1. Introduction
We cannot talk about Wisdom Mentoring without starting with the Wisdom transformation to which many of us—maybe all of us—are called. This is not about fixing a problem and or meeting some conjectured goal; it is about opening one’s life up to move beyond the usual constraints and restrictions of ordinary awareness. While it might at first blush imply one-size-fits-all, the passageway of the Wisdom transformation will be uniquely specific to and for each individual. Because this transformation is the foundational underpinning for Wisdom Mentoring, much more will be said about it as we move through this program.
A related assumption tied to this transformation is a more expansive view of incarnation. Many of us have grown up with the theological underpinning of the Incarnation—namely that Jesus is both human and divine. But a Wisdom understanding of life extends and expands this understanding to assert that we are all—every human being—that we are all similarly constructed of both the human and the divine. Thus, each person is an instantiation, a particular expression, of the divine wholeness. This wholeness of which full life desires to be manifest requires the inclusion of each and every human expression of the divine. Each person, then, is a unique and necessary mosaic piece of the whole.
The call to the fullness of life, therefore, is not a generalized pattern of goodness or decency to which all individual lives should conform. (Not that goodness and decency aren’t promoted!) Rather, the fullness of life and being calls each life to be transformed into the authenticity of its own specific divine expression and unfolding. That will necessitate that the process of Wisdom Mentoring with each distinctive individual will help each person find her own unique form and expression in her life’s fullest unfolding.
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2. Wisdom Transformation’s Arc
Another related assumption of this Wisdom transformation is the arc of its basic direction. While we may have been born into an expansive view of life that sees and appreciates that we are all integral parts of a greater whole, this appreciation fades in the face of our upbringing, our basic socialization and enculturation, our education, and our professional development. Under the persistent influence of these forces, most of us find ourselves in our adulthood truly believing that life requires the combative struggle against the competition. Thus, our lives often become punctuated by a striving to produce successful and impressive achievement, as well as a posturing and positioning in order to enhance how we appear to others.
Other forms of assistance, like counseling, psychotherapy, and/or coaching, can sometimes be employed to help a person to achieve success and to reach strategically aimed goals of accomplishment that might seem to assist the smaller self in its struggle for self-promotion and self-aggrandizement. But Wisdom Mentoring does not collude in this. Wisdom Mentoring sees through the insistences of the smaller self and guides and encourages the mentee to access the larger and more authentic self.
So here, then, is another foundational understanding that supplements the spiritual truth that we are all a combination of human and divine. While the smaller self—that part of us that so aptly expresses our vulnerable humanness and that part of ourselves that wants so desperately to make something of significance of ourselves—while the smaller self is not bad and does not need to be silenced or even eradicated, it simply needs to relax itself in order for the divine part to more deeply and more fully express and manifest itself.
This work of growing into one’s own deeper self requires a whole different set of abilities and capacities. Indeed, it requires a very different way of seeing and being. Not only does it require a person to swim upstream against the myriad cultural conventions that seem to seek to influence us, but it also invites us to entrust ourselves to the beneficent forces of the universe that we may not have previously recognized.
Thus, Wisdom Mentoring is aimed at assisting a person in this qualitatively different dimension of development. Mentoring offers accompaniment along this arc.
3. Beyond Beliefs
This deeper way of being and deeper way of seeing might be confused with a set of particular religious beliefs. But because beliefs are for the most part mental assertions, they may reside in our mind and not necessarily in the rest of our being. Wisdom promotes an embodied understanding that favors experiential knowing, rather than just theoretical or even theological propositions. Thus, Wisdom Mentoring is directed beyond just the rational, the mental, and the strategic; it is directed toward fully-embodied experiencing and fully-embodied knowing.
But, paradoxically, this deeper and more embodied knowing seems to be best accessed and more fully developed when a person moves beyond a sense of distinctive separateness. This more limited sense of separation is what keeps us locked in competition with others. Additionally, this sense of separateness is precisely what has led to our present crisis of the pervasive sense discouragement and depression on the one side and of privilege and entitlement on the other. When we can truly see and experience ourselves as connected and integrated parts of a greater whole, not only do we see more accurately how we fit with the greater collective, but we are also far less likely to engage in judging either ourselves or others as in any way unworthy and unequal. Additionally, when we can honestly acknowledge the equal value of all, new capacities of loving and caring and a deeper intuitive knowing become available to us. It’s as if, in our former smaller-self orbit of separateness, we were profoundly blocked in our capacities to see and know more accurately.
