Finding one's way to oneself
A dynamic of self-discovery
Article available in French
The Eternal Present · Spiritual Awakening · 11 min
Exploring the concrete pathways of inner transformation.
Being oneself is by no means self-evident. Our days sometimes reveal a being who eludes us and retains its share of the unexpected. In the wake of life’s accidents, the questions return: who am I, and what is the meaning of my life? The answers we offer remain forever insufficient. They cannot grasp our living reality beyond the reach of words.
What if the adventure of being were a matter of inner growth? A journey whose very dynamic signifies our identity? It would then be a question of ceasing to apprehend ourselves through a fixed image — one we then seek to impose upon others in a perpetual theatre of shadows.
The inherited identity
The idea we hold of ourselves evolves throughout existence. From the image reflected back by our parents to that which we perceive as we become adults, our identity transforms according to the rhythm of our experiences.
It is the external world that furnishes us with the tools to understand ourselves. Under its influence, we gradually form our manner of thinking and of finding our place. What determines the person we become is the confrontation between our own dispositions and the universe in which we grow. First the family and its history, then the social and geographical context, and finally the cultural and political milieu with its organisation, its fashions, and its prejudices.
Our psychic life is oriented by our childhood within the family environment. It is there that our inner mechanisms for managing otherness take shape. Our vision of the world is constituted during adolescence, in an alternation of adoption and opposition towards newly discovered ideas. By the time we leave the parental home, our personality is formed, as is our manner of regarding ourselves.
Yet these elements result above all from the unconscious impregnation of external influences. They are the consequence of the conditions linked to our birth. They are not the fruit of an inner growth conducted in an awakened dialogue with the world.
Most human beings do not question this process except during shattering events, or following the slow inner erosion produced by the gap between their daily existence and their intimate being. So long as their modes of thought and action yield satisfactory results, they challenge nothing.
But should the equilibrium break, a phase of introspection begins — one that is sometimes painful. The person then perceives the inadequacy between their genuine needs and the direction their existence has taken. They sense how distorted their idea of themselves truly is. They feel impelled to evolve by an urgency that is the expression of their intimate being in suffering.
It becomes necessary for them to undertake a work of self-understanding, a journey to untangle the complexity of their personality and to reconnect with their essential being. It is in this reappropriation that a more authentic life opens up — one that honours their original singularity.
The masks of everyday life
For a long time, we content ourselves with a functional, outward image: I am so-and-so, I come from such-and-such a family, I practise such-and-such a profession. We identify with our name, with social roles, with a culture. These reference points furnish us with a reassuring representation of ourselves and of the world.
We advance in this manner, preserving an inner equilibrium that is sometimes precarious. But inner movements pass through us, emotions overwhelm us, which overflow this simple image we ceaselessly repeat. The gazes of others astonish or discomfit us, yet we continue to assume roles ill-adjusted to our being, for fear of losing our social existence.
All these events gradually open fissures in our inner citadel, and through them seep doubts and anxieties. We begin by repelling them, plunging into easy distractions, for we refuse the confrontation with that inner voice that wishes to question us.
And we continue our pursuit of all manner of illusions, until the day when a lightning-bolt intuition recalls us to ourselves. Or else an unhappy event strikes us — the death of a loved one, a separation, a burnout. There we stand, alone upon the deserted shore of that inner island we had always taken care to avoid.
In that instant, everything that had assured us of being ourselves has shattered. We find ourselves breathless, the heart heavy with all the buried griefs and all the humiliations endured by our inner child.
Yet this difficult passage can open us to a new horizon. It can allow us to discover unknown aspects of our potential and to set out towards the most intimate reaches of ourselves.
What has just been broken is broken by the effect of a kind of blessing. Our fictitious protections against the fear of the unknown and our illusions about ourselves are laid low. All these artifices that reduce us to quasi-automatic mechanisms and deprive us of perceiving our singularity are annihilated.
This difficult laying bare is the occasion to set out in search of who we truly are — to journey patiently towards the oasis where we may unfold the full dimension of our being. It is in this movement that a more fluid and more liberated identity defines itself.
The quest for the true self
He who accepts these questionings finds himself stripped of all the reference points that had assured him of his being. His situation resembles that of desert nomads who must quit a refuge that has grown precarious. They set forth on a perilous journey towards a new oasis. Organising their provisions, setting out, confronting the expanse of sands — all this becomes an imperative.
The same holds true for us. Were we to silence this inner voice, we would expose our future to the certain resurgence of this call. It would then make itself heard in a more violent manner — through a more acute crisis, or through grave illness.
So long as we refuse to regard our inner realities, we shall be confronted with fresh warnings, in forms increasingly critical. We must therefore set ourselves in motion. Accept to journey towards oneself. Make of these crises the occasion for significant progress — a beneficial transition towards a truer and more profound self.
Our surface identities are fragile. They are constituted solely from the impregnation of familial inheritance and the culture of our age. It is as though we had been manufactured to fulfil functions that ensure the perpetuation of a certain type of society. Our initial singularity must restrict itself to finding a form compatible with recognised models; failing which, we are driven out beyond the common camp.
This social and spiritual stranglehold reduces the human being to an atrophied version of himself. Until the flash of an intuition passes through him and begins to awaken him, or until the accidents of life strike him and set him moving once again towards himself.
