WISDEOM 5

He prayed--it wasn't how I prayed.

He ate--it wasn't what I ate.

He spoke--it wasn't my language.

He dressed--it wasn't what I wore.

He took my hand--it wasn't the color of mine.

But when he laughed--it was how I laughed.

   And when he cried--it was how I cried.

Amy Maddox, 16

Franklin Community High School

Bargersville, IN

***********************

We continued to explore an aspect of our earthly dilemma: the mind’s need to know and the soul’s desire to live in the Mystery.

I was not suggesting that we do not ask questions. God knows, I’m always looking. As a person who has spent much of this lifetime cultivating my intellect, I still find comfort in having, what I call an “intellectual framework” to give me some understanding of this evolutionary process I am experiencing, but also realizing and accepting, in the long run, I am going to be confronted with that which the mind cannot comprehend. 

“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom the emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand wrapped in awe, is as good as dead —his eyes are closed.” Albert Einstein

A suggestion: when a question comes to mind, especially when we are doing this kind of spiritual work, eg. “What does that mean?” “How does that idea fit in; it seems completely opposite of what was said before?” etc.

Stop for a moment and ask, “What would it be like if I knew the answer?” and just stay in that space for a moment and notice what happens. 

If you really want to stretch, ask yourself, “What would it be like if the answer didn’t matter?” and sit in that space for a moment. At first it might be quite uncomfortable, but continue to allow yourself to let go of the mind’s turmoil. The turmoil will not disappear, but your attachment to it will lessen. 

As you do this you can begin to experience “the peace that surpasses all understanding.”

Recall the lessons that have come before--these are practices we can do consciously--

1. Set our willingness and intention--in this case, to be aligned to divine wisdom; then 2) to open ourselves to the possibility of all that means.

The metaphor I used in class was imagining coming out of a cold room, and desiring to be warm, and then moving into the sunlight. There is nothing more you need to do--you let the sunlight warm and comfort you.

Now in this awareness, the sunlight or Divine Wisdom is not a power outside of you, but it is a power beyond the scope and understanding of the little self---here is where we sometimes get caught up. When we speak of Wisdom already being inside you, we are speaking of your unique connection with wisdom that comes about with your alignment with the Truth of who you are. 

“Now wisdom, we say, is a part of your inheritance. And you mistake intelligence for wisdom and they are not the same thing. Anybody can do the math who learns their times tables. Anybody can do the construction that learns how to build something with a hammer and a nail, but no one may know the truth until he aligns to it. You may only know truth ” “by aligning to it. And we underline this, and say it a third time: You may only know truth by aligning to it.”

In other words--you have to step into the light.

I recall Dr. Suess suggested that “Life’s a great balancing act.”  And here we are, balancing real and illusion, the spiritual and the material, surrender and action, the human and the Divine.

One of the reasons why we collect books and workshops, etc. is because the mind is always hunting for a rule book. It wants to be right, to feel safe. I remember someone saying, “When we are born we expect to be handed a user manual--Life 101”--well, here we are still looking.   Me, too.

But then, if we are open to it, there comes the challenge to enter a world or dimension beyond what my mind can grasp or understand. The physicist Max Plank exclaimed that the reason why we cannot comprehend the mystery is because we are “part of the mystery.” It’s like Alan Watts described as trying to “bite your own teeth.”

There are moments when we just “let it be.” When we are in the Holy Instant--these can be both simple and profound experiences, a flower, a cat purring on you lap, that first spoonful of dessert, a child’s laughter---name a few yourself.

“The decision that you make to stand at the precipice and to step off into the unknown is to welcome all the new possibilities that may be, but then you need your wisdom to claim them in your worth. Just because something is there does not mean you require it. Just because it may be seen does not mean you must see it. And your wisdom will teach you. “I am wisdom” will align you to wisdom if you are still enough to move into the frequency of it and let it inform you. And let it inform you, we will say, is the easiest way to understand this. You are all very used to controlling things, you know, so you believe when you are passive, or you are receptive, you are not doing anything, and you confuse this with action. To be in reception is an action. It is not inaction. It’s a conscious choice to allow. If you allow this now, you will receive it now, and you will reap the benefits very quickly.”

