Lughnasa\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Waning Green Corn Moon<\/p>\n
“To find yourself, think for yourself. ” – Socrates<\/p>\n
Gnothi seauton, written over the door into the temple of Apollo, the home of the Delphic Oracle on Mt. Parnassus, means, Know thyself.\u00a0 How, you might ask?\u00a0 Listen to Socrates: to find yourself, think for yourself.\u00a0 This seems so straightforward, but humanity society pushes more toward thought focused on blending in, getting by.\u00a0 The need to belong and to have respect is so strong it bends our thoughts, often before we know they have been changed.\u00a0\u00a0 We change our values so they conform to the group not because we are weak, but because we are social animals.<\/p>\n
Our life in community cuts against the grain of thinking for ourselves.\u00a0 This is why so many people have trouble with finding themselves.\u00a0 We seek out meditation, religious dogma, political ideology, even scientific certainty in place of careful examination of evidence for themselves.\u00a0\u00a0 It is, at first, so pleasing to quiet the anxiety by replacing your own thought process with ready mades that we do not realize we have begun to censure ourselves.<\/p>\n
Yet this much is true:\u00a0 if you have not weighed and considered a matter using your own reason, your own intuitions, your own feelings then you have moved further away from finding yourself.\u00a0 To do otherwise\u00a0 is a harsh discipline, often not pleasant, but it has one saving grace: you know who you are.<\/p>\n
As you go through the day today, ask yourself if that thought is your own.\u00a0 Ask yourself if the value you hold comes from your decision making or the pre-cut cloth of public or group opinion.\u00a0 Ask yourself if you want to be who you are or who others would shape you to be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lughnasa\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Waning Green Corn Moon “To find yourself, think for yourself. ” – Socrates Gnothi seauton, written over the door into the temple of Apollo, the home of the Delphic Oracle on Mt. Parnassus, means, Know thyself.\u00a0 How, you might ask?\u00a0 Listen to Socrates: to find yourself, think for yourself.\u00a0 This seems so straightforward, but … Continue reading Thoughts of Your Own<\/span>