I wonder if you, like me, recognize the crucial importance of wisdom at this point in your life and our life together on earth.

Recently, more than 15,000 scientists from 184 countries signed what they called “A Warning to Humanity” that was published in the Oxford University Press journal, Bioscience. It focused on the global crisis we are facing related to such things as freshwater availability, marine life depletion, ocean dead zones, forest loss, biodiversity destruction, climate change, and the implications of these things for the sustainability of life on earth.

Life as we are living it is simply not sustainable and nothing we are doing to address the problems is working. The call for living wisdom could not be more clear or urgent.

Wisdom is often best seen in contrast to its foil – foolishness. The difference between the wise and foolish person is so obvious that the wisdom literature of the world makes extensive use of stories of fools to illustrate the distinctives of wisdom. Think of Jesus’ story of the fool building his house on sand while the wise person builds on rock. The difference is easily recognized. Or think of his parable about one blind man leading someone who is also blind, and the danger they both face of falling into a pit. Foolishness is often best recognized by the absence of wisdom and wisdom by the absence of foolishness.

The Dalai Lama was once asked what most surprised him about humans. As the story goes, he answered that humans sacrifice their health in order to make money. Then they sacrifice money to recuperate their health. Then they are so anxious about their future that they do not enjoy or truly live in the present. Then they live as if they are never going to die, and die having never really lived.

Although the Dalai Lama never mentions wisdom, his description of foolishness clearly identifies at least part of what wisdom involves.

Wise Fools and Crazy Wisdom

But the danger of seeing wisdom and foolishness as opposites is that we easily tend to miss the fact that the wisest person will still often do incredibly foolish things and fools can, at times, show moments of stunning wisdom.

Think of contemporary people in positions of leadership and influence who do really stupid things. It shouldn’t be hard for you to quickly think of a number of religious leaders, politicians and other public figures who fit the bill. And perhaps you can also find examples in your family or circle of friends.

But it is much more helpful to think of the incredibly stupid things you have done yourself – things you have never wanted anyone to know about, that you still may have trouble acknowledging. Now it’s suddenly clear why we are so much more comfortable thinking of others as foolish and ourselves as – if not wise, at least generally displaying common sense. It is hard to admit that we also are sometimes incredibly foolish. But until we do, we fail to recognize that wisdom and foolishness are twins that live together in the human soul.

C. G. Jung described our inner fool as expressing a kind of crazy wisdom that, by challenging conventional wisdom, points us toward true wisdom. Looking back on his life at age 85 he said that since human nature is temperamentally set against wisdom he had often found it necessary to pay the price of being foolish in order to access true wisdom. Just as we cannot recognize silence apart from having known noise, or light apart from knowing shadow, so too, it seems, wisdom is only recognizable in relation to foolishness.

Jesus offers us a classic example of the apparent craziness of wisdom. Think of the seemingly foolish things he taught and lived:

To find your life you must first lose it
The last will be first and the first will be last
The meek and poor in spirit will inherit the earth, not the powerful
Laboring is real rest
Giving is the way to receive
Yielding is the way to conquer, and
Dying is the way to truly live

Is it any wonder the official religious wisdom figures had to kill him? Yet, seen through the eyes of faith and across the distance of time, clearly what Jesus was offering qualifies as hidden wisdom – seemingly crazy but profoundly true and wise.

Wisdom often needs to be cloaked. The court jester always hides behind humor to deliver his message. And, as Jung noted, sometimes it may be necessary to pay the price of being (or at least appearing to be) foolish in order to access true wisdom. Most people are fools who think they are wise. And those who actually are wise will often appear to be fools.

The route to wisdom is through life – through all its absurdity, foolishness, missteps and their consequences. And, despite what we want to believe, that path has no short-cuts.

Wisdom and Knowledge

While knowledge comes from learning, wisdom comes from living. No one becomes wise merely by either the accumulation of information or the passage of time. However, while many people fail to become wise as they age, no one actually becomes wise unless they age.

Information leads to knowledge, but knowledge does not automatically translate into wisdom. Wisdom comes from living that is guided by seeing through eyes of an awakened heart and transformed consciousness.

In Buddhism this is called enlightenment. In Christianity it is usually described as acquiring the mind of Christ or Christ consciousness. Some refer to it as accessing cosmic consciousness. However, regardless of the language we use to describe it the important thing to note is that it involves something much more profound than acquiring information. What it involves is a quantum shift in our inner world. It involves nothing less than a fundamentally new way of seeing and relating to everything in existence – to one’s self, to others, to God and to the world.

The Spirit of Wisdom inhabits all of creation and is our truest and deepest self. This means that wisdom comes from living in alignment with the Transcendent One I call the Spirit of Wisdom. It also means that since the Spirit of Wisdom inhabits all of creation and is our deepest and truest self we are already deeply connected to what we seek. This is why accessing wisdom has less to do with acquiring knowledge than learning to see through what I describe as the eyes of Christ.

The portal to wisdom is the awakening and transformation of our hearts and minds. Walking through this doorway does not lead us to a pool of knowledge but to a way of knowing, something I call wisdom knowing.

Most of what we think we know is a product of our minds. You might say, for example, “I know I exist because I am capable of thought,” (I think therefore I am). This “knowing” is clearly the fruit of the mind. Or you might say, “I know God exists because I believe the Bible.” But once again, because beliefs are construals (formulations or understandings) they too are the fruit of mental processes.

Wisdom knowing is not dependent on the senses and can never be reduced to beliefs. It is deeper than either of these things. It is knowing that emerges from hearts and minds that are awakened, integrated and transformed. This is wisdom that we can both know and live.