Know Thyself

Have you ever wondered if there is some journey for us humans to take?
Have you ever wondered who you are?
How much do you really know yourself?

There is a so-called "spiritual" (consciousness) journey and search for truth through knowledge and understanding. When we search for truth, we also search to understand more of who we are; a search for answering the question “who am I?”/“who are you?”: to know-thyself.

We have several layers combined to make us who we are.

We all have a unique individual body as part of who we are. The body is the basic primary substance that exists in itself -- physical, material.

We also all have consciousness functionalities and capacities in common as part of who we are -- which we can also develop upon. Consciousness is the secondary substance -- nonphysical, immaterial. Some of who we are is in our conscious control, while some of it is unconscious or subconscious, with drives and motivations taking us in certain directions in life. We all have thoughts, emotions and actions as part of the functionality of who we are.

Individually, we also all have an ego-personality-identity construct and worldview that is unique to our personal experience and knowledge attained -- nonphysical, immaterial, but more epigenetically formed from our environment in life.

If you don't examine yourself, you don't know yourself, and you don't live an examined life. This involves the individual particular self we each are (ego-personality-identity), and the common universal deeper aspects of who we all are, the consciousness, psyche, mind, self or so-called "soul" or "spirit". We have the general "spirit" of consciousness with the capacity to learn, and there is living by the "spirit", i.e. morality.

Morality is the "spirituality" that matters, morally acting is the "spiritually" activated state that matters, and being more moral is the "spiritual" state of being that matters.

The “spirits” within are the “gods” and “deities” that control us: our unconscious drives and motivations. These are the "unseen" forces within. The "gods" and "deities" of consciousness within us have been externalized, objectified, reified, projected, personified and anthropomorphized through metaphor, analogy, symbolism, mythology, narratives and stories, used to attempt to explain and make sense of aspects of ourselves and of reality itself. Higher order consciousness is the higher "God/Spirit" that can rule over the lower "gods/spirits" of our lower order unconscious aspect of being (our conditioning and automated responses). Go look at Ancient Egypt, Greek and Rome to understand how we expressed knowledge about the human condition (who we are) through gods and deities. Then the power of belief took symbolism as literal, further confusing consciousnesses.

Humans invent many beliefs to try to explain what is going on. Some can be validated through being demonstrated and verified by reflecting aspects of reality. Yet many beliefs only exist in our subjective imagination, not objective existence. When we realize and admit we are wrong about many things we thought we knew, we can awaken from our somnambulist state of thinking we're deeply thinking, and thinking we know 'who awe are'. We think we know what we do -- what we're doing -- but most of it is conditioned through automatically and unconsciously reflecting the environment we are influenced by (other people, their behavior, etc.). We are largely thinking and behaving in unthinking ways, not really evaluating what we are truly doing.

What we do as we manifest our consciousness through action and behavior, is a part of who we are. If we don't know and understand the conscious and unconscious drives and motivations that have us think, feel and act in certain ways, then do we truly know that much about ourselves? No. We might know who we are as a unique individual ego-personality-identity construct that differs from others, but not the other aspects of what makes us who we are; the deeper parts of how we function.

Action and behavior is the end-result manifestation of who we are. Behavior shows others who we are. We can be fools or be wise in action. Knowing thyself involves knowing if our actions are wise or foolish. We have the capacity for self-reflection, analysis, introspection and contemplation. We can change our ways away from foolish wrong-action towards wise right-action.

Wisdom is doing something with what you know and understand. If you don't act on what you understand to be right, then you don't really understand the responsibility that comes with the knowledge and understanding of what is right to do. Changing ourselves or the world for the better requires being responsible for our actions and learning to choose the right over the wrong.

“To know and not to do, is not to know.”
- Wang Yangming

What we do involves moral behavior. Do we act rightly, or wrongly? We have to make the choice based on our limited or deeper understanding.

Consciousness has conscience which deals with moral living. We have consciousness as the primary "spirit" (both higher "Spirit" and lower "spirits"), and then we have conscience to develop more moral understanding for how to live (the "spirit" of living right, good and true). The search for truth and the quest to know thyself more, will lead to the deeper care for moral truth and the understanding that we are beings that strive for moral living. The quest to know thyself leads to understanding the importance of morality and actualizing and realizing it to deeper degrees in our lives.

So then, what's the purpose of human consciousness? To be more moral. That's how we become better, truer, realer and higher potential versions of ourselves. That's how we evolve consciousness and humanity. That is all our purpose and goal. That is the potential power of consciousness we all have.

We have been doing this unconsciously for thousands of years. Go look at history, it's one continuing battle of people creating evil, creating good, and stopping evil to allow more good to manifest. We strive to do better, to be free from harm and the oppression of immoral people and their behavior. I think it's time for us to put morality at the forefront of our conscious awareness and strive to actualize more morality. What do you think?

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Thank you for your time and attention! I appreciate the knowledge reaching more people. Take care. Peace.