Life is unpredictable.
It is typically filled with
little Joy
and much sorrow.
Our dreams can simply
disappear.
And then
we ask ourselves,
how can we find
the inner peace
of tranquility,
living with such
uncertainty?
My Dear Friends,
you can find
that there is a place
in you,
where you are quiet and calm
and nothing can disturb you.
But it is difficult
to find the way there.
Help
is available.
Please allow me
to share
some truly valuable resources.
One
of the most valuable
I have discovered
is from
www.wikihow.com/Achieve-Inner-Peace.
The following is from
wikihow.com:
Do you want to achieve the calmness and serenity
that comes with inner peace?
Anyone can!
All you need to do is let go
of the stresses and strains
of daily life
and make time to just
be.
.
Finding inner peace is a process
– so take it
one day at a time.
Quiet your mind.
Sit quietly to free and empty your mind of thought.
Rest frequently.
Find a comfortable spot to unwind, relax
or take a nap.
Being well-rested
is crucial to your mental and emotional well-being.
Keep everything simple.
Inner peace is easier to achieve
when you simplify your life
and your to-do list.
Try not to do everything at once.
You can do anything you want,
but you don’t have to do everything
at once.
Take your time.
Achieving inner peace is a process;
take the time to experience and enjoy
your own personal journey.
Don’t be discouraged if the process takes a while;
there is Beauty in the process
of becoming.
if you are recovering from emotional trauma,
allow yourself the TIME
to experience the process of recovery.
You can achieve inner peace
and live a purposeful, self-directed life
when you take the time to recover
fully.
can be difficult to achieve.
It can take
a great deal of
TIME.
.
But you can
ENJOY traveling down
the path to inner peace.
And,
it will require YOU
to learn much more
than you know.
There is Beauty in the process of becoming.
.
Know Thyself.
this thought, commonly attributed to Socrates,
stems from a more ancient source
and lies at the root of all
philosophy.
.
Know Thyself was written on
the Temple of Apollo at Delphi.
Legend tells that the seven sages of ancient Greece,
philosophers, statesmen and law-givers,
who laid the foundation for western culture,
gathered in Delphi to inscribe “know thyself”
at the entry to its sacred oracle.
The adage subsequently became a touch-stone
for western philosophers,
and extended its reach
as the influence of Greek philosophy expanded.
This site gathers its most profound expressions
and elaborates on their meaning.
The path to inner peace.
Self-knowledge is all-encompassing.
What is learned on one scale of experience
can be applied to all scales.
It is the highest form of knowledge,
surpassing all other knowledge.
Self-knowledge is also timeless,
which means that what is gained in one era,
benefits all subsequent generations.
On this website we have gathered
many expressions of ancient wisdom
that have been articulated by eminent men and women
from all ages, traditions and cultures.
Our compilation reveals the Universal nature
of man’s quest for self-knowledge,
and further shows that no age of mankind
was necessarily any closer or farther
from this quest than any other.
Although we may be technologically more sophisticated
than our ancestors,
the age we inhabit is in the same relationship
as previous eras to this quest.
Therefore, the primary aim of this site
is to benefit from the ancient wisdom
of our ancestors and apply it to our own period.
If you’d like to explore the quest for self-knowledge more deeply, subscribe to our mailing list.
We will send you email updates
on a contemporary attempt at building
an online community that applies
ancient wisdom in modern times.
Or simply read on to learn more
about the Universal challenge of
self-knowledge.
When asked what was the most difficult thing,
Thales replied, “To know thyself.”
When asked what was easiest,
he replied, “To give advice.”
Since Solon (one of the seven sages)
received his education in Egypt,
the principle of Know Thyself
might well predate the Greeks.
At the same time, the Hindus in the east
developed their system of philosophy
before the Greek civilization,
and knowledge of the Self
took a prominent position in their writings.
(Read more about the history of Know Thyself)
Wherever and whenever the adage originated,
Know Thyself was universally adopted and placed
at the foundation of knowledge,
the corner stone on which the temples of philosophy
should be erected.
“The essence of knowledge is self-knowledge,”
claimed the Greek philosopher Plato.
Centuries before him, the Hindu Upanishads confirmed,
“Enquiry into the truth of the Self is knowledge.”
Leagues away and centuries later,
the Persian poet Rumi wondered,
“Who am I in the midst of all this thought traffic?”
and the American poet Walt Whitman celebrated his Self,
“a simple, separate person.”
Know Thyself through time
This two-word imperative traveled from antiquity
and throughout history to the present day.
Like a golden thread in a multicolored fabric,
Know Thyself wove its course through races and cultures, through religious and secular traditions, spanning spiritual and scientific teachings and appearing in art and literature.
Indeed, the ancient adage was declared
in almost every medium on every continent and in every era.
Know thyself has often been a corner stone
rejected.
“Can one know oneself”
wondered the French poetess George Sand.
“Is one ever somebody?”
“When will I ever see that Am that I Am?”
lamented the poet Rumi.
Scores of poets and philosophers
dedicated their lives to inquiring about the Self,
seeking its elusive mysteries, digging deep to unearth
that hidden stone without which all construction would be futile.
Some attained remarkable results,
attested to by the legacy of their works.
Others never found an end to their quest.
“I have an inner self of which I was ignorant,”
confesses the Bohemian – Austrian poet Rilke in his diary,
while the ninety-year-old art-historian Bernard Berenson
tells a different story:
Yet,
who is the real I,
where does he hide from ME?
