Many regard life as a course of learn­ing, a pro­cess meant for gath­er­ing exper­i­ence. Sadly, the stun­ted man finds it hard to learn from any­thing but what he has exper­i­enced him­self. And yet, accord­ing to Livy, res­ults are merely the teach­er of fools. The subtlest source of know­ledge is med­it­a­tion, when one awakens to some­thing and becomes enlightened. This may be a moment­ary insight, a flash of truth, or an enlight­en­ment real­ised with less­er or great­er inter­rup­tions, or else a com­plete and total, final enlight­en­ment. The ancient tra­di­tions also regard learn­ing by hear­ing as a very high level of gain­ing know­ledge. Par­ables and stor­ies serve this end. Often it is enough to hear some­thing, and at once one under­stands and remem­bers it – though of course we should fil­ter out bad habits of mind and gos­sip, to which one is just as sus­cept­ible. Such things are not worth listen­ing to. The next level is learn­ing by sight, when one learns from the mis­for­tune of oth­ers. Finally comes touch, when one learns some­thing through one's own skin. This last may be held to be inferi­or, and yet it yields power­ful exper­i­ences. Learn­ing, then, almost always comes about through the work­ing of one of the senses. In spir­itu­al circles, how­ever, insights of the soul, mys­tic­al exper­i­en­cing, are val­ued above the the­or­et­ic­al know­ledge of them. Object­ive know­ledge is thus sur­passed by insight, by what is per­son­ally lived.

Exper­i­ence of life can­not be learnt, only lived, so it is not enough to pon­der life, rather we must expose ourselves to the lived exper­i­ence of our own lives. The five coun­sels below cap­ture the nature of life and tell us what insights we must arrive at.

  • 1. Life is not easy… This pro­pos­i­tion is easy to agree with. Life prob­ably has weight because it bears respons­ib­il­ity too. Wheth­er life really is hard or not is almost impossible to settle as a mat­ter of fact, for to every­one his own life is the hard­est, but once we pos­sess etern­ity-con­scious­ness, then life, even with all its incon­gru­it­ies, also seems a light-hearted game. But all is not lost, for:
  • 2. … but help is near. This pro­pos­i­tion is harder to agree with. How often we feel that help is delayed or never comes at all, as if one had been left orphaned and alone. Yet not-help­ing is help too: it com­pels us to recog­nise our own resources, to over­come our weak­nesses, to come to exper­i­ence our strength. Help may not arrive in the form we ima­gined, but help as a prin­ciple is always present. Now comes the bit­ter pill:
  • 3. You are not the centre of the world. Protest as we may, it is a fact. Even with the best of inten­tions, man's view of the world is ego­centric: every­one starts from him­self. When this takes on patho­lo­gic­al pro­por­tions, we call it extreme selfish­ness, but oth­er­wise it is nat­ur­al for us to focus on ourselves. Slowly, how­ever, we must travel from ourselves to our true selves, and, start­ing from ourselves, dis­cov­er in oth­ers too the human and spir­itu­al traits we share. Let this be an encour­age­ment:
  • 4. A divine arrange­ment exists. When everything seems utterly entangled, that is when the pic­ture begins to clear. Who­ever believes in provid­ence has his path made smooth, who­ever protests against his fate is swept away by life. To recog­nise this arrange­ment is not easy, and to accept it is harder still. Pos­sessed of these insights, to nestle into the arrange­ments is wise… And finally:
  • 5. Divine love is the way. Who could deny it? Love is con­tent with the present, hopes for the future and does not brood over the past. In the prac­tice of love all its hard­ships dwindle, with cour­age everything becomes pos­sible. Who­ever lives in a naive, romantic way, or else in the full­ness of his wis­dom, bows his head equally before the great­ness of feel­ings. The ancients held the god of love to be the migh­ti­est, but the power of divine love is migh­ti­er even than worldly love. What are you rooted in, that you are able to do any­thing at all, and what is it that drives things? The divine will, the arrange­ment, seeks to pre­vail, and divine love gra­ciously aids it, so that beauty and har­mony come about. This is the ulti­mate act of love.