One of the most important roles of our intelligence is thinking, and one of the most important roles of our thinking is conceptualization. One great danger lies in conceptualization - the moment we conceptualize something (or someone), we label them instead of directly experiencing them and have an illusion as if we understood them. The truth is that there is a fundamental gap between knowing about something (or someone) and knowing them.
Let me give a couple of examples that show the fundamental difference between conceptualization and direct experience. The menu at a restaurant is conceptualization, and actually eating foods that are in this menu is direct experience. Nobody can satisfiy their hunger just by looking at the menu. Similarly, hno matter ow many books someone has read about love, they will never know love as long as they have no experience of loving someone else or being loved by someone else.
The fundamental difference between conceptualization and direct experience must be apparent in these two exmaples. But the confusion between the two often occurs, especially when the conceptualization in question is very abstract and elaborate. Then a map is confused with a territory.
This confusion becomes especially subtle when it comes to religions (especially their mystical traditions) and spirituality for spiritual direct experience constitutes their very foundation and it refuses conceptualization.
Let's take another example. If we conceptualize Hasidism by defining it as Jewish mysticism, we only know about it, but we don't know it without directly experiencing it, nor will this knowledge become life wisdom.
The so-called academic research of religions, including Judaism, and spirituality, is especially problematic as it excluse personal spiritual direct experience as part of its methodology. How can we truly understand love just by reading and talking about it without directly experiencing it? Such knowledge won't be able to make our life truly meaningful, either.
If someone thinks that the intellect is the highest human faculty, they are completely wrong. There are two types of what the intellect can't comprehend - what is below the intellect, such as superstitions and some dogmas, and what transcends it. Spiritual direct experience transcends the intellect.
Knowledge becomes wisdom only if it's applied to our daily life as direct experience. Words that are based on direct experience can even transcend their very limitation. The truth is that the Chabad branch of Hasidism uses language to transcend the intellect. This is like using diamond to polish itself.
PS: This post is a bold attempt to conceptualize the inherent problem of conceptualization with no direct experience.