#self-knowledge

[thepersonalwords]

Writing allows a person to explore both physical reality and the internal workings of their mind. Writing places us in touch with our unconsciousness. Writing purposefully, applying the white heat of self-examination, can act to transform oneself. Writing allows a person with sufficient resolve to anneal their basic constitution, make their mind more flexible.

Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

[publicatiosui]

According to Michel Serres, the only modern question is: what is it you don’t want to know about yourself?

-- Adam Phillips

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Charlie Chaplin Once Said....

“As I began to love myself I found that anguish and emotional suffering are only warning signs that I was living against my own truth. Today, I know, this is Authenticity.

As I began to love myself I understood how much it can offend somebody if I try to force my desires on this person, even though I knew the time was not right and the person was not ready for it, and even though this person was me. Today I call this Respect.

As I began to love myself I stopped craving for a different life, and I could see that everything that surrounded me was inviting me to grow. Today I call this Maturity.

As I began to love myself I quit stealing my own time, and I stopped designing huge projects for the future.

Today, I only do what brings me joy and happiness, things I love to do and that make my heart cheer, and I do them in my own way and in my own rhythm. Today I call this Simplicity.

As I began to love myself I freed myself of anything that is no good for my health – food, people, things, situations, and everything that drew me down and away from myself. At first I called this attitude a healthy egoism. Today I know it is Love of Oneself.

As I began to love myself I quit trying to always be right, and ever since I was wrong less of the time.Today I discovered that is Modesty.

As I began to love myself I recognized that my mind can disturb me and it can make me sick. But as I connected it to my heart, my mind became avaluable ally. Today I call this connection Wisdom of the Heart.

We no longer need to fear arguments,confrontations or any kind of problems with ourselves or others. Even stars collide, and out of their crashing, new worlds are born. Today I know: This is Life!”

[crystalsenergy]

the danger of (focusing only on) the Mind

in difficult moments

The mind has a tendency towards defense,

and with defense, being connected to this mechanism, in moments when we face some kind of threat, fear, or difficulty, the mind focuses on seeing the negative.

Since it feels that it is important to protect itself from everything, it soon understands that you must be on the defensive.

This is why pessimism tends to arise.

For in moments when something negative appears to deal with, the mind immediately wants to take us to defense.

It's as if the negative situation is, for the mind, a confirmation that everything is negative and that only evil exists. Hence the pessimism.

However, because it is an exaggerated state of defense, the mind falls into the traps of sadness, melancholy, aversion to opening up to others, generating anguish and melancholy.

Focusing on the heart, intuition, and feelings can save us from this. <3

For instead of insecurity, we will find some internal support and assistance. Instead of the inner voice saying that nothing is reliable, by relying on your heart and yourself, you can feel confidence in yourself.

It is important to remember that the more these things happen, the more the human mind deals with crystallized thoughts of pessimism, closing off from the world, defense, anger, and the need for isolation, precisely because it believes that life is only this.

Remember: you are not your state; states come and go, especially intense states that demonstrate phases of your life!

You are more than that. You are stronger than your own mind!

After all, it is only a part of you.

And the mind, lies!

[gennsoup]

Man indeed! How arrogant! How ignorant! Woman would be as correct, but I'll settle for humanity. And it strikes me that the quality humanity stands in need of most is true intelligence and self-knowledge.

Keri Hulme, One Whale, Singing

[cerberus253]

Damn, ain't that way too real.

From "Anima and Animus - Eternal Partners from the Unconscious"- By Eternalised on YouTube

[lesewut]

γνῶθι σεαυτόν ("Know thyself!")

Sijakovic, Bogoljub “The Presence of Transendece- Essays on Facing the Other through Holiness, History and Text.” Published 2013 in Los Angeles by Sebastian Press, Western American Diocese of the Serbian Orthodox Church in collaboration with The Institute for Theological Research of the Faculty of Orthodox Theology of the University in Belgrade.

As the title emphasizes, the book deals with "the presence of transcendence", the absence of which is so acutely felt throughout the rest of our world, that often seems disoriented and senseless. In Sijakovic's philosophical-theological conception, history plays a very important role.

As a relatively sceptical person, I often find revealing argumentations in countries of the world, that define history as a part of suffering (in Western Europe history is thought in terms of making -> Historical Achievements), like we can find in the Balkan (14th Chapter: A Critique of Balkanistic Discourse: Constribution to the phenomenology of Balkan "Otherness") . History and the interpretation is a huge and exciting topic, sometimes it is almost forgotten, how long past historical events are still instrumentalized and influencing our live :

"History is the battleground of our existence. It is that dimension of reality that demands our constant attending because it is both an indispensible constituent of our identity and a playground of virtually unlimited possibilities for deciption. Those who are powerful write the narratives that fill our history books. They "explain" to the rest of us all the "whats" and "whys" in history."

With the help of theology and philosophy, it is possible to reconstruct the past instructively. Beside sorting the facts and offering appropriate accounts, we need to know ourselves and our "nature" , to learn how to react and respond adequately, as we have a responsibility on the interpretation, as it can advance to identification. However, the philosophical aspiration to comprehend the "reality" as a whole, is a very ancient idea. Historical science is complex and there is no object of history completely independet from historical knowledge (T. Litt: "The theory of historical knowledge is simultaneously the theory of historical reality, vice versa." Cf. "Geschichtswissenschaften und Geschichtsphilosophie"). Also the concept of history decided what is to be an object of history, which is again determined by the conceptualization of history, especially by the major interpretative concepts, such as "longue durée" (Braudel) ; "episteme" (Foucault) "unsurpassable horizon" (Satre) ; "Paradigm" (Kuhn). There are many other concepts of interpretation of historical "facts" (there is no objective history, it is always about our understanding and explaining), interesting is also the theory of Nietzsche, who uses the perspectivists approach to history in order to stand against both the positivsts ideal of objectivity and the teleological historical constructs of Hegel ("Weltgeist") and Eduard von Hartmann.