We began this reflection with using our imagination--”What would it be like if I did know?”

We will close with another meditative act--”What would it be like to step into the light; to simply align myself to Divine Wisdom, even  letting go of my questions, to allow the Heart to speak to me, to embrace me, to hold me, to love me.

Thank you.

Peace

WISDOM 4

“Everyone of us is shadowed by an illusory person: a false self..We are not very good at recognizing illusions, least of all the ones we cherish about ourselves.  Contemplation is not and cannot be a function of this external self. There is an irreducible opposition between the deep transcendent self that awakens only in contemplation, and the superficial, external self which we commonly identify with the first person singular. Our reality, our true self, is hidden in what appears to us to be nothingness....We can rise above this unreality and recover our hidden reality.... God Himself begins to live in me not only as my Creator but as my other and true self. ” 

― Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation

I hesitated to use the term intuition in the context of this chapter on Wisdom. The reason being that the definitions of intuition and the description of the term can range anywhere between a hunch, a guess, a gut feeling, a reflexive reaction to something, or the essence of Divine Wisdom within us. Obviously all of those descriptions are not the same thing.

The way it came up for us this morning is that one person was describing wisdom as listening to the wee small voice or the Divine wisdom within each one of us as being her understanding of intuition and with that I would agree.

As other people thought about or played with their own definitions, eventually we began to run into some unwanted baggage. For me there is a huge difference between a hunch or guess or an involuntary reaction or response to someone or something as compared to listening to the voice of divine wisdom. A hunch or a reaction or response to a stimulus are all learned behaviors that have become so much a part of our personality structure that they live in our unconscious and most often we don't even realize they have been triggered. We simply look at them is our natural way of responding or sometimes say to ourselves, “Well that's just the way I am.”

Probably the biggest challenge, if not the primary challenge, to this work is that we are being asked to both examine and release or let go of all of the old definitions of self including those that lurk on the unconscious level. To release all of those to allow ourselves to become the truth of Who We Are. I do not deny the difficulty of that .

In a way where we are confronted with is that wonderful quote from Einstein:

“No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.” 

Here we are looking at ourselves and our world with a burning desire to make things different and yet the realization is dawning on us that if we continue to try to make changes on the personality level they will not stick; they cannot stick.

Intuition is another form of knowing, it is not a reflexive or an unconscious act In fact, it is one of the higher states of consciousness that we can be in. In some ways intuition is a connection between our personality self and the Divine Self in the Spirit.

In the deepest way, when we are speaking of intuition, there is no such thing as my intuition that would be similar to claiming my divine nature. There is only one divine nature and it does not belong to my personality self.

It is true that our decision making process can be clouded by past learnings of fear, of separateness, prejudice and exclusion. We are not pretending that those go away by themselves, but our awareness of them as a very limited form of consciousness allows us to begin to bypass those old patterns of thought into ones that resonate more deeply with the truth.

“Now we ask you this: If you ask the question of yourself and you state it as an intention, “I am now asking myself in a higher way to move into alignment with the question I have asked,” and you set it as an intention, “I am setting this intention to move my frequency into accord with the response I require to know my own wisdom, my information in the highest way available to me,” you will claim it. As you make the intention, you must understand that you are making a decision to align to something. That is very different than grabbing something or shielding yourself from something. It is simply aligning to something new. And in this alignment you call your frequency as yourself in this new way.”

A simple way of distinguishing between true intuitive wisdom as opposed to the limited teaching of the personality self is that intuitive wisdom will be presented to us without a trace of fear or judgment recrimination. Whereas the voice of the smaller self will speak in the language of fear and exclusion as well as predicting dire consequences if we do not obey its dictates.

Because we have free will even though we are encouraged to love unconditionally we still have the choice to live in limitation.

“I am aligning to the question and the response that I require. I am Word though this intention. Word I am Word.”

We could repeat this truth or an affirmation directly after saying Serenity Prayer and being aware of how wonderfully they fit together .

We do not realize that we probably putting this teaching to practice more often than we think. Whenever we open our hearts in compassion to another, we are literally putting ourselves into their “space” to become aware and to know what it is they might be experiencing. We are not taking it on ourselves, but we are in awareness of the pain of another so that we may sit lovingly with them. If nothing else, they are reminded that they are not alone. 

