Hetepu (Peace) Family
I was just sitting back and listening to Black Star’s K.O.S. (Knowledge of Self), which had me reflecting on some things. I remember back in the day, not to sound like an old fogey, when Quest, DeLa, Gangstarr, Paris, Heavy D, Brand Nubians, Black Sheep, PRT, PE, KRS-1 and all of them was around. We talked about knowledge of self to raise the consciousness of folks. It wasn’t all about power. It was about just surviving, living, enjoying life and making sure we don’t fall in the social traps. It was all about seeing the divine within you, but I noticed something.
Nowadays, people are always talking about knowledge of self but they never express the benefit or purpose of knowledge of self. To begin it must be understood that you are composed of several parts. There is a thinking part of you, a feeling part of you, a spiritual part of you and so on. In psychology these different aspects of you are commonly referred to as the conscious, subconscious and unconscious minds. Technically speaking, you only have one mind, but it is divided into different parts that control different aspects of your life. The subconscious mind governs your memories, emotions, autonomous body functions, etc. Your conscious part of your mind governs your rational thinking and your will, while your unconscious corresponds to those aspects of you that lie outside of conscious and subconscious control such as your intuition.
Now, let’s see how this applies. Ninety-nine percent the world population lives their life based upon what was learned or the memories of their subconscious because the subconscious is responsible for our habits, but as we all know, our habits are not always good. A lot of us have some pretty destructive habits in the sense that they cause harm to us and others like smoking, abusive behavior, critical language, etc. For instance, when we see someone doing something that we disagree with. It is out of habit that we may criticize their actions and behavior, but before we do it. There is something inside of us that gives us the impulse not to do it. That something speaking within us is our unconscious. A lot of times, we choose to do the exact opposite of what that unconscious voice is telling us not to do. The decision to choose is due to our conscious. As you can all of these three parts contribute and make you who you are.
When you don’t have knowledge of self, you tend to only rely upon the subconscious part of your being. This means that engage in actions and behaviors based solely upon you feel and have learned because remember, the subconscious governs our emotions and memories. This means, if it doesn’t feel right, we don’t like it, etc. we will not do it. This sounds great but we have to remember as we saw earlier, our subconscious can mislead us because it lacks the ability to reason, which is a function of our conscious. This is why there are so many people addicted to cigarette smoking and a lot of other destructive habits. It is because somewhere along the line, the individual that picked up the habit of smoking thought it was “cool”, “hip” or whatever, so the subconscious liked it and became a “destructive” friend.
So what knowledge of self does is to remind you first and foremost that you are not your subconscious, your subconscious is just one aspect of you. Said another way, you are not what you have learned, memorized or done in the past. This is just something that you have done. This is very important to understand because a lot of people think that since they made some grave errs in their life. That they are not welcomed and do not deserve the blessings of God, which is so not true. Your subconscious or your past does not define who you are. It is the conscious choices that you make that determine who and what you will be. As I stated in the example above, there is an unconscious part of our being that speaks to us, but we have to decide on if we choose to listen to it or not. This unconscious part is also what is referred to as the Divine Spark or the Spark of God within. Every living being on the planet has it, but only man and woman have the ability to listen to it or ignore it totally.
When you have knowledge of self it reminds you of all of this, but it also helps you to see that the same divine beauty that exists in you dwells in others as well. Everyone and everything is sacred because it is created by the Divine. Even man-made objects have place in the scheme of things because they are still a manifestation of God through human hands. But again, knowledge of self throws back in our face that it is what we choose to do with our life and the things in the world that brings about our demise and the demise of others. When you knowledge of self, you have no need for a secret philosophy because you see the benefit of expressing gratitude. You understand the nature of your being is the nature of the universe and vice versa. And, this is why it is important to get Knowledge of Self.
Hope that helps.