The Light of Enlightenment

Relationship is the giving and receiving of energy in the form of love, light and power.
Every interaction is an exchange and every exchange is energetic. While love is the primary form of that energy when the heart of the self is unblocked and whole, the second form the energy of the self takes is that of light. But what do we mean by light?

Imagine yourself in ancient Greece, sitting around the fire, under the stars, late at night, with friends and family. The young ones are listening to the elders as they pass on the 'light' of their wisdom through myth, legend and their own experiences. It is this wisdom of right understanding, right thinking and right living which 'enlightens' the next generation, maintaining the balance and harmony of society and right relationship with nature.

Not far away, there is another group discussing why the world is the way it is, why people do what they do. They are trying to work out why there is a marked increase in conflict and suffering. They are the philosophers in a process of inquiry, seeking to understand how the world and the universe works. One day, a few philosophers become tired of all the talk and intellectual toing and froing, and they decide to 'do something'. They begin to study the material world in all its forms and variety of phenomena. They start to fathom the rhythms of nature and the movement of the planets in an attempt to find meaning and purpose. They ask questions like 'why does water fall down and not up, why is grass green, why does a flower have fragrance?' Scientific research is born and wisdom gives way to the gathering and exchange of the 'light' of knowledge about the world.

The discovery of over one hundred elements, the development of electricity and, several hundred years later, the appliance of science spawns technology. Knowledge gives way to information as we develop the ability to send huge amounts of information in the form or packets of light across vast distances in seconds. In only of a few short decades, everything that can be quantified and measured is reduced to set of digits, a form of data, and fed into a machine for lightning transmission in massive quantities from one side of the world to the other, almost instantly. Information gives way to data. We now evaluate the worth of many modern organizations according to their 'data resources'. From wisdom, to knowledge, to information, to data - this is progress . isn't it?

Each day we need to make hundreds of decisions. Most are small, occasionally some are large and life changing. The commodity we need in order to make the best decisions is not data, it is not information, not even knowledge - it is wisdom. Yet it is wisdom that is now in shortest supply in the world. If you were to look at the currency of exchange across all your relationships today, at what level do you exchange 'light' - is it as data, information, knowledge or wisdom? Which one do you exchange the most?

For most people it is 'information' as we talk mostly about what others are doing (gossip), and what happened yesterday (news). If we are to increase our resource of wisdom it makes sense to mix with people who are exchanging energy (light) at this level. This will only happen when we decide to see life itself as the school, our self as a student, and consciously embark on a journey of continuous learning. If we don't learn we don't change. If we don't change we don't grow. If we don't grow we diminish.

This makes all your relationships opportunities to learn and grow in wisdom. If you are having difficulty in any particular relationship it is never the others fault, it is the way you are responding, which derives from the way you perceive the other. It means your responses are not being informed and shaped by a deep enough wisdom - the wisdom of compassion, the wisdom of forgiveness or the wisdom of understanding is missing. So every relationship is a teacher, a facilitator, a space in which you can grow in wisdom, nourish with wisdom and be nourished by wisdom. The wisdom cycle might look likes this - experience, followed by reflection upon experience, generates insight, followed by application, creating more experience, for further reflection. If you are a meditator then you will likely know that you have within you an innate sense of 'what is true', and you are able to allow that 'knowingness' to refine the wisdom that you grow in your life.

Like good wine wisdom matures with age. Hence the natural wisdom that can be accumulated in a long life. However, unlike wine, which sits still for most of its life until tasted, all of life must be actively faced and tasted! Only then will you see the dullness and emptiness of all data and information, and how unnecessary it is to accumulate yet more knowledge about the world. Only then can you fully taste and appreciate the wisdom that is distilled from taking risks, rising to new challenges, engaging fully with others and then silently reflecting on the whole process of living.

And unlike a battery whose power runs down when used to light up a room, your wisdom becomes brighter and deeper the more you use it to 'enlighten' the relationships that you form and the world that you live in