Being Wise

Being Wise

Have you started paying attention to your wisdom? Are you aware of how smart you are? Do you own your insight?

How do you know you are intelligent?

Sometimes, there are well-meaning people in our lives who ascribe to the notion that accusing someone of being stupid will improve that someone’s behavior. It doesn’t. Sometimes they are not so well-meaning, and are saying that as part of their legacy of childhood, that is, their adults shamed them.

Why am I smart? How am I wise? What makes me clever?

So, over the years, we get the idea that we aren’t brilliant, that we aren’t wise. We decide that since maybe we aren’t smart at X, we aren’t smart. We delude ourselves, and then we fix those delusions into our personal dogma. Dang.

Fixed delusions. Unsupportive beliefs. Wrong thinking.

How do I know I’ve got some of that going on?  I feel bad. It’s really that simple. If I feel bad, I have something off operating in my brain.

How can I choose? Why do I decide? What makes me positive?

We have all got smarts about something, even if we don’t all have smarts about everything. Smarts tends to be more about fact-type stuff. Like friends who can rattle off information about amazing topics. Sometimes, we have the kind of smarts that gets valued in school, and sometimes our smarts are barely recognized in school. Sometimes our smarts are mechanical, in that we can build or fix stuff like a whiz. Sometimes our smarts are musical or in the visual arts, or even culinary smarts.

Smarts tend to be something we learn, someone needs to teach us. We might be able to figure some stuff out in our smart places, but we will need to be taught, maybe by a live person in front of us, maybe by books or videos.

Wisdom isn’t taught. Wisdom bubbles up from inside. Wisdom is often about information from our belly-brain, information about the relationship between things, intuitive information, deep, non-verbal stuff. Wisdom produces insights into ourselves, our communities, our world. Wisdom can often produce life-changing ideas.

Wisdom cannot be taught.

We can nurture our wisdom. We can recognize it, and cultivate it, and listen to it. As we own our wisdom, we find ourselves coming to know who we are more profoundly. This, in turn, will often bring us more self-compassion, and more compassion for each other. As we practice cultivating our wisdom, we will also become more self-forgiving, better at letting go, slower to hold a grudge. Our wisdom lets us see the big picture and the little details.

How have I changed from doubting my wisdom to owning my own brilliant mind?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2014 all rights reserved 05122014

How do you feel when you are wise?

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Spooky Smart

Spooky Smart

Universal, infinite wisdom. Divine, infinite being. Natural life of bliss and satisfaction. Sentence fragments, sure, but so much content.

Over and over again I am confronted with a very simple concept. When I am clenched , stuff is more challenging, and when I relax, things are easier.

One place I find this to be true is with solving stuff, figuring things out, remembering stuff, being smart in general. I find it much easier to do that when I let my mind relax. I know I’ve kind of been going on about relaxing, but, dang.

In my qigong practice there are three rules: Don’t worry. Don’t intellectualize. Relax.

There are three more rules: Relax. Relax. Relax.

When I remember to relax, I remember that I do what I can, and let go of the rest. When I remember to relax, I can let stuff flow, my thoughts, my emotions, my responses to life. When I relax, time stops racing past me. Days slow down to a nice day-length, weeks are a nice week-length and a year takes a whole year, like it did when I was a kid. I really love that.

When I relax, the wisdom of the universe can flow through me.

How do I know I am brilliant? Why am I so wise? How am I clever?

I have met several people in my life who are spooky school-smart. They remember stuff from college like nobody’s business. They have IQs in the 170s. Or something. I have also met people who have music smarts that blow me away, or visual art smarts, or people smarts, or cooking smarts, or physical being smarts.

Point is, we are all brilliant. I have to work at math, but I can read your face and body stuff pretty well.

How are you brilliant? Where does your brilliance shine? What do you excel at?

As we own our skills, and talents, and gifts, our self-esteem grows, we feel good about who we are, what we can do. Because we are connecting with our core self, our natural self, we feel less attachment to our ego-self, that part of us that wants everything to stay exactly the way it is. We feel excited for change, excited by the flow of our lives, we love to be surprised by what’s next, and we feel competent, strong, and capable of handling whatever comes our way.

Like you, I am a work in progress when it comes to this stuff. Like you, I have stuff come up on the outside, and come up on the inside. Like you, I plug away at it, doing what I can to remember what helps me keep moving forward. I try to remember to be kind, to have compassion, to stay peaceful. I don’t always succeed, sometimes I really screw up. I get angry, and ashamed, and fearful. I worry.

But I am much better, as my life lately has been pointing out to me, thank you, Life.

