CAN WE FIND SELF-KNOWLEDGE FROM WITHIN?

It is undeniable that we can find truth by looking within ourselves. We can detect our pains, tight muscles, and feelings. We also have the capacity to know right from wrong. As many agree, we are wired to know moral truths. However, can we attain wisdom and accurate self-understanding by looking within?

Here is where we encounter great differences of opinion. The highly acclaimed spiritual guide and mystic, Ken Wilber, comes out in favor of finding the truth within:

·       The mystics ask you to take nothing on mere belief. Rather, they give you a set of experiments to test in your own awareness and experience. The laboratory is your own mind, the experiment is meditation…the whole point is to re-member, re-collect, and re-discover that which you always already are. Indeed, the soul's duty in this life is to remember. The Buddhist smriti and sati-patthana, the Hindu smara, Plato's recollection, Christ's anamnesis: all of those terms are precisely translated as remembrance… And so, the soul that finally remembers all this, and sees it however vaguely, can only pause to wonder: How could I have forgotten? How could I have renounced that State which is the only Real State.

Any self-knowledge depends on remembering, but are we able to do this without bias?

In “Stillness Speaks,” mystic and New Age Guru, Eckhart Tolle, suggests that wisdom and self-knowledge are attainable merely through stillness and self-observation:

·       Wisdom comes with the ability to be still. Just look and just listen. No more is needed. Being still, looking, and listening activates the non-conceptual intelligence within you. Let stillness direct your words and actions.

Although, self-knowledge is theoretically available from within, these writer claim that it is not so easy:

·       “Sometimes, when you don't ask questions, it's not because you are afraid that someone will lie to your face. It's because you're afraid they'll tell you the truth.” (Jodi Picoult)

·       “The human brain is a complex organ with the wonderful power of enabling man to find reasons for continuing to believe whatever it is that he wants to believe.” (Voltaire)

·       “The author concedes that humanity had the fatal tendency to shape truth to our beliefs rather than beliefs to the Truth.” (Frank Turek)

Why do we run from self-knowledge? It is just overwhelmingly painful. In “A Study of History,” Arnold Toynbee expressed his reservation about self-knowledge:

·       Unless we can bear self-mortification, we shall not be able to carry self-examination to the necessary painful lengths. Without humility there can be no illuminating self-knowledge.

As many point out, true self-knowledge is humbling. It shows us who we truly are. As a result, many psychologists have observed that normalcy is self-delusion. One representative study reported:

·       “In one study of nearly a million high school seniors, 70 percent said they had “above average leadership skills, but only 2 percent felt their leadership skills were below average.” Another study found that 94 percent of college professors think they do above average work. And in another study, ‘when doctors diagnosed their patients as having pneumonia, predictions made with 88 percent confidence turned out to be right only 20 percent of the time.’” (Abcnews.go.com; “Self-images Often Erroneously Inflated,” 11/9/05)

Many such studies demonstrate that self-delusion is pervasive. Although we have the inner resources for self-knowledge, we seem to lack the willingness to make use of them. In “Positive Illusions,” psychologist Shelley Taylor sums up the evidence:

·       “Normal people exaggerate how competent and well liked they are. Depressed people do not. Normal people remember their past behavior with a rosy glow. Depressed people are more even-handed…On virtually every point on which normal people show enhanced self-regard, illusions of control, and unrealistic visions of the future, depressed people fail to show the same biases.” (214)

Perhaps pain isn’t so bad? Perhaps it’s even necessary! Sadly, once the psychological torment passes, these aggressive tumors return.  Taylor confesses:

·       “When depressed people are no longer depressed, they show the same self-enhancing biases and illusions as non-depressed people.” (p.223)

This demonstrates that these “self-enhancing biases and illusions” are entirely human and serve to explain why we flee from self-knowledge. We are simply addicted to the pleasure of having an inflated self-esteem, and we will reject anything that might threaten our comfortable addiction.

