The Internal Development Necessary to Become Loving & Wise

Have you ever wondered, "Just what is human nature, and where does it come from?" In reviewing history, it is obvious that people have been more concerned with trying to control survival and security than learning how to develop love and wisdom. In trying to get survival and security under control we have been intensely competitive, and often tried to exploit one another to gain temporary advantages. One sad result is that we have come to think of fear and greed as just human nature. Throughout history, some people have become loving and wise, and these we tend to revere as saints or deities. Jesus, Buddha, Lao Tsu, Confucius, Gandhi, etc. are familiar examples of people we have seen as extra special, or even as deities because of their degree of love and wisdom. There is also the occasional person in our personal acquaintance that seems to embody the qualities of love and wisdom, and we often admire, respect and feel warmly toward these people. As much as we respect, admire, or even worship people who integrate love and wisdom, we have yet to establish (at least as far as I am aware) the training necessary so that people who want to become loving and wise can learn the required skills and awareness. Instead, our daily priorities and purposes indicate we value survival and security, while love and wisdom are relegated to beliefs, assumptions or ideals that we revere; but so far, have failed to clearly define and consciously master. What I am suggesting is that it is time to make becoming loving and wise both a practical goal and a conscious purpose in our everyday lives. To make developing love and wisdom a practical goal we must have a sequential process defined by observable facts, specific skills, and concrete activities, not just vague feelings or fantastical beliefs. Too often, people imagine that love and wisdom are a consequence of how they feel or what they believe, rather than a factual development of their minds and emotions created by mastering specific skills and concrete activities. The purpose of this book is to provide the information everyone needs to master their objective internal needs and potentials, as well as specific mental tools necessary to think for understanding and a concrete process for building genuine emotional bonds. Each category provides complex sequences of skills and awareness necessary to build love and wisdom. With the mental and emotional development created by mastering these sequences of skills and awareness we become empowered to fulfill both our universal and unique needs and potentials. Becoming loving and wise is one consequence of this fulfillment. I have identified the processes necessary for internal growth through a lifetime of reading, personal observations, and professional experience. Essentially, my life has been devoted to pursuing the answer to one question, “What, if anything, will make human life internally satisfying and genuinely meaningful?” Through books I have scoured history, literature, philosophy, and psychology looking for the answer to my question in the lives, emotions, thoughts, and imaginations of Western civilized experience. I have also explored the thoughts, lives, emotions, and experiences of Eastern philosophers and spiritual leaders. For twenty-five years, I practiced traditional psychotherapy, and for the last ten years have taught the awareness and skills necessary for mental and emotional development. Through studying people who became loving and wise, as well as those who did not, I have identified universal needs, potentials, and mental tools that every internally developed person I have ever studied has to some degree understood and mastered. What anyone can easily observe is the internal development of a few people is not enough to change the history of human beings. While we are better off having a few wise people to provide examples rather than having none, it is also clear that each ordinary person needs to master internal development in his own way, and for his own purposes. It boils down to the old cliché that it is better to teach a man how to build his own house rather than give him one that is already completed. Certainly, simple observation of the daily plight of human beings around the globe would indicate that the existence of a few, or even many loving and wise people has not trained the rest of us to be loving and wise. Instead, we tend to either ignore or pervert the teachings of the great personages of human history. It seems that we simply cannot live in a house of love and wisdom that someone else has built, but must learn how to build our very own abode.