BY URVIL JAMES VILLARUEL

Jan. 14, 2016, Toronto, ON - Read as much as you can; do as much as you can. 

As defined, a mystic is a person who stresses the importance of intuition and direct experience with regards to the divine. In this case, the divine wouldn’t necessitate something super natural; rather, something both natural and super in its nature.

A scholar, on the other hand, is defined as a specialist within a particular branch of study. They are the academic, the intellectual and the savant. For them, acquiring knowledge is the epitome of their practice.

If you begin to take a look at the varying "great" personalities and free-thinkers, you will begin to realize that each of these "great" individuals was simply a merger between them both - the mystic who also found themselves out to be the scholar. They studied, they examined, and they explored through the consciousness of their own direct experience; not just through scripture alone. Now, I’m not saying to go out and become a great personality, or to use any of this aforementioned mystic-scholar-ism to get very far in life. No, I simply implore you to begin to question as to why it is that we place so much emphasis on others, when both the knowledge and direct experience are there for us to be had? Finding the guru, not outside of yourself, but within.

The fire is only as hot as it is in our minds. It is only by touching it do we ever really know for sure. Thus, knowledge is to be married with experience, and through that knowledge of the experience do we ever find true wisdom.