Trust Your Inner Wisdom?
Trust your “inner wisdom” is a lot like Joseph Campbell’s dictum follow your bliss. It sounds good on the surface, but it can just as likely lead us away from the Christ within as lead us toward our divinity and life’s purpose. This is because wisdom is not planted inside us like a burning bush but a mustard seed–a seed which takes years of learning, living, and loving for it to bloom up with fire. The seed of our inner wisdom also demands that we dissipate the cloud cover of our egos which so often stunts its growth and blurs its message.
Jesus’s wisdom, we are told, grew as he grew in years.1 It was only after he had surpassed the wisdom of King Solomon2 and put the devil (ego) behind him in the wilderness of his soul that he fully trusted his inner wisdom and began his ministry in earnest.
Inner wisdom is not downloaded from On High. It is a process of coalescing, of unification. Buddha’s enlightenment under the Bodhi tree didn’t arrive like a thunderbolt from the heavens. It was a coalescing of all his past meditations, learning, and experiences: all of the pieces of the puzzle suddenly fell into place. But before that could happen, Buddha had to collect all those pieces of knowledge. And that took time, patience, and diligence.
So, by all means do look toward your inner wisdom for guidance. But remember that there are many inner voices battling for your attention. Don’t trust the voice that you think is your “inner wisdom” blindly. Enter into a dialogue with it. Make sure the road it is calling you on has a heart. And look for the traps that your pride and ego sets along the way.
—
The Living Hour’s SBNR motivational series combines history, literature, philosophy, psychology, and religion to help bring about new perspectives on Progressive Christianity and spirituality. Sign up by entering your email address into the “Opening the Small Gate” box in the right corner of this web page.
- Jesus grew in wisdom as he grew in years, and gained the blessing of God and men. – Mark 2:52 [↩]
- She came from the very ends of the earth to listen to the wisdom of Solomon; and here is more than a Solomon! – Luke 11:31 [↩]