Wisdom Mentoring assists the growth and movement into this deeper and more perceptiveness and generative productivity. Specifically, Mentoring guides and encourages the Mentor to move toward this deeper and more embodied way of knowing.
4. Wisdom Cuts Across All Religions and Traditions
Rather than being associated with or belonging fully to any religious or philosophical tradition, Wisdom cuts across all other traditions. Rather than expressing the “what” of any particular tradition or the content of its beliefs, it much more expresses the “how”—the way in which these beliefs are held on the deepest level. Sometimes it is said that if you took any religious tradition down deep enough, you would find a mystical underpinning that would resemble what we are saying here about Wisdom. The implication here is that there is nothing inconsistent or at odds here with any of the world’s great spiritual traditions.
A caveat about lineage. Sometimes current Wisdom and contemplative groups like to locate and secure themselves within a spiritual lineage, tracing their present community’s position back through pathways from certain other authors, teachers, and groups. But here there may be a subtle ploy of privilege and specialness that can creep in. For me it makes sense to hold any notion of lineage very loosely.
Wisdom Mentoring respects all faith traditions and can work in conjunction with them. Mentors works with Mentees in the traditions in which they find themselves. While certain individuals may find themselves outgrowing a particular form or expression of their religious tradition, they often can find a new and deeper place within that tradition. In this as in many other issues, the Mentor seeks to assist the Mentee to find what is authentically his or hers.
5. Meaning is an Inside Job
While recent psychological research has shown the devastating and lasting effects of trauma on the body, Wisdom shines a light on the possibility that even the most difficult experiences in life—even past traumatic events—can be portals to deeper life. Rather than difficult previous life events leading to the inevitability of future suffering and even victimhood, Wisdom illuminates the possibility that past difficulties can be redeemed and transformed into new opportunities. Wisdom sees the possibility that we can find meaning and purpose no matter what the circumstances and no matter what the conditions in which we find ourselves. In other words, we do not have to be defined by the situations in which we find ourselves. Even the most difficult waters we travel through do not have the authority to define us.
This runs counter to the prevailing belief in conventional culture that, if we could only enhance our current situation and circumstance to our match our desires, that then we might be truly happy. But how many times have we seen in ourselves and/or in others that achieving just the right living conditions—maybe the big house, the fancy car, the expensive vacation—does not bring the long sought after happiness after all.
Life satisfaction and meaning turn out to be “an inside job.” They do not necessarily require optimal life circumstances. Instead, some internal transformation is required; and Wisdom Mentoring assists in this shift.
6. Divine Aspects in Human Form
This deeper way of seeing and knowing to which the Wisdom transformation delivers us is more than an abstract or theoretical way of being. It is the tangible and specific way in which the divine aspects of a person can concretely be expressed and come into being. But importantly, this can be facilitated by another in this process that we are calling Wisdom Mentoring. Here the Wisdom Mentor can, by the power of her seeing this divine part in the person before her, reflect this divine wholeness and fullness back to the other from the reflection in her eyes. Thus, this divine fullness can be, in a very real sense, seen into being; and it becomes fully manifested when the person entrusts himself or herself to this and then lives the fullness of this reality into being.
But let me try to be clear about this process. While the Mentor can see the divine aspects of the Mentee and while in growing into this deeper identity as they are seen reflected back to the Mentee from the Mentor, this does not mean that the smaller self with its ordinary consciousness is either rejected or replaced. There is, rather, an integration of the human and divine aspects in such a way that the parts are brought together in a kind of mutually shaping. Sometimes this is expressed as the necessity of living a life of wholeness and fullness at the juncture of the horizontal and vertical axes.
Thus, if manifesting both our human and our divine natures in this life is the life task (or the “what”), living at the juncture of the horizontal and vertical axes is the means toward this end (the “how”). While it is simply unnecessary (if not impossible) for us to move beyond our human nature and abandon the horizontal altogether (for then we would no longer be human, after all), it is possible for us to live at the juncture of the horizontal and vertical axes and to allow our very human nature be informed and infused by the divine.
But this cannot be accomplished simply by religious belief; it requires a deeper and more fully embodied and experiential entrustment in the divine. And it can be facilitated by the guidance and accompaniment of another; and this we call Wisdom Mentoring.
7. Wisdom Mentoring is Non-Hierarchical
Wisdom Mentoring is a non-hierarchical relationship. That is to say, even when expressed in a more formal or even professional context, Wisdom Mentoring never elevates one party over another. One party is never healed, while the other is unhealed; no party is considered whole while the other is deemed broken. Indeed, the Wisdom transformation into which we are all invited opens our eyes to see that we are all integral parts of a greater whole. That means that there is no “other,” no other party onto which we can assign blame and no other party onto which we can project our own unclaimed negativity. While in many other forms of “helping” this distinction of hierarchical standing may subtly or not-so-subtly exist, in Wisdom Mentoring differential distinction is very deliberately and intentionally transcended.
