Why is self-knowledge so important in prayer?
God resides at the deepest center of every human being. Prayer is a journey to that center. Thomas Merton defines prayer as “a yearning to grow in the awareness of God’s presence, a personal understanding of God’s word, knowledge of God’s will and the capacity to hear and obey God.”
Moving from the unreality that keeps us from where God resides in our deepest center is a seemingly endless challenge. This is the mission of an authentic spiritual life. Self-knowledge is crucial to this development.
Giving such importance to self-knowledge may seem strange to you. To make this more understandable I would like to invite you to look at your life today compared to five or ten or fifteen years ago. If you have worked at living your faith minimally I am sure you can see a lot of changes. Self-knowledge was an important part of that maturing process. More patience, more tolerance and more reconciliation are all woven into the larger progression of knowing ourselves with growing clarity. This new wisdom leads to an expanding awareness of our dependence on God.
In our time, psychological self-knowledge is a major industry that contributes to our well-being. Likewise, AA and all other twelve step programs and their affiliates are rooted in self-knowledge. Both of these major initiatives are ultimately part of our spiritual journey.
Most of the Gospel mandates flow from this practice of refocusing to put God at the center:
If anyone wants to be first, he must make himself last of all. (Mk: 35-36)
Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. (Mt 10:39)
Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross and follow me. (Mt 16:24)
Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit. (Jn 12:24)
The journey of self-knowledge is often described as moving from the false self to the true self. It is a new way of looking at ourselves, at others, and the world. It is a transformation of consciousness.
The false self is entrenched in our exaggerated sense of self-importance, our illusions of grandiosity, the blindness of our addictions and, most of all, the unreality of our idols. Our heart creates many false centers in our attachments, the distorted use of God’s creatures. The heart becomes fragmented and flawed.
We tend to become blinded to our faults and failures. We emphasize the shortcomings of others. Jesus put it ever so clearly when he pointed out our blindness to the log in our eye rather than our stress on the splinter in our neighbor’s eye. Self-righteousness rises to the front and center. As we become aware of the false values flowing from our fragmented heart we come to a fork in the road.
We have a choice of life or death. We choose death when we double down on the clamoring of the false self. We choose life when we open ourselves to the mercy of God which engulfs the true self. At the heart of this encounter is the perennial challenge of knowing ourselves.
Self-knowledge Opens to God’s Mercy
Even the simplest things in life are often mislead by the false self. Having the right kind of clothes, a nice home, the lifestyle of our proper state and a good reputation are all potentially innocent choices. The false self has a field day refocusing these items to contribute to a deceitful vision of self-importance.All these deviations work together to weaken, and even hide, the longing of the true self to move on to the center in a more authentic life. This blockage is especially powerful when the distortions flow from an addiction that becomes rooted not only in the psychological system of the person but also in the nervous system of the body. This is the case in the abuse of alcohol, drugs, sex, and gambling to name the chief culprits.
Here again, self-knowledge, an awareness of what is going on within us, is critical in the necessary conversion that comes when we hear and obey God’s word and will in prayer.
St. Teresa of Avila received this message from God: “Seek yourself in me.” She came to understand that God accepts us as we are. She pointed out the brokenness of Mary Magdalene, the Canaanite woman, and her favorite, the Samaritan woman at the well. Jesus did not send them off to a thirty-day retreat and wait until they were perfect. No, Jesus encountered them as they were. He called them in the midst of their weakness and faults.
John Welch, O. Carm., a scholar in Carmelite spirituality, has these words of wisdom about Teresa’s self-knowledge:
The self-knowledge Teresa eventually gained consisted of two fundamental truths. The first was a realization of her essential poverty. She came to know her inattentiveness to God, her fragmentation, and dissipation. She acknowledged her sinfulness. And, on her own, she was absolutely powerless to control her life. Left to her own insight, energy, and vision she was unable to pull her fragmented life together….
The second, and more important truth about her life, was that this poor woman was immensely rich. At the core of her life was a reality which sustained her life, empowered her, and was her truest identity. She knew about God in her mind; she had to learn to trust that God in her experience. She became convinced that we live life buoyed on a sea of mercies. We cannot claim the credit; we can only live with gratitude. Once she knew who she was, fear fell away, and she lived with focused energy.
Her advice was to focus on Jesus, and in the light of that love to know ourselves as we really are.”
Self-knowledge, Prayer and Life
Teresa of Avila was relentless in declaring the importance of self-knowledge for the spiritual journey, the journey to God in the center of our being.Well now, it is foolish to think that we will enter heaven without entering ourselves, reflecting on our misery and what we owe God and begging Him often for mercy.” (Interior Castle 2.1.11)
For Teresa, prayer was the answer to almost all problems. However, she had an expansive notion of prayer. It took place in the context of the relationship between God at the center, our person, and our life experience. In the interaction of these elements in prayer, self-knowledge has a pivotal role. The mystery of God unfolds in the dynamic of the person’s prayer and life experience. Self-understanding brings this process together. The movement in accepting the reality of God’s place and our place brings God’s mercy to front and center. As she grew in self-knowledge, she grew steadily stronger in her conviction. “My life is the story of God’s mercy.”
As we grow in self-knowledge we will celebrate our lives as immersed in the sea of God’s mercy. Self-knowledge will gradually bring us to embrace the wonder of this gift.
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