What is self-knowledge?

If you ask yourself who you are, you will get a quick answer that will dictate to you your own mind. It will probably have as its title your first and last name followed by a list of characteristics, occupation, likes and dislikes that you think make you who you are and how you are. And this would be correct, but at the same time superficial.

Our mind is not capable of answering in its entirety such a vast and profound question as "Who am I?" because it only has accumulated data from situations that have happened to us throughout our lives.

This, our life, is a succession of events and circumstances of which we have no real certainty as to their origin. We are not taught the reason for our existence, the reason why we have been created and brought into the world. Therefore, we go only on the surface of reality. We live our own succession of events and circumstances from beginning to end. But is this really being alive?

Studying, working, having affective relationships, buying things, travelling - that's all well and good, but what else? Have we been placed on the surface of a planet in an infinitely mysterious universe for the sole purpose of leading a prosperous social life?

Beyond the material

Our material existence is necessary but beyond it, like sensing a fragrance that the wind gently carries or observing the incessant movement of the sea, there is something that has no name, something that we cannot describe in words, something that seizes us and claims us, calls out to us, speaking of us to the deep nights while, forgotten, we sleep in our beds.

That which lies beyond, that "something else", is nothing more than our own true identity. It seeks to be recognised consciously for us. It seeks to meet our attention and our will in order to be able to live, to express itself and, finally, to be.

What is our real identity made of? It is made of fragrances and hidden senses, of beautiful splendours and enchanted landscapes, of infinite firmament and delicate music, of wood and leaves, of bread and wine, of the charm and magic that all existing things possess within their great mystery.

What is our daily life made of? Surely of obligations, responsibilities, problems, stress, frustrated desires, excesses, distractions, passing pleasures and an endless number of, as we said, events and circumstances that we are involved in until the day we die without any further significance.

A different kind of knowledge

At this point, in order to begin to answer the question of "Who am I? knowledge that transcends that of our mind and that which we can get from any book.

It is the knowledge of our own reality, of our own identity, in the depths and depths of our heart.

Self-knowledge is prefixed with "self" because no one can know us for us. It is a task, an unparalleled adventure to which each of us rises and plunges, transcending our own barriers in the direction of the real and authentic within us.

The invitation that life offers us is to be able to embark on this journey towards that which is "beyond" and which will never cease to call us.