How to Know Thyself And Remember Who You Were Before The World Told You Who You Have To Be?

(Transcript of the video)

Know Thyself And The Ancient Temple

I’m back in Athens, Greece, my hometown for a couple of weeks and I decided to take a day to come and visit Delphi. In ancient times, Delphi was the place where Pythia, the greatest of all oracles use to be.

People from the ancient world would travel for days and weeks just to come and hear what she had to say about the fate that awaited them.

But today Pythia is not here to give me some guidance which means I will have to find guidance for myself by myself. And that’s a recurring theme in my life. I’ve always been looking for a teacher.

One who could guide me and show me the path I need to walk. I’ve never found one but what I have come to realize is that the teacher I seek, hides within me.

Under all the presuppositions and convictions about the world around me. And whenever I’m able to see below the surface of all those convictions and certainties, I always see glimpses of that great teacher that awaits. And he has my face.

So where I’m going with this is that often in life we feel the need for an external force to show us the way. But all the truth we need hides within us below all the certainties and assumptions about the world whose truth is taken for granted.

And this brings me to this place. The remains of the temple of Apollo. Back to its full glory, there were 3 maxims that were inscribed at the entrance of the temple.

The first one was “nothing to excess” the second one was “certainty brings insanity” and the third one was “know thyself”. Today we’ll spend some time understanding the last one.

Know Thyself. It’s a subject that has inspired generations of philosophers and psychoanalysts, so an 8-minute video won’t be enough to unfold all its glory, but we’ll use it as a guide on how to find the right path when we are in need of one.

So, how do we come to know thyself in terms of the great teacher you hide inside? In other words, how do you come to find your true personality, that hides underneath all the presuppositions you have about who you are and who the world is? Which is the ultimate question right? Who were you before the world told you who you have to be?

Well, the beginning of this journey is also the most difficult step. Because you have to forget whatever you think you know about who you are. Or to put it better, you have to understand that you know nothing about yourself.

That’s what the great Socrates was saying “The only thing I know is that I do not know”. And that’s the beginning of all wisdom. To adopt a perspective of ignorance about the challenge you’re facing. Not a perspective of authority and certainty. Just keep in mind the other maxim that was inscribed at the temple of Apollo. Certainty brings insanity.

How To Really Know Thyself?

So then the question becomes, ok how do I do that? How do I adopt a perspective of ignorance about who I am? And the answer is that you do the same thing, as with everything you do not know anything about.

You observe them. You learn to watch yourself and all your actions as if you’re a stranger that you want to know more about. You’re being attentive to your own actions.

And that is not an easy task. Cause you have to watch what you do and what you say and you have to be asking questions like “What sort of person would do that?” Or “what sort of person would say that?” And then go a level deeper and take a moment to notice how what you do and what you say affects you emotionally. Is this what I do or say that makes me feel weak? Does it make me feel shameful? Does it make me feel confident and powerful? Am I speaking the truth I have inside me or am I recreating a lie that I have learnt to recreate? Is this the person who I am or am I adopting a personality I know others will find likeable?

The First Step of Know Thyself

That’s the first task that requires a lot of humility to make it happen. And you will need a lot of strength to be that humble because recognizing your ignorance, and understanding that you don’t know who you actually are, will require all the humility you can possibly think of.

Because you have to go against your instinct of survival that keeps telling you that you know who you are. It’s this instinct of survival that creates all the certainties in our lives.

The most difficult thing is the first step. Exactly as Socrates was saying. The step is to get low enough to understand how much you do not know, what you think you know, about yourself.

But something that can give you strength along this journey is keeping in mind this: If I do not know who I really am, how can I possibly know all the potential I hide? Do you see how beautiful this is? If you’re ignorant about who you are, then you are equally ignorant about who you could potentially be. And that’s something to keep in mind. That’s when you find the teacher you hide within. That’s when you need no one to guide you or to tell you who you can become because all the infinite potential hides within. And that’s the superman that hides within.

Not in the sense of Clark Kent in his blue suit with the red cape. But the concept of Übermensch that Nietzsche spoke about. The superior man who justifies the existence of the entire human race. That’s what hides inside of you. That’s the person that would emerge from within when you completely master yourself.

