Know Thyself

Doing a personal inventory helps us to know ourselves. Doing more then one helps us to know ourselves very well. In today's Keep It Simple entry, it talks about the benefits of knowing ourselves. It tells us we don't need to be afraid, basically, of ourselves. "After all, we need to know our dark side before we can change it." We tend to be ruled over by the parts of ourselves we leave shut away in the dark. That which we oppress within ourselves will leak out all over the place. Sometimes it builds up and explodes when we don't acknowledge it -- like anger, for example.

Knowing the self helps us to trust ourselves, which is essential if we want to recover from any bad habits we may have. And we really have to trust ourselves before we can trust anyone else.

Projection is a psychological term that describes how we attribute to others traits and thoughts that we don't acknowledge in ourselves. It isn't desirable to go around projecting all of our negativity on others. It doesn't help our faith in anyone at all. I used to project all the time. I used to put my anger, and pain off on others. I'd feel sorry for monsters because I could perceive that they were in "such pain."

We will be judgmental, and negative if we continue to ignore what is going on inside. We will be full of false assumptions about others. It is impossible to really know others unless we know ourselves. It's hard to love others for who they really are, if we don't learn to love ourselves for who we really are. People love others for what they see in those others. Is it really love for that person if we are only loving a projection of our subconcious?

I always check my perceptions of others to see if I am responding (or reacting) to something within myself or something that person is actually showing or saying. A lot of petty dislikes, and such could easily be resolved if we learn to see that what we dislike so much in others, is actually a projection of ourselves. It is something within us that we don't like. If we know ourselves, we project things a lot less.

It is unlikely that we have much telepathy, if any at all, so we can't truly know another's intentions without investigating them. We really don't know, for certain why people do the things they do. Truly, it takes time to really get to know someone, and any judgments we may have about someone may actually be judgment on ourselves.

We need our Higher Power to sort all of our perceptions out. We need a higher power to avoid making petty judgments. We need our Higher Power to teach us to see ourselves and others clearly. We need our higher power to teach us how to love and trust ourselves. If we are afraid to look within, we probably need our Higher Power to reassure us that it will be alright. Then we can learn to forgive ourselves for what we may have done to ourselves and others. After all, that should be the result of doing a moral inventory -- forgiveness. It should also help us to perceive things more clearly.