Know Thyself

The Teaching

It is as old as the stones.
It came with Humans to the Earth
and it offers them a way out
of the web of sorrows
but at a price:
we must observe ourselves,
our behavior, our
inner and outer responses,
objectively. This means
without taking a personal interest
or doing anything about
the horror
which self-observation uncovers:
like a bad boy with a stick
overturning a stone
and finding a mass of crawling things
beneath, but
he refrains
from stomping on them.


Know Thyself

Socrates exhorted His disciples to do so;
every Master including Jesus, who called it witnessing,
has taught his disciples to observe themselves,

so they might come to know themselves. On the other hand,
I am no Master and I say, Don't do it, for God's sake!
They never tell us the terrible trouble it brings,

how we will never sleep easily again
in our unconscious selfish mad habits, how
what is now unconscious, hidden in us

will be revealed, like
opening a locked cellar door, turning on
the light and what you find down there

is the county asylum crawling with inmates,
some wrapped in torn filty sheets, others
naked and drooling; they are crawling and scratching

to gain position on the stairs, to escape, and
standing calmly in their midst, dressed
in robes of Light, is an Angel around whom

most of them huddle weeping, whose gentle touch
upon their fevered brows calms and soothes them.
This is what I am warning you about: never mind

the swarming lunatics, they are everywhere, but
once you have seen that Angel in your midst
the sorrow and longing will tear at you and

trouble you all the days of your life.

- from the book, Self Observation: The Awakening of Conscience - An Owner's Manual

by Red Hawk