One implication of this point is that the Wisdom Mentor needn’t keep herself anonymous or purely objective as a therapist might in counseling and psychotherapy. The Wisdom Mentor will appropriately share aspects of her own life with the Mentee as these might be helpful. This will not happen in a vein of “look how mature I have become” but more, “the soup you are in is familiar to me as well.” Thus, there is in Wisdom Mentoring an actual reciprocal exchange that takes place in which both parties are regarded and valued equally. The preponderance of the attention, however, will be on the Mentee and the Mentee’s evolving transformation. In this way, the Mentor’s sharing will be in service to the Mentee.
Paradoxically, however, even though the Mentor’s sharing is in service to the Mentee, the relationship is filled to overflowing with reciprocity. It is obvious how the practice of Wisdom Mentoring can benefit the Mentee and aid in the Mentee’s transformation; it is perhaps less obvious the extent to which the exchange in this relationship can benefit the Mentor’s deepening and ongoing transformation. What is perhaps exposed here is the pervasive reciprocity inherent in all of life’s dynamic relationships and unfoldings.
Thus, the quality of the exchange in Wisdom Mentoring feeds and benefits both the Mentee and the Mentor. But the beneficence does not end there. So rich and vital is the exchange that its goodness spills over the banks of the relationship itself and contributes to the seeding of love into the world. While this at first might sound like hyperbole, if it is true that everything is connected and that we are all integral parts of a greater whole, then it is not such an exaggeration to state the truth that love and positive regard in this form have implications beyond themselves. This love spreads out, then, into this world and, in fact, into other worlds and other dimensions.
This is an important understanding because, more often than not, in other spiritual systems interacting and influencing other realms seems so esoterically advanced that it seems to require some special knowledge or power. What we are saying here in contradistinction is that other worlds are directly fed by the expression of love in this world. And Wisdom Mentoring describes one particular and very powerful manifestation of love.
8. The Scope of Wisdom Mentoring
Wisdom Mentoring is at one and the same time a generalized calling to all human beings to live our lives beyond the tighter orbit of self-protectiveness and self-promotion, and it is also a more specific calling for some to do this work in a more formalized and directed manner. Let me elaborate both sides of this statement.
Again, if we are all integral parts of a greater whole, there is an interchangeability between the parts. Again, the implication here is that there is no “other”; there are only manifold expressions of the divine—sparkling manifestations of the divine in finite forms. And these, rather than being in any way oppositionally different, are in essence “me” in different forms and expressions. This brings us to a deeper understanding of Jesus’ invitation for us to love our neighbor as ourselves. Thus, the Wisdom way of seeing the one before us as an infinitely precious expression of the divine is the deeper life to which we are all called. Thus, the principles and dynamics of Wisdom Mentoring are for all who are called to this fuller love of love and compassion.
On the other hand, to engage in the more formal practice of Wisdom Mentoring the way Heather and I feel called is not for everyone. That does not make us in any way special or superior; it is just the very specific calling that we have heard in the deepest parts of our being and to which we have responded. For this expression of Wisdom Mentoring, it may be very valuable for one to have the guidance, support, and even supervision of another. We will broach that possibility at the conclusion of this present program
9. Invitation to Life’s Beneficent Unfolding
To think about the discernment regarding whether one is called more generally into deepening all one’s relationships by the desired intentionality of living more deeply into the dynamic underpinnings and methods inherent in Wisdom Mentoring or whether one might feel specifically called to the more formal work of Wisdom Mentoring, as Heather and I are engaged in, brings up another point implicit in the Wisdom Mentoring process—and that is the issue of planning. The Wisdom understanding and orientation takes us beyond strategic planning and explicit goal formulation. We might say that it transcends and includes this kind of mental planning.
While there certainly is a place for strategic thinking for a person who is living on and through the arc of the Wisdom transformation, more and more in this transformation does one engage with a force in the Universe that seems to desire our most authentic unfolding. What occurs to us, then, as we move across the threshold of this transformation is that, because the Universe is experienced as actively conspiring on our behalf and in favor of our authentic unfolding, we can, more and more, allow our lives to simply unfurl. Here, then, serendipities and synchronicities are increasingly noticed and more deeply trusted.
