The Greek aphorism, “know thyself” was once said to be inscribed in the temple of Apollo at Delphi. This phrase speaks to self-knowledge and many philosophers have written on this topic. According to Lao Tzu, “He who knows others is wise; he who knows himself is enlightened.”
This begs the question then, “how do we do who we are”? If we go a little deeper, we might ask, “are we really who we think we are?”
Most of us walk through life believing that we know who were are based on who we think we are. We don’t often stop to ask these questions. Yet, they are important questions to ask ourselves. In doing so, we might ask yet another question, “when did we learn who we are?”
This final question is important because most of us learn who we are at a very young age.
The important point to note is that because we start learning about ourselves at a very young age, that learning comes from our right brain - the part that processes nonverbal, sensory, and emotional experiences because the left brain isn’t developed that early (it starts coming on line at around 2 yrs of age). This means that the way we get to know who we are isn’t language based or analytical. It is implicitly learned, not explicitly!
If we experienced early childhood neglect in the form of misattunement from our parents/caregivers, then we didn’t develop a secure attachment with them. Since it is only recently that attachment theory has made its way into parenting, most of us didn’t grow up with secure attachment. Whether the popular theory was to not feed us on demand, allow us to cry so that we didn't become spoilt, or we were neglected due to hardships in the family or parental trauma, our experience was one of lack of attunement and that left us feeling insecure.
Without any explicit memory of this or language to understand this, we didn’t “know” this; we experienced it. We now know from neuroscience that those experiences are held as implicit memories in our body and our belief structure, whether we are aware of it or not, corresponds to it!
If our experience was one of neglect or lack of attunement, then our body-based belief is often that we weren’t loved or that we weren’t worthy of being loved - even when our left-brain belief about ourselves may be different!
Getting back to the question of how well we know ourselves, the real answer is - not well at all! To know ourself is to know our true Self - the one that is not impacted by our experiences; the one that is never wounded or broken! It’s the Self that we would have known had we had secure attachment - and the one that we can know now as an adult. In fact, we can develop a secure attachment to our Self so that we can know our power, purpose, and potential! Wouldn’t that be awesome?
So, how do you begin to "know thyself"? By integrating your mind and body so that they are congruent with who you truly are!
Holding a vision for you to know your SELF!
