Knowing Your Nature

We so badly want to know who we are, to know our human design. We pursue various means to learn who we are, such as western psychology, astrological birth charts, various relationships, journaling, numerology, trendy new frameworks (like “human design”), and much more. This appears to be a natural consequence of our self-awareness, our awareness that we are aware and, therefore, the impulse to discover what this human experience is all about. The ancient Greeks said, “know thyself.” Through our journey inward, all outer circumstances become invitations to deepen the wisdom we are here to gain about ourselves, and other people become the characters in our story serving this growth and learning potential.

The journey to knowing our nature comes with the tantalizing trap of “figuring it out.” We naturally assume that if this human experience is about knowing thyself, we must come to a conclusion at some point. Consider the cliche, like most things in life, that knowing your nature is about the journey and not the destination. The moment we believe we have fully realized our nature, an insidious limitation emerges which prevents us from remaining fully open to the range of possibilities for how we may show up in the very next moment and the moment after that. If we begin to act as though we “know” ourselves, we close off to the wisdom from beyond the thinking mind, which reveals itself only when living on the edge of uncertainty, riding the wave of mystery in Presence. The ultimate dance we do as human beings is to journey inward into our nature while letting go of expectations of what we will find. The journey itself is the understanding and to remain open to all that may reveal itself is the everlasting practice. Be watchful of closing down further opportunities by jumping to conclusions about who or what you are and how your are meant to show up in this world.

I am a self-described seeker and love to meet with people who have various gifts and ways of accessing spiritual knowledge beyond the veil, shining a light on the dark corners of our psyche, soul, and life path. But the most tantalizing trap is then proclaiming, “I have finally figured it out! At last, I know myself!” In fact, I just recently met with an intuitive medium who spoke with a great great grandmother of mine, an angel watching over me and guiding my path, who bluntly proclaimed, “He always wants to know everything!” I fall into the trap just as much as anyone else! My thinking mind would love to see it playing out in front of me, alas, that is not what is meant for the human experience. You and I are invited deeper into the heart space, the feelings consciousness, to dance and play with our feelings, our intuitive wisdom, our desires, and our creation energy. We are invited to call in visions of the future loosely, with no attachment to how it all unfolds, only with unbridled excitement for the ride. We discover who we are through experience and experience comes through action, through making perceived mistakes, through trial and tribulation, and through receiving all that this mysterious world has to offer us. Like receiving a wrapped gift, you are not meant to ruin the surprise. Revel in the delight of not knowing and see the unfolding of your life as a continuous unwrapping of a gift so special it does not matter how it happens. If you surrender to the process, the delight may come not from knowing the final answer but from the mystery itself where all is possible at once.

Let us deconstruct the famous line, “know thyself.” The word “know” may not refer to knowledge as we have come to expect it in the thinking mind, but rather to a deeper layer of understanding emerging from wisdom beyond the mind. This kind of wisdom does not necessarily show up conceptually or with a map of precisely deconstructed contents of your personality, but instead may contain a simpler and more profound knowing of ultimate Truth, Reality, and Self that can only be known through deep, present-focused, loving awareness. Only when the ego and its pursuits are quieted can we gain direct access to the grander Nature of things, including our role in it all. The second word “thyself” does not necessarily refer to the personality you are familiar with, love or loathe, and continuously attempt to improve upon little by little, but rather to a deeper truth of who you are, a child of the Great Family, the ultimate Source of all things, of which Jesus himself proclaimed to be the son of. We are all the sons, or children, of this source. To know thyself is to proclaim as Jesus did that your ultimate Self is a branch of the Great Spirit Tree. From this wisdom, you do not necessarily get to figure it all out or know each step of the way, but you are invited into a much deeper peace by welcoming in whatever comes as an invitation from the roots of this tree to be the most expansive branch you can be. If you allow yourself to be completely free, free from all constraints of who you must be, you open to possibilities beyond what the limited ego mind could ever know, and you discover the even greater gift of not knowing.

You certainly have a “nature” that is unique to you and your unfolding in this life, but it is a fool’s errand to chase the complete picture until the final bell has rung. Better to trust your nature will be revealed in time, through the journey itself, rather than in one complete flash of insight. Our time here on Earth is about change and growth. If we knew the complete picture, our time would be over. Mystery is always part of the earthly equation. Dance loosely with what you have come to “know” about your mind body experience and stay open to the possibility that your inner most identities and core traits may be more flexible than you thought or may flip themselves over from time to time to reveal the underbelly of a more dynamic essence. Remembering your wholeness is not about forcefully bringing every part of yourself under the microscope for examination. Trust the parts you are meant to see to reveal themselves when you are ready to see them, and for the shadows to be experienced as readily as the Light, without attachment or judgment. To be seen, to be known, and to be understood reflect the underlying desire for validation of who we are and to know we are doing it “right,”that it’s okay to shed the conditioned shame and blame around who we are. But we do not actually need to be understood, by ourselves or others, to trust that if we only surrender to the path ahead of us, we will be guided true. It is when we force certain constructs or ideas about ourselves into play that we complicate things and resist the natural flow. Once you see through the need for your emotional protections and defenses, you realize it is less important to know and to be fully known than to embrace the mystery of all that can be. The bodymind you are occupying for this trip around the sun is not your truth anyway, let it play the role it believes itself to be while knowing there is always more to the equation, always space for greater awareness, and always another layer of existence deeper than the one you currently inhabit. Remain a mystery to yourself until your last breath. No need to rush, all will be delivered when you return home.