Know Yourself: The Most Difficult Challenge In Life

Hi, Boomers,

I just read an awesome quote by Carl Jung:

Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.

I got to thinking about the speech and workshop I am giving in Austin at the Texas Women’s Conference Beyond50 on the 23rd of this August.

My contribution to this event is in the category of  “Self-Discovery and Empowerment – Overall Wellness is the Key to Success.”  My mantra for this topic is a quote from Cervantes:  “Make it thy business to know thyself, which is the most difficult challenge in life.”

Do you ever find yourself in a situation and think, “This is the very thing I was trying to avoid”, and wonder how it happened, or how you attracted or chose to bring that very situation into your life?!?   I used to think this all the time when I went into a bar and the first guy that hit on me was an alcoholic and, dare I say, an asshole.  These guys could smell “nurturer” a mile away.  There I was, the quintessential co-enabler, sitting on a bar stool minding my own business when someone slides next to me and he is jonesin to suck the energy from my body. I was clueless.

Anything within us that is still unknown to us, or that has not healed yet, or that you have chosen to repress, will rule us. Anything that remains outside of our awareness will own us big time.

At the core of any of our work on self-discovery and empowerment is what Cervantes offered up centuries ago:  “know yourself”.  And I’ll add:  then the light of our being can shine through.  If we make an intention to shine light on all aspects of ourselves with a truthful and compassionate eye, life will have less struggle, less panic attacks, less drama.  Oh, but we are addicted to drama.  It’s so much fun/pain to suffer fools. Isn’t it?

Remember Plato’s allegory of the cave?  Most of us live in caves or we live most of our lives in our cave.  The distinguishing factor of cave life is that we live in the half light.  If we are conscious, we are able to notice our reality in the present (not in the past when it was warm and fuzzy or in the future where magical thinking prevails) .  But most of us live in a cave of half shadows, which represents the  unconscious. We get really comfortable with that semi-darkness because we won’t have to see the truth inside of us.  So we sit out life watching the shadows on the cave walls (ourselves) and are never really motivated to get out of the unconscious because it’s oh, so comforting to watch our shadow self. It takes effort, it takes consciousness to put on our headlamps and explore our world.

Knowing ourselves , which is a sign of loving ourselves gives us direction for our life’s journey.  Look, dude, we already know the destination of our journey and it’s off the planet we go when our time is up.  So let’s take the journey full on with lights ablazing and accept all aspects of self-discovery. The end result is that it will bring great freedom and the ability to choose what rules us. Dig deep and rock on!

That’s my message to the ladies in Texas and for all the ladies I will be speaking in front of for the rest of my journey.

Namaste

Joan