You understand that knowledge does not come in words. Information may come in words, but knowledge is something else. Knowledge awakens from inside you. It is from inside you, or it is just words and not knowledge. Anyone can read a line of words. Any words can be repeated. Anyone can say anything, and often with great gusto. That does not necessarily mean that the words are from the heart of the speaker. They may just be from the mouth of the speaker, just another recording turned on once more.
The knowledge that lives in you, words cannot say. Try as they may, words can’t capture the love and wisdom that take you over. Sometimes love and wisdom (true knowledge) take you by surprise, and you are lifted high. True knowledge is something you have always known yet have perhaps not recognized. When you gain an insight, you are reunited with your own wisdom. Wisdom can’t be someone else’s. Wisdom is not an announcement to be read aloud. It is an inner recognition. Knowledge recognizes itself. Then you become the Knower.
In one sense you can say that knowledge is remembered. If so, it is remembered from deep in your DNA. Memorization has its value, but it is not the same as knowledge. Your mind cannot retain all that you have stuffed in it. Your heart, however, contains all that you are to draw from.
One who has never read a book may be more familiar with love and wisdom than one who has read thousands. I say it again and again: Knowledge does not come from outside you. It comes from within you. That is the only place it can come from. Getting A’s on all the work of philosophers doesn’t mean you have the wisdom of the philosophers. You have gained other people’s thoughts, seen glimpses of greatness, been stirred by words, and, by your reading, blessedly, you have laid claim to the direction you want to go in. But plotting the map isn’t the same as getting there. You may even follow the map so rigorously that you forget why you charted the course.
I am not saying to stop reading great works. Just know that, even if the answers are there, it doesn’t mean you’ve got them. It may mean you only have the words.
Give respect to the great wisdom in books, but claim only the wisdom that is yours. If you find yourself saying overmuch that someone said this, and someone said that, ask yourself where are you in the equation? Quoting has its merit. Speaking from your own heart has more. Better to speak your own befuddled knowledge than wear someone else’s crown.
Sometimes when you read a lot, not always, but sometimes, your mind becomes overcrowded, and you think you know everything. Certainly you have read at great length. You have accumulated great thoughts from many great places. Sometimes your beautiful mind has become overgrown with others’ knowledge, hardly leaving space for your own to grow. In that sense, be empty-minded. Start from a good place of not-knowing.
Grow your own crop of knowledge, beloveds. Eat not so much from others’ plates. For a discovery to be a discovery, you have to make it yourself.
Out-seeing is not the same as insight. Be your own teacher. Use Me. I am within you. I am available. Find the great love and wisdom saved in your heart. All the outside is back-up. The original is yours. Regardless of how it appears to you, you have great knowledge within you, and so does everyone. No one owns greater knowledge than you.