Wisdom replaces ignorance in our minds when we realize that happiness does not lie in the accumulation of more and more pleasant feelings, that gratifying craving does not bring us a feeling of wholeness or completion.It simply leads to more craving and more aversion.When we realize in our own experience that happiness comes not from reaching out but from letting go, not from seeking pleasurable experience but from opening up in the moment to what is true, this transformation of understanding then frees the energy of compassion within us.Our minds are no longer bound up in pushing away pain or holding on to pleasure.Compassion becomesthe natural response of an open heart.
Nicholas of Cusa described human creativity as a participation in the act of God creating the cosmos. God creates the cosmos, we create the microcosmos, the "human world". As we do our daily work, make our homes and marriages, raise our children, and fabricate a culture, we are all being creative... The ultimate work is an engagement with soul, responding to the demands of fate and tending the details of life as it presents itself. We may get to a point where our external labors and the OPUS of the soul are one and the same, inseparable. Then the satisfactions of our work will be deep and long lasting, undone neither by failures nor by flashes of success.