More than a mental belief or faith, these changes are sensed in the heart and the body. We have already mentioned how the Wisdom transformation brings the heart and the entire body on line with the mental mind, such that there is a deeper embodied sensing and awareness available.
Another way of expressing this is that, rather than living within our subjective selves and encountering a world outside of ourselves in any kind of objective manner, more and more do we see ourselves as embedded in the spiritually infused physical world and, to the extent that we allow ourselves, guided and accompanied by the loving force of this Universe. Rather than a dangerous place that might otherwise require our defensiveness and self-protection, the world comes to be experienced more and more as a friendly place that not only desires our authentic unfolding, but also encourages and directs it.
Wisdom Mentoring is undergirded by this sense; and the Mentor encourages the Mentee to see and experience reality in this unfolding way as well. This constitutes a wholly different way of seeing and encountering reality. The Mentor, thus, gently guides and supports the Mentee in gradually stepping into this newly sensed reality.
10. Reality’s Emergent Unfolding
Undoubtedly most all of us grew up with the more conventional understanding that reality was set and settled. It provided a fixed stage for us on which we could act out our individual lives. But Wisdom and its transformation leads us to a very different conclusion. Rather than being static and settled, the perspective of Wisdom sees reality as unfurling itself in a constant and ongoing evolution. Not only is it fluid and ever-changing, but we also have a significantly meaningful contribution in terms of just how it will unfold. We, in other words, help to shape reality’s unfurling.
Do we, then, live in a world that is both changing and a world that is inviting us to shape the direction of this change…? In many ways this might at first seem both threatening and excessively demanding. How and where do we put our feet down on solid ground and how might we bear this responsibility…? In the Wisdom transformation and deepening we get a sense of the beneficence of this unfolding change. The world is a woven fabric of connected and interrelated parts. The thread that binds and holds it all together is love. But the awakened heart comes to know that, while love is the means by which all life is held together, even deeper and more intentionally, manifested love is also the goal to which we are headed. Our responsibility, therefore, is this—from the instrument of our specific being with its share of divine DNA, our responsibility is to manifest love in the form of our own unique authenticity.
And while reality is constantly shifting and changing, we are standing on the earth. Rather than an unsteady and wobbly foundation, our interconnectedness and mutual reciprocity with all things and being, both seen and unseen, tenderly holds us in place.
The Wisdom Mentoring lens sees life in this perspective. The Mentor gently guides and tenderly reminds the Mentee of this experiential truth. Thus, using one’s own life experiences and one’s reflection and processing of them, the Mentee is accompanied by the Mentor over the threshold of this new and dynamic understanding of life.
11. One Size Does Not Fit All
I remind us that, although we speak of the Wisdom transformation as if it were a clear and definable thing, it is in fact as unique and specific as each person who inhabits this change. It’s true that there are some means by which it can be vaguely generalized—like, as you’ve heard me say many times, moving from the tighter orbit of the smaller self that is preoccupied with self-protection and self-promotion to a larger and vaster orbit that sees and experiences the self as an integral part of a greater whole—but it truly does take on a unique shape, flavor, and form in each specific individual. Thus, in the accompaniment of the Mentee, the Wisdom Mentor utilizes the Mentee’s specific life experiences to assist him or her to express what the divine might look like when manifested in this specific individual’s form.
To state this explicitly reinforces the truth that Wisdom is no monolithic ladder for all to climb in just the same way. Neither is it necessarily the uniform aspiration and goal of some abstract theory of spiritual development. All speculative theories of stages of consciousness run the subtle risk of this kind of aspiration and the subtly assumed sense that we can lift ourselves up by our own bootstraps. Thus, while there is a general agreement of the direction in our movement along the arc of the Wisdom transformation toward greater, deeper, and more surrendered love—we all move according to the specificity of our unique and authentic unfoldings.
Thus, the Wisdom Mentor assists the Mentee in a deeper understanding of his or her life experiences. Rather than plotting a more successful life or even a more religious life, the Mentor is encouraged and supported to find the truth of his or her life in the immediacy of the present moment and in the specific of the Mentee’s present life situation.
12. Connections and Perspectives
Being somewhere on the arc of the Wisdom transformation, the Mentor has deeper and deeper access of an intuitive sense of the way in which life expresses itself in patterns of relationships and connections. Note, however, that these intuitive sensings are not necessarily simply rational or logical. While the transformation we are pointing to does not reject rationality, it both transcends and includes it. Thus, Wisdom practitioners over time are brought to deeper understandings that take us beyond the limitations of this ordinary way of seeing and knowing..
