Know Thyself,
Nothing to Excess,
Certainty Brings Insanity.
— The three Delphic maxims inscribed in the forecourt of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi according to the Greek writer Pausanias (Wikipedia)
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1. Know Thyself …
The first of three pieces of ancient wisdom – and great wisdom it is:
As Aristotle once said: “Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.”
That’s why I insist that an inner path and practice is necessary for anyone interested in any kind of better life and making a difference in the world.
Going within and nurturing awareness and mindfulness means you understand what makes you tick, how you work best, what makes you come alive, what you need to focus your attention on.
You gain an understanding of your own personal “user manual” – which is something priceless.
You also get to see the doubt that holds you back from truly being yourself; where you don’t listen to your intuition and your gut but follow the crowd, forever stuck in concern with, “What will they think of me?”.
We all seem to pick it up from a young age, and “I am somehow wrong and broken” or at least, “I am not good enough”, is such a handbrake to fully being alive.
Knowing yourself means you can let that unconscious belief drop. And let it drop you must.
As Rumi wrote,
“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”
Know yourself.
It’s not wasted or a frivolous use of time and energy. It’s the foundation to all Quality in your life.
I did not know that there were 2 more maxims that accompanied this Queen of all, but they are Good in and of themselves.
2. Nothing to Excess.
It was Socrates, the great Google tells me, that once said:
“Everything in moderation, including moderation.”
Ha! I love that.
Even the greatest strengths become weaknesses when taken too far.
For example, discipline – and indeed, friends and acquaintances have recently been asking me about it.
Jocko Willink, that ex-Navy SEAL, has made famous his maxim, “Discipline equals freedom”. One of my Ishaya vows is tapas, and that can be translated into “useful boundaries”.
Discipline is a wonderful thing. A journey of a thousand miles may start with a single step, but it’s only achieved by stepping in the same direction, repeatedly.
Turn your head to every other little option and nothing gets done. Focus means you can create consistently.
Can you be too disciplined?
Certainly! I’ve personally taken it too far into the realms of force and brutality, before starting to find some sort of Goldilocks sweet spot. Not too much, not too little – a rule to be broken when really necessary.
There’s a time for holding back; there’s a time for blowing out.
Everything in moderation, even moderation.
3. Certainty brings Insanity.
A doozy this one.
The hunt for uncertainty certainly leads to stress and suffering.
The whole world is change, constant change.
And while I have tried to find a kind of anchor point amongst that by attempting to get all my life ducks in a row, everything sorted and “then I’ll be happy” style, them ducks never stay put and so I never stayed happy. Or at peace. Nor did I find certainty.
Life IS change.
Hunting for certainty in that which forever changes will lead you to insanity.
Give up that hunt, and find it in the one place that never changes:
You, here now.
This is all you know for certain. This moment, right here. This you can measure. This you can definitely feel with your body. Anything else is a guess, a memory, a hope, a fear.
This is certain, and you are certain.
The core of You never changes. There’s part of you that hasn’t gone anywhere. It is the same essential nature from before you were born.
Even while your body has aged and changed; You have not.
Seek certainty in your being.
And …
If you think you’re certain about any particular fact?
You’re closing the door to enquiry, to curiosity and to new experience.
“I know” is limiting and limited.
Be open, flexible, innocent, curious.
Hold strong opinions if you must, but hold them lightly. Be open to more. Be open to being wrong.
And anyway – whenever I am certain about anything in this world, beyond the power of love and the present moment, it seems the world will do its best to prove me wrong.
Nature doesn’t really like fixed barriers, it seems. It likes flow. And that goes with opinions and beliefs too.
Anyhoo, try it. Try all these three.
Someone once thought them powerful enough to carve in stone so all the bright lights of Ancient Greece had a chance to see, and maybe reflect, upon them.
Maybe they knew what they were doing?
Have a lovely lead up to Christmas and holidays!
Go well,
Arjuna