Truth can only be recognized by recognizing the false. When false is recognized, truth emerges. It is not two separate experiences. It arises concurrently. To recognize false is wisdom and wisdom itself is already from the space of truth. Hence the spiritual wisdom journey is about recognizing the false and truth reinstates itself.
More than not our perception seems to convince us that what we experience is real and hence true to us. What is true is what we perceived but not what we realized. Seldom do we question the way we perceive experiences. When we wake up to perception we recognize each perception is based from old ideas of the past. Even if our perception is based from right understanding deriving from a realization of the past, yet if we are seeing it from the past, we are not expanding our understanding further. The journey of wisdom is non-conclusive as the more we understand, the more we are able to look at the same experience differently.
In other words, wisdom grows as and when the maturity of our ability to see things differently grows. Wisdom begets wisdom. It is wisdom that facilitates the ability to look at an experience from a vast perspective. And it is wisdom that allows us to go beyond the experience and see what is within it. It is wisdom that enables one to see the mechanics of the causal relationship of each experience.
We can’t do, create or mimic wisdom but we can create conducive environment for wisdom to mature. And all it takes is a journey of self inquiry, not taking what we experience as true but to question and time tested until realization comes to our fold. Questioning is not intercepting an experience with a thought but rather experiencing an experience from the perspective of inquisitiveness and curiousity of how it comes about and what it leads to. It is training the mind to see the cause and effect of things as they are and long exposure to this way of seeing brings maturity to the understanding of the working of the mind and the overcoming of it.
Without inquiry, without meditation, it is impossible to see a way out of the mind. Once one masters the working of the mind, one is able to use the mind skilfully for the benefit of the world. Before that can happen, mindfulness, awareness, observation, recognition, and realization is part and parcel of the inward journey of meditation – to get a closer glimpse of how the mind functions. It is a process to be repeated again and again, and yet again. There is no end to the journey. The question of when is it going to end is out of question – except to know that if it really ends, one will know with certainty. What is certainty but a realization itself, and what is realization but wisdom in progress. Hence it is not up to one to make a conclusion but to keep trusting that the journey is constantly work-in-progress unfolding.
The self needs to be questioned. The self needs to be understood. The self needs to be transcended.