The ignorant man is an ox.
He grows in size, not in wisdom.
– The Dhammapada, v. 152
The Sayings of the Buddha

A mocker resents correction; he will not consult the wise.
– Proverbs 15:12

Financial advisor T. Harv Eker admonished me that if the financial advice of a wealth person sounded counter-intuitive, then I should do it immediately.

This, of course, sounded counter-intuitive.

He went on to explain: Each of us has a “file box” of responses we have learned, and that we apply in any given circumstance. Whenever a situation arises in our lives, we flip through the file box to find the most appropriate response that we know. That last part is key. If we are not wealthy, then we have never learned appropriate skills for building wealth. Therefore our learned responses – the ones in our file box – are by definition, wrong.

The wealthy individual is wealthy (not the ones who inherited, but those who created wealth) because their learned responses are effective.

What is counter-intuitive to us, is intuitively-obvious to the wealthy.

The challenge, then, is to practice and learn the ideas, attitudes, and actions of the wealthy until the practice of creating wealth is as intuitive to each of us.

 Wisdom Can Be Painful, But Not Nearly As Much as Ignorance

I had always considered myself to be a learned individual – a student of science and philosophy. I can’t tell you how much knowledge I lost due to the accident because if I remembered what I had known, it wouldn’t be lost.

What I came to understand, though, is that knowledge and wisdom are not the same thing.

Anyone can gain knowledge. Wisdom is different. It is not about thinking, it’s about doing. Wisdom is based on experience, on life. When we take all the knowledge of our life, put it into action, and distill the results down to their essence, then we have wisdom.

You can also achieve wisdom by sitting in deep meditation under a Bodhi tree for 49 days, too, or so my teacher tells me.

When most of us are faced with difficulties, we draw on our own experiences, or consult those around us, especially those who think most like us, since their advice would make the most sense.

Like wealth, however, our learned responses, and theirs, are also probably wrong.

I am like most people in that regard.

Unlike most, perhaps, I experienced a point of complete collapse in my life – I had knowledge but it was gone. I had skills but they they were lost. I had my grasp of reality, but those around me told me thing were not really that way, but not to worry, head traumas were like that.

My hunger for knowledge gave way to a thirst for understanding.

I came to realize I could not build wisdom from my own knowledge, and there are very few Bodhi trees in Texas.

I found a glimmer of understanding, as is often the case, in a moment of absolute despair. The words I had read as philosophical exercises in the Dhammapada of the Buddha and the scripture of the Bible were not to be learned as thought, but to be applied as wisdom.

These passages were the distilled knowledge and experiences of those who had devoted themselves to seeking the truth, and they persist because, then as now, they work – often counter-intuitively – but work, nonetheless.

What I mocked, what I ignored as quaint bits of historical gedankenexperiments, turned out to be far more profound when put into practice. 

I have not given up my endless pursuit of knowledge, that is not who I am. Now, though, I begin each day seeking wisdom – wisdom through prayer, through meditation, through silence and stillness, through inspiration, inspiritus – the Holy Spirit, perhaps.

I am not wealthy, but I am putting their advice to work. I am not wise, but I am putting those teachings into practice.