Know Yourself but Know More Than Yourself!

Richard Rohr’s metaphor of “the cosmic egg” uses three different perspectives to understand human life: “my story”, “our story” and “the story”. We are currently exploring “my story”.

Richard says:

“Socrates, the father of Greek philosophy, is supposed to have written over his door: “Know thyself.” There it is. That’s the foundation of philosophy: self-knowledge. And that’s what the cosmic egg is saying too. If you try to jump over self-knowledge and know your own biases, your own woundedness, your own shadow as we say now, you won’t know how to interpret the other levels, or you’ll misinterpret them— probably better said. So, hold onto the little inner yolk of self-knowledge.”

from the podcast Another Name for Eveything

Self-knowledge seems to be about understanding our weaknesses as much as it is about our strengths: our own biases, our woundedness, our “shadow”.  We will learn to see much that isn’t too flattering as we learn more and more about our ego and the inner games we play in order to find love or status or just to pursue our self-interest!

Which is why “my story” is not enough to base life on.  We will be sucked into whirlpools of our own pathology – whatever that happens to be – laziness, greed, cynicism, self-interest, arrogance, or whatever “shadow” energies drive us!

We need an “our story” that is bigger than us: parents, schools, churches and our communities to help us understand the role of different boundaries to “me”. 

And we need a “The Story” that puts my little life, and our communal life, in a grand, cosmic context of the unfolding of the universe and God’s will.

So although we must know ourselves, we must also know more than ourselves. And in that tension there may be spiritual growth.

You can listen to the episode from Another Name for Everything via this link.