The Sword of Self-Knowledge
Thoughts on the whats, hows, and whys of self-awareness.
“So sever the ignorant doubt
from your heart with the sword
of self-knowledge, Arjuna!
Observe your discipline! Arise!”
-Bhagavad Gita 4:42
Throughout the entirety of the Gita we see Krishna, over and over again, telling Arjuna that in order to live into his dharma or sacred duty, he must understand who he is. The doubt that Arjuna is overcome with is the fruit of his lack of self-understanding and self-acceptance. He is torn between two of his identities, that of familial birth and that of sacred duty.
Our self-knowledge cuts through the doubts we have about what we should do next—how we should show up in the world. In times of great turmoil, there seem to be unending messages about what we could be doing to respond to the many crises we are faced with. Knowing who we really are *and* who we’re not not only makes our path and actions more clear, Krishna counsels that this is the only way to remove ourselves from the cycles of karma.
The Gita is set during the most chaotic and tumultuous time in ancient Indian history. Much like today, there seemed to be a new challenge or difficulty popping up every day. Things seemed like they were the worst they’ve ever been, and especially for Arjuna, it felt like there was no way out. During our unique geo-political moment, a lot of us feel like Arjuna, hunched on the floor of our proverbial chariots, not knowing what to do—torn in too many directions, our hearts flooded by our ignorant doubt.
There has never been a better time to pause and reflect on who we are—and who we aren’t. Studying with tools like the Enneagram can be a powerful kick-start to your self-awareness journey. This tool is the wetstone that sharpens our sword of self-knowledge. Even if you’ve been studying and practicing yoga for years or decades, this tool offers powerful insight into your unconscious thoughts, feelings, and behaviors and gives you a glimpse of who you really are.
“If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.”
― Gospel of Thomas
One of the most powerful statements of the gnostic gospel of Thomas, this quote impresses upon us the importance of not only knowing who we are, but also clearly expressing it in the world. While the quote itself may seem somewhat cryptic, the principle it expounds is a fairly common trope. This is something we know without having to be told.
The artist who won’t rest until their masterpiece is complete, the woman whose life is dull and empty until she bucks society’s expectations and stumbles into her passion, the kid from the other side of the tracks who is transformed after discovering he’s a math prodigy. This story is not just something for the silver screen, it’s a uniquely and universal human experience.
We are all born with a greater purpose, something deep inside that is dying to come out. Some of us find it early, some of us can’t hear the still small voice until well into old age, but the outcome is always the same: life doesn’t seem to “click” until this piece has found it’s expression in the world.
So how do we find it? Why was it lost in the first place? The spiritual work that the Enneagram comes from says that we have fallen asleep to ourselves, yogic philosophy says we have mistaken the world of impressions and experiences for the true reality. Both systems offer guidance as to how we find our way back—but any way you slice it, self-knowledge is key. Being able to explore our inner landscape with honesty and bravery allows us to see more clearly what that burning coal in our hearts really is—and gives us insight into how to stoke that coal into a fire.
“The self is the friend of a man
who masters himself through the self,
but for a man without self-mastery,
the self is like an enemy at war.”
-Bhagavad Gita 6:6
Well, Krishna continues to drop truth bombs on Arjuna, and this has got to be one of the most devastating. It’s language and metaphor is particularly seering as Arjuna himself is a warrior, and arguably one of the best of his time. Krishna draws the comparison and shows Arjuna that while he is slumped on the floor of his chariot concerned about an external war, the war that’s really causing him problems is the one going on inside.
In yoga circles I often hear this sentiment shared about our minds. “The mind is a wonderful servant, but a terrible master.” The Enneagram community has a similar catchphrase, “You can’t master what you can’t see.” How do we make our minds servants? How do we “master ourselves through ourselves” as Krishna instructs? How much of ourselves are we seeing on a regular basis? How much is left in our blindspot?
What I’ve learned through nearly 15 years of working with the Enneagram is that if I’m not paying attention to my bad habits, they’re often running the show. Before I discovered this tool, though, I was constantly at the whim of my unconscious patterning. I just couldn’t figure out why things never really worked out the way I wanted. I kept trying, to no avail. With the support of the Enneagram, and a hefty amount of hindsight, I can see now how deeply entrenched I was in my habitual ways of being.
