The Seven Pillars of Wisdom 

The core spiritual principles that define HAGT (Harrison’s Applied Game Theory)  are known as the “Seven Pillars” or “The Seven Pillars of Wisdom. They are derived from ideas s I first heard about through my Zen and Mystic Taoism studies. These Seven Pillars are not rigid or dogmatic yet they do create a framework for daily practice or spiritual discipline.

I have found a daily discipline of this sort to give my life the necessary.

 

The Seven Pillars of Wisdom are Powerful Tools For Building Self-awareness and Creativity. They are: 

1. Meditation, contemplation
2. introspection
3. Exploring your cognitive biases*, and logical fallacies*
4. Doing what needs to be done
5. Living through love while serving other
6. Game-based thinking*
7. Singing, dancing, laughing communicating clearly, and being silent.

 

Each of these pillars of the Wisdom Practice requires wakefulness and a sense of focus into the many subtle elements that comprise the human experience. This is a complete awareness of your surroundings and your relationship to those surroundings. And then there is the full understanding of many specific qualities such as love, empathy, morality, creativity, compassion, or intellect.

The genesis of this aspect of the work was greatly influenced by Howard Earl Gardner, an American developmental psychologist, who created the idea of specific, specialized forms of intelligence.

 

 

Gardner listed them as eight primary “key” multiple intelligences including;

• Linguistic intelligence (“word smart”)
• Logical-mathematical intelligence (“number/reasoning smart”)
• Spatial intelligence (“picture smart”)
• Bodily-Kinesthetic intelligence (“body smart”)
• Musical intelligence (“music smart”)
• Interpersonal intelligence (“people smart”)
• Intrapersonal intelligence (“self smart”)
• Naturalist intelligence (“nature smart”)

I embraced and expanded these “intelligences” to include morality, sexuality, existential, and pragmatism. I prefer to call what Gardner named intelligences as “consciousness” or “Understandings.”

I name them in this way rather than intelligences as Gardner does, only because the word intelligence is often seen in relation specifically to the intellect, and in a Wisdom Practice to be aware or understand something means so much more than just an intellectual awareness. It is Beginners Mind.

 

 

Understanding What Needs to be Understood

Part of how you will grow as an individual is through understanding. When I speak of understanding, I am speaking of something very specific, not the way that the word “understanding” is often used. I am speaking of having  a complete integration of what “Is.”

Within my own spiritual wisdom practice, I have found certain forms of understanding to be core to the process of spiritual inquiry in the post-digital age.  Most of the Understandings are primarily sensory in nature and though an individual may be inclined towards one form of understanding over another, each form needs to be fully explored in relation to one’s daily Wisdom Practice. Doing what needs to be done in the way we have discussed, is part of a Zen teaching called “Chop Wood, Carry Water”. Here one understands what needs to be Understood and does what needs to be done.

With few exceptions, each of the “Understandings” relates to how we think. All of these Understandings involve various unique approaches to thought, and some Understandings have very weak connections to each other while others have very strong correlations.  These various connections form patterns. For example, a practitioner who is comfortable and skilled in creating friendly environments in social situations may not necessarily be more compassionate or empathetic than one who is shy and uncommunicative.  In the same way, the practitioner who takes time to master a skill like sweeping a floor may learn to solve a complex problem through a different way of thinking. Thus, an individual with a clear, profound, and fully developed Understanding in one area may appear to be slow in other forms of Understanding.

A wise person will have the ability to leverage these understandings, patterns of thought, words, and behavior as needed.

A visionary thinker in this concept of patterns is Christopher Alexander, an architect and urban planner who has written extensively on this “pattern language.” Pattern language shows up often when developing strategies, tactics, and solutions through HAGT.

 

Below are links to articles related to spirituality, the Wisdom Path, and HAGT. Click on this graphic above the article to open it.

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About Lewis Harrison

Lewis is the creator of Harrison’s Applied Game Theory is a business futurist, author, speaker, seminar leader, and Results-Oriented Life Coach. He has a passion for helping individuals, and organizations, solve problems. He has a passion for personal growth, self-improvement, applied game theory, and Transmodern Zen.

Contact him at LewisCoaches@gmail.com (He will respond to you personally)

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