That’s the Superman that Nietzsche spoke about and that’s exactly the potential that you’ll be able to see if you’re humble enough to understand first how ignorant you are about who you are.

So that’s the reward for the difficult task of determining who you are by paying attention to what you do and what you say.

So the beginning of the wisdom of the knowledge of ourselves is the acknowledgement of how weak our beliefs make us and how insufficient our knowledge is.

The Second Step to Know Thyself

And now we move to the next maxim, “nothing to excess”. And I want us to look at it from a characterological perspective. From a characterological development perspective. You see, the society in which we live teaches us from a young age to behave in a certain way. It’s as if we wear a mask that on one hand is designed to make a certain impression upon others while on the other hand, it conceals our true nature.

This is exactly what Carl Jung called the Persona. Coming from the Latin word which means mask. So Persona in psychology is that personality that we chose to project to others which are differentiated from our authentic self.

So this archetype of the persona enables us to connect to others and relate with others by reflecting the role we are playing in life and which we have learnt through a lifetime of error-ridden iteration.

It’s what allows us to adapt to society basically. But remember, “nothing to excess”. Yet in the society in that we live in, we do it in excess. Under the constant tyranny of a society full of thumbs up and likes, which creates so much pressure and creates an excessive commitment to collective ideals, we are forced to project our personas in great excess.

And when we do that, when we identify so much with the personas we have created, our ego pushes down to the unconscious parts of ourselves that we categorize as unworthy. And then what happens is that those parts, who are pieces of the puzzle of who we really are, are left without a voice.

We mute them every time they want to come out because we fear that they will mess with the persona that we have so carefully crafted.

Guess what happens then. Those parts are being pushed down. We try to reduce their strength. We try to silence their activity. In other words, we depress those parts of ourselves that are deemed unworthy. And these are the parts that eventually will cause depression. Because we are depressing them. But that’s a story for another video. For now just remember nothing to excess.

So the second step towards finding your real potential is to try and ask some difficult questions that will help you integrate that which you are depressing. That which you are pushing down in excess.

Start with these questions: What are my aggressive fantasies? How far am I willing to go if I let my aggression out? Have an honest discussion with yourself.

Or if you find those discussions too difficult try starting from somewhere less intimidating. Like for example “what are the things I procrastinate about and why?” What makes me unwilling to do certain things?” “What are the things that make me criticize myself?”.

These are incredibly difficult questions and having an honest discussion with yourself is difficult beyond imagination. But they are necessary to start getting to the reward bit. To start getting to understand your potential. Because the more you start to understand who you are and what parts you are depressing, the more you discover your potential for destruction.

Know Thyself and Discover You Potential to Destruction

And you might ask, how can my potential for destruction help me understand the true nature of my self? Well that’s a difficult one but you can think of it this way. Nietzsche spoke about the will to power. And the will to power as a concept is -at least as I understand it- is the driving force that all humans have.

It’s the will to live. The will to survive, the will to live up to your potential. It’s the will to move forward, it’s self-determination, but you can only be determined and find purpose only if you are able to say No to things you know are not elevating you towards your goal.

But how can you say No if most of the times you try to avoid conflict? Avoiding necessary conflict makes you weak and stops you from moving toward your ideal. That’s why realizing your potential to destruction is necessary for your path to your true self.

Because it allows you to incorporate, to integrate these dangerous and terrifying traits into a more sophisticated personality. A personality which is not scared to say No when necessary in order to pursue what’s meaningful. So nothing to excess my friend.

I can talk about these things for hours but I feel I’m losing my trail of thought. I think what I said so far makes some sense, so I’ll pause here and go to enjoy the walk.

But I will leave you with the 3 maxims that were inscribed on the temple of Apollo. Certainty brings insanity, so drop all your beliefs in order to Know thyself, to know the nature of your true self, and remember, as you go about your journey, nothing to excess.

I’m Dimitris, drop a like for the algorithm and I’m here to share insights and tools on how to live a well-lived life. Subscribe to my channel of you liked this video and I’ll try to post another one next week.