The Virtue of Experience
Experience, unlike patience or valor, is not traditionally regarded as a virtue, and yet it is the well from which all other virtues spring. Defined as “morally good behavior, character or quality, the good that comes from something, an advantage or benefit.” Such qualities can certainly be taught, but they are developed and put into practice only through experience. To seek a variety of experiences correlates directly with cultivation of self-awareness and wisdom. How else can we come to know ourselves except by experience?
Hermetic wisdom does not view our human personality as a pure expression of our true self. Rather, the personality is a vehicle through which we experience soul growth. Different personalities generate different experiences, all of which lead to developing specific forms of wisdom over time. Wisdom is not a singular quality that arrives in a flash; to become wise is to live through enough learning experiences that it can begin cultivation. Plato believed that well-being (eudaimonia) is the highest aim of humanity, and that virtues (aretê: ‘excellence’) are the skills we must build to master it. We develop that excellence through the experience of trial and error, or from a Kabbalistic perspective, through expansion and contraction.
Kabbalah tells us there are two elements of life - light and the vessel. Light is all the energy and experience that flows toward you, and the vessel is your capacity to receive and hold it. Our desire for experience is the vessel itself, and as we live our lives we expand our vessel. This means we have the capacity to hold more light, more expansive experience, and so our range of expression grows. The experiences we crave are full of information about the direction our soul wants to grow in, so Kabbalah encourages us to pay attention to our desires as suppressing them shrinks our vessel. By contrast, experience of loss and overwhelm breaks it, which is known as divine contraction.
In this sense, life is less a test of moral perfection than a curriculum of conscious vessel expansion.
Each incident of contracting experience - failure, grief, heartache, disappointment - point to a specific area of expansion the vessel needs before it can hold more light. The personality we take on in each incarnation comes with a unique set of desires, which create the experiences we need to facilitate this process. As our capacity to receive and hold more light expands, more desires are fulfilled. We can consciously expand our vessel by seeking out experiences beyond our comfort zone, doing spiritual work and having relationships.
Even ordinary moments of everyday frustration are opportunities for this expansion. If we train ourselves to look for the light in everything, every action we take will bring us closer to our soul’s full potential. Kabbalah does not differentiate spiritual development from daily living, and the accumulation of many small deeds creates ongoing vessel expansion. The most important action we can take is managing our reactivity. To remain non-reactive and seek the light in every moment is to fast-track expansion of our vessel, allowing more of the experiences we desire to pour in.
Over time, we realize that experience itself is initiatory. Every relationship, every disappointment, every risk taken or avoided is shaping us. In this sense, life is less a test of moral perfection than a curriculum of conscious vessel expansion. The soul does not incarnate to avoid pain or to remain comfortable within the boundaries of certainty, it incarnates to have experiences so that wisdom can emerge from direct participation in reality. What we call maturity is often just the gradual recognition that every experience we have carries with it a hidden invitation to expand our consciousness.
To seek the light in all things is a highly disciplined spiritual practice of personal alchemy. Both Hermeticism and Kabbalah tell us that every contraction contains the seed of expansion, every difficult experience conceals a greater capacity waiting to be born. The soul evolves through contact with life, and virtue becomes not a static moral achievement, but a living expression of gradually developed awareness. Experience facilitates this development, which makes it the highest virtue of all.