– I have heard that so many times and honestly… it seems to me a reverend stupidity – I said without reconsidering, and continue arguing-.
"Know yourself" How can I not know myself, haven't I lived with myself all my life? Am I not myself all the time?
– Well, no, the truth is exactly the opposite: you don't know yourself and very few times in your life have you been yourself. What you know about yourself is your personality and your conditioning. –
Ohhh!... Well, for a change, my dear guide, I don't understand anything.
– Look, the word personality comes from the Greek “person”. The persona was the mask used by Greek actors in plays. So, your personality is the mask with which you relate to others, but it is not you. Have you noticed that when you are alone and you think that nobody is watching you, you behave differently?
- Of course I've noticed - I replied excitedly feeling that I was beginning to understand you -, even with some people we are in a certain way and with others we are different.
– That's right, your personality is something acquired, which has to do with the situations that surrounded your childhood, with the society in which you were born, with external things. None of them you chose and over none of them you had control.
– But then… do we always wear a mask to relate to others?
- Always. A mask of learned attitudes, of commonplaces, of rehearsed reactions. A way of being and acting that leaves no room to be yourself: to be spontaneous.
– And we hardly make contact with each other. We avoid showing the other.
– We avoid it because we are ashamed, because they have told you that you can be whatever you want… except be yourself. And in those rare moments when you make contact with your being, when you cry emotionally, laugh without thinking or dance without control, what happens?
– They repress you, they think you're crazy, they criticize you.
– That's right, others are uncomfortable that you show the real me, because in society you live in the "as if", in the superficial, in the comfortable, without making contact with the other. Showing your emotions, your vulnerability, your joy, your innocence, is crazy.
– But… with the people we love? with them if we show our true selves, right?
– That would be wonderful, but it is not reality. We are so identified with our mask, with our personality, that we think that "it" is us and even in privacy we continue to respond to a program. When you kiss your girlfriend, when you make love to her, you don't touch, it's just the masks that kiss and caress each other.
– But… we're sorry! - I said a little annoyed.
– They feel a small part, believe me. Between so many learned attitudes, so many automatic actions and so many distractions of your mind, there is no space left to see the other, to feel yourself.
– Well, I find it hard to believe that we are always hiding our true selves.
– You hide it so much that you don't even know him! When people aren't trying to convince others that it's something it's not, they're trying not to let anyone know what it really is.
On the one hand, exaggerating and lying to create a more pleasant face for others and on the other hand, pretending and hiding because what he thinks he really is, embarrasses him.
– We hide our diaries, we repress our emotions, we don't express our ideas… but then, do we live in lies?
– Not in lies, on the surface, our personalities are the circumference, our being is the center. The circumference is the "as if".
– As if we loved each other, as if we cared, as if we loved each other, as if…
– The husband pretends to be faithful and has a lover, the wife pretends she doesn't know so she doesn't have to worry about money, the children pretend to study, the bureaucrat pretends to work, the politician like he matter, the policeman as if he were honest, the priest as if he were pure and chaste.
– And how do we then get to know each other?
– Observe the way in which we have been conditioned. Pay attention to the programs in which we respond blindly.
– Wait, wait… that sounds like we're robots…
– We are robots, slaves, puppets. We all are. There is nothing original in any of us. Since our childhood we have been enslaved, conditioned, programmed.
What we believe we are, our goals, our values, our fears, our tastes; they were imposed on us by others. We were never given the opportunity to choose our beliefs. We never had the chance to question them. We have chosen nothing.
What you think you are, that person you defend tooth and nail, that personality of which you feel proud or... so ashamed, is not you.
Those goals that move you, the fears that control you, the ideas that give meaning to your life, the values that you respect; you inherited them all. They were forced on you when you had no chance to reject them, to even analyze them.
– Hey! You're already overdoing it! – I said furious- Is it that we are a bunch of puppets without will, without the possibility of choosing anything? So we are manipulated at will and we don't even realize it?
An hour passed without my guide saying anything. I stopped insisting that he give me an answer when they realized that that was exactly what he wanted to teach me. That I was used to easy answers, to pre-digested information, I liked not only that they gave me food in the mouth, but also that I wanted someone to chew the food for me.
Did you choose to be born?– he finally said.
- Nope
– Did you choose your parents or your family?
– Some say that if we choose them.
– That's newage bullshit. Did you choose them?
- Nope.
– Did you choose to be a man?
- Nope.
– Being Mexican?
- Nope.
– Being Catholic?
- Nope.
- Your name?
- Nope.
– Is there something important in your life that has determined your way of being and that you have chosen?
You don't have the faintest idea of who you are, you live behind the mask that is the personality that you have been given, without being able to show it to others. You ingest alcohol in order to loosen your bonds. Without foreign substances in your body you cannot speak, you cannot laugh openly, you cannot dance, you cannot even express your emotions. Since you live through others, their opinion is more important than your feelings. The "what will they say" is what governs your life.
Knowing yourself is knowing what remains when you get rid of all those labels with which you have identified yourself: ideologies, beliefs, nationalities, stereotypes, fashions.
– Which is not easy.
– It is the most difficult thing you can imagine, because getting out of the pile is jumping, venturing into the unknown, it is as Jesus said: “getting lost in order to find oneself”.
– Know yourself – I repeated, now with more respect – wow! Who said it first?
- The Greeks
- Oh yeah! Already knew.

– Mhhh… Of course…