Psychologist Roy Baumeister has extensively researched the relationship between high self-esteem and performance:

·       For three decades, I and many other psychologists viewed self-esteem as our profession’s Holy Grail: a psychological trait that would soothe most of individuals’ and society’s woes. We thought that high self-esteem would impart not only success, health, happiness, and prosperity to the people who possessed it, but also stronger marriages, higher employment, and greater educational attainment in the communities that supported it. (http://imaginefirestone.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/RethinkingSelf-Esteem.pdf)

• Recently, though, several close analyses of the accumulated research have shaken many psychologists’ faith in self-esteem. My colleagues and I were commissioned to conduct one of these studies by the American Psychological Society, an organization devoted to psychological research. These studies show not only that self-esteem fails to accomplish what we had hoped, but also that it can backfire and contribute to some of the very problems it was thought to thwart. Social sector organizations should therefore reconsider whether they want to dedicate their scarce resources to cultivating self-esteem. In my view, there are other traits, like self-control, that hold much more promise.

Baumeister, Wilber, and Tolle each share the same goal – having accurate self-knowledge. However, it seems that this goal is obstructed to such a degree that the disciplines of remembering, self-reflection, and stillness are incapable of breaking through, and perhaps we don’t even want these disciplines to break through.

This is where Jesus’ words can offer us a renewed hope. One night, a Jewish member of the Sanhedrin, Nicodemus, came secretly to question Jesus and was told that he wasn’t even ready to hear the answers:

·       Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” (John 3:3)

According to Jesus, real truth, although available, is not attainable unless we are reborn of God. Elsewhere, in His final moments, Jesus startled His disciples with a teaching that must have seemed over-the-top to them:

·       Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. John 15:4-5)

It is terribly humbling to learn that we “can do nothing” apart from Him. It is something that we will not allow ourselves to see, without entirely destabilizing our lives. At all costs, we will resist it.

However, this truth, embraced by AA, has made the difference in many lives so broken that they were ready to receive it. Let us all be so broken!

THOREAU AND THE NEED FOR SELF-KNOWLEDGE

Henry David Thoreau celebrated nature. For him, the woods were “temples not made with hands.” How? Because nature was the place of Communion, the place to learn about oneself and to grow!

In contrast, according to Stephen Mitchell, Thoreau believed that:

·       Civilization trains them up to seek power and security through ownership, fostering fake and artificial appetites rather than teaching them to see and accept the riches that nature provides…[quoting Thoreau:] “Society is always diseased and the best is most so. There is no scent in it so wholesome as that of pines, nor any fragrance so penetrating and restorative as the life-everlasting in high pastures.” (Christian Research Journal, Vol.39/Number 05, 37)

What corrective role does nature play? Mitchell writes:

·       Nature, then, offers wisdom as an antidote for civilized foolishness, cleansing humans from society’s moral toxins. “For at the same time that we exclude mankind from gathering berries in our field, we exclude them from gathering health and happiness and inspiration, and a hundred other far finer and nobler fruit.” (37)

How does nature cleanse us “from society’s moral toxins?” It helps us to discover the law of our inner being, “an instinct toward a higher, or as it is named, a spiritual life.” As Mitchell puts it, it is a “life that requires self-discipline rather than social discipline”:

·       For Thoreau, he who does not hear his inner voice cannot know the law of his own being. Consequently, he will be dominated by his society. So dominated, he will make choices that circumscribe his humanity, preventing the full development of his spiritual life. (36)

It is in nature that we come to hear our inner voice, which enables us to gather “berries in our field.”

Certainly, knowing the “inner voice” – having self-knowledge – is critical, and the woods gives us an opportunity for self-reflection. This is important. Whatever we manage well we must first know well. This is true of every aspect of our lives – managing our house, clothing, car, business, relationships, and even our own lives.

However, it doesn’t seem that time for reflection in the woods is enough to produce self- knowledge. Why not? Because we have an aversion to self-knowledge! In fact, we run from it. In other words, we lack self-knowledge because we reject it. We would rather feel good about ourselves than to think correctly about ourselves.

