There is something curious about the Finnish word 'tuntea': it translates both to 'know' and to 'feel'. When we say "tuntea itsensä" we talk about knowing myself or knowing about myself, but it could also be interpreted as feeling myself. Yet I don't think anyone thinks about that. Tell me if I'm wrong.
This came to my mind, again, during an inner observation practise, where I was laying down on my back, being with my breath as it happened and focusing my awareness on my feelings, as well as physical or energetic sensations - and whatever I was experiencing anyway (though I'd rather call it imperiencing since experience takes place in one's inner world, doesn't it?).
As usual, I became aware of stuff that I did not like and did not want to feel, but there it was. And there was no denying that all of it was part of me, even though most of the time I was / am not aware of them.
It was happening mainly on emotional level: fear and it's sideproducts, which are meant to cover and hide it, such as anger and just resistance. As you know, you feel emotions physically too, and I was feeling the fear in my stomach. Uhh, very unpleasant. I was also very aware of other physical and energetic sensations too: I was feeling my body and energies.
So I went: "Oh well, I suppose that if I want to know myself I can not choose what parts I want to know. If I want to get to know myself deeply and thoroughly, I takes a choice and a decision to know all sides and aspects of me, and of my whole being."
I was thinking - in Finnish of course - and all of a sudden understood the other meaning of the word 'tuntea'. I realised it would take a decision to feel it all as well! It only made perfect sense because in the end they are the same.
So I chose to be with whatever I was feeling, including the resistance to what I was feeling. Feeling my body combined with feeling my feelings. Most of the time we think that intellect, feelings and body are separate functions but that is not true. And now I was just feeling what I was feeling, without caring if it was physical or emotional. I wasn't even interested.
We also have a tendency to rely mainly on our intellect, so we automatically analyze our emotional and physical feelings. We process them through a "thought machine". That doesn't help us to know our selves, for the only purpose of feelings is that they are to be felt. We don't need any intellectual information about them.
The best thing that can come out from this all is that when analyzing loosens it's grip –and at the same time there is more just pure feeling of our body and feelings– our three functions (intellect, emotions, body) start to regain their natural balance. When that happens, we start to know and feel ourselves intuitively.
Self-knowledge is not knowing our thoughts and thinking, nor knowing about ourselves. It is experiencing ourselves through being with all sides and aspects of ourselves.
