Developing Personal Wisdom

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We know what it takes to become knowledgeable, but what does it take to become wise?  Is the process totally beyond our control, or are there things we can do to speed it up?  In this article Copthorne Macdonald, author of three books on wisdom and webmaster of THE WISDOM PAGE, says that if we want to become wiser people we can develop the characteristics of wisdom — the relevant perspectives, and values, and intellectual knowledge — and incorporate them into our lives.
In the late 1990s there were meetings in Burkina Faso of a "Council of the Wise." This was a group of people from different countries and backgrounds who wanted to foster the development of wisdom in African culture. A useful outcome of these meetings, and a good starting point for this topic, was the identification of four levels of wisdom development: • POTENTIAL SAGES includes almost everyone.
These are busy people who have the potential to become wise, but have never felt the call to intentionally develop wisdom. • SAGES IN INTENTION have come to understand what wisdom is, realize that they have the potential to become wise, and have decided, as the Council put it, to "follow the path of their potential." • DEVELOPING SAGES are actively involved in wisdom-developing activities.
• ESTABLISHED SAGES are those who are recognized by others as wise people. As I have come to understand it, we become wiser people in two ways: by exposing ourselves to wisdom-fostering INFLUENCES, and by energetically dedicating ourselves to helpful PRACTICES.
That is, we intentionally practice, with effort, the behaviors and attitudes that we someday hope to become effortless expressions of our deepest, truest selves.  If we want to become wiser people, we can become "Sages in Intention," then "Budding Sages," and develop the characteristics of wisdom — the relevant perspectives, and values, and intellectual knowledge — and incorporate them into our lives. Let's consider some tools that can help us do that: 1. A CLEAR UNDERSTANDING OF WHAT WISDOM IS.   There are many views on the subject.
Read about them. Get a sense of the wisdom characteristics you would like to develop, and start working on it.
2. COUNSELING AND VARIOUS KINDS OF PSYCHOTHERAPY.     Becoming a wiser person is an exercise in inner development, and there are activities that can help us along the way.
Counseling and various forms of psychotherapy can, if needed, help us reach the starting point for advanced work which we might call responsible adulthood or mature ego. A person at this stage is free of psychoses and crippling neuroses and has developed emotional control and empathy to an ordinary degree. There are many forms of therapy, including life management counseling, therapies to help us get over fears, therapies to help us manage anger, therapies to help us get over compulsions and addictions, and others. 3.
INTELLECTUAL KNOWLEDGE RELEVANT TO THE KND OF WISDOM WE ARE TRYING TO DEVELOP.     Reading about inner development can be very helpful for anyone who wants to become wiser. To go beyond normal healthy adulthood — "that starting point for advanced work" — many people turn to writings that discuss the further reaches of human development. Such writings, in turn, lead us to do-it-yourself practices: mind-quieting practices, self-knowledge practices, ego-transcending practices, and oneness-realization practices. Reading about these things is not a substitute for the practices themselves, but reading can help us understand them and perhaps motivate us to try them. Novels and biographies are valuable resources for the development of practical wisdom because they present us with countless examples of wise and unwise behavior, skillful and unskillful handling of life situations. Biographies of wise people can be especially helpful. How does their behavior differ from ordinary? What values guide their lives? What perspectives and interpretations of life situations do they make use of? For those who would like to develop existential, metaphysical, spiritual wisdom, the world's spiritual literature is a vital intellectual resource.
There is also an extensive literature on specific go-see-for-yourself spiritual practices that take the practitioner to deeper levels of understanding than reading can. Also helpful in developing the "Big Picture" view are books that deal with the nature of mental and physical reality, the cosmos, and evolution. If we want to be effective change agents, then we need to select resources relevant to the kinds of change we are trying to bring about. Among the possibilities are the "new disciplines," including the sciences of complexity, cosmos-wide evolution, and the human brain/mind system. Important for many would be learning more about human cultures, economic systems, and the biosphere. Of general importance is an understanding of ethics and techniques for changing ethical perspectives; probability as a decision-making tool; the techniques of conflict resolution and effective persuasion; and information on current transformational activities.