Consequently, we live in darkness. I know that this is hard to believe; so I want to provide some evidences:

1.    We seek a psychotherapist, not to learn about ourselves, but to feel better about ourselves. Therefore, the therapist, wanting to attract customers, does not advertise, “Come to me and learn the truth about yourself.” Instead, she will advertise, “I will reduce your unwanted symptomology.”

2.    Instead, we tend to leave the psychotherapist who confronts us rather than affirms us.

3.    When we get into an altercation, it is always the other guys fault. This is because we cannot tolerate being wrong or at fault.

4.    Instead of seeking wise correction so that we can better ourselves, we flee from it.

5.    We surround ourselves with yes-men and people who compliment us.

6.    We wear a façade and try to impress others. Many will admit that they can no longer discern façade from fact.

7.    We clothe ourselves with symbols of success.

8.    Many psychological surveys affirm that we have inflated opinions of ourselves. In fact, psychologists claim that an inflated self-esteem is so pervasive that it is regarded as “normal,” suggesting that we are unable to tolerate an accurate self-estimation.

I know this very intimately and paid a tremendously high price for my inflated self-estimation, fed by a constant stream of positive affirmations. They became a drug, and I needed a continuous supply to stay afloat. However, when reality clashed with my affirmations, I crashed. This would occur with each failure. I would then run to the psychologist to build me up again on more positive affirmations.

If we are unable to see ourselves, it means our lens is so darkened that we cannot see and understand others. We are out-of-touch. An unwillingness to see and accept myself, with all my warts, made it impossible to connect meaningfully and honestly with others.

I needed more than a few walks in the woods or even a steady diet of trees. I needed the light to shine upon me, the light I had always resisted. Without this light we walk in darkness and trip on every tree-root that crosses our path.

My dilemma was the one painted by Jesus:

·       And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. (John 3:19-20; ESV)

I couldn’t tolerate the exposure of either my deeds or my identity. It was only through the loving reassurances of Jesus’ acceptance of me that I could begin to tolerate the light and accept myself.

I enjoy nature, but I no longer expect more than what it is able to give. It cannot rescue me, but it can point joyously to its Creator.

THE ELUSIVENESS OF SELF-KNOWLEDGE

Self-knowledge is to the wise as eyes are to the race-car driver. As the driver will crash without sight, any ordinary person will eventually crash without self-knowledge.

If it is true that to manage anything well, we must first understand it, it is also true that we need to understand ourselves. If we lack the knowledge to put the gas in the gas tank and the water into the radiator, our car will soon become inoperative. Should not the same be true when it comes to managing our lives!

Many have observed that self-knowledge and self-examination are critical to our lives.

The psychologist, Carl Jung, noted that:

·       Your visions will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.”

We might even add to Jung’s observations that we will not be able to understand others, their motivations and actions, until we first understand our own. Consequently, we have to look inward.

This is the message of most world religions. The Book of Proverbs exalts wisdom and self-examination:

·       The purpose in a man’s heart is like deep water, but a man of understanding will draw it out. Many a man proclaims his own steadfast love, but a faithful man who can find? (Proverbs 20:5-6)

Proverbs hints at the main problem of self-knowledge. We really don’t want it. We would rather think thoughts that are comforting like, “I am a wonderful person.”

In “Stillness Speaks,” mystic and New Age Guru, Eckhart Tolle, suggests that wisdom and self-knowledge merely through stillness and self-observation:

·       Wisdom comes with the ability to be still. Just look and just listen. No more is needed. Being still, looking, and listening activates the non-conceptual intelligence within you. Let stillness direct your words and actions.

