8 How Do I Know My Self?
The realization had hit Caleb like the proverbial ton of bricks. For years, Caleb had been getting hints from several quarters that he had reached high time to grow up. His mom had been the most vocal, until recently when Caleb cut her off. Girlfriends here and there, or actually ex-girlfriends as it always occurred, had more or less said the same thing as his mom. Caleb had heard something similar from a school advisor or two and even from the supervisor at his former workplace. Caleb’s reaction had always been a defensive not my problem. After all, what exactly did they expect Caleb to do? But then one morning, Caleb’s denials had come crashing down on his own head, for the first time opening his mind’s eye to the depth and breadth of his own problems.
Awareness
Psychological maturation and spiritual growth involve seeing your mind, soul, spirit, and self become clearer, purer, and more integrated, authoritative, purposeful, peaceful, and powerful. Growth and maturation, though, generally take a degree of introspection, discipline, and correction. Overcoming a division within oneself, rejecting an obsession or addiction, and adopting the better thought, persona, and practice all require first recognizing the division, obsession, or addiction, and the better approach. Awareness of oneself is thus generally a prerequisite to growth, correction, and maturation. Reforming or transforming is hard without sensing the old life to relinquish and new life to take up, the old self to let die and the new self to adopt. One way or another, we must first acknowledge our need for rescue, for transcending our unconscious and condemned self through some reflective conviction. The question is where to get that insight into oneself.
Mirror
A mirror can be a good way to get a view of yourself. Of course, a mirror shows only the outward appearance, plus whatever little one can tell of the inward person from the outward mood or demeanor. Outward appearances may show something of inward conditions but not usually much, at least not directly. Outward appearances may instead deceive. Fruitful inward contemplation may outwardly appear to be inattention, even indolence. Contrarily, true inward lethargy may outwardly appear to be respectful, calm and positive contentment. We can also be quite good with our masks, hiding our inward turmoil or disgust with outward smiles and nods of false affirmation. The even harder part is that our soul can hide not just from others but from ourselves. The ego that rules us and personas through which we act can so far suppress our authentic soul, spirit, and self that we might hardly recognize our true self if it were to emerge. To discern our condition, we need a special kind of mirror, not one that measures outward appearances or even inward identities, those that we put on and off.
Reflection
Reflection is the feature that makes a mirror useful. The mirror itself is nothing but a shiny object. The mirror holds no power in itself. The mirror’s power is instead in us, in the way that we use the image of us that the mirror reflects back to us. The mirror tells us nothing. Our study of the image it reflects back to us holds the power. Our reflection over the reflection is what counts. You can stare into a mirror all you want but learn nothing if you do not direct your attention to the image it reflects, then concentrate your thoughts on the features or anomalies that catch your attention, and then begin to compare and contrast what you see with some model, standard, or expectation you have in mind. The word reflection here has two meanings, both the image that the mirror reflects back and the mental processing of that image with attention, concentration, and analysis. To know yourself, to learn about your psychological and spiritual condition, you need both kinds of reflection, the reliable external stimuli giving you a picture of yourself plus the thoughtful if not rigorous internal analysis of what you’re seeing. To learn about yourself, focus first on the external stimuli, or mirrors, and then on the insightful thought or analysis.
Perception
Mirrors come in many forms. Indeed when you think about it, the whole world becomes a mirror. Interactions with others, for the prime example, are mirrors. The mirror is not just in how others react to you, from which you can learn a lot. The mirror is also in how you react to others, from which you can learn even more. Join a new group, and you’ll learn even more about yourself. Yet people whom we engage are not our only mirrors. Every task, challenge, and opportunity is also a mirror, as conditions respond to us and, more so, we respond to conditions. Take on a new challenge, and you’ll learn about yourself. The more we engage the world, the more it reflects back. If learning about yourself requires some form of engagement with the world, the more ways in which you engage the world, the more different things you may learn. Notice, record, and study your internal reactions to people, places, events, and conditions. Hone your skill at perceiving and studying those reactions. The one who changes the least is the one who notices the least. To grow and mature psychologically and spiritually, you need to strengthen and refine your perception.