Well, we began with Merton and I can not think of a better way to end with that wonderful prayer of Wisdom from his book Thoughts in Solitude:

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to love as Christ loved does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore, I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me and you will never leave me to face my perils alone

WISDOM 3

P, 132-133

Dear God,

We pray for our brothers and sisters

in El Paso.

Please give them comfort

in this hour of their agony.

May those who are wounded

survive and heal.

May those who died be at peace.

May those who grieve be given the strength

to bear this unbearable moment.

At this time of catastrophe, dear God,

enlighten us and lift us up.

Cast out all darkness and bless all hearts.

Amen

From Marianne Williamson (before Dayton)

“Now, speaking the words will not do it. And you must understand the difference between setting an intention in language only and setting an intention in your spirit. When you shift your vibration in a new way, there is an experience, an overlay that occurs because you are moving your vibration from one space to another and, in the new space, acclimating to the vibration that exists there. So this is experiential, yes. But just to say the words and not to acclimate, not to bring your vibration to the new place, will not support you well.

Now we will ask you this: What is one thing you need to know? Now, don’t ask where you left your keys. You probably left them in your bag anyway, or on the place you always leave them. Ask what you need to know in your worth. “Am I the man I believe I am to be in this lifetime? Am I living the life that is in all my possibilities? Am I allowing myself freedom in true ways? Am I trusting myself enough to give myself the promise of a new way of being in my own way, expressed as me, “I know who I am?”

Now we ask you this: If you ask the question of yourself and you state it as an intention, “I am now asking myself in a higher way to move into alignment with the question I have asked,” and you set it as an intention, “I am setting this intention to move my frequency into accord with the response I require to know my own wisdom, my information in the highest way available to me,” you will claim it. As you make the intention, you must understand that you are making a decision to align to something. That is very different than grabbing something or shielding yourself from something. It is simply aligning to something new. And in this alignment you call your frequency as yourself in this new way.”

I must ask your forgiveness and Indulgence as I seem to be almost overly fixated with this concept of alignment. it is a new language for us in some ways a new concept or at least a concept that is being brought into Consciousness now. To know that it is a welcoming and a new awareness of Truth.

It is not through effort that alignment takes place, but as we have spoken of before on a conscious level, in my willingness and my intention I bring the energy of alignment into focus and as I do that in a conscious way then it is the divine within me, my higher self, my Christ consciousness that completes the process.

Although in this chapter we are speaking of wisdom, we could be speaking of any of the qualities of the Divine or any of the expressions of the Divine through us. Qualities such as compassion, love, joy, grace and even wisdom are simply a forms of the expression of the Divine through us.

When I am in alignment with Truth, there is no judgement, there is no conflict, there is no this or that, there simply IS and we have all experienced times such as these. Now the personality self will attempt to create or recreate those times of bliss or Oneness, but you see, if you step back for a moment, that it is living in the past and attempting to create a past moment in the future. Our limited intentions are understandable, but the results of locking into the limited desires of the small self lead only to frustration .

The small self or the personality can still be led in higher ways. This is difficult to explain in language but imagine that the personality self' has the goal of being in alignment with love and yet it also knows it can only come so far in manifesting that alignment, no struggle here, but the awareness that surrender acceptance is a necessary part of the process.

What is it that you seek today for yourself or for your world? This past week we have been given some powerful reminders of the violence that can be born from fear, anger and a sense of separation. We realize that if we add our own fear, frustration, and anger to the mix that we are creating more of a problem and becoming mired in the negativity that we are attempting to heal.

And yet the concept or the idea of love, loving our enemies, doing good to those who hate you, in the face of this violence seems to leave us in a place of helplessness. Even love does not seem to be enough.

We might also refer to this whole concept of alignment as “Miracle Consciousness.” If we were to look at and study the recorded miracles of Jesus while he was manifesting through a physical body, we would begin to notice how this concept of alignment is working with him and through him.

When he calmed the storm that threatened the boatload of Apostles, they stood back in awe and said to one another, “Who is this that even the wind and rain obey him?” Imagine Jesus, not forcing something to happen, not erasing the wind or the rain or the storm, but coming into alignment with the patterns of energy that creates wind and rain and storm, and just as you would calm a frightened child, allowing a similar kind of release or calming to take place.