Requirements for the Historian are also compared and interlinked with the social power (my recommendation by Popper: "The Open Society"): History of humanity is the history of the political power. And also Foucault connects the narrative of the Historian with the ritual of power, as those terms are congenital for a long time, the history of the mighty is tying people legally to power, the speech of the power that establishes order. "It is the fascination generated by the glory of reknowned people and deeds: The light of law and the radiance of glory are the functional principles of history [Foucault "Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the College de France, 1977 - 78]. Both law and glory issue forth from power, and power issues forth from war. Also an important role of historical science is the formation of the identity of a given community, so it cannot be "over-valued" (in the sense of national identity).

So what is true and correct? It is very difficult, as historical knowledge is always a self-knowing and in the historical science, the self-understanding of man is manifested:

"The ends that he follows and the image of himself are discerned by man in the mirror of history. That mirror is held for us, as she calls us to memory and remembrance (Burkard Liebsch "Probeleme einer genealogischen Kritik der Erinnerung: Anmerkungen zu Hegel, Nietzsche und Foucault") , by the muse Clio whose mother is the goddess of memory, Mnemosyne. He who memorizes and remembers- he knows himself."

So it is just logical, that Sijakovic is also highlighting: “The Anthropological meaning of self-knowledge: Toward the Apollonian precept "Know Thyself!"

But also other cornerstones of Sijakovics view are presented, like the confrontation of the human-being in any forms of communication and continuing processing aims at truth and authenticity, which will never end in accomplishment. But maybe in a less aggressive world?

Just a little throw-in, because very informative are also Sijakovics speculations of the “Metaphysics of Light” the theories about “The Paradigmatic and Tautegoric Nature of Poetry”

[oxigenar]

English Version | Please do not ask me not to be myself.

There are times when despair hits and I want to scream   “WHY DOES NOBODY HELP ME? DON’T THEY SEE I AM HURT?” I always needed to deal with my pains alone. From simple headaches to emotional and physical pain (not only those caused by others, but if I also caused it myself then nothing more fair, right?) I am alone. I have always been. But now I am lonely in a foreign language, In…

[dakakaruna]

Week 4 - Daka's Message : Progressing in Your Practice

Become a Patron of Homoerotic Tantra℠:Mascul-IN-Touch℠ on Patreon! Click here: Become a Patron! An Official Site of Homoerotic Tantra:Mascul-IN-Touch℠ This is Daka’s Message for the Coming Week of Meditation & Reflection May your meditation blossom like a spring garden!   Daka’s Message: As we conclude Week 4 and begin our fifth week of Meditation and Reflection, I’d like to provide you with…

[bgheal]

[dreamy-conceit]

Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.

— Alan Watts, Life magazine, April 21, 1961

[quotelr]

Yes it’s me, I myself, what I turned out to be, (…) I’m the one here in myself, it’s me. (…) Whatever I was, whatever I wasn’t—it’s all in what I am. Whatever I wanted, whatever I didn’t want—all of this has shaped me. Whatever I loved, or stopped loving—in me it’s the same nostalgia (Álvaro de Campos)

Fernando Pessoa, A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe: Selected Poems

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Anyone who has ever been compelled to think about it — anyone, for example, who has ever been in love — knows that the one face that one can never see is one’s own face. 

One’s lover — or one’s brother, or one’s enemy — sees the face you wear, and this face can elicit the most extraordinary reactions. We do the things we do and feel what we feel essentially because we must — we are responsible for our actions, but we rarely understand them. It goes without saying, I believe, that if we understood ourselves better, we would damage ourselves less. But the barrier between oneself and one’s knowledge of oneself is high indeed. There are so many things one would rather not know! 

We become social creatures because we cannot live any other way. But in order to become social, there are a great many other things that we must not become, and we are frightened, all of us, of these forces within us that perpetually menace our precarious security. Yet the forces are there: we cannot will them away. All we can do is learn to live with them. And we cannot learn this unless we are willing to tell the truth about ourselves, and the truth about us is always at variance with what we wish to be. The human effort is to bring these two realities into a relationship resembling reconciliation. 

~James Baldwin  ::  (Book: The Price of the Ticket)

[Philo Thoughts]

[compassionmattersmost]

Verse 2: The Deathless Ones — Insights from Ramana Maharshi

“Deathless are they who know the Self. Those who know intense fear of death seek refuge only at the feet of the Lord who has neither death nor birth. Dead to themselves and their possessions, can the thought of death occur to them again? Deathless are they.”— Ramana Maharshi, Forty Verses on Reality In the silent expanse of existence, a profound truth emerges: those who truly know themselves are…

[allthedesiredusernamesaretaken]

" The more I read, the more I acquire, the more certain I am that I know nothing. "

- Voltaire

[quietflorilegium]

“She felt as if her soul had been liberated from its terrible conflict; she was no longer wrestling with her grief, but could sit down with it as a lasting companion and make it a sharer in her thoughts.”

George Eliot, "Middlemarch"