(…) we have to penetrate through our obvious and also our not so obvious secondary layers of self-recognition. The ways in which we recognise ourselves, describe ourselves, fill out forms, present ourselves to others by the way we dress or by the way we act or by the cars we drive or by the house we live in, by the conversations we have or the company we keep, all these ways in which we express ourselves and recognise ourselves and feel comfortable, all of that has to be penetrated through. We have to see through it. That’s the work of finding oneself. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to stop everything you are doing and go off to the desert or Bonnevaux, or change the external forms of your life at all. But it does mean that what you have to view is in the secondary levels of self-recognition; that’s self-knowledge, that is humility, and it’s clarity, and it is also liberation. That is, I think, what Jesus means by ‘losing your life’. It means to be detached from what we can possess of ourselves. Anything that we have or are, that could be possessed – status, money, identity, social identity, religious identity – anything that can be seen as a possession has to be let go of.
( Finding Oneself 1 Laurence Freeman )
