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.
Rather than regret for what I have written, I feel regret for what I shall never be able to read.
Be aware of your breathing as often as you are able, whenever you remember. Do that for one year, and it will be powerfully transformative. And it's free.
You achieve stature only by being good enough to deserve it, by forcing even the contemptuous and indifferent to pay attention, and to acknowledge that human relations and human emotions are of inexhaustible interest wherever they occur.
When you combine the ability to express your unique talent with service to humanity, then you make full use of The Law of Dharma.
Needing approval is like saying 'your view of me is more important than my own opinion of myself'.
I don't have any regrets. If I could have talked to my 19- or 20-year-old self, I would have said, 'You're going to be fine. It ain't that serious!'
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