When Wisdom Comes

Once you have learned to slow down in your mind, it is quite amazing how beautiful insights and experiences come into your life, seemingly out of nowhere. This is because, if you can transcend personal thought, and your busy thinking mind, what is left beneath is the natural connection to the formless, timeless essence of all things, an essence to which we are all intricately connected. In a quiet space, wisdom can come through. We don’t need to search for it, nor need we employ techniques to find it because it is already a part of us. It’s not up to us to decide when or how wisdom will come through, we need only trust that it will come through and show us exactly what we need, when we are open, quiet and indeed when we are ready. Trust wisdom to know what you need because it’s a part of you.

In fact, employing techniques to find wisdom will only draw you further away from it. In order to find it you must abandon your search! Techniques are concepts conceived intellectually and this makes them a part of the world of form. As wisdom is formless, before this world of thought, it is impossible to find it using techniques or grasping for it with the intellect. This took me a while to accept because, like all of us I am trained to use my intellect to control my world. However, that we have control is an illusion and resists the natural flow of the divine intelligence (Mind) that guides our lives. By letting go of the need to control and trusting in the higher, formless energy in all things, we can live beautiful lives.

For me, learning to let go is an ongoing process but when I do the results are nothing short of astounding!

If you get quiet and just let all your thoughts drift by, you will sense a vibration or a buzzing energy. This is the formless place where Wisdom resides. I know this can be tricky to grasp but there is a part of you that knows exactly what I am talking about!

An example of Wisdom flooding into my life would be something that I experienced last summer. I woke up to familiar insecure thoughts and consequent feelings around money problems and scarcity. Then I remembered what I know about thought. Thoughts are just a neutral gift from the same divine intelligence that powers all life, that beats your heart and holds the planets in place with gravity. In the dream of life, it seems as though every thought that pops into your head is your thought. It brings such freedom when you realise this is not the case! Thoughts flow through your mind in an endless stream but you do not have to energise them. You can choose to let unhelpful thoughts float on down the stream and choose to energise more positive helpful thoughts! An example of this would be when you feel a surge of anger towards someone and think about really shouting at them but then you control yourself and manage not to act on it. You chose not to energise the thought to shout in anger using a gift called Free Will.

So, I remembered this and let my fearful insecure thoughts float on down the stream of my consciousness and it brought me great quietness and peace.

I got up, got ready and left the house. I was driving to a location normally about an hour’s drive away in rush hour traffic. In my peaceful, meditative state wisdom was bringing me more and more understanding as I contemplated various situations in my life.

Then it happened. I was driving down a normally busy dual carriageway just past Hertford when the word stopped.

I cannot properly explain what happened because it was an experience beyond form and words, being form can only be an echo of the truth. As my mind continued to slow down, more and more, eventually my ‘Free Will’ stopped. And so ‘I, Julian’ dissolved. Free Will is what keeps us here in the world through the divine gift of Thought. If it stops, we stop, and this is what happened to me. The energy of my consciousness still existed but only as the one energy before form, not as a ‘separate self’. This is the truth of us, we are all that one energy. This experience taught me more about the oneness of life that I could have possibly imagined!

I came back and found myself behind the wheel of my van. I did not know where I was or who I was, and I did not recognise anything in the world around me, then is started to come back as my Free Will kick started me back into ‘reality’. Another way of saying this could be that I awoke from one of many dreams and then fell asleep again.

I cannot know why I was so lucky as to have this experience but in a quiet state I was given a gift that is immeasurable. I can’t say that I now spend all my time in a state of blissful oneness because I am having a human experience like all of us, but that experience is now a part of my consciousness, and it will always be with me.

An interesting final observation is that my morning commute, that always takes 60 to 75 minutes in rush hour traffic, took 40 minutes. There was no traffic, the world was slow and peaceful, truly demonstrating that the world we experience is a direct reflection of our thinking.

I was shown that this life is an inexplicable gift and is best described in the words of Sydney Banks:

‘Life is a divine dream, suspended within the boundaries of time, space and matter’

I often write poems to express these kinds of gifted experiences. Here’s what I wrote for this experience:

When Veils Stretch Thin

Behind the beauty of God’s design,

Just beneath your busy mind,

Lies a silent treasure so sublime,

A perfect truth: we are divine!

If you slow down in meditation

Or contemplate deep revelation,

You can fall through the gaps and find soul reflection,

You are already at your destination.

There’s no way to predict this happening,

It could happen when you are in nature walking,

Or on an average day when to work you are driving,

The world melts away as the veils are thinning!

When you slow down with how you think,

Beneath the illusion you may sink,

The speed of your thoughts is the missing link,

The world can dissolve, and reality shrink.

And there you are back in your home,

At one in peace, and never alone,

An angel sitting on your throne!

Returned to God in golden tone!

It’s always there beneath illusion’s curtain,

Pure beauty and gratitude and love that is certain,

It’s where we are now, in bliss, beyond pain,

Which we created in innocence to radiance gain.

You cannot search for what is already there,

You are the light that shines everywhere!

Deep inside is where you must stare,

To know your truth that I wish I could share.

© Julian Mann