There is a kind of knowledge that can change your life. But this knowledge is also the hardest to attain because it cannot be taught.
You arrive at this knowledge through insights. Insights are the magic moments when you understand something on a very deep level. When something clicks and what was blurry now seems sharp and clear.
But when you hear someone try to put an insight into words, it wouldn’t be enough to evoke the same insight in you. The important part – the experience of deep understanding, the part that feels like something – that would be missing.
You’d have to do some work first. In meditation, for example, everyone has to do the work of meditating. A teacher can create conditions that make insight more likely, or find examples, stories, or metaphors that point in the general direction. But everyone must arrive on their own.
This is the fabric that wisdom is made of. But the world we live in focuses more on understanding things on an intellectual level. And it makes sense: in many situations, intellectual understanding is a great tool for solving problems. I wouldn’t want to fly an airplane built purely on intuition. But without intuition, we probably wouldn’t have airplanes at all.
Intuition and wisdom aren’t taught in school, but I would argue that they are more valuable – because they are harder to attain. It’s this kind of knowledge that will change your paradigms, the way you see the world. And because what you think and do comes from here, gaining this knowledge will change your life.
💡 Reflecting on Insights
(As always you can download the Notion template to take structured notes)
What’s a time when someone told you something that you brushed off but later realized was profound?
How did you come to appreciate it?
What is something you “know” but haven’t truly experienced yet?
What would experiencing it look like?
What insights do you avoid sharing because they sound “stupid” or “obvious”?
Why do you feel that way?
🙏 Thanks!
Thank you for reading and for being part of Mental Garden. As always, I sincerely hope you found this email useful.
What I've tried to do in this email may be a bit meta – I wanted to share my insight that intuitive knowledge is valuable. I hope my words pointed in a direction specific enough to evoke a sense of recognition in you.
Wishing you a great week.
With gratitude,
Marc