What the Practical Sphere Contributes to the Wisdom Sphere


Who would you rather fly with -- a pilot who studied flying on the ground for 20 years but never flew a plane, or a man with ten years of flight experience who never cracked a book? That's an easy question. If you're going to be that far off the ground, you'd rather trust your safety to the man plenty of practical experience. When it comes down to a choice like that, we realize how little we value learning that lacks the support of real-world experience.

We learn through experience -- it's a well-known fact. Study yields knowledge, but without practical experience, the greatest fruit of knowledge -- true wisdom -- does not appear.

Wisdom requires more than a grasp of information. According to Webster's Dictionary, wisdom is "the intelligent application of learning, conferring the ability to discern essential qualities and inner relationships." The definition goes on to state that wisdom is "the ability to deal with persons, situations, etc., rightly, based on a broad range of knowledge, experience, and understanding."

Clearly, study is only one of wisdom's "parents." Practical life experience is the other. No matter what the subject, a person seasoned in the school of practical experience grows much wiser and more capable than any mere scholar can become.

The many roles experience plays in developing wisdom

Deepening understanding. Part of the way practical experience contributes is by deepening the comprehension we began to acquire through intellectual learning. Words convey ideas and DESCRIBE experiences, but even the best-chosen words convey little meaning compared to the living experiences to which they refer.

A big city. If a travel book says, "Mexico City is the largest city in the world," you might believe it. But if you walked across Mexico City and it took you two days, you'd have a MUCH deeper comprehension of how LARGE the largest city in the world actually IS.


Learning from mistakes. Valuable wisdom can even come from our mistakes -- not theoretical mistakes, like the questions we missed on a test in school -- ACTUAL mistakes.

The shock of shocks. What about the shock an apprentice electrician gets when he touches the wrong two wires in the fuse box? That is a lot more convincing than what they told him in trade school about the dangers of working with electricity. Once he's been SHOCKED and knocked on his ass, you better believe he's going to be careful around live voltage from then on. When he starts working with higher power in industrial situations, the habits he formed after that early mistake could save his life.


Raising more questions. Practical experience increases wisdom partly by raising more questions. Clearly, the nuances of life are more numerous than can be documented in books. Experience not only the confirms things we learned, which is important in itself, but it does something more valuable: It makes us aware of things that we need to know, but DIDN'T KNOW we needed to know. Experience expands our awareness of the nuances and issues involved.

Back to the drawing board. You go out and do something, and for a while everything goes according to plan, but then a wrinkle comes up. You say, "Oh my -- I didn't expect that! What's going on?" In that moment in which success eludes you, greater wisdom becomes a higher priority. Your eagerness to achieve a real-world result refreshes your desire for learning, and sends you enthusiastically back to the drawing board to find a solution for the unanticipated obstacle.


Knock and it shall be opened to you. As new questions are answered, knowledge deepens and broadens. The more questions, the more answers -- and greater wisdom results. For this, the questions we need are found in the practical realm.

Testing and refining understanding. In the school of experience, there are tests around every corner -- and that's a GOOD thing. These "pop quizzes" show us where we're at. They help us assess the adequacy of our knowledge and discover misunderstandings about ourselves, life, and the path of spiritual evolution. In practical living, tests give us opportunities to question, correct, confirm, and refine our spiritual understanding.

Book learning is not soul-satisfying

We're just not satisfied with reading a movie review or a recipe -- we want to see the show, and taste the dish ourselves! By the same token, we can't be ultimately content with contacting lofty truths through spiritual books and lectures. We need to experience them and apply them to really "own" those ideas.


Unity. Some people spend many hours studying spiritual books, yet how far do they get just from reading the testimony of others? Numerous awakened souls have written about the joy of Unity-consciousness. But what a great difference there is between understanding the CONCEPT of Unity, and experiencing the Reality of Unity. In the technique of Unification, that joy can be PERSONALLY known. It is the birthright of every human to experience higher consciousness, but it takes some practical effort to bring that experience into realization.

Fulfillment through service. Spiritual and religious leaders all agree that a life of serving other people is a very fulfilling life. Anyone can easily see, theoretically, how that might be true. But you have to immerse yourself in serving to REALLY appreciate the satisfaction they're talking about. Obviously, the gratitude of someone that you've actually helped is incredibly more rewarding in reality than in theory. And the satisfaction of having worked unselfishly all day -- how can book-learning anticipate that?


It's not whether you win or lose, but WHETHER you played the game

It is said, "It's not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game." Here, we can simplify that further: "It's not whether you win or lose, but WHETHER you played the game."


Ready to play the game.


Undeniably, HOW we walk is important. And so, obviously, is the DIRECTION we walk in. But in the long run, WHETHER we walk or not may be most important. Even if, at times, we walk in the wrong direction and reach a dead end from time to time, we can always turn right around and walk somewhere else -- as long as we're mobile. Mobility provides the practical experience from which we learn.

All of our attempts at spiritual implementation can contribute to wisdom, no matter how successful or flawed they may be, and no matter what their apparent results. Of course, SUCCESSFUL efforts reinforce knowledge -- "Yes, that's TRUE. Wow, that really WORKS!" FLAWED efforts contribute, too, by raising important spiritual questions which, if asked, will be answered. Directions proven to be wrong turn us around and head us where we should have been going
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The most famous 180° turnabout. At one point in his vigorous search for enlightenment, the Buddha fasted himself half to death. After falling down in a stream in a faint, he struggled to his feet with some difficulty, and emphatically declared, "This is NOT the way!" In that decisive change of direction, the "Middle Way" of Buddhism was born.


Win or lose, as long as we take action, we stand to gain. So let's walk the walk.

Live and learn

Study is one virtue where MORE isn't necessarily BETTER. When we study too much, while doing too little, we suffer from "spiritual indigestion." The best way to avoid stagnation is through living implementation. For true spiritual assimilation, nothing beats LIVING -- sincere, dynamic engagement in life.

Action requires a degree of courage that thinking does not, but the rewards make the risks worthwhile. Clearly, a spiritual life LIVED is more profoundly educational -- and spiritual -- than a spiritual life merely STUDIED, CONSIDERED, or PONDERED. We have seen this principle in action many times.


Example: At the LFF, an on-line student may go along for weeks just studying. But almost invariably, as soon as a person starts APPLYING recommendations from the class, their life becomes dynamic. They have many fresh insights.


The more spiritual life is LIVED, the more it fills with significance and meaning. That is one of the great gifts of the practical sphere of spiritual life. In "the school of experience," class is always in session! So, LIVE -- and learn!