Walking a spiritual path, one cannot help but seek wisdom.  So what is wisdom anyway? As I was meditating on that question the other day, the story of the Wizard of Oz, and how Dorothy and her friends were all going to find the wizard to “get” something, flashed in my mind. In the story, they were told that they needed to find the wizard (the wise one), and when they found him, he would help them with their perceived plights. I didn’t make the connection right away, so I kept thinking to myself “Wisdom, wisdom… Oh! WIZ-DOM!” Of course! WIS is from the word wise—accumulated knowledge, good judgment, IN-sight. And DOM comes from domain, like King-dom is the domain of the King, where the king demonstrates his leadership and power. Wiz-dom is the domain or territory where the wise demonstrate their knowledge and insight.  So Dorothy and her friends were advised to go to the domain of their knowledge, their good judgment, and their insight.

The story of Dorothy and her friends all seeking something outside of themselves, is a story we all live. We think our courage, our intelligence, our home, and our wisdom is someplace we have to go to, someplace outside of ourselves. And in seeking wisdom, we often do the same. We are raised to equate knowledge of a topic or formal education with the way to wisdom, and it’s not. I mean, we just have to look around to realize that formal education and reading doesn’t necessarily make a person wise! Likewise, our tendency is to think other people possess wisdom and that we don’t. That’s because it’s so easy to see good traits in others, but we often sell ourselves short, so we do not acknowledge or become aware of our own assets within our very being. Or if we witness someone with a lot of accumulated knowledge in one area, our tendency is to think that person has wisdom in ALL areas of life. That is not true, either.  

So the paradox of seeking wisdom is that we DO need to go someplace, but that place is a domain within ourselves. It’s a positionality of consciousness. So, those definitions of wisdom are really the effects we demonstrate when we are IN the place of wisdom. Now, we can’t journey to a place, unless we believe it exists, so first of all, we start by deciding that wisdom is already within us. That allows us to connect to that positionality of consciousness. Centering within our core connects us with the God mind within, and we enter that place of wis-dom.  From that postionality, or WIS-DOM, we are instantly guided to gathering knowledge that truly serves us, to exercising good judgment when required, and provided IN-sight into what’s really important in any situation. Yup, those munchkins were right. Going to the source of wis-dom, each of us will find just what we are looking for.

Kelle Eli (Th.M. Energy Medicine) practices a blending of medical intuition with spiritual healing to transmute limiting belief systems held in the energy bodies. Her teachings focus on helping clients in the transformation of their own consciousness and how to channel that power to create lifestyles infused with purpose and joy. She can be reached at www.KelleEli.com.