In his healing miracles, rather than seeing a disease being conquered or erased, imagine what it would be like to know that Jesus did not see disease or illness. He saw all these beings who came across his path as being whole in perfect. In other words he held them in the alignment of Truth and Wholeness and by doing so overcame those false notions of illness or disease.

The co-founder of Unity, Myrtle Fillmore, did something quite similar when she created the prayer or the mantra, “I am a Divine Child of God I do not inherit illness.” I would imagine that practice began as a wish or desire or, to put it in the language we have talked about above, as a willingness and an intention. And yet there was also in knowing from within that I am not creating something so much as I am affirming something that is already true. It is already true beyond my intellect and beyond my senses; I will not let my intellect or my senses dictate what I believe. This prayer of my heart comes from a knowing deep within me, and I will continue to pray this prayer until that knowing becomes manifest in the physical world.

There is a progression here in how I perceive this process. At first there is a need, then there is the desire to either transform or alleviate that need, then there is the realization that the need can only be met in a space beyond the mind, beyond the five senses, beyond that which is provable in the material world. Once that realization is reached, we still work with the personality self, but also realizing it does not have the complete answer. We use the personality to formulate willingness and intention. We might find ourselves creating a mantra or prayer similar to Myrtle Fillmore's. At first it is just words attached to a strong desire of the personality self which is attached to the form that the healing or transformation might look like. At the same time we also realize, in our higher nature, it is only the Divine that knows the perfect form of this transformation, and so we release, we let go, we surrender into the Christ Consciousness that Knows.

Now all of these things are going on at the same time. Just because I surrender into the Christ consciousness doesn't mean that the need or the attachment within my personality self disappears. Can you see that all of this is happening simultaneously ?

Now let us move on a bit to wisdom itself.

I related that, years ago, when we were just beginning to work with guided imagery that there was an exercise we did in our treatment centers called “The Wise Person. In the imagery we would be walking through a jungle or desert then coming to a mountain and knowing at the top of this mountain was a cave and within this cave was a wise person who would answer any question of our choosing. Now the wise person in the cave could take different forms-- for some it might be Jesus or Buddha or Mary or even a wise person in their own lives. Inevitably we would guide them to meeting their wise person and asking their question and then gently opening to receive the answer. Then we would take them down the mountainside back to where the journey began and back to their chair in the circle of our group. 

Inevitably everyone brought to the wise person a question of consequence and everyone also received an answer, most often and acceptable one.

The magic happened when we asked the group, “Where did the answer to your question come from?” and inevitably they will say, “It came from the wise person in the cave.” And then as we sat with that quietly you could see the dawning of awareness and understanding that, in some unexplainable way, the answer to the question came from within myself, not the self that I am used to being aware of, but a deeper aspect that I might not have ever known was even there.

We spoke last time of bypassing the thinking mind to open ourselves to wisdom and on a daily basis we probably do this by asking ourselves simple questions and opening ourselves to the answer: “Is there another way of doing this?” “How can I hold this differently?” “What am I to learn from this person place thing or event?”

And after all of this we were reminded that we already are in alignment; we are already whole, we are already healed.

“You are already healed you are already whole you are just doing the work of peeling the layers of trauma core wounds limiting beliefs and conditioning that obscure your magnificence.” quote from Erin Telford.

And, of course, that reminded me of the wonderful teaching from Marianne Williamson which again is a clear directive to claiming the Truth, the truth of Who You Are.

 “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” 

― Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of "A Course in Miracles"

“Be at Peace--I have overcome the world.”

WISDOM 2

P. 132

Again we are lovingly confronted with the paradox of Divine Truth we are living in.

We are well aware of the difference between saying the words “I am a Divine Child of God, unconditionally loved’ as opposed to claiming that as my truth. We might not be able to explain that distinction in words, but here it is. “I love you,” as words or “I love you” as Truth. Same words perhaps, but a very different energy or vibration.

Let us say in a movie, for instance, an actor is playing a part, and doing a very good job at it, but there are also times when the actor “becomes” the character. I’m reminded of Ben Kingsly in Gandhi. As participants in this drama, there are times when we can enjoy watching another playing a part and then there are times when we become lost in the characterization. I am no longer watching a film but am involved with the character himself/herself.

