Parakalein

Recently, I read a Hasidic legend that spoke to me. I hope it speaks to you.

When God created human beings, the angels were jealous because God had endowed the humans with divine wisdom that would guide them through life. So the jealous angels conspired to hide this gift from the humans. "Let's take it to the peak of the highest mountain," said one. "No," said another, "Let's bury it at the bottom of the deepest sea." But the smartest angel of all said: "Let's hide divine wisdom deep inside each person. It's the last place they'll ever look."


There are those who believe in "original sin" or the Freudian concept that man is "poly-morphously Perverse".  Others maintain that humanity is basically good, Jungian "original blessing".  Some religious people feel that there is no wisdom inside yet Jesus taught "the kingdom of God is within you".  People invariably look outside of themselves for help, identity, validation, even redemption none of which change the basic frustration of humanity in fact often this search outside oneself for meaning or reality adds to frustration.  Those who learn to "go inside" to seek inner wisdom often find it.


Religion often proposes and external redeemer yet when the redeemer is resident behavior and beliefs that impact living in peace and harmony are seldom changed.


What is it were both.  What if inside all of us is "inner wisdom", that "we are loved and that we are loving" so we need not struggle nor add to the frustration of living by looking outside for affirmation and validation.  This is not living without respect to others but in deed with respect to all people and things.  What if the role of external redeemers were to place in us the "jump start" that we need because we do not believe there is wisdom inside.  So the external redeemer helps us to redeem a sense of who we are and that wisdom exists inside.  The kingdom of God is within you.  The redeemer is inside and outside and all around you.


Then we could live from the inside out to all those around us the love and peace that is inside.


True wisdom is everywhere we just need to get out of our preoccupation with other things and focus on love and peace.