Within every human lies a moral spirit that confers on us our divinity and makes us all children of God. It blesses us with a conscience that helps us to distinguish between right and wrong. It makes us feel guilty or shameful when we have done something wrong. It is the source of our human goodness and defines the spiritual nature of our humanity. In addition to giving us our moral centre, it guides us in the direction of our life's purpose and in the fulfilment of our human potential. We sometimes speak of this moral spirit as the inner voice or the little voice within. We can all sense it and we ignore it at our peril. It is our inner reality because it is real. It defines our inner selves and we are all challenged to live in keeping with who we are internally. But first we must know ourselves. Only then we can believe in ourselves.
When we know ourselves we walk through life with confidence. We are spiritually energised and enjoy inner peace. We can trust ourselves because we can surrender to be guided by our inner selves. We have the strength to present ourselves to the world truthfully. We are authentic and not pretensive. Hence, humility comes naturally as we let go of our self-inflated egos. We feel wholesome as we pursue life with integrity. We easily acknowledge our weaknesses and vulnerabilities because we know that we can correct them. We are comfortable with ourselves and easily extend brotherly love to all other human beings. Hence, the wisdom in the Greek aphorism, "know thyself"-truly words of the wise and a statement of truth.
The more we know ourselves the more we are likely to display self-discipline and personal responsibility. In T&T there is a loud call for a higher level of self-discipline and civility in keeping with the watchwords of the nation-Discipline, Production and Tolerance. Self-discipline only comes when our citizens can display a higher level of self-control arising from greater knowledge of self. It is only through greater self-discipline that we can advance as human beings and as a society. With self-discipline comes a greater sense of personal freedom and independent thinking as we allow ourselves to be guided by our inner reality. In life we are faced with a stark choice of (1) allowing our lives to be determined by what is happening in the world around us-our outer reality; or (2) allowing our lives to be guided by the world within us-our inner reality.
Sadly, we live in a world in which the vast majority of us are conditioned to define our lives almost totally on the basis of what is happening in our outer reality, thus setting up ourselves for a lifetime of inner turmoil and the misery that accompanies it. As a result many, if not most of us, are trapped in our outer reality waiting and dependent on others, showing little initiative and blaming others for our failures. In that state we are lost, blind to our true strength and unable to acknowledge our dependency. We are insecure and morally wanting.
We would love to be seen as authentic and when we are not, we pretend to be. In fact, we have developed a whole new academic discipline of personal, corporate and public "spin-doctoring" to train people in the art of lying. Many parents and teachers routinely condition their children to tell lies about themselves so that they "sound nice" and "look good." Most of our corporate and public organisations now have departments and trained professionals dedicated to presenting a "nice image" of their organisations, whether or not this is really so. In the process truth gets lost, despite our public mutterings of its importance, and we end up with a culture of lying that becomes dominant in our politics, homes, schools, organisations, communities and wider society.
To discover our world within is to discover our inner reality. When we recognise that we are challenged throughout our lives to define ourselves in keeping with our inner reality, we open the door to becoming the more responsible and fulfilled human beings that we desire to be. We discover that we don't have to "belong" to a group to be our true selves. We don't have to belong to a religion, a race, a culture, a nation, a church, a school, a village, a city, a country, a profession, a club, and a political party in order to be a fulfilled human being. The only real belonging that is necessary is the belonging to the human race. It is only then that we will be able to fulfil our true human potential.
The lives of Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela and Mother Theresa are instructive. In the human race there are no foreigners, no aliens, no outsiders and no non-belongers. We all belong. We only become truly human when we can discover and live in keeping with the divine nature of our inner reality. We can best discover our inner reality through the process of introspection, a process that helps us to reflect on who we are and to sense and feel our human potential. In my column of April 16, 2010, I wrote the following: "Introspection is connecting with our inner selves. It is discovering our divine gifts. It is becoming aware of our true selves. It is discovering and acknowledging the God in us. It is contemplating on our human goodness. It is reclaiming our moral centre. It is reconciling with our life's purpose. It is mastering our emotions. It is allowing our spiritual centre to guide us. "Unfortunately, the essence of introspection can get lost in the unnecessarily rituals of various belief systems, philosophies and cultures such that finding our inner selves appears to be more difficult than it really is.
"The truth is that our inner self is easily available to us and to all other human beings. We do not have to belong to any one group, tribe or religion to access the inner self. "In order to find our inner selves we must first disconnect from the numerous distractions that intrude into our lives and which create internal turbulence, thus obscuring our inner selves. Hence, from time to time we must retreat from the noise of living so that we can better hear our inner voice. This is introspection-it puts us in touch with our inner beauty with which all humans are endowed. Introspection awakens us to our inner power and energises our lives." Believing in ourselves follows.
THEO FERGUSON
Leadership educator
ferguson.theodore@gmail.com
www.theoferguson.com