This expresses itself in at least a couple of ways. The Wisdom Mentor in the conversations with the Mentee can bring to bear connections and perspectives that the Mentee herself might otherwise overlook and not recognize. While never forced or thrusted onto the Mentee, in their shared consideration these perspectives can assist the Mentee in more deeply understanding how things fit together in his or her life. Additionally, the Mentor can see openings and possibilities to which he or she was previous unaware.
Additionally, through this process of Mentoring and through the practice of surrender that the Wisdom transformation brings one to, the Mentee comes to create within himself or herself the spaciousness for this kind of intuition to blossom and grow. Thus, the Mentee comes upon a deeper way of knowing that can intuitively see and appreciate these deeper connections and perspectives. As the usual insistencies of ordinary thinking are gradually surrendered, there is a greater spaciousness that opens up within a person, through which deeper patters and connections can be intuited. Through this process, the Mentee will likely come to rely less and less on seeking to draw knowledge from outside himself or herself through books and programs. This is because this greater inner spacious give room for the growth in intuition and inner knowing.
13. Non-Traditional Conceptualizations of Time
A similar development takes place in the Wisdom practitioner’s understanding of time. The concept of “transcend and include” seems operative here as well. While the one-way arrow of linear time is respected and retained, it is also transcended by a multi-directional appreciation of time. Connections of people and events can be seen and appreciated even when they are separated by periods of elapsed linear time. An action in the present seems to be able to touch and heal a situation from the past or the future. Present work in this moment flows out in all directions. It effects the actor and those whose lives the actor currently is touching; it can accrue benefit to the future and those who come after; and it can touch the past, redeeming those who came before.
The Wisdom transformation opens us to this deeper understanding of time. But because it is so countercultural, the Wisdom Mentor helps to hold up this wider frame for the Mentee to gradually appreciate and live into. As in all other areas across the board, this is dealt with in Mentoring not on an abstract or theoretical level. It is not something the Mentor teaches the Mentee. Rather, like all Wisdom understandings, these concepts and understandings must grow from within, be grasped experientially, and then more deeply integrated into one’s body and being. This is part of the scope of the work of Wisdom Mentoring.
14. Reciprocity and Mutuality
At first blush it certainly would seem that Wisdom Mentoring is comprised of two posts—the Mentor and the Mentee. And it has been useful to distinguish these two posts in order to elucidate some of the dynamics inherent in Mentoring. But the deeper truth is that Wisdom Mentoring is a dynamic that is both mutual and reciprocal. I see this in at least a couple of different ways.
Even when most of the focus in a conversation between the two falls predominantly on the Mentee and when the Wisdom understandings discussed are being applied mostly to the Mentee’s life, it does not necessarily mean that there is not reciprocity inherent in the exchange. Rather than the Mentor’s being spent or in any way diminished by the Mentor’s work with the Mentee, the exchange results in benefiting and energizing them both. Because neither is trapped or reduced through any kind of role identification, the exchange truly and deeply feeds both parties.
But the reciprocity and mutuality can be seen through another perspective as well. The kind of meaningfully beneficial conversations of these Wisdom understandings that comprise Wisdom Mentoring is one aspect of the process of integration that needs to take place for and within the Wisdom practitioner. This is the importance of something I call “finding our Wisdom voice.” Reading books on Wisdom, listening to Wisdom talks or presentations, or even attending Wisdom schools are never enough to fully appropriate Wisdom. Wisdom, instead, demands to be known experientially. And being able to articulate Wisdom understandings through language is one component of that integration. This deepening integration takes place within both Mentor and Mentee.
But another essential component is the actual assistance of another in anything that might resemble Wisdom Mentoring. In something akin to the recovering alcoholic’s own sobriety and recovery being dependent on assisting others in their recovery, the Wisdom practitioner’s transformation is deepened when she can temporarily set aside the immediacy of her own needs and issues to be present to another in order to assist that person. That is why our desire here is to present Wisdom Mentoring in the widest and broadest possible perspective. Rather than just a specific way of working with another in a more formal and professional manner—although it certainly can be that—the call to Wisdom Mentoring is for us all, for we are called to be both Mentees and Mentors. Our own growth, in fact, will be linked to our willingness and capacity to assist others in their own growth and Wisdom integration.
15. Internal Relations
While in that earlier, tighter orbit, we operated as if from an inner and subjective monolithic self to an outer world that we viewed objectively as “other,” the Wisdom transformation opens us up from both directions—both inner and outer.
