Because in the school of the Spirit man learns wisdom through humility, knowledge by forgetting, how to speak by silence, how to live by dying.
Interpretation
True wisdom comes from humility and understanding the importance of silence and letting go.
In this quote, Johannes Tauler emphasizes that the path to spiritual growth and enlightenment is paradoxical. He suggests that one must embrace humility to gain true wisdom, recognize that often we learn by forgetting preconceived notions, communicate effectively through silence, and understand the essence of living fully requires an acceptance of mortality and letting go of attachments. This reflects a deeper philosophical understanding of life and spirituality.
In practice
During a meditation session, one might reflect on the wisdom of humility and silence as taught by Tauler.
Often when He comes, He finds the soul occupied. Other guests are there, and He has to turn away. He cannot gain entry, for we love and desire other things; therefore, His gifts, which He is offering to everyone unceasingly, must remain outside.
Every one should find some suitable time, day or night, to sink into his depths, each according to his own fashion. Not every one is able to engage in contemplative prayer.
As a good wine must be kept in a good cask, so a wholesome body is the proper foundation for a well-appointed inner ground.
If you fall seventy times a day, rise seventy times and return to God so that you will not fall too often.
If we really want to achieve true prayer, we must turn our backs upon everything temporal, everything external, everything that is not divine.
If ye keep watch over your hearts, and listen for the Voice of God and learn of Him, in one short hour ye can learn more from Him than ye could learn from Man in a thousand years.
Rhetoric is not important. Actions are.
When you are willing to stop looking for something in thought, you find everything in silence.
A person who can laugh and go with life does not demand to be in control, which is why the most controlling people may be sarcastic but lack an authentic sense of humor.
Perhaps the biggest tragedy of our lives is that freedom is possible, yet we can pass our years trapped in the same old patterns...We may want to love other people without holding back, to feel authentic, to breathe in the beauty around us, to dance and sing. Yet each day we listen to inner voices that keep our life small.
When people think about 'thinking,' they often think 'academia;' they think 'threat.' They think 'coldness.' I want to reverse all those images and say, 'No, the brain God gave you is intended to throw fuel on the fire of your affections for God. It's really good at it if you let it.'
Thoughts are fine when you don't confuse them with who you are, and then thoughts are not a problem. Thinking is a wonderful tool to create things in this world. It only becomes problematic and a source of suffering when you confuse thinking with who you are.
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