Knowing Less

 Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world.  Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.

Rumi

Eckhart Tolle explains the importance of changing individual human consciousness in order to change the world t by first becoming self aware:

You can only change the world by changing human consciousness...and there is only one place that it can happen and that is in you...to practice self observation implies there is enough self awareness in you that you can observe yourself.

And as I have discovered in my own living practice, the more Self aware I get, the more the self diminishes.  The more I seek to know, the less I know. So this axiom set out by the Oracle at Delphi and to which Socrates ascribed, "Man, Know thyself" ...really means, I believe, "Man, as you observe self, see through your trying to know self...that the self you think you are  isn't real and the more you try to know this self and gain knowledge for this self...the less you will know." 

Eckhart Tolle puts it this way:

You know less as you become more aware...because the compulsion to judge continously isn't there.

So as I trudge along this path, feeling a bit "stupid" as I become aware of how little I know. I recall a line from Plato's Repulic,

I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.

All is well.

Eckhart Tolle ( February 18, 2025) Eckhart Tolle on the Importance of Self Awareness. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srdASys9EIo&t=802s