Life Examined

Socrates was known to have said, “A life unexamined is not worth living.”

When I first read that statement I found it to be quite harsh. As I have traveled further along life’s path I see the wisdom in his statement.

We are the only species on the planet that I know of that can be conscious of our consciousness. We can think about what we think. And we can choose to act or not act. We can think about ourselves, our strengths, our weaknesses, our likes, our dislikes, our prejudices, our fears, our insecurities, our wisdom and our lack thereof. In essence, we can have a conscious relationship with ourselves. We can make choices and we are ALWAYS accountable for those choices, even when those choices are made from a less than a conscious space. 

If we fail to examine self, we are simply a product of our socialization process. We never rise above the generation of before us and thereby repeat the “sins” of our fathers. Self-examination allows us to evolve and to transform, which I believe we must do. As a species we were meant to evolve physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

As we examine ourselves we come to realize that the intelligence that created the universe is the same intelligence that created you. You are nature and nature is you. The intelligence of nature is the same intelligence that is in you.

One important key to unlocking that intelligence is through the observation of emotion. Nature created within us the ability of emotion that we might understand our relationship to all “other” things, even though we ourselves can never be the “other”.

While all things are conscious to some degree, we as a species can activate by studying, by meditating, and by communicating with our hearts, a deeper or brighter consciousness of purpose. Most human beings have at some level, a desire to know of their unique purpose in mortality. This purpose can be discovered as one observes self in relationships. Relationships are our primary teachers about what it means to be us. Every relationship measures back to us some essence about us. All things we see “out there” are in reality within us.