What Self-Knowledge Means to Me

Yesterday, feeling drained after a busy morning on the computer, I left the house with no particular destination.

I eventually made my way to a nearby school activity field, where I walked across the grass and eventually sat on a large log mysteriously placed on the ground beside a baseball diamond.

A day like yesterday..

From my seat, I had a view out across the large field, which was bordered by a busy road that swept along in front of me, several hundred feet away. On the other side of the street were restaurants and stores, and beyond them some low-rise condos, and beyond them the rest of the city seemed to spread out in front of me.

My goal leaving the house (beyond simply having a break) was to gain a clearer inner state — to get out of my mind and to focus on the reality of the world around me, to be awake in the present moment. This is something I try to do regularly as part of my spiritual practice.

But at first I muddled along, got a coffee at the corner shop, and plodded down the street without much intensity in my efforts. The sky was grey and cloudy and even the colors around me seemed muted, lacking vibrancy.

And so I found myself perched on my log in the field, gazing around me vaguely, but most of the time swimming around in my head. One moment I’d see dimly the grass and the cars and stores and baseball diamond, and then the next I’d be oblivious to my surroundings and immersed again in thoughts of whatever project I’d been working on, and of news stories, of blogs, of politics, of other assorted stuff. The thoughts weren’t deliberate or volitional. They arose in a kind of meandering, day-dreaming, compulsive way.

As soon as I caught myself, I would shake out of it, come back to the world around me, try to perceive the grass again, to hear the breeze and cars, feel the damp air, feel my body sitting on the log. But eventually my focus would fade and the mind would start chattering again, thinking about a problem, a memory, a fantasy. Even when I could perceive, my perceptions of the external world were often distorted by mental activity: I would gaze at a tall wooden hydro pole, for example, then my mind would imagine it snapping and falling down like a toothpick. Odd things like that.

Perhaps this sounds fun or creative, but there was nothing very liberating or expressive about it for me. It actually felt very confining — just some guy, day-dreaming away, unable  to really shut off the tap of thoughts for more than a few moments. There was something compulsive about it. I needed to escape from a world that was difficult to face.

I’m not sure exactly what happened then, but I felt suddenly a surge of strength or energy within, like something had turned on. The thoughts didn’t entirely cease, but I felt as though I had gained some distance from them, like a diver who pops up above the water. And gradually I felt myself ‘tune in’ to the world around me. I still had to try, but I could feel and see the results of my efforts in real time.

The chattering thoughts gradually died down. Replacing them was a sense of deep stillness and silence, like the roar of the emptiness of a large cavern. The inner restlessness faded away, and I felt myself sitting stilly on the log, like a mute part of nature, relaxed and unmoving.

Photo courtesy of gems86

And the scene before me somehow came into focus. My perception felt fresh and pure, as if I was seeing this place for the first time. My vision seemed to pulse and vibrate with life, and instead of seeing things dimly through a web of thoughts, I saw the world clearly — but almost with a sense that there was so much more beyond these objects, close, but still closed off to me.

An understanding was part of that. Some kind of awareness of the temporary nature of the field, the street, and the city. It hadn’t always been there, and one day it would probably pass. I felt like a stranger, observing with interest the world around me, but not really belonging to it in any essential way.

And overall, there was a sense of peace and freedom within myself, what I had left the house trying to find.

During my own personal search into this side of life, I have sometimes experienced these states – let’s call them states of heightened consciousness – more, sometimes less, depending on the day or week or month.

Since I first saw such states were possible, I felt driven to understand more about this unusual and incredible potential that existed within me (and of course within others as well). But then often I feel a sense of lethargy in my spiritual search, and it can be difficult to find the drive to be aware when going with the flow of the mind seems so much easier. However, whenever I’ve felt inner darkness or low states, the memories of these moments of more intense consciousness are very motivating and sustaining. It reminds me that I want to know — I want to understand and see what’s really possible in all of this.

It is a journey inwards and outwards at once, a personal search yet a spiritual search, and one which seems to require confronting a lot of unpleasantness both within and without. (And there’s the great difficulty…)

One of things I find interesting about ancient Gnostic writings (the commonly-called ‘Gnostic gospels,’ many of which were found in an ancient cache in Nag Hammadi, Egypt) is the strong emphasis on self-knowledge. I don’t consider myself a ‘religious’ person or a believer in the conventional sense, but I value these texts very deeply because they speak of psychological realities that ring true with my own experience. Here’s a section from The Gospel of Thomas that speaks much better of all this than I can:

Jesus said, “If those who lead you say to you, ‘See, the kingdom is in the sky,’ then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, ‘It is in the sea,’ then the fish will precede you. Rather, the kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you. When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and you will realize that it is you who are the sons of the living father. But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty and it is you who are that poverty.”

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