First, inner. Through an inner inquiry and by means of both support and guidance from the Mentor, the Mentee begins to discern and distinguish different inner voices representing various internal parts. But rather than exposing a disruptive fragmentation, one’s inner wholeness is seen and experienced to be an inner conversation among the connected but differentiated and distinguishable parts.
Again, through guidance and support from the Mentor, the Mentee can not only distinguish these parts, but also engage and dialogue with any of these parts. This is especially important because, when one or more of these parts seems to resist some particular constructive forward movement, it can be first thanked and then assuaged such that it no longer subverts this positive move forward.
Inherent here is a deeper understanding and appreciation of potential wholeness and congruency that cooperation and understanding among these various parts represent. Instead of trying to expunge or silence any of these parts, then, the Mentee can learn to work with them. Through this approach a sensitive and understanding internal community is developed within which all the various parts can have voice and standing without needing to act up and derail the whole enterprise. An inner softness develops that contributes to a sense of inner coherence and equanimity.
Next, outer. Gradually the Wisdom practitioner comes to see that what used to be understood as “outer” is no longer as objective as was once thought. As we have already suggested, this outer reality is not as set and settled as we once believed. Indeed, because life is constantly unfurling itself, we begin to see that we have an effect on how reality will be. In this process, the hard and fast line between what used to be conceived as our inner subjective reality and the outer objective reality is no longer so clear. The membrane between inner and outer seems to become more porous.
The result of this, among other things, is that we begin to more acutely sense that we belong to this world. As an integral part of the whole, we are related and connected to all the other parts and to the whole. In Wisdom Mentoring this emerging consciousness is both supported and further explored. But as has been stressed throughout, this is not presented or discussed as a theoretical or conceptual reality, but rather as an experienced sense on the part of both the Mentee and the Mentor.
16. Expanded Means of Relating to the Greater Universe (1-2-3 of God)
Another experiential sense that this shift between inner and outer leads to is an experiential expansion of how we might relate and interact with the divine. This dimension can be named variously, e.g., the Universe or God.
For many of us in growing up we were inculcated in our religious upbringing to view God or the divine is an all-knowing power beyond us. And so, our prayer was aimed to this omniscient force in the heavens. As many of us much later in our lives were introduced to a more contemplative and unitive sense, turning our backs on vocal prayer voiced to a Thou in the second person, a Thou that was separate and other, we began to appreciate that the divine is the loving force that permeates and animates all of life and that there is no place in this life where the divine is not. The divine, then, was woven into the “suchness” of all creation. This, then, is the divine in third person, often described in the third person as an “It,” or maybe as the Great Web of Life.
Additionally, as we have referenced earlier, we begin to even appreciate that, if we are integral parts of a greater whole, and that if each part bears the identity of the whole, then we ourselves are instantiations of the divine in this life. Our first-person relationship with God may be termed, “I-I.” It begins with an intuited sense that there is no place where our identity leaves off and God’s identity begins. Our being and God’s being flow together and are intimately shared. This is the “I-AM” experience of felt oneness with the divine.
These three approaches, each with their characteristic perspective, cover the whole waterfront of forms and understandings of prayer, mediation, and communication with the divine. There is a depth and fullness that results when a person utilizes all three. Usually, however, one or two are left behind.
The Wisdom Mentor herself has this appreciation and listens intently to the Mentee if and when the Mentee broaches this territory. Specific suggestions may even be given to give permission to the Mentee to explore this through various practices. If the Mentee is willing to experiment, the experiential response will be fully processed and discussed.
17. Practices
The previous consideration of the forms of prayer and mediation as the 1-2-3 of God, raises the larger issue of practice. Because Wisdom is grounded in experiential knowing, spiritual practice is one of the important ingredients in the Wisdom transformation and in Wisdom Mentoring. But just how practice is regarded and held in the process of Mentoring is important.
The path of practice does not necessarily represent a ladder of ascent that the Mentee must climb. Indeed, as powerful and as important as practice is, it can at times be subtly and even unknowingly used in this way as the means to get somewhere. Practice is best employed when it is held lightly. Yes, it is important and even useful, but it is not a sure and certain ticket for us to get somewhere. When held more tightly, it just represents another way of insisting that we are supposed to lift ourselves up by our own bootstraps.
And yet, the Wisdom Mentor knows that practice is one way that the Mentee can respond to the call of, and the desire for, spiritual deepening. This desire calls forth from the Mentee a response, and practice can be part of that response. Additionally, practice can give the Mentor and Mentee rich material to process in order to integrate new spiritual experiences into deeper experiential understandings. Not only, then, will these experiences be grist for the mill of Wisdom Mentoring, but the Mentor may also along the way suggest specific new practices that may lead to important new experiences. Practice, then, becomes a rich territory for exploration and discussion in Mentoring.
