To Be Free, You Must Know Yourself
The light and the dark make you who you are
To the deep thinkers,
Welcome to the Deep Thinkers Newsletter: A collection of essays dedicated to going beyond the surface.
If you’re new here, check out the Deep Thinkers archive.
When I think about the path to self-knowledge, Carl Jung’s concept of the shadow comes to mind. That is, the part of our unconscious mind that holds the traits we consider “undesirable.”
In other words, it’s the side of ourselves we repress because it doesn’t mesh with who we think our ideal self should be.
Your shadow is the darkness within.
The side you’re ashamed of.
The side you don’t trust even those you love to see.
According to Jung, we can never feel whole if we repress and reject our shadow. If we are to become the individuals we’re meant to be, he argued that we must learn to integrate our darker qualities rather than ignore them. It is through this integration process that we grow our character and it is through a journey of self-knowledge that we can fully integrate the repressed side of our psyche.
As the great Stoic philosopher, Seneca once said:
Death lies heavy upon one who, known exceedingly well by all, dies unknown to himself.
Who are you?
Self-knowledge is freedom from the chains of societal pressures, existential dread, and insecurity. It peels back the layers of every persona you’ve ever created, bringing to light your most raw and authentic self.
A lack of self-knowledge can often blind us to some of our deepest issues. For instance, though I am someone who values solitude, I recently had to accept that I suffer from intense bouts of loneliness. I spent a lot of time alone as a kid and so I became self-sufficient at an early age. As a result, I convinced myself I was different from most people I knew because I didn’t clamor for attention.
And yet when I took a step back and analyzed my romantic relationships for the past decade, I realized I wasn’t as unique as I thought.
Whether it was a committed relationship or something more casual, I have always needed someone to lean on. Most people would say there’s no shame in this, and to an extent I agree. But the image of who I thought I was did not align with my reality. It wasn’t until I zoomed out and viewed my behaviors and decisions from a detached perspective that I could finally see the entirety of who I was.
So my question to you is:
How do you make sense of everything going on inside of you (including what you’ve lived through) if you never make the time for conscious self-reflection?
That is where it all begins. It is the conscious self-reflection that nudges you toward a deeper sense of understanding—a deeper sense of self-knowledge.
When you don’t know why you do the things you do or have a distorted self-image, you are more susceptible to outside forces. You’ll let other people tell you what you deserve or you’ll continue to make decisions that don’t align with your highest self.
Self-knowledge, then, is the source from which you understand your worth as a human being and break away from the outside noise and influence. It is how you stand firm in the middle of a world that overvalues what you see on the surface.
Confronting every version of yourself
I want to share with you a visualization exercise I do to help me connect with myself.
I start by closing my eyes and taking a few deep breaths. I then picture my inner world as a large forest—my Internal Forest of Being. And in this forest, there is a valley separating the two sides. The valley is where I invite every version of myself to meet—my different personas, my ego, and my inner child. The version of me I’ve recently invited to the valley is my shadow, the persona I’d kept hidden in the darker side of the forest.
You see, each fragmented persona (including your shadow) is a part of the greater You. Inner peace comes from these fragments convening together to reveal your authentic self. It’s how spiritual awareness and moral consciousness evolve.
This process of integration and self-connection reminds me of a quote by English poet William Blake:
If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern.
Peering into the completeness of who you are poses the genuine possibility of confronting aspects of yourself that contradict your current belief system. Do not run from this confrontation. Face it head-on and see that you come out on the other side with a more thorough understanding of who you are.
The path to self-knowledge
The journey of self-knowledge is unique to each person. It is a lonely road. Nobody can hold your hand or provide the answers for you.
Even so, the following tips are a good place to start for anyone on such a path.
Acceptance/Surrender (remove self-imposed bonds)
The very denial of our shadow is one of the ultimate barriers to self-knowledge. Our shadow traits are very much a part of who we are. Many people, however, refuse to even acknowledge these traits.
But these characteristics don’t disappear just because you try to ignore them. They live on in our unconscious, manifesting themselves in sudden outbursts or moments when we act “out of character.”
Face and acknowledge these traits and integrate them, using them to enhance your journey of personal growth. Until you accept your entire being, you won’t be at peace with yourself.
Observation (watch yourself from a detached perspective)
If you’re anything like me, you know what it’s like to fixate on a thought and then extrapolate it out into something bigger—in turn sending yourself into a furious state of anxiety and paranoia.
Remaining attached to any of your thoughts for too long is a dangerous game. The longer you fixate on a thought the more you identify with it and the harder it becomes to move on.
You begin to solve this problem by choosing to become an observer. Watch yourself and listen to the things you say to yourself about yourself. Instead of obsessing over the thoughts that worry you the most, watch them come into your consciousness, and then watch them float away, just as quickly as they arrived.
Meditate and journal often. Meditation is the art of staying present and letting thoughts come and go. Journaling allows you to express yourself in your writing, moving those thoughts out of your mind space and onto paper where you can see them for what they really are—mere thoughts, not reality.
Free thought (reject the herd mentality)
One of the biggest reasons we lose the connection to our authentic selves is the influence of society (I wrote about free thought and the resistance to society’s influence in a previous essay).
We create “acceptable” personas and reject aspects of our personalities we believe others will hate. The issue is, if you do this for long enough, you’ll have no idea who you really are. You won’t know the difference between your authentic self and these fabricated personas.
Instead, follow your inner voice, not the voice of the herd. The herd is full of people who’ve long abandoned their dreams, many of whom have no desire to do the kind of self-inquiry needed to become whole.
In sum, say yes to the things that ignite your spirit, not the things society is chasing.
Wholeness as a form of salvation
Danish theologian and philosopher Soren Kierkegaard once said:
Life can only be understood backward, but it must be lived forward.
We cannot go back and undo or change our past. But to understand our life in the present, and hopefully make better decisions in the future, we must make time to reflect on those moments lost to time.
Those moments of reflection are crucial for self-knowledge. Without self-knowledge, you become easily swayed by the masses. You’ll fail to know what you stand for. You’ll be a slave to the way society operates.
Salvation lies in understanding what makes you unique. It lies in becoming whole, not in the fragmentation of your psyche. Get to know yourself—every side of yourself and be all you’re meant to be. No more hiding. No more rejection of the self.
More self-acceptance.
More self-knowledge.
More freedom.
What stood out to me this week:
You rarely recognize what will be important to you beforehand. Then it happens. Later, you’ll spend your life telling the story of how the map changed in that exact moment; when the roads shivered and split.
- Nix, making the work you’re meant to
Go back further. Watch old movies. Read old books. Explore mediums that barely exist today- magazines, VHS tapes. When you tap into content outside your 'for-you' feed, an entire world opens up. Different output starts with different input.
- Zach Pogrob, How to Be Different (Without Being Lucky)
🎵Song of the week:
Thank you for your time. Let me know how this post resonated with you or share it with a friend.
Stay blessed and enjoy your weekend.
There can be no freedom without self-understanding. Otherwise, we remain stuck in the deep habits of mind.
Feel I need to do this as I’m at a crossroads in my life which is hard to navigate given my lack of knowledge of my whole self