"Know yourself"

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noumenon

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WHY? WHY DON"T WE SPEND OUR LIVES PUTTING FORTH AN EFFORT IN UNDERSTANDING OURSELVES? Will that be too much time with ourself? Or maybe we may not like the person we get to know?
 
Because there are more important things, like loving God with your everything and loving your neighbor neighbor as yourself. Knowing yourself is important, but it should be far from your first, much less only, priority.
 
BlaineTog said:
Because there are more important things, like loving God with your everything and loving your neighbor neighbor as yourself. Knowing yourself is important, but it should be far from your first, much less only, priority.
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If you don’t know yourself how can you begin to love?
 
noumenon said:
If you don’t know yourself how can you begin to love?
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Who we are changes constantly. How can you expect us to keep up with all our own modern fads and obsessions when Jesus is so much more important?😛
 
Everything Christians do should be in relation to God. Always there must be that connection there. Including as one defines oneself. That definition must include God - for the Christian.

So, I would say that God desires for us to know ourselves - we must know our place here on Earth and we must know what God’s will is for us so that we can do it. Now, God wills different things for different people - I think we have to know ourselves so that we can better know God’s will for us.

After all, if you don’t really know yourself, how can you know that what you feel you must do is from God (God’s will) or from your own selfish desires (your own will)?
 
Tim_Kirchoff said:
Who we are changes constantly. How can you expect us to keep up with all our own modern fads and obsessions when Jesus is so much more important?😛
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Appearently you and I are discussing two different perspectives or is it that you don’t understand my point of interest.I’m not speaking of anything concerning fads nor obsessions.I am speaking of you becoming familiar with the person who is within you.“UNDERSTANDING THE PERSON YOU ARE”.If you could not see what would you understand?
 
Ummm. Not sure what’s going on in this thread.

You should definitely know yourself. By studying the person, the mind, the body, the soul – all of these things separately and together, we can begin to understand who we are.

In order to properly love our neighbor, we have to understand and love ourselves. “Love thy neighbor as thyself” only has meaning if we first love ourselves. In order to properly love ourselves in manners of dignity, self-respect, life purpose, blessings, beauty, emotion, etc etc. ---- we must understand who we are, where we come from (distant ancestor, closer family, science, etc).

Granted, this doesn’t take a life of dedication in order to do this. Or rather, I have trouble seeing how a life dedicated simply to knowing thyself would be fruitful to anyone. For this would seem like doing nothing but educating oneself to the end of life. Education is great, but serves only an intermediate purpose, for the knowledge you gain would die with you if you don’t give something back to the world (community, other people, etc). In the words from the Book of Ecclesiastes (which I strongly encourage you to read), the life is then “useless.”

Peace.
 
Archerette74 said:
Everything Christians do should be in relation to God. Always there must be that connection there. Including as one defines oneself. That definition must include God - for the Christian.

So, I would say that God desires for us to know ourselves - we must know our place here on Earth and we must know what God’s will is for us so that we can do it. Now, God wills different things for different people - I think we have to know ourselves so that we can better know God’s will for us.

After all, if you don’t really know yourself, how can you know that what you feel you must do is from God (God’s will) or from your own selfish desires (your own will)?
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Truely, with my entire heart,I do love the person that the foregoing words came from.I am highly familiar with the contents of your heart.I know this to be true,however,my reason for submitting the topic(“know youself”)is to cause the people to become familiar with themselves.We have a tendency at understanding other people and not having no interest at all of understanding ourselves.If more people understood themselves i’m sure the world would be so enjoyable.I love your words ,thank you.
 
chewchoo said:
:confused:
love your neighbor as yourself…

so we should forget about our neighbor?
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No. You’re crossing wires. In loving your neighbor, you forget yourself. This doesn’t mean you don’t love yourself, it means you don’t think about yourself.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t know yourself; you should, it’s important. I’m just saying it’s a means to an end, not an end in itself, and it’s a far lesser goal than loving others.
 
BlaineTog said:
No. You’re crossing wires. In loving your neighbor, you forget yourself. This doesn’t mean you don’t love yourself, it means you don’t think about yourself.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t know yourself; you should, it’s important. I’m just saying it’s a means to an end, not an end in itself, and it’s a far lesser goal than loving others.
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i’m not crossing any wires here. most of us don’t just wake up one day and say i’m going to love my neighbor more than myself, and then do it.

you have to remember that the world is full of people at all different levels of spiritual development. some of them are so full of themselves that they don’t see other people at all. these full of themselves people need to understand themselves first. they need to understand that they are not perfect. they need to understand that they are sinners. only then can they start to have compassion and love for their neighbor.

and even if some people are more spiritually developed than others, they still lack humility. most of us here are sorely lacking in the humility department. we are always telling our neighbor that they are wrong in some thought or concept. how are we loving our neighbor above ourselves, forgetting ourselves, when our opinions need to be stated. (yes, me too) this would be a very silent board indeed if we truly forgot about ourselves. 🤷
 
noumenon said:
WHY? WHY DON"T WE SPEND OUR LIVES PUTTING FORTH AN EFFORT IN UNDERSTANDING OURSELVES? Will that be too much time with ourself? Or maybe we may not like the person we get to know?
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This question is one of the compelling reason why i believe that there is such a God.

