Information, Knowledge, Wisdom

Was asked yesterday about my thoughts on information, knowledge and wisdom. Here is my quick recap.

Someone mentions chess to us and we take an interest and are shown the pieces and their names. We now have ‘information’ about the game.

We sit down with our friend as he or she explains the rules of the game and we play through a couple of rudimentary examples. This acquainting gives us a ‘knowledge’ of the game.

We progress by studying the game; openings, mid-games and endings. We experience opponents of varying degrees of expertise and learn additional strategies from them. Over time subtleties of the game are learned by practice, repetition and application. We ‘become’ each piece to understand the hidden power of each and also their weaknesses. We win more games and start to experience the mindset of a great chess master.

Many would call that ‘wisdom’ and be done with it and few would disagree. But wisdom doesn’t end there, that is just the start.

Wisdom appears when silence becomes most important and the mind admixes the subject with the highest Source. It is then that Listening takes place. We let go of our naïveté, reasoning and limitations and allow the Infinite to take over. At that point distillation and attrition begin, selecting from our repertoire all that can be discarded – such as those concepts we held in such high regard years ago but now we understand their flaws. Wisdom contains no impurities. It is wisdom because it is about, and only about, the highest -and most pure – facets of any subject.

Life in general shares a corollary with the above. When we are younger we heard about many games, religions and pastimes. Some we accepted and they became ‘knowledge’ to us but we haven’t had the time necessary for wisdom to form from them. They are our ‘beliefs with limited understanding’. With age, it is discovered that some of these concepts we picked up in the past were flawed – but still we allow them to be ruling parts of our lives.

If we permit the un-pure to govern who we are, wisdom will never be found.

Wisdom, Listens.