by Aubrey Little

Created on: May 02, 2009

Wisdom definitely influences our spiritual lives, but the degree to which this occurs varies from one person to another. Wisdom can serve to support our spiritual life path or it can have us begin to question our spiritual life.

To better understand the impact of wisdom on one's spiritual life, we need to know how we are defining each word.

Wisdom is "the ability to discern or judge what is true, right, or lasting; insight" (1) while spiritual relates to the belief of something greater than oneself that brings one to lead his/her life within a set of moral confines.

Development of Spiritual Life

When we are children our parents create our spiritual life by providing their beliefs, taking us to church or practicing our religion outside of a formalized/organized religion. At this time in our life we do not judge these beliefs to determine if these beliefs actually support what we have already experienced during our lifetime.

As we go through school we are provided with a greater sense of how our world was shaped. These experiences begin to shape our opinions of our spiritual lives. Our parents and families help to reinforce our spiritual beliefs and the practices associated with that faith or spirituality. At this stage we are gaining life experiences, but we are not yet measuring this against the judgement that wisdom provides.

When we move into our teen years we begin to question the beliefs that we have held close to our hearts during the past years. Conversations we have with our friends may begin to influence us to reevaluate our belief systems. School may require that we research other cultures and potentially learn about world religions to better understand history and current events. Sometimes this exposes us to new ideas that might question our spiritual beliefs.

As we learn more we may begin to ask questions such as: "Do I really believe this? Could this really be true? This doesn't make sense -why do I accept it?". Our interactions with other people may result in more questions coming to light.

In our adulthood we begin to judge thoughts based upon the wisdom that we gained during our time at work, our social lives and even the world events that we have witnessed.

How does wisdom influence our spiritual lives?

Most individuals will begin to change the concepts that they hold as true in their mind. As a child I may believe in ghosts, but as an adult I may dismiss that belief and adopt a belief in spirits. The decision to change our beliefs is based upon all of our life experiences, which shows part of the impact that wisdom can have upon our spiritual lives.

Some concepts we deemed to be part of our spiritual beliefs are expanded when we talk to others about healing options, which might include the adoption of a belief in chi or energy work. We evaluate these new options by experiencing or further researching these new concepts. Wisdom helps us determine what other concepts and practices we are willing to add to our spiritual life and well-being.

World events provide us with the opportunity to gain further wisdom on the impact of spirituality on cultures through the fighting of wars, protests, social events, fund-raising and much more. We use this wisdom to further determine how our spiritual lives are or will be shaped.

Wisdom and spirituality go hand-in-hand with each other. The more we learn, the wiser we become and the more we adjust our spiritual lives.

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1. wisdom. (n.d.) The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. (2003). Retrieved May 2 2009 from http://www.thefreedictionary.com/wisdom

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