Word of the Day: Wisdom

Wisdom is a feminine word. In the Gnostic tradition, Wisdom is personified as Sophia, a divine feminine aspect of God. Wisdom also appears many times in the Bible, described as a gift from God and ability to discern God’s truth.

Wisdom is more than just knowledge or gnosis. Wisdom includes knowledge and adds to it experience, understanding, and discernment. It cannot be attained simply through study.

Here we will explore the true meaning of wisdom, and how to awaken this divine feminine state.

wisdom (noun) : the quality of having experience, knowledge, and good judgement; the quality of being wise

Another definition of wisdom is “spiritual truth.” Wisdom contains wise + the suffix -dom. Wise comes from the PIE root word weid meaning “to see” or “to know.” It is related to the Old English word witan meaning “to know, be aware of.”

I have met many people, especially those with an abundance of masculine energy, who seek to know the world only through the mind. Just this week I met a man who expressed that his mind was all he needed to discern truth, overcome obstacles, alter his DNA patterns, and attain wisdom. While I do agree that the mind is powerful and can be a great ally in healing, wisdom requires more than just the mind. Existing only in the mind we miss out on experiencing of many of life’s riches, like feelings of compassion and radiant joy.

As we learned earlier this week, health is wholeness. The heart must be balanced with the mind for us to be in good health. This balance is also required in wisdom.

Wisdom, by definition, requires experience and discernment in addition to knowledge. Knowledge is attained through study and through the mind. A religious scholar, studying only the Word of God, may never actually experience God. This is true of other subjects as well.

This is why wisdom is a feminine word. It requires the divine feminine, yin quality of feeling and experiencing. When knowledge acquired through study meets with our lived experience and emotion, information is known in a completely different way. It is no longer just theoretical.

It is also true that we don’t become wise only through feeling and experience. I love when I have a feeling or experience and then learn, through study, the science and mechanics of the experience. It becomes easier to share the truth of the experience with others. Teaching and sharing is possible when we have language to convey the experience. Knowledge grounds experience in wisdom and vice versa.

We need this balance. This is the truth of wisdom, the balance of masculine and feminine, of gnosis and feeling. By definition, combining experience, knowledge, and judgement is the path to wisdom.