The Mystic Heart by Wayne Teasdale

Author:Wayne Teasdale
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: New World Library

Element 6: Mature Self-Knowledge

Some twenty-five centuries ago, Socrates counseled, “Know thyself.” In the same way, mystics have genuine, mature, honest self-knowledge. They are radically open to acknowledging faults and limitations, and do not shy away from coming to terms with them.

Spiritual progress depends on a maturity in our self-understanding. We must know ourselves fully. Humility is the basis of an honest, mature self-awareness that accepts ourselves as we are, without covering up, making excuses, or blaming others. We live in a culture in which the average person tells a lie thirteen or fourteen times a day, and many of these lies are to ourselves! Humility will not allow us to lie to others or to ourselves, and certainly not to God. A mature self-knowledge depends on truth and honesty.

Profound inner change takes root gradually within us as we gain this precious self-knowledge and uncover all the hidden motives that lie buried deep within us. This self-knowledge can also be seen as a gift of divine grace, and contains the wisdom to guide us in our mystical or contemplative development. In some traditions, such as Hinduism and Buddhism, this grace can be mediated through a spiritual master or guru, but it represents a significant factor in our growth to spiritual maturity and wholeness in most — if not all — traditions.

Self-knowledge, when it reaches its full potential, becomes the basis for very radical inner change. Mature self-knowledge happens when we move beyond denial — denial of our faults and limitations, our buried motives or hidden agendas — and beyond judgment of others, beyond projection on others our own need for inner work. The more we see ourselves as we really are, rather than as our ideal self-image dictates, the more we are on the road to the fullness of the spiritual life, and the ultimate actualization and realization of our potential for divine love and compassion.

Joy

In a number of theistic forms of mysticism, self-knowledge is an illuminative state of consciousness initiated by the divine itself. The closer we come to God, the more we know the intimacy of divine union, the more we are aware of how imperfect we are in relation to divine perfection. We cannot long endure this perfection if we are not growing toward it ourselves.

Sufi master Shaykh Fadhlalla Haeri, in his practical work The Journey of the Self, remarks about how contentment and joy — bliss — dawns in the life of the person who has achieved real self-knowledge. He observes, “Once self-knowledge is mastered, one attains a joy and happiness which cannot be measured by any of the normal senses. This joy is of a higher value, and gives greater solace and comfort, than anything else we can seek or find in this world.”15

Coming into the clarity and truth of self-awareness, self-understanding, free of illusions and delusions, we know a continual joy, a fullness of bliss that will never pass away. It is the bliss of wisdom, that wise understanding that embraces us as we realize

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