Category: philosophical counseling
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How Does The Desire For Wisdom Emerge?
How does the desire for wisdom emerge? Not everyone cares about wisdom, and the question–“What is wisdom, and how can I become wise?”–only occurs to some in some contexts. (At this moment in history, I posit that the question of wisdom is of paramount importance, but making this argument is a subject for another day.…
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Contemplating Wisdom: Most Notably, Questions To And For Wisdom
Questions What are some of the questions to which wisdom is the answer? 1.) At what does (my) life ultimately aim? A world-class athlete aims at victory, but victory is not wisdom. A business leader aims at success, but success is not wisdom. Neither have yet made the question of wisdom their foregoing concern. For…
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Where No Questions Can Arise
Quite often Sri Ramana Maharshi tells a disciple or visitor something like the following: “Only see your true nature and that question will not arise.” While reading Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi with sensitivity, one is frequently struck by the aching anxiety as well as the lurching desire behind the questions. It’s as if the…
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Fundamental Anxieties And Spiritual Limitations In The Cloud Of Unknowing
I doubt that the author of The Cloud of Unknowing came to the deepest non-state states of consciousness. The text itself reveals some fundamental anxieties as well as an inadequate “map” of the “territory” beyond “the cloud of unknowing.” Let me start with the latter. The Cloud author illuminatingly distinguishes between “the cloud of forgetting”…
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‘Humble Stirrings Of Love’ And ‘Nagging Undercurrents of Doubt’
The Cloud of Unknowing is a hybrid text. For starters, The Cloud author draws heavily on negative theology. This much is abundantly clear in his translation The Mystical Theology of St. Denis. For instance, in Chapter 4, we are to begin by “remov[ing] from God that which is without substance and everything that does not…
Andrew Taggart, Ph.D. 