Know Thyself: What it Entails

Know Thyself.
What does it even mean?
It has many applications.

It pertains to the living of an examined life.
A life of proactive self-reflection and self-observation…
In order to cultivate a more intimate relationship with the self.
Yielding better quality of life AND better dealings with others.

It pertains to knowing your soul.
Understanding that you are a human AND a Spirit… aka, a spirit having a human experience.

It pertains to familiarizing yourself with who you are and who you are not.

It pertains to knowing your limits as well as your endowments.

It pertains to an existential humility that YOU, as a self, are a “situated” self.

You exist in a context, or more accurately, a set of contexts.

And ultimately, as one among 8 billion fellow human beings, you can’t even imagine the vast range of other peoples’ experiences and outlooks.

There are so many worlds within this one world.
And our own is only ONE among vast, sweeping, multitudes.

We need to remember that bigger picture if we are to know who we are.

This context of yours matters in the shaping of who you are.
AND it shapes all that you do NOT know.

Socrates was big on insisting we need to learn to start taking as a given all that we do not know.
So that we’re not so smug and over-confident in our beliefs and opinions.

So much exists that you have zero idea about. Could not possibly have any idea about.

And so given this, Know Yourself becomes a call to stay humble and aware that there is a huge array of things in this world about which you “don’t even know that you don’t even know.”

Know Yourself becomes a call to stay curious and questioning. And to continue on the path of self-knowledge as an on-going process, never a destination arrived at.

To Know Thyself, therefore, is about so much more than doing a thorough excavation of the raw materials, the predilections, and the proclivities of the self.

It’s every bit as much about a scanning of your context and backdrops.

It’s every bit as much about a reorienting to the truth that you are “socially positioned.”

And becoming attuned to BOTH your inner game and your ongoing effect upon the world around you.

Love + Oneness,
Naomi