4. FULL AND VARIED LIFE EXPERIENCE     If we are open to learning, life itself teaches us. Having many and varied life experiences obviously teaches us more. We not only need to structure our life so that we have many kinds of experience, but we also need an open, curious, inquisitive, appreciative mental stance so that we get the most out of whatever experiences we have. Travel; getting to know people with different skills, outlooks, and values; engaging in different kinds of work; taking up a variety of hobbies — all these things enrich our life and potentially take us further down the path toward wisdom.
5. FEEDBACK AND COUNSEL FROM WISE PEOPLE     Hanging out with people who are already living the values we'd like to make our own can be most helpful. Where do we find such people? Groups like Unitarians, Quakers, and Buddhists that focus on personal growth and doing good in the world are a best bet. Local and online discussion and activist groups are another possibility. Some of these focus on psychological or spiritual growth. Others focus on various social issues.
We can experiment, and when we find groups that feel right, get involved. 6.
THE OBSERVATION OF BEHAVIOR — OUR OWN AND OTHERS     People all around us are struggling to up level their lives — some skillfully and successfully, others very unskillfully and unsuccessfully. The world's literature and films present us with countless additional life stories. What can we learn from them? Can we pick out the strategies and behaviors that work and those that don't? Can we start to sense some general "laws of life" behind the specifics? And can we learn to pay attention to our own behavior, and become aware of the underlying values? 7. PRACTICES THAT HELP US INTERNALIZE VALUES     Becoming clear about the values we would like at the center of our lives — the values we want to make truly our own in a deep and powerful way — is the first step. The challenge then is to move these values from our head to our heart and our guts. In psychological terms, we must internalize them so they are not merely nice thoughts, but actually guide our behavior. Doing this takes effort, and during one of his trips to North America the Dalai Lama gave an example of what we need to do. He spoke to an audience about the need for everyone to internalize that key value of wisdom, compassion. His advice to those who wanted to develop compassion was to put themselves in challenging situations and then, despite the natural reluctance to do so, behave compassionately. By making the effort to engage in value-based action — again, and again, and again — we eventually internalize the value.
Expressing the value in action gradually takes less and less effort until it becomes part of our outlook, part of our natural way of being, part of who we are. 8.
BODY–AWARENESS PRACTICES     In our culture we fill our waking hours with discursive thinking. We think about the past. We think about the future. We plan. We solve problems. Wisdom, however, demands that we spend a lot of time paying attention to what is happening in our immediate situation. Body awareness practices such has Hatha Yoga, Tai Chi, Vipassana meditation, and many sports can help us break the mind-tripping habit. 9.
MEDITATION     The last tool I'll mention — though definitely not the least — is meditation. In fact, meditation is generally considered to be the most powerful single tool for developing wisdom. Psychologist Jane Loevinger's research produced a 9-stage scale of psychological development. The terms she uses for the two highest stages are "autonomous" and "integrated." It turns out that less than 2 percent of the general adult population have managed to reach these top two categories. However, for people who have had a meditation practice going for several years, that number is 38 percent. Meditation retreats of 7 to 10 days duration are especially helpful. In the beginning, the mind is its usual noisy thought-filled self.
Pure quiet awareness is there as the substrate of the mind, but it is modulated by a lot of high-intensity information — thoughts, sensations, emotions, etc. — much mind CONTENT.   But as the days go by, mind content — especially thinking — gradually drops in amount and intensity. It usually take 3 to 4 days of diligent morning-to-night effort in a supportive environment to make the switch. But once you've entered the quiet-mind mode, interesting things start to happen.
We  become more sensitive to our surroundings, we begin to "know thyself" in a serious way, our creativity is enhanced, and insightful shifts in perspective occur. Source: Free Articles from ArticlesFactory.com .