Standards
The harder part of psychological or spiritual insight into oneself, though, isn’t gathering the data. You can go through your day collecting all kinds of information about yourself from your responses to interactions. Indeed, that data is what a client brings to a lawyer, psychologist, or counselor, and what a parishioner brings to a pastor or priest. The professional first elicits that data with open-ended questions like How can I help you? and What brings you here? The harder part to personal insight is analyzing the data. Think again of looking in a mirror. Once you’ve comprehended the image, you must begin comparing the image to the groomed self you hope to carry into the day, or to the person whom you saw in the mirror the day before to see if you’ve recovered. You discern the response you should take to the mirrored image from standards you have in mind. Analysis of your image requires constructs, templates, models, experiences, or other frameworks out of which to draw insights. Learning your psychological or spiritual condition proceeds analogically, holding the data you have on yourself up against a construct you have in mind. That’s largely how professionals reason, drawing on both a well of education as in this must be this type and a well of experience as in I’ve seen this before.
Sources
One can find different sources for these constructs within which we learn about ourselves. Personality types are an example. A brief online test will tell you that you are an introvert or extrovert, sensing or feeling, thinking or feeling, or perceiving or judging. Question the reliability of those tests and their value. Your personality may well reflect different attributes in different settings, for instance highly introverted in one setting while highly extroverted in another. And believing that you are introverted rather than extroverted may offer you only rudimentary value. Take personality tests for what they are worth. For time-tested and trustworthy spiritual and psychological insights, you might well prefer the scriptures, collected over a millennium and tested by billions for two more. They are by far the most highly developed, widely distributed, consistently deployed, and historically trusted source for spiritual and psychological insight. The scriptures are the ground on which the modern psyche formed.
Symbolism
To draw fruitfully from any source, though, one must understand its symbolic structure and representations. Meaningful reality necessarily has patterns to it. Without patterns, involving chaos structured into recognizable forms, we would have no meaning. Our insight, though, depends on recognizing the transferability or symbolism of those patterns. One thing is like another. Categories of things emerge from an archetype. Archetypes relate to one another within a cosmic structure. Grasp the basic structure of reality, and one begins to see the generative archetypes and to recognize their symbolic expression in varied situations and things. All thinking and expression is symbolic. Comprehending the symbolic structure behind communicative expressions and forms spurs insight. For the ancient scriptures, modern therapy, or anything else to be a useful source, you should be able to discern the symbolism in your thoughts, actions, events, and conditions. You should be able to see that your thoughts relate to the archetypes. Doing so is a tall order but may be the single greatest key toward self-knowledge. A chapter near the end of this guide further addresses this symbolic structure.
Light
Having both the data on yourself to analyze and the sources and constructs from which to do so, though, are still not enough. The light of transcendent realization must still turn on. Just as the light with which we see comes from outside ourselves, the insight with which we realize also has a transcendent source. You are not making up insights out of your own whole cloth. You are instead receiving them, much as your eye receives the stimulus and images of light. The traditional way of expressing the outside source of insight is to speak of the Spirit’s movement or whisper, the Spirit after all being the personally active agent of the embodied Logos or Word. Never feel as if you must make things up about yourself, coming up with your own thoughts, insights, and resolutions. Don’t try too hard. We are generally untrustworthy sources for our own revelations. Instead, recognize that you are receiving insights, drawing them from a vast well of wisdom. And be sure to draw from the one most-trustworthy source, from the author and source of life himself. Whether you do so by journaling, prayer, meditation, worship, fasting, study, or service is your choice. But seek the light. Don’t pretend to generate it yourself, or another entity not having your best interests may feed it to you. Receive only the light.
Conviction
To know yourself, though, further requires conviction. Without conviction, insights are only suggestions. Insights must land hard for realization to set in. We do not change without conviction, nor do we even know ourselves without conviction. We may receive from some reliable and authoritative source some wonderful, inspiring, applicable, and insightful advice. But as long as we treat it only as advice, we will generally not embrace it, surely not incorporate it effectively into our thinking, actions, identity, and persona. The need for conviction, to truly know yourself, reminds us that data and analysis are insufficient. For conviction, we also need the transcendent light of the Spirit. Placing the transcendent source of wisdom as deep within us, where the Spirit dwells, compels us toward conviction. Conviction is the Spirit’s power to transform through insight into the self, soul, mind, and spirit.
