Jonathan Livingston Seagull

“They are saying in the Flock that if you are not the Son of the Great Gull Himself”, Fletcher told Jonathan one morning after Advanced Speed Practice, “then you are a thousand years ahead of your time.”
Jonathan sighed. The price of being misunderstood he thought. They call you devil or they call you god. “What do you think, Fletch? Are we ahead of our time?”
A long silence, “Well, this kind of flying has always been here to be learned by anyone who wanted to discover it; that’s got nothing to do with time. We’re ahead of the fashion, maybe. Ahead of the way that most gulls fly.”“That’s something,” Jonathan said, rolling to glide inverted for a while. “That’s not half as bad as being ahead of our time”.
Richard Bach
Jonathan Livingston Seagull

The Seagull Speaks Creative Commons Copyright

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Golden Threads 1: Wisdom and Knowledge

Initially, I would like to speak to you about the differences between knowledge and wisdom. It is important to have knowledge about things - to be knowledgeable - but, during recent human history on Earth, you have valued the acquisition of knowledge to the detriment of gaining wisdom. You have even ignored the need for wisdom altogether, hence the mess you and your planet are currently in.

The worst in you has always emerged when you have denied and continue to not recognize the incredible ability that you have to create things out of nothing (or at least what seems to you to be nothing - I will deal with this concept of ‘nothing’ later). You are an extremely creative species, but your creativity and your recognition of the power you have to create, for example to manifest your own futures and to heal your own pasts and your own bodies, has been suppressed by the those who have governed you, to your detriment and their gain. I include here the political, religious and scientific establishment. And this has gone on for centuries, for so long that you have taken it as a fact that you are powerless to change anything.

You think you have knowledge of the world, and indeed your scientists have made incredible progress in their understanding of material reality. However, many of you continue to ignore the deep insights of science, while others ignore the traditions of wisdom provided by many of your ancient cultures.