For much of my life, I justified my worth to myself partially by establishing intellectual capability. I learned facts and skills. I grew my knowledge of various subjects, and learned a foreign language. I earned a high GPA in college, worked hard to excel in my career, and became “the best” I could be at various activities. Eventually I had a long list of intellectual accomplishments to present to myself to prove my worth to myself. It worked for a while.
A few years ago in my spiritual walk, I made a profound personal discovery: in the Big Picture, my intellectual accomplishments are largely unimportant! Sure they have some effect in the physical- and of course there is in fact certain spiritual value to my having achieved them. But in the Big Picture, from the view of larger Reality which supersedes this entire physical reality, my knowledge, skills, and abilities actually mean very little. They are not the reason why I am here.
Metaphorically, I realized that my skills are like a video game character’s skills: they have value where assigned, and perform functions within the video game, but are in fact almost meaningless in the larger reality, where I already transcend that paltry knowledge and crude physical functionality.
I found that what is important, in fact, is intent: striving to have the truest quality of intent- that means genuinely loving intent- in all the choices that I make. Put crudely but succinctly: love is more important than knowledge.
Metaphorically speaking, you and I are living in a video game. (See Tom Campbell’s work.) This is a “virtual” reality: an experience constructed within consciousness. When we die, we don’t take our character’s video game skills with us. The character’s body dies. That’s OK because fundamentally we don’t need the skills, or the body.
What we do take with us, rather than the character’s skills, is our own ability to actually play the game with higher quality intent (intent that is more loving and less fearful). We learn how to actually be more loving and less fearful. Every time we play, we get a little better at seeing past the illusions and making loving choices. Every time we play, we conquer some fear.
Our knowledge does not survive in its current limited form, nor does it need to. However our wisdom, our genuine love- that survives forever!
A Walk in the Physical 