Darkness
Light seeks darkness, turning darkness into light. To know ourselves, we also need to know our darkness. We carry within us not only the positive light of our genuine self, made in the transcendent one’s image, but also the shadow behind the light. We are both darkness and light, conscious and unconscious, ordered and chaotic, both giving and taking of life. We are both good and evil, loving and hating, serving and disserving, healing and injuring. To know yourself, you must know your darkness. We too often assume that ignoring our darkness makes it go away, if we just focus on the light. But avoiding your darkness isn’t the way to turn it into light. Darkness without light remains darkness. And a soul split between darkness and light remains incomplete, inauthentic, and broken. Shining the transcendent light of consciousness, of awareness, into your darkness begins to turn it into light. Seeing and acknowledging your darkness begins to unify and complete the soul. The parts of you that are missing or inadequate have their whole hidden in the darkness. Shine the transcendent light of consciousness into your darkness, and you’ll begin to turn that darkness into the light that will complete your soul.
Apparition
To know yourself also requires recognizing and avoiding apparitions. The moment that we perceive something about ourselves, whether positive or negative, our ego turns that insight into a self-image to usefully project into situations. The process is so instant and automatic that we nearly can’t help it. Pride is in our nature. If the realization is of a positive attribute, we instantly aggrandize it, turning it into more than it is. If the realization is of a negative attribute, we instantly exaggerate or minimize it, depending on our psychological and spiritual needs in our current situation. Our realization becomes an apparition, haunting us with its deceptions. We need a powerful discipline not to turn a self-realization into a disabling phantom. Our ego does not want us to know ourselves because our ego wants to remain in control. Thus, when we discover something about ourselves, the ego claims it as its own, not to grow and mature but instead to manipulate. Beware the ego’s manipulation of any realization you reach about yourself.
Unknown
Do not think, either, that we can know ourselves fully, at least not in this realm. A little self-knowledge can be a valuable thing. Self-knowledge is the beginning of growth. Yet do not exaggerate the little self-knowledge you acquire. Our self-knowledge will always be a small fraction of what we could potentially know about ourselves. The unknown self is far greater than what we can know of ourselves. Indeed, the unknown self is so much greater than what we know of ourselves that one could say that we cannot know ourselves but only know who and what we are not. The self is not to fully know. We wonder in retrospect the source of our new growth, capacities, interests, talents, and skills, but all those things were already present in our unknown self. The large part of you that you do not know is where your potential for growth resides. Life is more a process of self-discovery, of drawing things out of your unknown self that were always there, than a process of adding to who you are. You cannot add to who you are but instead only draw more undiscovered attributes out of yourself. And it isn’t you drawing those things out. The transcendent one is instead getting to experience more of consciousness and realization through you, in the unique way in which the transcendent one constituted you. Know thyself, but respect and value your unknown self even more.
Reflection
On a scale from one to ten, how well do you feel that you know yourself? How would you describe yourself, not your credentials or accomplishments but instead your person, soul, or spirit, to a new acquaintance who asked? What person or situation has recently shown you something about yourself that you hadn’t realized? What did they show you? List three ways in which you could newly engage your world to collect more data about who you are from how you react. What models, frameworks, constructs, insights, or standards do you use to discern your own attributes? To whom or with what are you comparing and contrasting yourself? How reliable, rich, deep, and nuanced are your standards? What or who brings about your greatest conviction? Can you recall a recent conviction you felt deeply that caused you to reconsider who you are and how you’re constituted? Did you find your ego quickly distorting that honest conviction into something of personal pride and use? What shadow within yourself have you been avoiding recognizing? In what value do you hold, and with what respect do you regard, your unknown self?
Key Points
Consciousness and awareness involve discovering your attributes.
To know ourselves, we need a mirror of some sort to collect data.
Reflection involves both perceiving our image and studying our image.
We perceive ourselves through interaction with people and conditions.
We analyze ourselves by comparing ourselves to models and standards.
Choose reliable, sensitive, and enduring models and standards.
Recognize symbols in your visions, dreams, and imagination.
Data and analysis still need a transcendent source of light for insight.
Knowing oneself also requires conviction, not just comprehension.
To know oneself also requires discerning one’s unconscious dark side.
Avoid allowing ego to turn self-knowledge into prideful apparitions.
Recognize the depth and power of your unknown and unknowable self.