Hello Questioner, thank you so much for sharing your past so vividly. You have obviously had a hard time- and yet we never give ourselves a task that we know we cannot handle.
What is Wisdom, what is Intelligence? Great question. It reminds me of another way I've heard it put, "Street smarts vs. Book smarts". You can read all you want about self defense, but until you find yourself facing off with someone you realize you don't know anything.
It's a slippery comparison... where does intelligence blend with wisdom, are they separate altogether, does one lead to the other? I wrote a lot here and deleted it, because essentially I don't think I really know the difference yet myself. I believe wisdom is superior to intelligence, or that intelligence is a facet of wisdom. I can't put a finger on it. I like the idea that others have put forward about love making the difference. Certainly, it is no coincidence we have the label "Cold hearted intellectual" in our culture.
I actually had a bit of an epiphany a few weeks ago that is relevant here. I used to be disturbed by the atheist position, and it gave me cause to evaluate and re-evaluate what I believe about spirituality on at least a weekly basis. (this is a terrible thing to do by the way- very uncomfortable!). The reason I gave it so much attention was because I for the life of me couldn't figure out what it was about their viewpoint that was flawed. If you review their position and ignore a couple anomalous things such as NDEs, hypnotic regression and PSI phenomena, coming at it from an intellectual standpoint ONLY (ignoring all subjective feelings), you will eventually conclude that they are correct. That we live in a cold and senseless universe. While I could never fully believe it, I could at the same time not determine why, which was disturbing to me. Then I ran across a lecture by Jill Bolte Taylor, a neuroscientist who had an amazing experience. She suffered a stroke, and remained conscious, while her entire left brain shut down. When it did- she had a intense feeling of unity, of oneness, with everything around her- to the point where she didn't even recognize the boundaries of her body and the start of her environment. But at the same time she couldn't read, speak, use numbers, or anything 'intelligent' that the left brain controls.
To make a long story short- I realized that what the atheists are doing wrong is using only half of their brain to analyze reality. If we have a right side of our brain that deals in emotions, art, color, spirituality and the subjective in general, to ignore it is a gross misinterpretation of reality. It's like having a shop full of pliers only, when what you really need is a pliers AND a hammer to get the job done, to use your example. Atheists would scoff at this claiming it to be a deluded statement. But if you are not using all of your human facilities available to you, who is it in fact that is actually deluded?
To get back on track, I believe that our society has placed an overly large emphasis on left brain thinking, as exemplified by your parents. Left brain thinking is great of course- it has served us very well in the sciences. But for all it's greatness, science is still an exercise in intelligence, perhaps. Should we begin to use our *entire* brain, left and right sides together, we might begin to exercise some wisdom. Richard Dawkins is an amazing thinker, but he will never taste the fruit of wisdom so long as he discounts his subjective experience of love. Surely there are religious leaders who on the same token are denied wisdom by entrenching themselves so heavily in dogma and biblical rules- ceasing to think altogether in favor of obeying God and pleasing Jesus. I hope this hasn't sounded too scattered, I guess I'm figuring it out for myself as I write this.
On the topic of your parents, if I might comment, you might enjoy reading a book called 'Journey of Souls', by Michael Newton. It fills the gaps not covered in the Ra material about time/space very well I think. Newton is a now retired hypnotist, who over the course of his career did about 7000 in-between life regressions. He speaks a lot about pre-incarnative decision making, and how we choose our parents and so on. It helped me tremendously in understanding why I have who I have as parents, why I am with my wife, and why I have had the experiences in my life that I have had. (I'll save that for my own story! hehe) It sounds to me like you have already done a lot of work in understanding yourself in relation to your parents, but should you wish any further help, I suggest his books.
You post is very inspiring. I may have to create a thread of my own at some point. In the meanwhile I look forward to reading more about your story.
Much love and other right brain thinking,
Lavazza
What is Wisdom, what is Intelligence? Great question. It reminds me of another way I've heard it put, "Street smarts vs. Book smarts". You can read all you want about self defense, but until you find yourself facing off with someone you realize you don't know anything.
It's a slippery comparison... where does intelligence blend with wisdom, are they separate altogether, does one lead to the other? I wrote a lot here and deleted it, because essentially I don't think I really know the difference yet myself. I believe wisdom is superior to intelligence, or that intelligence is a facet of wisdom. I can't put a finger on it. I like the idea that others have put forward about love making the difference. Certainly, it is no coincidence we have the label "Cold hearted intellectual" in our culture.
I actually had a bit of an epiphany a few weeks ago that is relevant here. I used to be disturbed by the atheist position, and it gave me cause to evaluate and re-evaluate what I believe about spirituality on at least a weekly basis. (this is a terrible thing to do by the way- very uncomfortable!). The reason I gave it so much attention was because I for the life of me couldn't figure out what it was about their viewpoint that was flawed. If you review their position and ignore a couple anomalous things such as NDEs, hypnotic regression and PSI phenomena, coming at it from an intellectual standpoint ONLY (ignoring all subjective feelings), you will eventually conclude that they are correct. That we live in a cold and senseless universe. While I could never fully believe it, I could at the same time not determine why, which was disturbing to me. Then I ran across a lecture by Jill Bolte Taylor, a neuroscientist who had an amazing experience. She suffered a stroke, and remained conscious, while her entire left brain shut down. When it did- she had a intense feeling of unity, of oneness, with everything around her- to the point where she didn't even recognize the boundaries of her body and the start of her environment. But at the same time she couldn't read, speak, use numbers, or anything 'intelligent' that the left brain controls.
To make a long story short- I realized that what the atheists are doing wrong is using only half of their brain to analyze reality. If we have a right side of our brain that deals in emotions, art, color, spirituality and the subjective in general, to ignore it is a gross misinterpretation of reality. It's like having a shop full of pliers only, when what you really need is a pliers AND a hammer to get the job done, to use your example. Atheists would scoff at this claiming it to be a deluded statement. But if you are not using all of your human facilities available to you, who is it in fact that is actually deluded?
To get back on track, I believe that our society has placed an overly large emphasis on left brain thinking, as exemplified by your parents. Left brain thinking is great of course- it has served us very well in the sciences. But for all it's greatness, science is still an exercise in intelligence, perhaps. Should we begin to use our *entire* brain, left and right sides together, we might begin to exercise some wisdom. Richard Dawkins is an amazing thinker, but he will never taste the fruit of wisdom so long as he discounts his subjective experience of love. Surely there are religious leaders who on the same token are denied wisdom by entrenching themselves so heavily in dogma and biblical rules- ceasing to think altogether in favor of obeying God and pleasing Jesus. I hope this hasn't sounded too scattered, I guess I'm figuring it out for myself as I write this.
On the topic of your parents, if I might comment, you might enjoy reading a book called 'Journey of Souls', by Michael Newton. It fills the gaps not covered in the Ra material about time/space very well I think. Newton is a now retired hypnotist, who over the course of his career did about 7000 in-between life regressions. He speaks a lot about pre-incarnative decision making, and how we choose our parents and so on. It helped me tremendously in understanding why I have who I have as parents, why I am with my wife, and why I have had the experiences in my life that I have had. (I'll save that for my own story! hehe) It sounds to me like you have already done a lot of work in understanding yourself in relation to your parents, but should you wish any further help, I suggest his books.
You post is very inspiring. I may have to create a thread of my own at some point. In the meanwhile I look forward to reading more about your story.
Much love and other right brain thinking,
Lavazza