This is somewhat of a metaphor between saying some words and/or claiming them as being the truth. Where we become confused and sometimes lost is that we are attempting to claim an infinite truth through our finite selves. Or to put it in the language of the book, we are attempting to claim our divinity through our limited personality self. As we have discovered, sometimes to our dismay, that method does not work.

So what do we do? The simplest way to expound on the process is to realize that we choose to “open” ourselves to this deeper truth. We do not create it; we do not even embrace it consciously. What we do is we allow it to embrace us. Again another example of this is someone loving you. You do not make some love you. You might not even understand why they love you. You can even reject it if you like but in order to take it in, you must be a you must allow yourself to be embraced by it.

There is a reference made In A Course in Miracles to an aspect of self that is referred to as “the decider.” The “decider” is that energy or that vibration which can choose what direction you go in. Again, in simplest terms, do I decide to go with higher vibration or lower; .do I decide to embrace my personality self is being the truth or do I open myself to the deeper wisdom of the Divine self.” (This is not new stuff--we are all aware of this process on some level. Rather than learning something , we are REMEMBERING.)

We are challenged with this choice each moment. That is why awareness is so essential. If we are not aware then the choices are being made for us by old thoughts, behaviors, patterns, things that we have learned from other people, fears and limitations that we still hold onto.

“Now, speaking the words will not do it. And you must understand the difference between setting an intention in language only and setting an intention in your spirit. When you shift your vibration in a new way, there is an experience, an overlay that occurs because you are moving your vibration from one space to another and, in the new space, acclimating to the vibration that exists there. So this is experiential, yes. But just to say the words and not to acclimate, not to bring your vibration to the new place, will not support you well.”

In our “deciding” we LET LOVE HAPPEN; we LET WISDOM EXPRESS ITSELF; we OPEN OURSELVES TO TRUTH OF WHO YOU ARE.

(One Of the many reasons why I am grateful for this work is that in working together on Sunday mornings and putting together this class reflection, I am pushed into a state of awareness that I am not always in. I am pushed into a state of awareness that is continually in the realm of the practice of the presence of God. It is a paradoxical realization that this life I am living and perceiving is so miniscule when contrasted with the depth of the cosmos and yet at the same time it is a unique and necessary expression of the Divine.

When I am aware God can show up in a spilled cup of coffee as well as in a rainbow.

The books also often speak willingness and intention. This might be another way of perceiving what we called “the decider.” It is also way of knowing how we go beyond words by energizing or raising the vibration of my consciousness and the desire of my heart. Willingness and Intention are within the realm of my personality self, perhaps one of the higher vibrations that it can reach. In my Willingness and my Intention, even through perceived limitation, I begin to bridge the gap between the human and the divine.

Again we are at the level of paradox that the mind cannot completely understand. Because as willingness and intention stretch the personality to its highest point, there is also the necessity for surrender to allow the Divine to take over. in other words, we do not define what our willingness and intention might bring us to. We allow that Wisdom and Truth to be defined and revealed by the Divine within us.

“Now we ask you this: If you ask the question of yourself and you state it as an intention, “I am now asking myself in a higher way to move into alignment with the question I have asked,” and you set it as an intention, “I am setting this intention to move my frequency into accord with the response I require to know my own wisdom, my information in the highest way available to me,” you will claim it. As you make the intention, you must understand that you are making a decision to align to something. That is very different than grabbing something or shielding yourself from something. It is simply aligning to something new. And in this alignment you call your frequency as yourself in this new way.”

 I jokingly added at the end of our class Sunday, but not so jokingly either, that our homework is to consciously work with what is sometimes referred to as “The Practice of the Presence of God.” I encourage you to do that if you wish.

I've often quoted Mother Teresa  when she defined her work on planet Earth by saying, “My job is to find the Christ in all his distressing disguises.”

Gratefully I will leave you with that one. 

