Someone asked me today about my work with the Enneagram system of spiritual and personal development. At one point she made a rather barbed comment about sitting around ‘navel-gazing’. She does a lot of charity work and seemed to think that self-knowledge is a waste of time when you could be out helping others.
She would probably have run screaming for the hills if I’d related the following, but I was reminded of this little story:
An eager disciple wants to know the secret of living a holy life. He hears of a wise old hermit who dwells in a cave on the mountainside.
(I know, there are so many eager disciples and so many wise old hermits, but bear with me!)
The disciple climbs the mountain. It takes him hours of strenuous effort. Finally he reaches the cave and sees the old woman sitting in meditation, her eyes closed.
After a few more hours, the old woman opens her eyes. The disciple asks tremblingly if he can learn the secret of a holy life. The hermit takes up a stick and writes one word in the earth in front of her: awareness.
‘Yes’, says the disciple, ‘I know that’s important, but what is the secret of a holy life?’ The old woman brushes out the word she has written and writes two more in its place: awareness, awareness.
‘But’, says the disciple, ‘how can this be the secret of living a holy life?’ The old woman looks at him and says ‘There are three secrets to living a holy life: awareness, awareness and awareness.’
The disciple staggers back down the mountain, hot and tired, and on the way he does indeed becomes aware: of his feeling of irritation with that damn hermit!
He begins to bring this awareness into his daily life and becomes increasingly aware of his reactions, his feelings, his thoughts, his actions. And once the habit of awareness is ingrained in him, he is able to be aware also of his love for himself and others, and of his love for God. And then he is able to meet himself and others in full compassion and awareness.
And perhaps in turn he becomes a great guru and goes and sits up on a mountainside dispensing wisdom, but we don’t get to hear about that.
The point is that “navel-gazing” is not a self-indulgent exercise. We can only grow in compassion for others through compassion for ourselves. Self-knowledge is not selfish. To quote the wonderful Maya Angelou:
Never trust the naked man who offers you his shirt.
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I love this story. So simple, yet so profound.
YES YES YES!!!! In our ministry we have a program and the first year is focused on the student. It’s for the student to become AWARE of their own issues, beliefs and attitudes about themselves, the world and G-d. I can’t tell you how often I’ll be teaching and one student will elbow another as if to say, “Hey, YOU need THIS part of the teaching!” and I’ll stop and say that everyone needs to take the teaching and apply it to themselves first. If we don’t get ourselves lined up first, we can end up unwittingly doing unimaginable harm to others or at the least be ineffective. Great story.
Love this story. Henri Nouwen (my fave) has some great words here. “Self-knowledge and self-love are the fruit of knowing and loving God. Laying our hearts totally open to God leads to a love of ourselves that enables us to give whole-hearted love to our fellow human beings.”
And I always am reminded of the “great commandment” to first love God and then our neighbors AS OURSELVES. I believe that is exactly what we do (love our neighbors as ourselves) and most often we are not loving ourselves very well. hmmmm????
First, I love that the wise old hermit is a woman in this story! Yay!
Healing ourselves comes first. The last thing we need is more unaware people bumbling around the world making messes.
Thanks everyone, glad this story struck you all.
Lucy, I have the Nouwen “The Only Necessary Thing” on order from Amazon and am eagerly awaiting it. It will be my first of his.