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“To find a mountain path all by oneself gives a greater feeling of strength than to take a path that is shown.” ~Karen Horney
Find the nearest mirror. Look deeply into it. There, hidden within that fabulously flawed human being staring back at you, is the greatest teacher you will never know.
Yes. It’s yourself. And yes, you will never really know yourself.
The inscription at the Temple of Delphi “know thyself” is ultimately unattainable, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t seek it. Enlightenment is equally unattainable, but there’s nothing wrong with striving for it. Self-improvement is still healthy regardless of the fact that you will never be perfect. Socrates’ dictum still stands: “The unexamined life is not worth living.”
Examining your own life is always going to begin with your interpretation of it. So it behooves you to align your interpretation with reality. Easier said than done. Because examining the self is a tricky proposition. The Self is an elusive mystery. It’s masks all the way down perceiving delusions all the way up.
The trickiest part is that only you can experience these masks and delusions. Nobody else can experience them for you. They are subjective. Your experience of them will always be primary to anyone’s interpretation of them. Not even the best shrink in the world can know them as well as you can.
That’s what makes self-examination, and the self-realization that comes from it, so important. Therapists are, at best, guides. They are therapeutic middlemen. Self-therapy is what a therapist directs you towards anyway. So, you might as well make that attempt to begin with. A therapist is good for keeping you on track and preventing you from getting stuck, but there’s nothing saying you cannot learn strategies to do it yourself.
There’s nothing saying you cannot be your own greatest teacher. The autodidact inside you is calling.
Learn your own nature by learning about human nature and Mother Nature:
“There is a voice that doesn’t use words. Listen.” ~Rumi
The most powerful way to hear the “voice that doesn’t use words” is through solitude and meditation. Out away from the things of man, where No-mind is free to remind you that you are a force of nature first and a human being second.
This is perhaps the most powerful strategy for teaching your Self to yourself. Solitude and meditation teaches a particular flavor of humility that gets you over your own ego (codependence) and puts you in touch with the interconnectedness of all things (interdependence). It teaches you how not to take yourself too seriously. When you unbecome yourself you become everything. You’re free to experience interdependence despite culturally conditioned codependence.
Allowing Nature to become your teacher cuts the uninitiated ego out of the equation and then sneaks in the initiated ego, which utilizes Soul as a tool to leverage a heightened state of awareness. From this heightened state comes the deep interdependent realization that everything is connected to everything else.
In this heightened state of eco-melting your third eye opens, your crown chakra blooms in full flutter, and your oneness with all things becomes paramount. You are suddenly out of your own way. You are free to learn what you must learn. You are free to become what you must become.
The cure for the pain is in the pain:
“Doctors study medicine. Teachers study education. Healers study darkness.” ~Mark Lundy
Just as you are your greatest teacher, you are also your greatest healer. Know thyself and heal thyself are reciprocal. Mother Nature teaches you this first. Pain teaches you this second. As Rumi said, “The cure for the pain is in the pain.”
Pain is inevitable. It’s a part of life. Avoiding pain just causes more pain. Ignoring or repressing pain just causes unnecessary suffering. Although pain is inevitable, unnecessary suffering is avoidable. It’s the same with spiritual or existential angst. We repress the darkness at our own great peril.
As long as you’re able to learn from the pain, it can become a steppingstone rather than a setback. Seen in this way, pain can be an initiation into wisdom (a sacred wound), and a flourishing into Eudaimonia. Which can be quite pleasurable.
Growth is painful. Change is even more painful. But being stuck is arguably the greatest pain of all.
Pain is a guide, a powerful teacher. And if you can gain the capacity to recognize the guideposts and learn the lessons that Pain provides, you will be more adept at adapting and more likely to grow into a healthier version of yourself.