The urge to awaken is the expression of innate wisdom.
The urge to have happiness, wellbeing, and peace of mind is common to all life forms and is the basis of all spiritual or wisdom traditions. The urge to know how things work, to understand the patterns of nature, and our self is innate to our humanity. The universal desire for happiness and peace of mind arises as innate wisdom from the depth of our being. Every form of suffering is coming from the sense that things are not right, which implies that we intuit how something should or could be. We should be smarter, kinder, more thoughtful, and considerate, and it irritates us when we’re not. We expect things to go well, to be listened to, loved, treated fairly, recognized, promoted, to remain healthy, to avoid catastrophe, and maybe even to live forever because we have a built-in guidance system that intuits the endless possibilities for happiness and wellbeing.
If the very core of our being is wisdom, why am I disappointed? Why do I feel incomplete or inadequate? Why do I feel devastated when things don’t turn out well? The question “Why do I suffer?” has been asked by all the wisdom traditions for thousands of years. Just asking the question is evidence of wisdom at the core of our being. We are social beings, we seek loving relationships, to feel content; we’re at peace when we express and receive affection, intimacy, and bond with each other. Peace-of-mind, happiness, and wellbeing are the natural state in integrity with growth, maturity, friendship, and family. Integrity with reality is at the heart of wisdom. Perceiving, processing, and responding to reality “as-it-is” is the skillful means to realize the fullness of our humanity. Suffering is pointing out conditioned thoughts, feelings, and actions that are out-of-integrity with our true-nature. The ability to see, hear, and think in integrity with how things are as the path of wisdom and wellbeing. Attachment to how we want things to be different is the path of delusion and suffering. The irony is that both wisdom and suffering are the gateway for spiritual awakening.
