How Well Do You Know Yourself?

Sounds like a pretty hippy question right? You spend all day everyday with yourself so of course you know yourself, right?

But how much of ourselves are our conscious thoughts, and how much are the true feelings and beliefs below?

My counselor described this analogy to me last week.

Imagine you’re a river… Stay with me here

The objects floating on the river, the logs, the twigs, probably a plastic bottle or two are your thoughts. By that we mean they are very superficial, surface level sh*t.

Beneath the floating objects is the water itself, and this is one level deeper. We are aware of the objects or thoughts floating above us; we are not consciously interacting with them; they are just there in the background.

And at the very bottom of the water is the river bed, the bottom. Now this is your true self. Your true suppressed, squashed version of yourself. Not the conscious, altered tailored version of you your thoughts lead you to believe.

Your true self can be found at the bottom of the river, at the river bed itself.

This is why silent meditation can be such a powerful tool, but why it’s also so difficult to do.

Being able to sit there long enough and observe all the objects floating along your river, until you sink low enough into the water then ultimately the floor bed is bloody hard. 

That is why most people have to distract themselves with TV, phones, music, social media etc when they stop. 

You’d think prescribing 5 minutes of sitting down and doing NOTHING would be bliss for people. You'd think it would have 100% adherence. 

But because people hate sitting there with their own thoughts without distraction, it means most people “just can't do”.

But it's a skill, a practice. Something that takes time and repetition to be able to do and learn. 

You’ll learn far more about yourself if you are able to sit down for 10 minutes per day in silence and sink through the layers, than you will through any others means. 

If you can’t sit down for 5 minutes in silence and meditate, I would challenge you and say

“ You don’t know yourself at all, or, you do but you don't like yourself” ..

I’ll leave you with that thought.