WISDOM 1

“Indeed, there is an unbroken golden thread that weaves its way through human history, stitching together the many wise voices that have pointed seekers toward the simple spiritual truth. Yet while the timeless message of spirituality may be simple, the searching is not. Why? Because human beings are complex. By the time we make our spiritual searching a conscious endeavor, we have acquired layers of stubborn misconceptions about ourselves and the nature of life. Not only must we follow the golden thread toward spiritual freedom, but we must also unravel the garden variety twine that is wrapped tightly around our hearts and minds. The golden thread parts of my own spiritual story are interesting and enlightening—they involve extraordinary teachers and are set in exotic places, like India and Israel. But the most useful stories emanate from the unraveling of the tightly wound twine. Here the characters and sets are ordinary—me, my family, and others who have shared their questions and growth with me. How we unravel the twine—through the hard knocks of daily life and the hard work of self-examination—is just as much a part of the spiritual path as are solitary retreats and meetings with remarkable teachers. In daily life we make real the rarefied wisdom that we can only glean in meditation and in the words of saints and gurus.”

Lesser, Elizabeth. The Seeker's Guide

***********************

P.  130-132

SOLOMON AND WISDOM

7 “Now, Lord my God, you have made your servant king in place of my father David. But I am only a little child and do not know how to carry out my duties. 8 Your servant is here among the people you have chosen, a great people, too numerous to count or number. 9 So give your servant a discerning heart to govern your people and to distinguish between right and wrong. For who is able to govern this great people of yours?”

10 The Lord was pleased that Solomon had asked for this. 11 So God said to him, “Since you have asked for this and not for long life or wealth for yourself, nor have asked for the death of your enemies but for discernment in administering justice, 12 I will do what you have asked. I will give you a wise and discerning heart, so that there will never have been anyone like you, nor will there ever be. 13 Moreover, I will give you what you have not asked for—both wealth and honor—so that in your lifetime you will have no equal among kings. 14 And if you walk in obedience to me and keep my decrees and commands as David your father did, I will give you a long life.” 15 Then Solomon awoke—and he realized it had been a dream. 1 Kings 3:7-15

That phrase, “ a discerning heart” is often translated as “wisdom,” although “discerning heart” probably give sis a better feel for what wisdom truly is. 

“We speak of an inner knowing that is inherited by you through the vehicle you stand in, the energy bodies and the physical body that transmits the frequency through you so you may be in your own knowing in a new way.”

Have you ever become aware that you are “seeing” someone or something differently? A disaster turns into a gratitude; an annoying person turns into a teacher; a difficult situation pushes you into the challenge to respond lovingly. 

“Now understand this, please: When you are awakened in a new way, the vision is changed. When the vision is changed, the possibilities are new. When the possibilities are new, there are new choices to call to you. But to be in your wisdom means you identify what you need in a thoughtful, kind way and you inherit your wisdom; you claim the magnificence as the one who may know.”

Certainly one of the ways then you can recognize you are in your wisdom rather than your judgment judgment is of the ego and of the personality wisdom is of the heart .

Another concept which is similar to wisdom is sometimes referred to as discernment. Now this is not just word play. Judgment will practically always be a comparison or an “either-or situation;” “It is either this or that you must choose between black and white.”

Discernment or wisdom comes from the realization that human life lives in an area of grayness and that the directives for one moment might not be the same as the next. The mind loves to have definitions and wants to find ways of dealing with particular in similar ways situations. In the realm of wisdom and discernment, each moment presents us with a choice. And even though my question to myself might be the same, “How can I approach this lovingly?” the answer might be different from one moment to the next. We realize this is terribly disconcerting to the thinking mind which would much prefer to have a formula to follow or an equation to solve, and yet life it's not a cookbook or a mathematical proof.

Ponder that wonderful line quoted above, “you claim the magnificence as the one who may know.” In other words, you are the unique expression of the Divine in this moment and aligned with Divine knowing you respond to this moment perfectly and lovingly.

“Now, when we speak of knowing, as we have explained previously, we do not speak of thinking. Thinking is a process. It’s a sorting. It’s a way of managing information. And you may come to a decision through thinking anytime you need to. Wisdom is inheritance of a divine sense of authority. When one is in his wisdom, he is a benefactor to others because he may share information from a higher level.”

This is also another way of determining whether I am acting from wisdom, my Divine consciousness, or from judgment in my limited personality self. “Am I choosing something that raises the vibration or lowers it; am I opening my heart or am I closing it?”

