true? In fact, they believe it so strongly, they may even go to war with you over these beliefs. Such is the power of the mind. There’s nothing literally wrong happening here. It’s just the nature of how our minds operate by design.

Just looking over the course of human history we can see the effects of limiting ourselves to and subsequently defending our treasured beliefs.

This is the thing about trying to come to know spiritual truth via the mind. It just doesn’t work. Really.. I’ve tried too…

Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.

-Buddha

It seems to be soooo common to see people quoting others when really they actually have no idea whatsoever whether or not what’s being said is actually true. (Props to you if you caught the humorous irony of me using a quote to talk about not relying on quotes.)

People claim that it’s somehow magically all one, yet they experience nothing but separation.

To me, this is a violation of integrity. To put it mildly, you’re bullshitting yourself.

This isn’t to say that I’m against saying things like “We’re all one” if you’ve never experienced oneness. To take one of many examples, from a purely practical standpoint, seemingly separate individuals can create much better results when coming from a place of family-like unity and cooperation than they ever could competing with one another. Whether or not you’ve seen directly that it’s all one, you can still take advantage of this in your own life now. In this way, paradigms that come from learned beliefs still can contain applicable value.

That said, their value goes only to a certain limit. There is eventually a point where the belief just isn’t enough. It may very well be for a while. It may be enough for lifetimes even.

But eventually, and you’ll know when the time is right for you, buying into a belief system of oneness or whatever else is no longer satisfying. You want to taste the real thing, not just talk about it and read about it and hear about it. Each person in their own perfect time.

From Believing to Knowing

It is when this threshold is reached that we are ready to transition from believing to knowing.

It is at this point that we may begin some serious investigation into our minds, exploring even our most treasured beliefs and seeing if they stand up to inquiry.

Byron Katie likes to to have you bring up your beliefs and ideas and then ask yourself, “Is this true? Can you absolutely know that it’s true?”

We can get really fundamental here.

You are a human being. You are God. Everything is one. You are a spiritual seeker. You are the creator of your reality. The sky is blue. The earth is round. 1+1=2. The mind has the capacity to know anything at all. The thoughts you think are your thoughts.

What beliefs seem so totally obvious that you wouldn’t bother to question them?

Question them.

Cut the crap. Recognize the false as false and quit buying into your mind’s illusions. We had mistakenly positioned our minds as the one who calls the shots. “I know best,” says the mind. When you quit depending upon your mind for answers, it will start to fall away as it loses its place as “the source of wisdom.”

In its space will remain, well, nothing. Emptiness. Pure being. Consciousness itself. It is from this emptiness that true wisdom arises. This is the inner guru. As Davidya explains, “There is also the idea that when we know nothing, everything will be known. (laughs) This is because all concepts we hold onto are barriers to being. As we release the grip of more and more of our mythos, we awaken to what is true.”

But don’t take my word for it.. or his! You can even take that up for inquiry. Do you know what anything that has been said here is true? Find out for yourself.

We can all be a parrot for a while. Eventually, however, we’ve had our fill of that game and enough is enough. It’s time for something deeper, something more raw and pure.

This wisdom within is available to us all. If you’re ready, the invitation is to begin reaching beyond your mind.

The above listed way is just one of many ways to do so. How do you access your own inner wisdom?