LESSON 9
AWAKENING HIDDEN FOUNTAINS OF PLENITUDE
Central to philo-sophical practice is Plato’s notion of going out of the cave, or what is called here “transcending our perimeter.” But these metaphors should not mislead us to think that the philo-sopher’s goal is to be beyond all boundaries, free of all patterns and conceptions. As human beings we cannot be devoid of personality traits, tendencies, and structures. Nor is this a desirable goal. A person without a personality or psychological structure (if there is such a person) cannot develop relationships, pursue goals, or indeed live in this world.
What we can do as philo-sophers, however, is transcend our boundaries in a specific aspect of our being. We can, in other words, get out of our cave in certain respects, on a certain level. As human beings we will always be limited by a perimeter, by psychological and cultural structures – but we can go beyond them in a certain dimension: the dimension of wisdom.
Metaphorically, we can think about the dimension of wisdom as a lens that adds depth to a two-dimensional photograph, or as the eyes of a hippopotamus that see above the water. The photograph is still a photograph, and the hippopotamus’s body is still underwater, but they now reveal a fuller horizon of reality. Wisdom, then, colors our lives with depth and realness, adding a new dimension to everyday events and making us greater than our perimeter. To some extent wisdom can also broaden our perimeter, but it cannot abolish it – which is to say, it cannot abolish our humanity.
But what is wisdom? What does it mean to be wise?
It is easier to start with what wisdom is not. Clearly, a wise person is not necessarily endowed with quick logical thinking, or with theoretical knowledge. A computer expert or a university professor is not necessarily a wise man or woman. Being wise means understanding life in a broader way, not just in theory but through one’s attitudes, behaviors, emotions, and entire way of being. Indeed, we wouldn’t regard as wise a person who is petty, or self-involved, or preoccupied with his health or possessions, or is stuck in a particular ideology. A wise person is not limited to his self-centered concerns, but is in touch with a greater reality, with wider horizons of human existence.
Thus, the wise person is attuned to a greater world; he is in touch with a fuller scope of reality. His attitudes and behaviors and entire way of being express more than his specific self-centered concerns and perspective. They also express a broader horizon of understanding life.
This means that wisdom is not primarily knowledge ABOUT a greater reality, but rather understanding and living FROM a greater reality. Gaining wisdom means that some of our attitudes towards life are nourished by more than a narrow perimeter. They emerge not just from our solidified patterns and conceptions, but are also animated and inspired by a broader scope of sources and resources. The sources of our thoughts, our feelings, our behaviors and attitudes are nourished by greater fountains of understanding. These fountains may also nurture happiness, love, courage, creativity, and in this sense they are fountains of plenitude.
To be sure, we all have some degree of wisdom. All of us are more than our perimeter, regardless of whether or not we are engaged in philo-sophical activity. What animates our attitudes towards life is always more than our habitual conceptions and patterns. A simple self-reflection would show that in many everyday moments we transcend our familiar perimeter – when, for example, we suddenly gain a surprising understanding, or when we are inspired to act in a new way that is sensitive to a larger scope of life, or when we are overwhelmed by a rare appreciation of intimacy or beauty. What happens at those special moments is that unfamiliar resources infuse in us new attitudes to reality, and thus new kinds of feelings and behaviors. But these deeper fountains of understanding are usually dormant in everyday life. The search for wisdom requires that we learn to awaken them.
Some would want to call these fountains the unconscious; others might regard them as the collective unconscious, or the soul or the spirit, or even God speaking in us. We need not enter into those metaphysical speculations and disputes. For our purpose we can call them hidden fountains of understanding, or of plenitude.
This is, then, the meaning of going beyond our perimeter: awakening our hidden fountains and learning to understand and live from them more fully.
EXAMPLE
Rachel is a practical person. She works at a bank, where she is regarded as an excellent worker: She is efficient and reliable, and she always follows instructions. After work she spends most of her time cleaning her house and preparing meals, and then reading the newspaper and watching the news. Many of her colleagues find her somewhat boring. In conversations she reports in dry words what happened to her at work, or simply repeats the latest TV news. If somebody tries to talk with her about art or cinema or religion, or even about political speculations, her face contorts and she says something like, “I am not interested in that sort of things.”
