Been thinking again....

Sometimes I think that when I was born, I just wasn't dropped on my head, but thrown across the room and landed square on my head. It's just amazing what I come up with when I have too much time on my hands.

Give you an example, when did fish get an appetite for worms? I have this mental image of two bass laying on the bank trying to catch their breath when a worm just happens to wonder by...then fish CPR (catch, picture and release) and they went under the nearest submerged stump and told their kin... You'll get it if you are a fisherman.

Anyway, I had this though while peddling around town on my bike... do you think spiritual growth is possible without concurrent intellectual expansion.

In other words can you grow spiritually if you are not growing intellectually?

Many of you know that I love to learn. I think it is fun, and from all the latest research life long learning might just be the number one thing that will keep you younger longer. Besides, doing something that you find stimulating can't be all bad.

But even as a young learner I have always been drawn to biographies. Better yet talking to people about the lives they lived and the path that they have walked often teaches and inspires.

As a teacher I always encourage those that I touch to read widely and to expand their understanding. I think it is important and well as enjoyable. But ultimately while I believe that expanding the intellect has many benefits, it is not an essential prerequisite to developing spirituality.

Many people surmount great spiritual peaks through feeling and intuition alone. Most of the old Shamans were not conventionally intellectual or well read (or even read at all); they could not quote Lau Tzu, or Goethe or Jung but it did not stop them from connecting with and becoming a great conduit for God.

I guess if you are going to flex your intellectual muscles (and I recommend that you do) remember that for knowledge to be of any benefit at all it must be placed into the experiential world.

Knowing is not the same as doing. And you only truly own what you have experienced. Everything else is just decoration. Seems to me until you get to the point of practice, all knowledge remains impotent.


Having said that, one of the first things I do initially when I take on a new group of students at the college or mentor wide eyed interns is to get them reading widely, anything they can get their hands on about fitness, learning and life. What I have found is that IF I can get them to escalate the difficulty of their reading, (advising them to ‘just read’) even if initially they do not understand what they are ingesting. I can stimulate discussion and hopefully a little bit of learning. Over the years I've learned to do this as part of their studies, I made it a compulsory element because I know that in the age of DVD's, TV and dumbed down journalism very few people read anymore, and when they do, they generally do not challenge themselves.

This helps me when I am teaching. Primarily people come to me because they are looking to learn new things about this fitness stuff and exercise adherence, and while I am practised in articulating how I found my way, there will always be a part of the aspirant that will want my experience and my words validated from other sources. So giving them books to read by other travelers helps people to trust what I offer. Ultimately the words and the book s are only there to encourage them to go out and experience things for themselves, so that they can be the proof.

Because words without experience are short lived. What gives words life is action.


But there is a danger of mistaking knowledge of the journey for the journey itself, if people are not careful, they can get too caught up in intellectualisation - I think that a word. If it is not tempered in the forge of experience knowledge can become a wank-fest of self congratulatory narcissism. I have fallen into this trap myself, quoting the latest flavor of guru to display my level of intellect. But I have also fallen into the trap of judging people that I think might over intellectualise things.

When I was studying for a master’s degree and had to read lots of academic tomes I really hated the language of academia because I felt that it was completely inaccessible to the man on the street. But to pass my degree I had to read it, and I also had to write it. And ultimately I was glad I did, because it pushed me to expand, and enabled me to understand a language that was not open to me before.

So now I encourage other people to read books that are beyond their scope for the same reasons. The danger is (as I said) when the intellectuals intellectualise but never put the words into action.

In the world of metamorphosis (I have found) action is all. And if the anti-intellectuals don’t become more open minded they too might miss out on something of real import.

I am aware that I have possibly offered you contradictory advice here so, in conclusion I’ll tell you what my life has told me thus far and what is as real as gravity to me; reading is great, writing is great too, you discover things that you didn’t know you knew when you write, but when it comes to actual knowledge, experience is everything.

When I am attracted by a speaker or a guru or a swami it is always because they have experienced life in all its wonder and its awe. If you climb Everest or go to the moon or overcome a debilitating childhood people will cross the globe to speak with you because everyone wants to touch the hand of experience.

Til next time...