Knowing yourself is one of the first tenets of Enlightenment

My path took me through being raised a Mystical Christian (mostly in California after I was 4 and before that Seattle, Washington. I tend to be more polite than Californians generally speaking because of my first 4 years in Seattle which is a lot like Canada and many people in Seattle intermarry with Canadians because of close proximity.

So, my path took me through Mystical Christianity and my parents ran a church in Los Angeles with about 1000 Adherents when I was 6 to 12 years old so I learned how to counsel people like my parents did through their church.

However, as an adult I found that I needed something more to want to be alive. I found this Something more through Psychology Today magazine in the library of Palomar College in San Marcos, California.

By understanding how useful psychology would be to my personal survival I moved into a different way of looking at things and away from a more church going way of seeing things. So, instead of going to church I decided to practice my beliefs 24 hours a day all the time waking and sleeping. This worked for me along with learning how to cut loose things that were heading me towards suicide in my life. For example, my father's pride was not a functional pride and I found that was leading me to want to be dead in emulating this. Instead I went off on my own custom made reality that was built from what I learned in college along with books like Dweller on Two Planets, Lord of the Rings and other Tolkien Books, Books like "The Aquarian Gospel" and other books that helped me along the way. However, I grew up reading things written by Robert Heinlein and Larry Niven and Isaac Asimov because they like Gene Roddenberry  all used theoretical science and not just fantasy to write their Science Fiction.

George Lucas was another theoretical  science writer of Science Fiction too so I also became a fan of his in the 1970s and after.

But, knowing yourself is the key to long term survival here on earth.

Often people believe knowing some teacher is the key to survival but not really.

The real job in long term useful and happy survival is actually learning to know yourself, know your needs and what it will take for you to actually want to be alive in this world.

Because if you don't do what makes you want to be alive and happy, you just aren't going to be around anymore or you are going to do things that you will always regret in life.

So, knowing yourself is the key to being a benefit not only to yourself but to all other beings too potentially. 

By God's Grace