🪞 How to Know Yourself?

Greetings!

Have you heard of the phrase "Know Thyself"?

In the Islamic tradition, there's a well-known saying of the Prophet Muhammad:

"Whoever knows himself knows his Lord."

I remember when I heard this for the first time. It sounded so profound, but I didn't know what it meant. It made me wonder: what does it mean to know myself? And how can knowing myself help me know my Lord?

This is the question I'd like to explore.

Who Am I?

When I think of myself, what comes to mind is my name, my age, and where I'm from.

And if you had to introduce yourself to a room of strangers, you'd probably say the same kind of things:

• What you do

• Your role in life

• Who you're connected to in your family

• Where you're from

There's another level too, and it goes a little deeper. It's about your qualities, your strengths and weaknesses.

Think of a job interview. Someone asks you to tell them about yourself, and you share what you're good at.

All of these are true, and they are part of who you are. But they aren't who you are essentially, because every one of these outer descriptions changes with time: your age, your interests, even your nationality.

To know who you are, you need to go deeper.

So the question stays open. How do you know yourself?

You can't know yourself from the outside

Here's the interesting part. Knowing yourself is not something you can do from the outside. Your outer qualities do not define who you are.

Think of what happens when you walk into a room full of people. You can see everyone. Their faces, how they sit, what they're doing with their hands. The one person in that room you cannot see is you.

And I think that's the real difficulty with "know yourself." The thing you're trying to see is the one thing your eyes are not pointed at.

The way in is to watch how you react

One of the pathways to knowing yourself is to watch how you respond to situations. Say you're in a room full of people. Watch how you respond to the people in it.

• What do you love?

• What do you hate?

• What do you feel when a certain person speaks, and what do you do next?

These reactions reveal something about you that your name and your age never will.

And here's something to think about. Put someone else in the very same situation, and they respond very differently from how you would. That gap between your reaction and theirs shows you where you differ from them. In a sense, it's the first glimpse you get of yourself.

You were made to be a mirror

Okay, so your reactions show you something. But what exactly?

To answer that, I want to quote two verses of the Quran on the creation of man.

When God created Adam, He told the angels: "I am going to place a successive human authority on earth." (Quran 2:30)

The word in Arabic is khalifa, a representative, someone who stands in for the one who sent him.

And then the next verse says: "He taught Adam the names of all things." (Quran 2:31)

Put those two verses side by side. A khalifa represents the One who appointed him. And Adam was taught the names so that he could reflect them.

Mystics like Ibn Arabi, Al Ghazali, Rumi and several others have used the metaphor of a mirror to explain this idea:

"Dear friend, your heart is a polished mirror. You must wipe it clean of the veil of dust that has gathered upon it, because it is destined to reflect the light of divine secrets." ~ Abdul Qadir Al Jilani

"The universe is the mirror of God and the heart of man is the mirror of the universe... [Man] realizes that his own attributes are in reality the attributes of God and so his own attributes vanish. He further realizes that all attributes of men are only attributes in image... but that they are in reality the attributes of God." ~ Al-Ghazali, Mysteries of the Human Soul (al-Madnun)

"Do you know why your mirror does not reflect? Because the rust has not been cleared from its face." ~ Rumi, Masnavi, Book I, line 34

So we are like mirrors.

Every one of us was made to reflect the qualities of God. He is the Most Merciful, the Most Just, the Most High, the Ever Living, and those are the qualities we were made to carry into the world. A mirror can't see itself either, but it can do its job, which is to reflect.

And none of us reflects completely. Something always gets in the way. There are obstacles between us and the light we were made to reflect.

So to know yourself, you need to ask another question: "Where is my reflection blocked?"

An uncomfortable feeling shows where the mirror is blocked

How do you find what's blocking the reflection? I think this is where the work comes in.

When we feel agitated, impatient, or disappointed, or when we act in a way we're not proud of, we usually treat the feeling itself as the problem. Something to get rid of, or to feel bad about.

But think of yourself as a mirror again. An uncomfortable emotion is a sign inside you that is telling you exactly what is blocking the reflection. It's information. And once you can read it, it tells you what you need to develop.

Let me give a few examples.

If I'm getting agitated by small matters, the agitation is pointing to a contentment I haven't developed yet.

If I'm impatient, it usually means I want something and I'm not getting it, and the signal underneath is pointing to Tawakkul (trust in God). Trust that He has a plan, that He is wiser, and that He knows better than I do what should come and when.

If I'm constantly disappointed, sometimes the thing to realize is that I've become too attached. I've stopped seeing myself as a mirror and started clinging to worldly things, which will pass anyway.

"The aim of moral discipline is to purify the heart from the rust of passion and resentment, till, like a clear mirror, it reflects the light of God." ~ Al-Ghazali, The Alchemy of Happiness, chapter I

Notice that the signal doesn't always ask for the same kind of work. Sometimes it names a quality to grow, like contentment or trust. Sometimes it names an attachment to loosen. Either way, the feeling is not the enemy.

What about taking action?

I don't want to leave you with the idea that every uncomfortable feeling means you should sit quietly and work on yourself. Sometimes being a mirror means taking action.

When there's injustice, the feeling that rises in you isn't always something to wipe away. It can be the mirror asking to reflect God's quality of justice, and justice often shows up as action. When your community needs help, or your family needs your effort, the quality being asked of you isn't contentment. It's care, and care shows up as work.

So the signal doesn't always say "let go." Sometimes it says "get up." The question is the same either way: which quality of God is this moment asking me to reflect? Sometimes the answer is patience. Sometimes the answer is your hands.

Knowing yourself is polishing the mirror

You don't know yourself by looking harder at your name, your age, or your role. Those are the labels on the mirror, not the mirror.

And you cannot know yourself while the mirror is dirty. When it's covered, all you see is the outside world, and it's easy to mistake that for who you are. But the more you polish it, the more you see yourself for what you are, a mirror. And the clearer it gets, the more of God's qualities can pass through you into the world.

You know yourself by noticing where the reflection fails. The next time an uncomfortable feeling rises, before you push it away, try asking a different question. Not "What's wrong with me?" but "What is this feeling telling me I need to develop?"

That's where knowing yourself begins. And it might be where knowing your Lord begins too.

I would love to hear from you. What did this bring up for you? Reply to this email or leave a comment on the blog post.

Warm regards,

Mohammed Ali

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