We do ask this because we are designed to do so. We have this feeling of trying to know ourselves because we are created according to the image of God.

God knows Himself: thus a Person of the Son. The very expression of Himself is thus the Holy Spirit, the LOVE that flows from Son to the Father and vice versa.
 
nick_aksureh said:
Ummm. Not sure what’s going on in this thread.

You should definitely know yourself. By studying the person, the mind, the body, the soul – all of these things separately and together, we can begin to understand who we are.

In order to properly love our neighbor, we have to understand and love ourselves. “Love thy neighbor as thyself” only has meaning if we first love ourselves. In order to properly love ourselves in manners of dignity, self-respect, life purpose, blessings, beauty, emotion, etc etc. ---- we must understand who we are, where we come from (distant ancestor, closer family, science, etc).

Granted, this doesn’t take a life of dedication in order to do this. Or rather, I have trouble seeing how a life dedicated simply to knowing thyself would be fruitful to anyone. For this would seem like doing nothing but educating oneself to the end of life. Education is great, but serves only an intermediate purpose, for the knowledge you gain would die with you if you don’t give something back to the world (community, other people, etc). In the words from the Book of Ecclesiastes (which I strongly encourage you to read), the life is then “useless.”

Peace.
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It takes a life time to even become close to perfecting yourself.So you are saying that you are just about perfect?I don’t think so.My purpose for the thread is to direct our attention inward instead of outward.To stay out of other peoples bussiness because our own life is too much for us comprehend.By the way,I am deeply familiar with the bible.The state of mind that the author of the book of ecclesiastes was in is also a state of mind that just about everyone has entered sometime or another throughout the jorney of life,Even people that don’t believe in the BIBLE.Maybe you don’t understand that you don’t understand my perspective.It’s not how much a person knows,it’s knowing when and how to apply what you know.
 
chewchoo said:
i’m not crossing any wires here. most of us don’t just wake up one day and say i’m going to love my neighbor more than myself, and then do it.
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I was responding to the OP’s question, “WHY DON"T WE SPEND OUR LIVES PUTTING FORTH AN EFFORT IN UNDERSTANDING OURSELVES?” The answer is because you need to come out of yourself and help others, ideally to the point where you don’t even think about yourself. I was not addressing what every single person in the world needs to do at every single moment. Sometimes you need to put the oxygen mask over your own face, but that’s a preliminary step to helping the guy next to you.
this would be a very silent board indeed if we truly forgot about ourselves. 🤷
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Only if we forgot the truth as well.
 
BlaineTog said:
I was responding to the OP’s question, “WHY DON"T WE SPEND OUR LIVES PUTTING FORTH AN EFFORT IN UNDERSTANDING OURSELVES?” The answer is because you need to come out of yourself and help others, ideally to the point where you don’t even think about yourself. I was not addressing what every single person in the world needs to do at every single moment. Sometimes you need to put the oxygen mask over your own face, but that’s a preliminary step to helping the guy next to you.

Only if we forgot the truth as well.
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You understand yourself so good until you don’t understand nobodyelse.If you understood the thread we would not be communicating right now,meditate on the word, you’ll understand.
 
BlaineTog said:
I was responding to the OP’s question, “WHY DON"T WE SPEND OUR LIVES PUTTING FORTH AN EFFORT IN UNDERSTANDING OURSELVES?” The answer is because you need to come out of yourself and help others, ideally to the point where you don’t even think about yourself. I was not addressing what every single person in the world needs to do at every single moment. Sometimes you need to put the oxygen mask over your own face, but that’s a preliminary step to helping the guy next to you.

Only if we forgot the truth as well.
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THINK!
 
If we are made in the image of God, then maybe we should should try to to know all three parts of that clause. We should understand the I of we; the others, the neighbors, of we; and also God.
 
noumenon said:
You understand yourself so good until you don’t understand nobodyelse.If you understood the thread we would not be communicating right now,meditate on the word, you’ll understand.
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So… “I’m right, just think about it?”
 
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