Quotes About Wisdom

We must be honest and humble about this: Many people of other faiths, like Sufi masters, Jewish prophets, many philosophers, and Hindu mystics, have lived in light of the Divine encounter better than many Christians. And why would a God worthy of the name God not care about all of the children?

God's greatest ally is reality itself. God's greatest revelation is what is (see Romans 1:20)—not what we want it to be, and not even what it should be—not abstract theories but concrete encounters.

Wisdom happily lives with mystery, doubt, and "unknowing," and in such living, ironically resolves that very mystery to some degree.

Like apples of gold in a silver setting is a word that is aptly spoken. It is a golden ring, an ornament of finest gold, such is a wise apology to an attentive ear." —Proverbs 25:11–12

In the second half of life, we are not demanding our American constitutional right to the pursuit of happiness or that people must have our same experiences; rather, simple meaning now suffices, and that becomes in itself a much deeper happiness. As the body cannot live without food, so the soul cannot live without meaning.

God can help you get what you want, which is still a self-centered desire, instead of God's much better role—which is to help you know what you really desire (Luke 11:13; Matthew 7:11).

There is a deeper voice of God, which you must learn to hear and obey in the second half of life.

Traveling the road of healthy religion and true contemplation will lead to calmly held boundaries, which need neither to be defended constantly nor abdicated in the name of "friendship." This road is a "narrow road that few travel upon" these days (Matt. 7:14). It is what many of us like to call "the Third Way": the tertium quid that emerges only when you hold the tension of opposites.

Most of us tend to think of the second half of life

It is the primary form of "dying to the self" that Jesus lived personally and the Buddha taught experientially. The growing consensus is that, whatever you call it, such calm, egoless seeing is invariably characteristic of people at the highest levels of doing and loving in all cultures and religions.

JULIAN OF NORWICH AND THE FIRST

We need to hold together all of the stages of life, and for some strange, wonderful reason, it all becomes quite "simple" as we approach our later years.

cacradicalgrace.org

There are few in our religious culture who understand the necessity of mature internalized conscience, so wise guides are hard to find. You will have many more Aarons building you golden calves than Moseses leading you on any exodus.

I believe, necessary for both joy and truth in this world.

No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it." I

My personal belief is that Jesus's own human mind knew his full divine identity only after his resurrection. He had to live his life with the same faith that we must live, and also "grow in wisdom, age, and grace" (Luke 2:40), just as we do.

I would like to describe how this message of falling down and moving up is, in fact, the most counter-intuitive message in most of the world's religions, including and most especially Christianity. We grow spiritually much more by doing it wrong than by doing it right.

The True Self always has something good to say. The False Self babbles on, largely about itself.

The advantage of those on the further journey is that they can still remember and respect the first language and task. They have transcended but also included all that went before. In fact, if you cannot include and integrate the wisdom of the first half of life, I doubt if you have moved to the second. Never throw out the baby with the bathwater. People who know how to creatively break the rules also know why the rules were there in the first place. They are not mere iconoclasts or rebels.

Old men ought to be explorers Here and there does not matter We must be still and still moving Into another intensity For another union, a deeper communion —T. S. ELIOT, "EAST COKER

Remember, mystery isn't something that you cannot understand—it is something that you can endlessly understand!

We grow spiritually much more by doing it wrong than by doing it right. That just might be the central message of how spiritual growth happens, yet nothing in us wants to believe it. If there is such a thing as human perfection, it seems to emerge precisely from how we handle the imperfection that is everywhere, especially our own. What a clever place for God to hide holiness so that only the humble and the earnest will find it.

All that a spiritual teacher really does is "second the motions" of the Holy Spirit.