Know Thyself

Retirement hasn't just given me time to read new books—it’s given me the space to finally see how they all connect. Lately, I’ve been thinking about the 'gap' between what happens to us and how we choose to respond. It’s the difference between just reacting with our programming and actually living a self-aware life. From Socrates to Quantum Physics, here is what I’m uncovering in my library:
I've been digging deeper into the theme of the self moving through the egocentric, socialized, independent, and integral stages on the way to self-actualization, or--dare I say--enlightenment. Socrates taught us that the path of growth is through a self-examined life, and suggested that an unexamined life is a waste. The aphorism "Know thyself" is a really succinct way of saying it.  Rather than saying, "I have come to know myself," a modern man might talk about having developed a conscience. And developed is the right word. It's not enough to just say that I happen to have a conscience; a self-aware person needs to have spent a lifetime growing it as well. "Composed of two Latin words meaning 'to know' and 'with,' conscience is very close to consciousness." (Rollo May). Conscience is self-knowledge. For many, the conscience is viewed as the little angel sitting on one shoulder, warning us against bad behavior. The little angel acts as an authoritarian conscience, saying to us, "Thou shalt not."  When we live by the "thou shalt not" ethic, we aren't truly living the self-examined life, but, rather, a life constrained by obedience. In this case, our behavior is outward-in directed. The "enlightened conscience" is the antithesis, and it works inward-out as a result of self-awareness. It may feel like a harder path, but May sees this enlightened conscience as a very natural extension of our being. Just as a tree naturally grows toward the light, a person who is on the path of self-awareness naturally comes to know which actions foster their growth and which ones diminish it. You don't need a law to tell you not to poison your own well: If you are aware the well is your drinking water, the "conscience" to keep it clean is automatic. This kind of alignment moves us from the dualism of this physical universe (day vs night, good vs. bad, right vs. wrong) to the unity of all things. Wayne Dyer discussed returning to unity when he wrote, "Once the dichotomies or pairs of opposites are transcended, or at least seen for what they are, they flow in and out of life like the tides."  The ancient Sufi mystic Rumi wrote, in his poem commonly known as 'A Great Wagon,' "Out beyond ideas of rightdoing and wrongdoing, there is a field. I'll meet you there."  To meet another human in that field is to relate to them essence-to-essence, rising above social constructs of right vs wrong, and good vs bad.  Deepak Chopra, (drawing from Vedic philosophy and quantum metaphors) suggests that once you drop the binary labels of right vs wrong, you enter a state of pure potentiality. He likes to relate it to quantum physics which describes how our physical reality behaves at the atomic and subatomic levels, where matter and energy exist as both waves and particles at the same time. Quantum physics shows our world to be probabilistic, rather than deterministic, at its base level. These systems exist in a "superposition," meaning in multiple states or positions simultaneously, until observed. This is pure potentiality.  The quantum physics field of potentiality is the underlying, non-material state of all possibilities where subatomic particles exist in a state of superposition (multiple, simultaneous states) before observation collapses them into a single, definite, physical reality. (Look up the double-slit experiment.) The act of observation/measurement forces a quantum system to "choose" between behaving as a wave or a particle. We are the universe looking at itself.  In this metaphor, our self-awareness is the act of observation that turns a cloud of possibilities into a single, lived action. Awareness (know thy self) leads to the transcendence of ideas of right and wrong, and brings us to a place of infinite choice--a unified field of potentiality. Enlightened conscience serves not as a judge, but as a guide pointing us toward that field of potentiality. Our infinite potential exists in the field of potentiality and is experienced in the gap between stimulus and response, between what the world asks of us, and how we respond to it. Self-awareness is what allows us to pause in that gap. Viktor Frankl called this the last human freedom. We pause, access our internal compass, measure our possible responses, and our field of potentiality collapses into a spontaneous "right" choice. We are the tree growing towards the sun.  Conversely, in a state of authoritarian conscience, the outcome is already collapsed; you do what you're told by the little angel on your shoulder, which was inherited from your ancestors, from your church (or parents' church), and from your tribe. In enlightened conscience, you remain in the "field" of potentiality until you choose the action that most aligns with your integral self.  "Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom." (Frankl). This is response-ability, the power to choose your response rather than just be acted upon by uncontrollable outside forces.  Rollo May would say--for example--that when you are fully aware and living a self-examined life, you don't need to be told not to hurt others--because you recognize the sacredness of humanity (created in God's image). You aren't "being good"; you are being whole. Viktor Frankl’s idea of the "last human freedom" is particularly salient because he developed it while he was held in Auschwitz. He noticed that those whose sense of humanity survived the horrors of the concentration camps were those who could widen the gap between stimulus and response. When the stimulus is extreme suffering, the natural human "thou shalt not" or "I must" (authoritarian conscience) often collapses into despair. But Frankl argued that by accessing that inner space, a person could choose a response based on finding meaning, which is to say, responding to the horror in a higher manner--with integrity and grace.  Frankl’s "meaning" is the observation that collapses the wave into a single, significant reality. You don't just pick a rote response to the world; you pick the one that makes your life's work, your interaction with the world, and/or your service to others, filled with meaning. You pick from a place of self-awareness.  Know thyself. Widen the gap.