LEAVE YOUR COMFORT ZONE – Even if it’s true that all roads lead to the top of the mountain, we should still choose paths that save time and do not injure others. If we really want to shorten our learning curve, we should stop repeating the cliches that make us feel comfortable and explore those awkward questions that most disturb our habitual thoughts and feelings. DO NOT LIVE
IN YOUR THOUGHTS ALONE – A tree becomes unstable if its branches grow larger than its roots. For every inch our branches stretch toward the rational brilliance and clarity of the sun, so far must our roots burrow into the dark moist soil of our irrational animal tissue. Wisdom is the balance between our light and our darkness.
MAKE LIFE YOUR TEACHER – Learn from everyone, but follow no one. Learning from your own mistakes is a better foundation for growth than surrendering responsibility to untestable authority figures. No one can be wise for another. If there are beings more evolved than we, their advice might be as useless as the tips you or I would give to a spider monkey. If you want to awaken, make life itself your teacher.
EMBRACE THE AMBIGUITY OF LIFE – Choose the tortuous ambiguity of real life over the comfortable clarity of religious certainty. All our answers are temporary resting places. As soon as we discover new information we must redraw our maps. Answers come and go, it is the great questions of life that accompany and guide us all through life’s twists and turns.
TAKE OFF YOUR MASKS – What you are truly thinking and feeling right now is your only true starting place for growing into wisdom. What you SHOULD think or feel is not a firm foundation for true spiritual growth. Polishing your image so that you appear brave and kind will only give you the mask of wisdom. Masks are very small prisons because we must hide behind them to keep up appearances. Even if someone falls in love with your mask you will still be utterly alone. Do not be ashamed of your own true heart.
SEE THROUGH YOUR OWN EYES – Avoid teachers who constantly appeal to absent authority figures. A seeker would not really know if their teacher was “enlightened” unless they were “enlightened” as well. And if a teacher is “enlightened” they would not need the crutch of authority to make their case. They illumine our lives with insights. Find teachers who speak from their own hearts and humorously use their own imperfections as teaching stories. There is nothing less enlightened than parroting the enlightened. We cannot feel through another’s skin nor see through borrowed eyes. Sleeping in the tent of a wise person is not wisdom. Wisdom is the truth that sets us free.
DO NOT GRASP AT THE WHOLE – Do not attempt to grasp the one. Instead dissolve into it. The “one” is no one’s property. It is the common life of which each of us is a minuscule part. No one grasps the whole but we each move closer toward it when we love any other piece of life’s mosaic.