How have I changed from feeling stupid to owning my brilliance?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2014 all rights reserved 04022014

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Shining On

Shining On

All sorts of wonderful things happen for us when we commit to become grownups, to evolve into our best selves, to enlighten our lives. We find more “luck,” and love, we find more opportunities for joy and bliss seems to follow us around like a happy, housebroken puppy.

We also find our wisdom, our deep understanding of how the world works, how we work. The more we come to know ourselves, the more we know about relationships, about finding solutions, about relaxing into peace, comforting both ourselves and each other. We find that we are more interested in each other, how we feel, what we think.

Curiously, we find that, the more we come to know ourselves, the more we seem to find that the details of our particular story are less important than they used to be. We are less interested in labeling ourselves as damaged, or broken, and so on, and more interesting in resolutions, and resolvings, appreciations, and gratitude.

We find that worry or fear are no longer as interesting a pastime. We find that we would rather look for the gold than the rot, to anticipate good stuff, to relish the silver linings.

We find that we have more compassion, not only for each other, but for ourselves. We find things to respect about each other, qualities we value, moments we treasure. We stop assuming the worst, and give each other the benefit of the doubt, and are amply rewarded most of the time.

Forgiveness comes more easily, too, not only for our people, our past hurts, but for our own stuff. We make amends where we can, and then let it go.

We listen better. We love more easily. We notice and let go of our negative moral and emotional judgments more quickly.

Wow, Why are we so astounding? What makes us such good people? How do we open so much.

There is a promise from 12 steps that I adore. We will intuitively know how to handle situations that formerly baffled us. O, I think I wanted that more than anything. And may I just say this: It rocks. I wonder if, when we let go of all that fretting about stuff, we have more room in our brains to find solutions out of our consciousness, we don’t even have to think about it, they are just there. However it happens, I like it.

What makes me wise? How do I value my smarts? How do I know I am bright?

We also find that we start to take our wisdom for granted. We assume it will be available to us when we need it. We count on it, and we find that we can count on our people most of the time. We find that we have more and more people who want what we have stepping in with us, supporting us, and the people who don’t, the ones who choose to stay stuck, or to continue suffering, to stay miserable, well, they sort of drift away. Sometimes, we are blessed with the miracle of those sad folks changing their minds, and coming to join us, and that is a day for celebration.

In fact, as I claim my wisdom, my insight, my smarts, I see something worth celebrating everyday, and make room for that little celebration. It may simply be a blessing at a meal, a moment to consider all the lovely things that have happened, and it might be a full-on party.

How have I changed from feeling thick-headed and dim to owning my brilliance?

(c) Pam Guthrie all rights reserved 02182014

How to Shine

How to Shine

One of the ways I’m pretty brilliant is about us. I get us, poor little we, with all our stuff. So much fear, and anger, so much mislearning, and grief, so much self-hate. I get us.

I’ve been doing what I do since I was a kid. I have always cared about you, I have a good ear, a big heart, and have always had a pretty good sense of what we are about. It got messed up during the dark ages, but I healed that up nicely.

I also draw pretty well, can do music-y stuff pretty well, and I can write.

As an expert on people’s stuff, I will tell you that, in my experience, everyone is brilliant at something, and even good at other stuff.

Oh, boy, am I hearing some interesting objections. I am not talking about being brilliant at screwing up. I’m not talking about being brilliant at failing. I know this, remember, and just because things don’t seem to be going your way doesn’t mean you suck.

How do you know you are brilliant? What makes you smart? Why are you so wise?

You know you are, deep in your heart of hearts, you know you are. How am I brilliant? What makes me use my smarts?

When we settle down, and just accept that we are brilliant, and in our particular way, we can start to enjoy it. Owning that we are brilliant is fun. Using our brilliance is fun. Being really good at something is fun.

I used to think that being brilliant was about being able to do math. Period. There are so many ways of brilliance, like stars in the sky. My balance of brilliance is unique to me, and yours is to you. Maybe you are brilliant with languages, and can communicate with tons of people. Maybe you are a genius with money, or can write songs that people love. Perhaps your genius is painting, or you are a baby-whisperer. Maybe your cooking is your genius.

Why do I own my genius?

When I settle down, and just accept that I am brilliant, I start seeing your brilliance, and seeing how brilliant you are is a joyful thing. And when we combine our brilliances, our collective magnitudes shine dazzlingly bright, and we can accomplish miracles.

I found that using my brilliance was one of my favorite things to do (“Pam! Stop that socializing!”) even if it wasn’t being valued by others. When I tried to stifle it, I felt miserable, and hobbled. I bet you have, too.

We need to find places to let our brilliance shine, where we get to enjoy our smarts, and feel satisfied with our cleverness. It may not be the job we are doing, but we will be so much more content when we give it a place to run.

How have I change from hiding my light to letting it shine all over?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2013 all rights reserved 09192013