As I learned to look out for my personality “red flags,” I found myself more and more often pausing and making different decisions, leading to a life that now feels much more manageable. And with life on a much better trajectory, I can see how where I place my identity more often than not determines my experience of my circumstances. With the help of the Enneagram and yoga, I’ve been able to not only see the places I was at war with myself, but also find a way to make peace.
Without this self-awareness though, my life would have been lost to the ongoing war.
“We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves,
(and) Continued to take moral inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.”
-Steps 4 and 10 of the Twelve Step Programs
I have yet to find any true and meaningful path to transformation that doesn’t involve a hefty dose of self-awareness and self-understanding. The Twelve Steps may be the most impactful transformational programs of the last 500 years with Richard Rohr regarding The Twelve Steps as the West’s highest offering to the world’s spiritual canon. And sure enough, not once, but twice we see the importance of self-understanding making itself very clear in Steps 4 and 10.
Step Four suggests that our self-awareness practice must be “searching and fearless,” what powerful qualifiers! Searching! Fearless! This work is not for the faint of heart! Step Four shows us that this work is anything but passive. It is an active searching out of ourselves at all times. We must be fearless in order to search the depths of who we are, because the truth is, we have hidden many things from ourselves—and with good reason.
We push things out of our awareness often for the very fact that they are painful or overwhelming in some way. They pose some threat to our ability to show up and experience ourselves as loved in one way or another. We have also built very effective methods for keeping these threatening things out of our awareness. It is for this reason that our “moral inventory” must be searching—active, engaged, determined. You can never find what’s been lost unless you go looking.
The things we have hidden from ourselves are often uncomfortable, sometimes even painful to re-engage with. In a recent interview I did with the founder of Evolving Enneagram,
, she mentioned that a critical part of her own inner work was believing that anything she found when she went inward was designed to be a blessing. This is a practice of being fearless. Cultivating a sense of faith in the goodness of what we find, and in our ability to deal with/process/hold any good and painful things we find within ourselves is the only way we would even be able to consider this kind of searching moral inventory.Cultivating faith in our own inherent goodness, little by little, is exactly how we dispel the fear that fractured our sense of identity to begin with.
“One who looks outside, dreams. One who looks inside, awakens.”
―Carl Jung
We can’t have a conversation about the psycho-spiritual without mentioning our good buddy C.J. now can we?! Carl Jung was easily one of the most influential thinkers in wester psycho-spiritual thought. His work around archetypes and dream analysis, and his famous departure from his teacher, Freud, are just a few of the major contributions that have shaped how we in the west think of psychological health and frame eastern and western spirituality.
This is easily one of his most famous quotes, it’s combination of brevity and insight make it great for putting on coffee cups and slapping on instagram posts. How often, though, have we sat and truly considered the implications of this maxim? There are undoubtedly many ways to interpret this gram-worth snippet, but a large portion of the meat of it seems to be lost in it’s meme-ification. This is not just a reminder to sit and do your daily meditations and self-observation exercises—it is, in fact, a reminder of how we should view each of the interactions and experiences of our lives.
As we move through the world, especially if we’ve chosen to take on any kind of spiritual or personal development project, it is almost too easy to assume everyone around you is a total dumbass. You’re too evolved to be the problem! Everyone else needs the attitude adjustment—definitely not you! I know this point of view intimately from my own personal experience, and must work against it daily.
Why do this work, you ask?
Because, like our buddy Carl is pointing out, if we’re always looking to the outside to find a cause (or inspiration, or support, or problem, or literally anything) we’re still only dreaming. If, though, we look inward at our own actions, behaviors, thoughts, feelings, and unconscious habits, we will more often than not find a much more true and actionable answer to our problems. On top of that, by continually examining how we ourselves are showing up to life, we have more and more opportunities to not only “master the self through the self” as Krishna instructs, but also more chances to remember who we really are in the process.
“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
―James Baldwin
While this quote can literally be applied to pretty much anything we want changed, I believe it speaks beautifully to the need for self-awareness and self-understanding. Most of us feel there are things in our lives we would like to be different, and especially if you’ve worked with the Enneagram for any length of time, you know how difficult it can be to shift and soften our most entrenched patterns of personality.
We can’t have any hope of shifting anything in our lives or in our world if we can’t face the reality of the situation. But by continuing to sharpen our sword of self-knowledge, we have at least some small chance of seeing things change.