18. Other Issues of Self-Judgment
While we have raised earlier the issue of decreased self-judgment and reduced inner conflict by creating a more conducive conversation among all the differentiated and divergent inner parts, there is another stumbling block of self-judgment that is often addressed in Wisdom Mentoring. This has to do with a self-condemnation of one’s past. The Mentee may harbor feelings of regret or even self-judgment that he or she did not in the past come to the spiritual point that he or she has found today. This is often expressed in statements like, “If only I had known then what a know now, I wouldn’t have made all the poor choices I did along the way.”
Here the Mentor may suggest an alternative way of looking at this. And indeed, this is how the Mentee may stimulate the growth of the Mentee’s own perspective not only in this specific area, but in others as well. Suggesting an alternative way of looking at one’s past may lead the Mentee to more adaptive and generous ways of looking at things. “Perhaps all of those previous missed opportunities and even dead-ends were the Universe’s way of preparing you for this moment that you’ve been given today. Without those missteps, you might not have arrived to the place you are standing on today.”
As the Mentee entertains the possible of this new perspective in this specific area, a greater self-forgiveness and inner ease replaces the old self-judgment. But as this shift is possible in this area, the Mentee begins to sense further inner release as other reinterpretations in other areas now seem possible.
19. What We Need We Already Have
Most of us grew up with the sense that every area of life had its own experts. These experts were the authorities who could inform and guide the rest of us. Even, or maybe especially, in the spiritual realm we were led to believe that we should follow the spiritual experts and gurus and follow their authoritative wisdom. Thus, many of us encircled certain spiritual leaders and teachers and listened intently and expectantly to their teachings. In so doing we gave them the authority to inform and lead us.
But Wisdom Mentoring operatives under a very different assumption—that is that everything we need, we already have. In this sense, then, Wisdom Mentoring desires to become the midwife of the birth of the Mentees own Wisdom voice and deeper intuitive knowing. It’s not that reading books or going to workshops is necessarily discouraged; it’s just, through the Mentor’s very different appreciation, the Mentee begins to recognize and own his or her own inherent Wisdom.
But this Wisdom isn’t necessarily something that was taken in from the outside and brought from there into the Mentee’s mind; this Wisdom is the Mentee’s own birthright—the embodied Wisdom with which one was born. To access his or her own inner resources, the Mentee needs to trust that it is there. This is both verbally and energetically communicated from the Mentor. The Mentor will skillfully draw this out from the Mentee.
But additionally, this will require a greater spaciousness for this innate inner Wisdom to bubble up and come through. Through the process of surrendering and letting go of past conditioning and even previous emotional conflict—through this spaciousness—the Mentee will find greater and greater access to this inner Wisdom.
Sometimes in this process, the previous level of reading and attendance at Wisdom schools and E-courses will be reduced by the Mentee as greater inner Wisdom is accessed and brought forth. Gathering up the past external “resources” will lose its compulsive nature and will no longer be so necessary. Now sitting outside with bare feet on the ground will be as enriching as reading the next spiritual tour de force.
Not only will the Mentor guide and accompany the Mentee in these shifts, but also, as subject matter for the conversations in Mentoring, they will be thoroughly processed in order to be better understood and integrated.
20. Mentoring is a Place for Laughter and Tears
One of the ways of measuring the efficacy of the conversations in Wisdom Mentoring will be the presence of both laughter and tears. Both are trustworthy. Taking the Mentor and Mentee beyond most conventional conversations, the laughter and tears evoked in these conversations reveal the truth of their depth of exchange. While any sort of academic conversation might deal with the theoretical and the conceptual levels of life and keep the conversation to the mental level, Mentoring will plow the field of the experiential, replete with deep emotions and embodied sensations.
21. Grief and Grieving and Death and Dying
While most conventional conversations steer skillfully around grief and grieving and death and dying, Wisdom Mentoring will take the Wisdom conversations right into and directly through these challenging and culturally-taboo subjects. So much of our inner frozenness and wounding rests of our unwillingness to navigate these waters more directly.
Grief is something our culture thinks we should get over in a certain amount of time. And if we don’t, it deems it unhealthy, and medication is prescribed. But Wisdom knows that grief is an important expression of love—that which we love but of which we are being asked to shift or loosen our grasp. Indeed, grief is so universal, it seems to be a glue that holds all of life together. While we are all certainly joined by our love, we seem also joined by our grief.
