Daily Practice Love and Kindness (with Truth) as the Highest Priority
Driftwood
by Delphina Raven, Balfour, BC, Canada
Always be disciplined in practising Love and Kindness (with Truth) as the highest priority in daily life. Practise it well and it becomes a disciplined practice that won’t betray you, no matter how right and justified you feel or even in actuality, when you are having the biggest struggle in life, or what seems to be the biggest obstacle in life.
Wisdom is when an insight has been experienced and understood with a hefty dose of humility, from different angles and the same ones, repeatedly, after enduring all the pains and regrets, after painfully shedding that mask or ego that shielded you for so long from the inner ugliness from others and yourself. It is not reading someone else’s insights or wisdom, no matter how invaluable and valid. It’s an organic and experiential knowledge that no one can give you. You must walk the path yourself.
Neither one is transferrable or teachable.
We’ve been conditioned through school and society (build on the same hierarchy model smothered in rewards and punishments, points gained and lost, winners and losers) that accomplishments and achievements are destinations and a competition. However, lessons in curriculum and in life, if learnt by experience, then it’s real knowledge; if learnt by memory and scores, then it’s superficial learning. Only the former leads to wisdom, insights, and foresights that are the stepping stones—not necessarily in a vertical hierarchy pyramid steps, but laterally as well, very much like the reruns landscape with hills and valleys above and below sea level—to live life fully and meaningfully for oneself and for others. It doesn’t follow a prescribed timeline like school curriculum. The more competition is ingrained, the shallower the learning; once this mindset is removed and replaced by the mindset of excellence practice based on discipline, then the knowledge is much much deeper and easier to retrieve when life strikes you with a hard and blinding blow.