Most people spend their entire life imprisoned within the confines of their own thoughts.  They never go beyond a narrow, mind-made, personalized sense of self that is conditioned by the past.  In you, as in each human being, there is a dimension of consciousness far deeper than thought.  It is the very essence of who you are.  

How easy it is for people to become trapped in their conceptual prisons. The human mind, in its desire to know, understand, and control, mistakes its opinions and viewpoints for the truth.  It says:  this is how it is.  You have to be larger than thought to realize that however you interpret “your life” or someone else’s life or behavior, however you judge the situation, it is not more than a viewpoint, one of many possible perspectives.  It is not more than a bundle of thoughts.   

Wisdom is NOT a product of thought.  The deep knowing that is wisdom arises through the simple act of giving someone or something your full attention.  Attention is primordial intelligence, consciousness itself.
From “Stillness Speaks” by Elkhart Tolle

If it were possible to intellectually repair one’s self, I’d have “fixed” myself ten times over.
I searched.
I read dozens and dozens of religious, self-help and spiritual books.
I attended retreats and spent time at a Benedictine monastery.
I began to attend church again.
I looked deeply into Buddhism, attended classes and became a practicing Buddhist.
I explored the Bible and bought a concordance to help my study.
I scrutinized codices of the Nag Hammadi and the Dead  Sea  Scrolls.
I learned about Gnosticism and ancient Gnostic teachings.
I investigated the teachings of Confucius.
I became a serious amateur student of psychology.
I poured over texts of spiritual practices from Sufism to Rosicrucian Principles.
I studied ancient philosophies of Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Epictetus, Pythagoras and Marcus Aurelius.
I probed the contemporary philosophies of Emerson, Thoreau, Huxley, Gandhi and Einstein.
I looked into the writings of Ram Das, Deepak Chopra, Rumi, Thich Nhat Hanh, Osho and Huston Smith.
I……..

While becoming more educated I consistently became more weighted down as I fed my intellect.  In choosing an outward quest in search of answers to my questions about living and its meaning, I neglected the ability to let them find me.  

What I searched for, to borrow the words of Socrates, was “hidden, but not concealed; evident, but not visible”.  The two best outcomes of my decade and a half of probing and investigating were:  1) I got into therapy and recovery and 2) I began a meditation practice.  I found no specific answers through those avenues I can identify, but I did find a lot of myself.  

In my opinion a good therapist does not heal a person, they help a person learn how to heal them self.  In the process one can learn how to “crack them self open” and heal from the inside out.   

My meditation practice is not about stopping my mind from stirring constantly with its whirlwind of thought.  Rather it is about letting the wind of thinking blow strong through me while paying as little attention as possible to it.  It is then I have room to focus narrowly and allow natural and innate wisdom to come to me.  Some days I gain a lot of insight, on others hardly any at all.  The answers are in the trying.  It is my consistent effort that heals. 

Make no mistake; “book” knowledge gained in my search has helped.  However, it was the acceptance that some things can not be intellectually known when I truly got better.  To get at the true essence of who I am all I have to do is keep faith in my self and a power beyond me I can’t explain and don’t now feel the need to.   There is gratitude within for every step on my path but most of all I am glad to be alive today!

 The beginning of knowledge is the discovery of something we do not understand.  Frank Herbert