Knowing yourself isn’t about coming up with a neat definition you can put on a business card. It’s more like watching the weather of your own being. The soul shows up in the little things, like what you’re drawn to, what you shy away from, or the memories that stick on you like burrs and the ones that slip away without a trace.
If you pay attention, you can catch the soul in the act. It’s there in the way you suddenly decide, without much thought, to take a different path home. It’s in how you savour the first sip of coffee, or how certain songs seem to move your whole body before your mind even kicks in. The soul has its own manners of tasting, sensing, feeling, and perceiving. It has its own style of being alive.
Then there’s the trickiest part: thought before it hardens into words or images. Pure cogitation, if you like. It’s not easy to notice, because the moment you try, the mind rushes in with pictures and sentences. But if you lean into it, there’s a sense of movement underneath. A current of thought that doesn’t need form to be real. It’s like wind across a field: invisible, but you can see the grass ripple.
So to “know thyself” isn’t about cracking some final code. It’s more like doing fieldwork on your own soul, keeping company with its moods and manners, watching the patterns as they shift. You don’t pin the soul down. You walk alongside it, stay curious, and notice how it weaves your life together from moment to moment.
The funny thing is, the more you watch, the more it changes. Which is maybe the point: self-knowledge isn’t about answers. It’s about presence.
Field Notes 04.10.2025