However, it seems that far more is necessary. Many of our pundits have commented on the difficulties of acquiring self-knowledge:

·       If most of us remain ignorant of ourselves, it is because self-knowledge is painful and we prefer the pleasures of illusion. (The Perennial Philosophy, Aldous Huxley (1894-1963))

·       There are three things extremely hard: steel, a diamond, and to know one's self. (Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) American statesman, scientist and philosopher)

·       Make it thy business to know thyself, which is the most difficult lesson in the world. (Miguel de Cervantes)

·       Other men's sins are before our eyes; our own are behind our backs. (Roman philosopher Seneca (4 BC-65))

Why do we run from self-knowledge? It is just overwhelmingly painful:

·       Unless we can bear self-mortification, we shall not be able to carry self-examination to the necessary painful lengths. Without humility there can be no illuminating self-knowledge. (“A Study of History,” Arnold Toynbee)

As many point out, true self-knowledge is humbling. However, with this humbling process, there can be no illumination.

As a result, many psychologists have observed that normalcy is self-delusion. One representative study reported:

·       “In one study of nearly a million high school seniors, 70 percent said they had “above average leadership skills, but only 2 percent felt their leadership skills were below average.” Another study found that 94 percent of college professors think they do above average work. And in another study, ‘when doctors diagnosed their patients as having pneumonia, predictions made with 88 percent confidence turned out to be right only 20 percent of the time.’” (Abcnews.go.com;; “Self-images Often Erroneously Inflated,” 11/9/05)

There findings are pervasive. In “Positive Illusions,” psychologist Shelley Taylor sums up the evidence:

·       “Normal people exaggerate how competent and well liked they are. Depressed people do not. Normal people remember their past behavior with a rosy glow. Depressed people are more even-handed…On virtually every point on which normal people show enhanced self-regard, illusions of control, and unrealistic visions of the future, depressed people fail to show the same biases.” (214)

Perhaps pain isn’t so bad? Perhaps it’s even necessary! Sadly, once the psychological torment passes, these aggressive tumors return.  Taylor confesses:

·       “When depressed people are no longer depressed, they show the same self-enhancing biases and illusions as non-depressed people.” (p.223)

This demonstrates that these “self-enhancing biases and illusions” are entirely human and serve to explain why we flee from self-knowledge. We are simply addicted to the pleasure of having and inflated self-esteem.

But is this addiction harmful? Taylor and others believe that an inflated self-esteem is necessary to get us going in the morning. But doesn’t this addiction also exact a high price?

Psychologist Roy Baumeister has extensively researched the relationship between high self-esteem and performance:

·       For three decades, I and many other psychologists viewed self-esteem as our profession’s Holy Grail: a psychological trait that would soothe most of individuals’ and society’s woes. We thought that high self-esteem would impart not only success, health, happiness, and prosperity to the people who possessed it, but also stronger marriages, higher employment, and greater educational attainment in the communities that supported it. (http://imaginefirestone.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/RethinkingSelf-Esteem.pdf)

• Recently, though, several close analyses of the accumulated research have shaken many psychologists’ faith in self-esteem. My colleagues and I were commissioned to conduct one of these studies by the American Psychological Society, an organization devoted to psychological research. These studies show not only that self-esteem fails to accomplish what we had hoped, but also that it can backfire and contribute to some of the very problems it was thought to thwart. Social sector organizations should therefore reconsider whether they want to dedicate their scarce resources to cultivating self-esteem. In my view, there are other traits, like self-control, that hold much more promise.

An inflated self-esteem is also associated with arrogance, lack of humility, self-righteousness, and also heightened relational problems. How then to break this addiction?

First of all, we need to become aware of the heightened price we are paying for our self-delusions. This can only come through suffering. However, more than suffering is needed. As Taylor had written, once the pain passes, so too does an accurate assessment of ourselves.

I found that facing my weaknesses, inabilities, and failures is so painful that I had to run from them, even after the intervention of five highly recommended psychologists. Instead, it was only through the love, forgiveness, and assurances of Jesus my Savior that I could begin to endure the truth.

People will kill when they are dishonored. This should give us some appreciation of how tenaciously we cling to our honor and high self-regard. Jesus had to show me that there was something better than my distorted self-appraisal. He showed me that I would do far better by living for Him than for myself.

