Marketing is part art, part science and part luck as discussed in my very first blog. There is another set of three principles that great marketers also implicitly understand. Mastering wisdom, truth and love is about discernment and balance: discernment on how to use of these skills, and balance on when to use these skills. Like everything in life there is a delicate care needed on procuring, honing and mastering these skills without tipping the scales by spending too much time in any one.
Power is just that: the ability to hold sway over another or a situation. Power is the result of wisdom, truth and love manifested. Power is a delicate thing that should be held in the highest respect as it is all too easily abused. Finally, power is an illusion. It is only what others attribute to your specific use of knowledge, truth or love. The true nature of power depends on what others perceive and allow, while the true nature of wisdom, truth and love is wholly within your own hands to use or misuse as you desire.
Wisdom
Wisdom is more than just knowledge. Wisdom is “knowing” with the added care of “understanding”. Almost anyone can memorize facts or “feel into” situations. This is not wisdom. Like all things earned, wisdom is a precious gift you can only give to yourself through time, experience and the drive to observe, learn, analyze, understand and articulate history, conversation, situations… life. Wisdom is an unquenchable fire in the hearts of those who seek truth and love. For without wisdom, truth and love are hollow. Without the discernment, the knowing, of worth, of right from wrong, of good from bad, of just from unjust, of compassion from animosity, truth and love can be misguided. Wisdom holds not only the secrets of the universe, but also the secrets of self, of destiny, of purpose.
Truth
Have you ever talked to a 5-year old when they are trying to hide something? They will answer your direct question but not the implied question. They usually won’t out-right lie, but they will evade the truth. So, you get caught in a game of 20 questions to get to the truth. You would think that with age we would forgo this trait of selective truth telling, but the unfortunate observation is that is not the case. All too often we suffer from selective amnesia. When asked why, most will say that people aren’t ready for the unfiltered truth: “You can’t handle the truth!” Even Hollywood movies like Liar Liar with Jim Carey show (to ludicrous extreme) what unfiltered truth could do to a person. I personally believe that the problem isn’t with truth, it is with compassion and tolerance masked as protecting the feelings of others and a desire to withhold the truth. Truth usually has three perspectives: the one of the person talking, the one of the person listening and the actual one of the impartial person observing. Without truth, there can be no trust and without trust there can be no real love or wisdom. Truth is the glue that holds wisdom and love in a divinely whole threefold flame.
Love
Is there any word more misused, over-used, and abused than the word “love”? I have found that there are three camps (see earlier Power of 3 blog) here as well: those you use it too much, those who don’t use it enough and those who treat it with the reverence it deserves. Yes, I do believe that love is cathartic and a truly unique and indescribable emotion. With the right availability of other resources it can also heal all wounds. The challenge comes with the typical application of the two polar extremes: if you love everything then nothing is special and if you love nothing then you can’t even love yourself. Those who casually throw about the word love don’t recognize the power they are wielding with each application and those who rarely (if ever) use it do equal harm. Psychologists have separated love into the categories: affection, friendship, romance and unconditional love. Maybe we should use these words instead of love as the shorthand. Love is the prize shared by wisdom and truth. As stated before it is wisdom that separates the level and truth that presents the emotion. Without the balance of these then love is nothing more than a loaded 9mm in the hands of a 5-year old.
Balance
I catch myself harping a lot on the subject of balance, to the point where I wonder if I’m preaching. I don’t do this intentionally. I do believe that too much of anything can be as bad as too little of anything and that we need to understand the boundaries to appreciate the whole. We as a society, as a species, as a people of the light striving for ascension should appreciate the dualities of everyday life: the longevity and fragility of the planet, the drive for community as well as solitude, the belief in socialism versus the reality of capitalism, the desire for love with the discernment of wisdom and the trust of truth. If all of us can master wisdom, truth and love, we can build a new world; a world to model for all of time the joy in a single child’s unbridled laughter.
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