It seems as if her world is made of hard facts and nothing else; as if only facts have reality and value for her. Anything else – opinions, imagination, games, abstract ideas – are meaningless and even suspicious.
One day, Linda comes to the bank to deposit a check. The two exchange some pleasantries about the weather.
“You are dressed very light,” Rachel says. “The meteorologist says there is a 90% chance of rain today.”
“I prefer not to know,” Linda says and signs her check. “I like to leave a door open for surprises. Don’t you sometimes feel weighed down by too much information, too many facts?”
Strangely, this touches Rachel and stirs something inside her. A new understanding rises to her consciousness. “Sometimes not-knowing is more than knowing,” she replies without understanding exactly her own words.
Rachel is surprised at the understanding that appeared in her mind. It gives her a sense of expansion, as if her mind is broader than it usually is. At lunchtime she feels no need to read the newspaper. Instead, she finds herself reading a short story in a magazine, and almost enjoying it.
“These sorts of ideas are not as stupid as I thought,” she admits to herself. “They, too, have something to tell me.”
Unsurprisingly, Rachel quickly returns to her usual patterns and attitudes. She continues to prefer hard facts, to speak dryly about news reports, to dislike speculations and games. As much as she tries, she can’t make herself interested in art or literature. In short, Rachel continues to be Rachel. Still, something is different in her now. A broader awareness, which rises every once in a while from hidden fountains inside her, adds new colors to her attitudes, like a tender halo of self-understanding.
IN PHILO-SOPHICAL PRACTICE
In the philo-sophical process, after we have gained some understanding of the boundaries of our perimeter, it is time to “listen” beyond them. This “listening” is possible because we are not totally enclosed in our perimeter: We have the inner resources to appreciate other ways of understanding and other ways of relating to the world. In a sense, we are already beyond our perimeter, but we are not fully aware of this. Our task now is to “connect” to those hidden resources.
This is usually not easy. We tend to feel resistance, criticism, or dislike towards anything outside our own familiar ways of being. Even though we may declare tolerance in a theoretical way, in practice we often resist the possibility that other attitudes may speak in us and animate us. After all, our perimeter is sustained by powerful forces.
At this stage, therefore, it is important for the philo-sopher to avoid theoretical arguments. This is the time to open ourselves and “listen” to other understandings and other attitudes that may speak in us. We do not criticize or analyze, we do not worry about correct or incorrect, we simply open ourselves for new understandings. But it is not enough to understand in a theoretical way – to think ABOUT alternative attitudes. The challenge is to understand FROM alternative attitudes, in other words to find new understandings speaking inside us. The mere fact that we open ourselves to additional inner fountains is already a step beyond our perimeter and towards a new dimension.
EXERCISE
Observe yourself during the day, and look for moments in which different inner understandings animate you.
In order to do so, start by becoming aware of small everyday events or moments: a passing thought, a sentence you utter, your body posture and your voice as you speak, your eye-contact and your hand movements, your sense of tension or of boredom – when you are waiting in line, or chatting with a friend, or washing the dishes. Don’t analyze and don’t evaluate. Simply familiarize yourself with the way these event flow out of you, and thus with your usual attitudes to your world, to others, to yourself.
And now look for moments that diverge to some degree from these familiar attitudes. Ask yourself what attitudes these moments express, and try to answer this question in words. Next, ask yourself how these attitudes interpret or “understand” the situations in which they appear. Finally, ask yourself whether or not these understandings are broader in scope than your usual everyday attitudes, in other words whether they emerge from outside your usual perimeter, from a broader appreciation of reality. (You may object that these questions are too vague, and that you need more instructions. But it is best to leave these questions open, so that you will explore them in your own way. After all, philo-sophia is a personal journey.)