Thus Abraham, our distant ancestor, hears the words in Genesis: “Go forth to yourself, leave your country, your lineage and your father’s house, towards the land that I shall show you.” I interpret: “Go forth to yourself” — towards your real and singular being. “Leave your country” — differentiate yourself from the ambient culture. “Leave your lineage” — free yourself from your psychogenealogical inheritance. “Leave your father’s house” — escape the state of mind of your family. To go “towards the land” — the new mental space — “that I shall show you” — that the inner voice shall cause you to discover.
Are we not all, at some moment of our existence, like this Abraham? Summoned to set out in quest of a more authentic self?
The Abrahamic call to liberation
Moving towards oneself requires, above all, that we confront the truth of what we are — that we begin to know and understand what constitutes us in order to draw from it what is truly our intimate essence.
Yet to know oneself, one must keep one’s own company. Engage in dialogue with oneself. Question and confront oneself. This demands that we counteract the modern habit of losing ourselves in a profusion of distractions — festive evenings, addiction to screens, compulsive purchasing. All these external impulses create a surface agitation. They draw a thick veil over our interiority, as though we were afraid of encountering ourselves.
This is the primary and foremost difficulty facing one who would truly be himself. He remains caught within a network of dependencies and automatisms. For many people, finding oneself alone in silence is an ordeal that can trigger such distress as to explain the growing recourse to everything that avoids this confrontation — deadening oneself with diverse activities and consumptions, and when that no longer suffices, with alcohol, drugs, or anxiolytics.
And yet it is indispensable to access the depth of one’s interiority in order to be attentive to all that passes through us — not in a morbid, narcissistic contemplation, but in that active observation which requires a neutrality and the complete absence of judgement or interpretation of what we discover.
The principal prayer of the Mosaic revelation begins with “Shema Israel” — “Hear, O Israel.” It addresses itself to every human being, called to learn through listening. This same revelation tells us: “Thou shalt make no idol, nor any likeness.” These words alert us to the danger of concrete images and mental representations — to the risk of finding ourselves enclosed within fixed states of consciousness. And the great peril of this domination by the visual complicates the access to listening to oneself.
Hearing is the most acute sense of the foetus. It develops before sight. Thus, when we have not yet entered the world of separation, it is hearing that takes precedence. It is therefore naturally through listening to oneself that we shall accede to our inner truth.
Listening to oneself
Drawing near to our most intimate essence demands a subtle listening to oneself. In the mental domain, this means discerning between our inner voice and all the chatter with which our brain is invaded — influenced by teachings and media that promote the opinions of the age, or by omnipresent advertising, charged with deciding our desires.
It is important to become conscious of the impact of a society’s global state of mind. A great number of our ideas and beliefs rest upon no conscious reflection whatsoever. They are prejudices, hasty conjectures provoked by our milieu, our era, our education.
Are you aware that there exists today a highly refined technique called nudging? This combination of the results of psychology and neuroscience serves to influence our desires and convictions. Through the multiplication of indirect suggestions carried by the media and social networks, it succeeds in orientating our motivations. In the political field, this was analysed as early as 1988 by Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman in their book Manufacturing Consent.
He who wishes to form his own thought freely will need to extricate himself from the grip of his society’s culture, by proceeding with a humble and lucid examination of his certainties. This process is a patient labour of personal reflection, but equally of active observation of our behaviours. Certain prejudices can only reveal themselves to us when they are caught in our own reactions.
Imagine you harbour a particular antipathy towards a certain profession. At an evening gathering, you meet someone with whom you feel at ease. They confide to you that they practise this very profession. Immediately, something shifts in your emotions and in your body. You no longer see the person for themselves. You are possessed by your mistrust, and your demeanour grows cold.
Thus, to journey towards oneself: to take one’s distance with respect to the profusion of information that surrounds us, to fall silent in order to return to one’s own thoughts, and to rid oneself of the parti pris that possess us — here is an indispensable step towards liberty and self-awareness.
Towards transmutation
To advance towards that which is essential within us, we must examine our manner of thinking, for our modes of thought determine our relationship to the world, to others, and to ourselves. They determine the manner in which we receive our emotions and the direction that our ambitions and our dreams take.
To know ourselves genuinely, we must listen to all that passes through us, in a wholly free manner, without opposing any resistance. If we cannot succeed in freeing ourselves from the power of our mental faculty, an entire part of our interiority will remain inaccessible to us.
We must plunge into ourselves as the diver descends into deep waters, for we are often unknown to ourselves. We survive, sheltered in the meagre space where we tolerate encountering ourselves, whilst refusing to frequent within ourselves that which frightens, disgusts, or disappoints us.
Yet all of this constitutes us. To know ourselves is to accept seeing it and acknowledging it. Were we to cease fearing ourselves — our insufficiency and our fragility — we might begin to understand who we are, and find our dignity in the acceptance of our condition and in our effort to evolve.
This attitude of total honesty with oneself finds little correspondence in our age. In our societies, the dominant forces push us to desire social success and to content ourselves with being simple producer-consumers. The way of spiritual development is not a priority.
And yet no one can fully realise themselves without understanding that it is possible to find, in the very depths of oneself, the springs by which to recreate oneself — more conscious, more free, more wise, and more loving. In this way we may accede to a more intense life.
The first step will be to accept tearing away all the veils of illusion — those that prevent us from living in the demanding light of one’s own truth. From this lucid knowledge, it will be possible to engage in a slow transmutation of our inner dross, so as to cause to be born there the roses of the spiritual Eden, whose splendour shall illuminate the world with a new beauty.
© 2026 — Dialogues du Nouveau Monde — Jérôme Nathanaël
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