How to "Know Thyself"

Many of my conversation include a question about knowing yourself. Something like, “Is it possible to know thyself?” or put another way, “How does one begin to know themselves?”

Know Thyself?

I asked: “How about self-awareness or this maxim of Know thyself? Is that possible?”

Human reality is always stretching: explained Clearly, there’s constantly shifting. “I’m a philosopher today, maybe not tomorrow. So how do I become? How do I know myself? If I’m just sticking to the label of a philosopher?” It’s important to understand who were becoming… It is important to ask - what “self” we are trying to be aware of; since we are always in flux or always changing.

Who am I?

“Only the shallow know themselves.” - Oscar Wilde

I recently read the above Oscar Wilde quote in Original Self by the psychotherapist Thomas Moore.

More writes,

During my years of doing therapy, it was not unusual for a client to say, “If only I could finally understand myself and figure out what I’m doing, I’d be a free person.” One of the great unconscious beliefs of our time is our trust in the mind. We try to understand every fragment…, celebrating discoverers, inventor, and researchers, and we apply same passion to ourselves.

What if most of our “self-understanding” is hollow and superficial? What if we don’t really know ourselves at all? Moore observed that “I was struck by the hollowness of most self-understanding” in therapy.

Usually, we think of the self as an ego contained in the skin of personality, but a deeper self, a more original self, lies outside the time and space of our personal lives. “What was your face before you were born? the Zen Master asks.” According to Moore, this is an excellent question because it has no definite answer.

Thought Experiment

Do all ways of knowing require understanding?

• Take a few minutes to listen to a great piece of music.
• Stare at a beautiful painting for an extended period of time.

Does one need to understand (music or art) to appreciate it truly?

Ancient Aphorisms

The notion of self-awareness dates all the way back to Ancient Greece.

“True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us.”

Similarly, the nineteenth-century philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche noted: “How can man know himself? He is a thing obscure and veiled. If the hare has seven skins, man can cast from him seventy times seven skins and not be able to say: Here you truly are; there is skin no more.”

What if authentic self-understanding requires the courage to accept the idea that we don’t actually know ourselves?

Final Thoughts

“Maybe that’s enlightenment enough: to know that there is no final resting place of the mind; no moment of smug clarity. Perhaps wisdom.. is realizing how small I am, and unwise, and how far I have yet to go.”

The truth is, we may never truly know ourselves, our friends, or our spouses, but we may eventually realize that it is enough to love ourselves and others without knowing what they’re all about. According to Moore, “Unconditional love means that we don’t love on the condition that we understand.”

Thank you for reading.