I am still pained to see myself as I truly am. However, He reassures me that it is no longer about me but Him:

·       I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (Galatians 2:20)

May He always remain first in my life!

Who are we and why are we here?

 

Part of being human is about knowing ourselves, even why we are here. The beloved Jewish philosopher and theologian, Abraham Heschel, asserted this very thing:

• It’s not enough for me to be able to say ‘I am’; I want to know who I am and in relation to whom I live. It is not enough for me to ask questions; I want to know how to answer the one question that seems to encompass everything I face: What am I here for?

Life is filled with suffering and injustice. The innocent become victims in what seems to be a senseless flow of snickering events. These force us to re-ask Heschel’s question – “What am I here for.”

Solomon’s life had been devoted to answering this question:

• I thought to myself, "Look, I have grown and increased in wisdom more than anyone who has ruled over Jerusalem before me; I have experienced much of wisdom and knowledge. "Then I applied myself to the understanding of wisdom, and also of madness and folly, but I learned that this, too, is a chasing after the wind. For with much wisdom comes much sorrow; the more knowledge, the more grief. (Ecclesiastes 1:16-18)

As hard as Solomon tried, he was unable to grasp life’s meaning. It was like trying to grasp “the wind.” Instead, his wisdom-quest produced “much sorrow” and “grief.” Why? Normally, he extolled the value of wisdom. However, when it came to grasping ultimate meaning, he was frustrated. He needed to know about the afterlife. Only this knowledge could give him the understanding for which he searched. However, his intellect was unable to pass through the curtain separating this life from the next. From the perspective of his limited wisdom-quest, it appeared that there was no meaning to life:

• For the wise man, like the fool, will not be long remembered; in days to come both will be forgotten. Like the fool, the wise man too must die!  So I hated life, because the work that is done under the sun was grievous to me. All of it is meaningless, a chasing after the wind. I hated all the things I had toiled for under the sun, because I must leave them to the one who comes after me. And who knows whether he will be a wise man or a fool? Yet he will have control over all the work into which I have poured my effort and skill under the sun. This too is meaningless. So my heart began to despair over all my toilsome labor under the sun. For a man may do his work with wisdom, knowledge and skill, and then he must leave all he owns to someone who has not worked for it. This too is meaningless and a great misfortune. (Ecclesiastes 2:16-21)

Without the confident knowledge of life’s meaning, which requires the big picture, Solomon hated life. However, he wasn’t alone. Even secularists have expressed our utter need for life to having meaning.  Psychologist Arthur Deikman writes:

• Human beings need meaning. Without it they suffer… Western Psychotherapy is hard put to meet human beings’ need for meaning, for it attempts to understand clinical phenomena in a framework based on scientific materialism in which meaning is arbitrary and purpose nonexistent.

According to Deikman, meaning could not merely be subjectively created. For “Western Psychotherapy… purpose [is] nonexistent,” and we are not able to create what is “nonexistent.”  Even the atheist and Christianity-despiser, Frederick Nietzsche, wrote that “He who has a ‘why’ to live for can bear almost any ‘how!’” However, once we reject the afterlife, that “why” becomes unattainable.

Despite all that he possessed, Solomon could not bear life without answering this “why.” This is why the Christian is so blessed! Alluding to Solomon’s perplexity, the Apostle Paul wrote:

• If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men. (1 Corinthians 15:19)

• If I fought wild beasts in Ephesus for merely human reasons, what have I gained? If the dead are not raised, "Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die." (1 Corinthians 15:32) 

Without heaven, life has no more meaning beyond a mad rush to fulfill ourselves. However, self-fulfillment will not satisfy, even in this life. Suffering is inevitable! How do we deal with it? Paul declared that we can only remain joyous in the hand of suffering as we look beyond it:

• I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. (Romans 8:18)

It is only the fragrance of our confidence in the next life that will enable us to look beyond the suffering. Why then are we here? It is eternity’s boot-camp!