On some level, we always realize whether what we are holding onto or the action that we are planning or manifesting at this moment is either a loving one or not. Wisdom will always respond lovingly and it will always know the difference between enabling and compassion. We suggest you sit with that one for a moment. 

We cannot describe or define all of the many times and situations you might need to apply wisdom in that way, but we encourage you to trust the God wisdom that you are a part of. Then when you are open to it, you will always be guided in a way that expresses love in its most ideal form.

It is probably not difficult to imagine or two sense that love is all around you as well as within you as the essence of your being. We recall that periodically, and there are times when we are gently or forcefully reminded of that truth. Well, wisdom carries with it a similar kind of energy. It is always here. It is an energy or a quality that can be called upon whenever you need it. and eventually there will come a time when you will not need to call or claim love or wisdom because you will realize they are the essence of Who You Are. 

This book and others like it often speak of “going into alignment” with a particular quality or energy. We realize this language is different from what you are used to and can sometimes be confusing, so let us repeat a lesson from the past as a way of understanding our present teaching today.

Since we mentioned love above, let us take that as an example. Someone can say to you “I love you” and you can take the words in and even agree with them and say “Yes I know that is true,” but that is an intellectual process you are agreeing to, something on a level of awareness that does not really change or transform anything. It's almost like passing someone a piece of paper with the word “Love” written on it. That's nice but it doesn't do anything

Now let us suppose again someone says, “I love you,” and you will know the truth behind those words and open your heart to it. When you do that, you allow yourself to come into alignment with the truth of the love, in the light, that someone holds you in. You do not need to understand or explain this process, you simply know the truth of it, but notice there was something more that you needed to do rather than just listen to the words. You needed to open yourself up to the truth behind those words or as we are saying here to “come into alignment” with being loved.

Now here we speak of coming into alignment with wisdom. This is a little bit more difficult because we are not used to doing this and so we will offer a very simple example and a very simple method of aligning yourself to wisdom.

You put this process into action without even realizing. It it is a simple technique of moving ourselves away from the needs of the intellect into our awareness and connection with our intuitive self. So if I say to myself, “What would it be like, in this moment, in this situation, to be aligned with Divine wisdom. I immediately open myself up to an awareness of an energy and a deeper truth that goes beyond my human understanding. In other words, I am aligning myself with wisdom. All of us have done this at certain times in our lives although we might not have been totally aware of the process. If for instance we are with someone or talking with someone whom we know and love and discover that they are in a difficult situation, and we want to be compassionate and consoling as well as having the need to offer some advice or information or direction that would be helpful to this person.

Often times when I have found myself in situations like this I have said a silent prayer, “God I have no idea what to tell this person. I have no idea what words might be helpful. Please guide me in the best possible direction to offer this person whom I love, who is in pain or doubt or confusion ,to offer them the best that I possibly can.”

Whether we realize it consciously are not what we have done in those moments is we have aligned ourselves to Divine wisdom. We have released our need to fix someone else or to control their behavior or their feelings and opened ourselves up to the Divine teacher of compassion who will always offer us and give us the grace to respond in the most loving kind compassionate and healing way possible. That energy is always available to us. I only seem to recognize that those sometimes when my back is up against the wall.

And so here, I believe, is a lesson for today. We do not have to wait for our back to be up against the wall before we asked to be aligned to Divine wisdom. 

“Now we will ask you this: What is one thing you need to know? Now, don’t ask where you left your keys. You probably left them in your bag anyway, or on the place you always leave them. Ask what you need to know in your worth. “Am I the man I believe I am to be in this lifetime? Am I living the life that is in all my possibilities? Am I allowing myself freedom in true ways? Am I trusting myself enough to give myself the promise of a new way of being in my own way, expressed as me, I know who I am?”

So we offer this challenge today— Anytime, in any situation, this week that you recall this lesson, ask yourself this question and to be open to however it might be answered— “What would it be like to be in Divine wisdom, to be aligned to Divine wisdom in this moment?”

And if you wish to take another leap in consciousness, to ask Divine wisdom that it give you a demonstration of its presence in your life this day. And again, be open to however that might show up.

In love; in light; in gratitude. thank you