In Search of Your “Original Self”?

Answer These Seven Questions

It has been estimated that Americans spend about $11 billion a year on self improvement.

We summon all of this emotional and mental energy to understand and find ways to improve ourselves.

One has to wonder, how can we live without “mindfulness” or a Buddha statue in our gardens or weekly megachurch experiences.

There is history in this quest for self improvement. The sages of Greece in the sixth century B.C. are believed to have originated the aphorism, Know Thyself — words embraced later by Plato and Socrates.

The desert fathers and mothers, religious ascetics of the third century, C.E., believed that “the cultivation of inner freedom was vital to the deepening of their experience of God. As they deepened their interior freedom, all aspects of their false self [were] removed and a clearer understanding of their truest self emerged….In the abundant simplicity of our true self, we experience deepest joy.” (Laura Swan, “The Forgotten Desert Mothers”)

In the world of today we hold in esteem the “self awareness” work of Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung who theorized that “your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Without, everything seems discordant; only within does it coalesce into unity. Who looks outside dreams; who looks inside awakes.”

Admittedly, there is good on many paths of self improvement especially if we are able…