Therefore, in Wisdom Mentoring, rather than avoided, grief will be mined and more deeply explored. Herein perhaps lies one of the keys to doors that had previously been closed. The Mentor will tenderly lead the Mentee to explore how the losses throughout life and the grief that has accompanied them can become passageways to greater life.
Something very similar could be said about death and dying. While intentionally avoided elsewhere, Wisdom Mentoring will know that in embracing our death we are given the portal to deeper life. In a past program that utilized “The Prophet” by Kahlil Gibran we were confronted with the irreducible link between life and death and that the pathway to the deepest and most meaningful life will paradoxically be the path that leads to a very real confrontation to death. As in all of the other mentoring work, this will not be danced around just conceptually or theoretically—it will be confronted experientially. The Mentor will tenderly and lovingly lead the Mentee through this territory because she will already have experienced firsthand herself how powerfully meaningful this is.
Thus, the Mentor will listen carefully in the Mentoring conversations, for any intimations of grief and grieving and death and dying and will offer to take the Mentor directly into these potentially rich territories.
22. A Further Calling
Sometimes it seems as if a person on a Wisdom path may be called to a quality and depth of work that may initially feel extraordinary or even impossible. Remember earlier in the program when we said that time is multi-directional and can run in directions other than just the assumed one-way linear arrow from past to present to future…? Sometimes it seems as if some may be called to heal more than just themselves—that they are also called to heal those around them as well as to also heal others from the past or the future. I myself have seen Mentees being asked to hold and carry the pain and grief of previous generations who themselves struggled to do so.
Isn’t the purpose of life to free ourselves as much as we can in order to live happier and more contented lives…? No, actually I don’t think so. I think life’s deepest meanings and purpose are approached when we dare to take love all the way. And just how and to what extent we do that depends on our willingness, our capacities, and, most of all, our intentions.
Wisdom Mentoring is assisting both the Mentee and the Mentor to love more deeply. Through the transformation from that smaller, tighter orbit to that vaster orbit farther out, we move to a greater capacity to love with more potency and more abandon. From this position we can love both more broadly and more deeply. In this way we have the opportunity to contribute more directly and more profoundly to the Universe’s ultimate consummation in love.
Like Mary in the Annunciation, we may be invited to destinies we ourselves cannot imagine. And like her, we have a choice. But those of us on this Wisdom path may be listening a little more intently to the possibility that something of larger proportions may be being asked of us.
Besides being so bold to think that we ourselves might be so invited, how could any one of us respond in the affirmative…? Only when we know for sure that we truly are integral parts of a greater whole and that our strength lies in the community of support rather than in any individual heroism.
Wisdom Mentoring is open to the possibility that any of us might be so invited—so called—in this life. Discernment is best done with another, another who knows us deeply, who knows us profoundly, and who loves us. And that is where Wisdom Mentoring delivers us.
23. Primacy of Love
Here, then, we arrive at the last and most important point in our understanding of Wisdom Mentoring. You may have been intuiting this all along this path we have been traveling together. We have said that the Wisdom Mentor sees the incarnational fullness of the Mentee. The Mentor sees both the full humanity and the full divinity of the Mentee. In so seeing, she can see how the divine part might potentially inform the human part such that the Mentee could live more deeply into his or her divine depth. When the Mentor might say that she sees the Mentee as a divine instantiation, this is neither just a conceptual nor a theoretical understanding—this is an experiential reality of how she actually sees.
In so doing, she herself is drawing upon her own divine nature in this sacred seeing. She is seeing as God sees—not evaluatively, not clinically, not critically, not judgmentally. She is seeing lovingly—with compassion, forgiveness, and even redemption. She is seeing through the eyes of love. And this seeing is delivered like water, warmth, and sunlight to the growing plant of the Mentee. This seeing through the eyes of love provides the medium within which spiritual growth can take place.
And what is this spiritual growth…? Is it some further stage of development defined by some theorist or theologian…? Maybe, but more it seems that this spiritual development in the Mentee is his or her growth in love. By being seen and loved in this way, the Mentee’s own capacity for seeing and loving increases in both depth and dimension.
Simply stated, the divine possibility with which the Mentor sees the Mentee is reflected back to the Mentee in such a way that he or she can begin to see the possibilities of living more fully in that very reality. And that becomes the focus of their ongoing conversations. This is not about expanding one’s beliefs; this is about the divine transmission of love from one to another and from that one on to further others.
Thus, this is both what happens in Wisdom Mentoring, and it is also where the Universe is headed…