I know who he is not,
but how and what and if at all HE is,
I have never discovered
although for more than seventy years
I have been looking for him.
It is the sincerity of such remarks as Berenson’s
that touch the reader and direct his attention inwards,
asking himself the very questions
these authors posed in their times.
Know Thyself – the essence of knowledge
If the essence of knowledge is self-knowledge,
then this site is an elementary door
to all those in pursuit of this wisdom.
Within these pages and posts are compilations of sayings on
Know Thyself,
the fruition of many hours of research by several individuals.
The quotations compiled are at the reader’s disposal.
Profound sayings on Know Thyself invite
contemplation.
They profess that Truth stands the test of time,
bypassing the ages and connecting us with the authors
who expressed them.
They spark our curiosity to learn more about the men and women who struggled before us, who strove in their times to find a firm foundation of truth,
as we do today.
They prove timelessly relevant and open doors into further inquiry of our true nature.
They confirm that, despite the passage of millennia, man’s struggles have essentially remained the same: man is, and always has been, a being in search of truth and identity.
Moreover, expressions of self-knowledge call us to action.
“‘Know Thyself’ was written over the portal of the antique world,”
said the Irish writer Oscar Wilde –
more than two thousand years after the seven sages inscribed it on the forecourt of their oracle.
“Over the portal of the new world,
‘Be Thyself’
shall be written.”
Socrates on Know Thyself
The only true wisdom
is in knowing you know
nothing.
“Wisdom begins with wonder,” said Socrates.
Through dialogue, he led his audience to passionate inquiry
of existence and identity.
His speech maintained a humble tone, claiming,
to the surprise of his listeners,
that he knew nothing.
In his mind,
one could not know anything without knowing one’s self.
Thus, the Seven Sages of Greece,
who had inscribed know thyself in the forecourt
of the Delphic oracle a few generations before Socrates,
had challenged all subsequent philosophers to attain self-knowledge before knowing anything else.
Socrates embraced this ancient challenge humbly:
I am not yet able, as the Delphic inscription has it, to know myself; so it seems to me ridiculous, when I do not yet know that, to investigate irrelevant things.
Care first about the greatest perfection of the Soul.
“What I want to discover at present,”
said Socrates,
“is the art which devotes its attention
to precision, exactness, and the fullest
truth.”
His philosophical inquiry was, therefore,
dedicated to truth,
foremost the truth about himself.
By publicly admitting his self-ignorance,
he made his audience aware of their own.
My Dear Friends,
there will be storms to face,
and sometimes tragedies.
But with Faith in our Loving God
and with trust in His Divine help,
we can confidently say,
“It will be well with my Soul.”
Goodnight.
A Saner Way
If we were to search throughout the history of human existence, in every nook and cranny on Planet Earth, we would not find one perfectly sane mind. Some form and degree of madness (in both senses of the word) is and has always been a pandemic disease among our species, from which no one has been immune, or has ever been known to fully recover.
And yet, despite the monumental ramifications of this astounding fact, it is rarely noted by even the most serious thinkers. It seems that we are unwilling to experience the inevitable humbling that must come with admitting, even to ourselves, that as a species, we human beings too often think, feel and behave as though we were not in our right minds.
Until we lift the veil of denial that blinds us to this premise, we will continue to go about our lives in utter confusion as to why we do the crazy things we do. But when we admit to ourselves, and one another, that the reason we behave as though we are mad is because we are, our confusion disappears.
We understand why we choose, of our own free will, to sacrifice clean air, water and food essential for our survival for petty pleasures that are too embarrassing to list and are sure to be the death of us; why we hide from one another behind a lifetime of disguises and lies; why we settle our disputes by fighting people we do not know, under orders from others we do not know, in defense of what we do not know is so; and why the demons of depression, obsession, repression, anxiety, guilt, apathy, hate and jealousy haunt our days and nights.
The many symptoms of our shared illness are easily seen on any street corner, in homes, schools, work places, courtrooms or anywhere else human behavior is on display.
But the most serious is our seeming obsession with some form of violence. What greater proof that the state of our minds is off-kilter than the fact that we commit, condone and applaud gruesome acts of violence, on a daily basis… from slaughterhouses and laboratories to war zones? What else, but mental illness, would explain why Spiritual beings, capable of reason and compassion, choose cruelty and violence instead?
Evolving beyond our lust for violence is the essential first step toward our desperately-needed cure. Only by rising above our willingness to terrorize, be terrorized by or watch anyone else terrify or be terrified by anyone else, will we, for the first time in our history, feel safe enough to lift the veil that hides our saner selves. When we do, we will discover that although we are surely mad, we are not only mad.
Each of us is empowered with a reasonable mind and a compassionate heart… the golden pillars that frame the pathway to a saner way of living.
When we embark on that pathway, we come face to face with veganism, which is non-violence in action. The concept, as simple as it is profound, is that the violent, unbelievably cruel custom of enslaving, torturing and killing our fellow earthlings must and will end when we stop supporting it, and we will do so when we see the innocent victims for who they really are… mysterious beings like us, who feel pain and Love life as we do, and have done us no harm.
When we open our minds to reason and compassion, we will see with saner eyes, that their precious bodies are not ours to bend and break to our will for the sake of our pleasure, comfort, convenience or any other excuse our unreasonable, apathetic thinking can conjure up.
Without veganism, we will remain trapped in our madness.
With it, we will be the sanest we have ever been.
Beings like us, who feel pain and Love life as we do.
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