Meditation: Wisdom is not a product of thought.

I have spent a lot of time pursuing wisdom. Most of it in the classroom. Twenty-six years as a student to be exact. That is more than many, but much less than some. Does time spent deep in thought make me more or less intelligent, than my fellow being human? Not necessarily. Much of it depends on having a keen eye for detail and developing the patience for exploration. This is actually what I taught when I taught Art History for three years at university. There is no shortcut to wisdom, to deep knowledge: wisdom is the shortcut. It is simply the product of practice, a matter of attention, something you already possess, something you can already sense. In meditation this morning I was reminded of something Tolle says in his book Stilllness Speaks:

"Wisdom is not a product of thought. The deep knowing that is wisdom arises through the simple act of giving someone or something your full attention. Attention is primordial intelligence, consciousness itself, it dissolves the barriers created by conceptual thought and with this comes the recognition that nothing exists in and by itself. [Attention] joins the perceiver and the perceived in a unifying field of awareness; it is the healer of separation."

~Eckhart Tolle, Stillness Speaks, Chapter Two: Beyond the Thinking Mind