The Ways to Self-knowledge

"Know yourself" is good advice. But to know ourselves doesn't mean to analyse ourselves. Sometimes we want to know ourselves as if we were machines that could be taken apart and put back together at will. At certain critical times in our lives it might be helpful to explore in some detail the events that led us to our crises, but we make a mistake when we think that we can ever completely understand ourselves and explain the full meaning of our lives to others.

Solitude, silence, and prayer are often the best ways to self-knowledge. Not because they offer solutions for the complexity of our lives but because they bring us in touch with our sacred center, where God dwells. That sacred center may not be analysed. It is the place of adoration, thanksgiving, and praise. Henri Nouwen Bread for the Journey

One of my favorite philosophers Gabriel Marcel places this a mystery, because we simply cannot analyze ourselves and the reason why is because we are standing on our own sense data. He calls this the ontological mystery. This is what perhaps the old Christian saying means when it says knowledge of self is knowledge of God.

You, O LORD, keep my lamp burning; my God turns my darkness into light. Psalm 15:28