Searching for the Secret Sauce
I’m originally from Texas, where people love their barbeque. I can say, without any bias of course, my dad made THE BEST barbeque sauce! I remember when I was too young to reach the stove, pulling a chair up next to him while he made his barbeque sauce, so I could see how he did it. He never used a written recipe. After he chopped the onions, garlic, and tomatoes, he just opened the spice cabinet, and started throwing a little pinch of this and a handful of that into the pot. Even though he never had a set amount of each item, the sauce always came out with his signature flavor, which got even better with age. I learned through the years how to approximate his recipe but no matter how much I tried it never came out quite the same.
I realized a while back that searching for the recipe for wisdom, for me at least, has been a lot like my dad’s barbeque recipe. From the time I was a very small child, I desperately wanted someone wiser than me to give me their recipe for wisdom. Then I’d have the secrets I needed to navigate this very scary and confusing world.
I received tremendous life skills from my parents, but they were young when they had me and just learning about life themselves. I knew instinctively that they couldn’t give me what I felt was missing within me. Thus, began my external search for wisdom.
I felt a lot like the baby bird hatchling in the childhood classic story, Are You My Mother? In the story the baby bird’s mother was gone when he hatched, and he didn’t know what she looked like. After a while, when no one came, he jumped from the nest in search of her. He asked a kitten, a hen, a dog, and even a large bulldozer (he called a “Snort”), “Are you my mother?”
As a pre-teen, in my search for wisdom, I turned to my peers. “Do you have wisdom?” But they didn’t know anything more than I did. In fact, often when all I wanted was an earnest discussion on the subject, they looked at me blankly as if I were from another planet. Sometimes they’d ask me instead if I wanted to go to a movie or an amusement park.
I turned to the Bible for wisdom, but nothing spoke to me. The language felt old, dead, and stilted. I turned instead to our Methodist church for answers. I thought about talking to the head minister. But I dismissed that idea almost as soon as I had it, since he seemed like such a cold and judgmental person.
I finally decided to talk to our new associate minister. He was much younger and seemed more open-hearted. He listened intently as I poured out my fervent request for a download of wisdom. He paused and said he couldn’t depart any great wisdom to me because he was still searching for it himself. He said other adults wouldn’t be able to help me either because the search for wisdom is a solo journey. I would have to take this journey for myself. Well, that definitely wasn’t the answer I wanted!
For a while I got depressed. But then I bucked myself up and decided, since I was on my own in this world, Atheism made the most sense to me. I made the mistake of mentioning that to a few of my classmates. Well, as you can imagine that didn’t go well in the “Buckle on the Bible Belt.” All that it did was open me to ridicule at church and at school. People would walk up to me in the hall at school and whisper in my ear that I was going to burn in hell. Or they would look at me in pity and tell me I should believe in God, “just in case,” so I could get into heaven. Their ridicule and pity didn’t affect me the way that type of spiritual bullying has for so many others. This treatment only confirmed that their brand of spirituality wasn’t for me. It steeled my decision to be an Atheist. Ironically, what helped me through this time was the saying attributed to Jesus, “Forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
In college, I became a member of the student chapter of the American Atheist Society. At least I had found a peer group I could relate to. But then I began to see the inside of the parent organization and its international leader. I saw a lot of hatred toward religion. I saw hero worship of the leader. There was a certain way we were “supposed” to believe to be “true Atheists.” The irony of that wasn’t lost on me! Although I still felt like I was Atheist I broke away from that group.
After all my search I still felt something was missing internally. I didn’t know what, but on hindsight I now see that my quest for what was missing turned into a lifelong journey of inward search through the intellectual, psychological, symbolic, and mythological realms.
I became my own subject as I studied my personal patterns of thoughts, behaviors, and actions in relation to myself, other people, my family of origin, culture, and humanity. I looked at the common threads between world philosophies, other religions, and ethical traditions.
It was during this time that I encountered the work of Joseph Campbell, his book The Power of Myth, and his concept of the heroic journey as a personal narrative. The story of evolving heroism is what helped me place all of what had been swirling around inside me into a context of wholeness that made sense to me. It also helped clarify why wisdom meant so much to me and how important it is to my personal evolution.
I now realize from over 60 years of external and internal search, that wisdom can never be spoon fed to us. Others can guide us along the way or give us a general system to follow. But ultimately, we must do the deep dive within ourselves to decide whether that system of thought, spiritual perspective, or philosophical approach to life works for us. It is only through this trial and error that I believe we fully live our wisdom from inside out.
Like my dad, who took a little pinch of this and a large handful of that, I am creating my own secret sauce of wisdom. My brand of wisdom is an eclectic mix of life experience, ancient philosophies, spiritual traditions, Jungian psychology, modern day mysticism, and integrating nuggets of wisdom from others who inspired me along the way. Since there is more wisdom than anyone can possibly experience in a lifetime, I expect I will be a continual seeker of wisdom till the day I die.
I now appreciate the baton of wisdom the associate minister at my church handed me so long ago as a teenager. He spoke deep truth, even though I didn’t want to hear it. When we dedicate ourselves to a wisdom path and listen to our personal truth, we each naturally create our own “wisdom secret sauce” with an exquisite flavor uniquely our own.