Judaism and Christianity include a "Wisdom Tradition" that is often ignored, even censored, in American religion. But it's right there in the Bible. In Proverbs 9, Wisdom builds her house with its 7 Pillars and calls to the foolish people in the streets to come in and learn. "Leave your simple ways and you will live. Walk in the way of insight."
But what constitutes "Wisdom" is not spelled out very clearly in Scripture. "What is Wisdom?" is a question worth a lifetime of pondering. I will offer just two points in the hope they may be of some value.
1. The Fear Of The Lord
Proverbs 9 says "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of Wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.
"Fear of the Lord" sounds off-putting. Who needs a religion that instills more fear? We've got enough of that already. Fortunately, Proverbs doesn't mean that. "Fear of the Lord" doesn't mean dread that God will do us harm if we don't tow the line. In The Idea Of The Holy, Rudolph Otto explained that the Hebrew term we have translated as "fear" means something more like awe, trembling in wonder before majesty.
The positive thing about "fear" is that it gets our attention. "The beginning of Wisdom" is attention to God. But where is God? Where are we supposed to look? Isaiah 6: 3 says, "The whole earth reflects God's glory." Where should we look? Everywhere.
Reality is made up of "here and nows" -- moments in places. God is the heart of each moment, present in each place. Most of us are usually spaced out, lost in our thoughts, missing the moment. Ram Das famously said, "Be here, now." He meant what Proverbs says, "Pay attention." God is the Beauty, Truth, Goodness, Value, and Meaning of each moment, each here and now. Wisdom begins with being on the lookout of God right here in this messy muddled meandering life.
2. Know Yourself
The apocryphal Gospel of Thomas says, "When you know yourselves, then you will become known . . . But if you do not know yourselves, you will dwell in poverty and it is you who are that poverty."
Thomas echoes the ancient Greek adage, "Know yourself." That adage was written like a signpost at the entrance to the Temple of Delpi, where the greatest oracle lived. Greek stories often tell of people who received guidance from the oracle and attempted to follow her advice because she could see the future. But they misinterpreted her words and came to disaster because their understanding was skewed by their own inner selves. They did not know themselves, the lens through which they saw, so they could not see rightly.
Wisdom actually begins with two insights, or perhaps at the point where the two insights meet. We need to know God, but we also need to know ourselves. Our own personal quirks all too often distort our sense of who God is, what God is like, what God is saying to us. We attribute to God all sorts of things that are really our own thoughts, fears, wishes, animosities, etc. So we can't know God any better than we know ourselves.
That means Wisdom requires a life of self-discovery. There are many ways to get insight into yourself. Depth psychology is the most familiar. I practice Bio-Spiritual Focussing, a body-mindfulness discipline. Peter Campbell and Edwin MacMahon, Bio-Spirituality: Focussing As A Way To Grow; Eugene Gendlin, Focussing. A good way to learn the practice is to attend an on-line group session at Stillpoint California. https://stillpointca.org/biospiritual-focusing
