I
recently showed you a cool tool to use if you're on a quest for self
knowledge. I hope you had some fun with it and found some
insight into the murky byways of your own mind.
Obviously
it's just a tool and using it is not exactly the depth of
introspection. I meant it to be a kind of trigger that would get you
thinking more about the way you speak in general and so lead you to a
real sense of awareness of what lies beneath the surface.
If
knowledge is power, self knowledge is power over ourselves.
The thing is that there's such a strong urge to settle for the
superficial, which is why I felt the need to add to what I started
there.
Nowadays
we're so bombarded with information, and I don't mean all the
rubbish that literally fills the pages of Google. No, there's so much
very thoughtful, valuable stuff out there and the problem is that we've
not got the mental space to take it in.
Our
attention span is so reduced by the nearness of the "back" button
that if you're even still here with me, you're probably among the last
ones standing!
When
it comes to tough thinking about yourself it's a hundred times
harder. People will do a lot, including spending a lot of money, to
avoid looking in the mirror and doing some real soul searching. Self
knowledge is hard to come by because we're afraid of it and the power
it gives us.
The
Talmud states in Tractate Brachos that if something awful happens
to a person, he should look into his own actions.
He's
on the lookout for something he did - or more likely some deeper
trait that needs working on. In traditional Jewish
beliefs there's no
such thing as an arbitrary event, so if something unexpected happens to
you, you treat it as a guide to help you discover something about you
that needs working on.
So
given that, I wonder why then so many folk run to check their
mezuzah when things start to go nuts. I really don't like to be so
cynical, but it looks as if they just want to shift the blame, so to
speak, from themselves to something a little more external. It's so
much easier to deal with.
I'm
not saying it hasn't ever happened that the mezuzah was found with
a flaw, but I am saying that you need to look
into yourself instead of
searching for something external if self knowledge is your goal.
You
can always take the path of least resistance. You can obsess
about
the things that are relatively easy to control, and make yourself
believe that you're doing just fine. But you'll miss out on so much
opportunity and potential that comes from really knowing who you are. I
hope you don't.
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He's
on the lookout for something he did - or more likely some deeper
trait that needs working on. In traditional 
