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Monday, March 28, 2022

Nanny State or Granny State?

By Anna Von Reitz
Chapter Two

It follows that the growth of knowledge and belief is unique to each one of us. It is an organic process. It takes time. And if we are serious about it, it takes effort.

The Great Dictum of the Ancient World, "Know thyself." is a lifetime pursuit, a matter of meeting endless challenges and answering equally endless questions.

Everything from, "Do I like oatmeal?" to "Do I believe in my professed religion?" hits the deck of our intellectual and emotional experience, demanding answers.

And they are answers that only we can give.

Be honest about this. Admit that you are a work in progress, from your first breath to your last, as wonderful as you are and as bad as you are, as strong and as weak, you are the already existing totality reflected in all the mirrors, the thing you only glimpse and always seek.

So you have all these questions, and you have your performances, your responses to each test. You have your ability to observe yourself, and the ability to say you got it right or you got it wrong. And how would we do it differently, too, if this, if that, if I'd caught the bus to Memphis....

Well, then, everything might be different.

I might have been a dentist's wife, living in Minnesota, instead.

Thus we accumulate our own collection of "unanswerables" and regrets, things that we remember and mull over time and time again, trying to fathom all the aspects of who we were then, what we did, what we didn't do, what we said, and most often, what we left unsaid, too.

Sometimes we emerge as the heroes of our own story, and other times we fall like Icarus, a broken lump with glued together feathers.

And that's just the way it is. We are all on a journey of self-discovery, and what we believe about ourselves, like what we believe about God, is forged in this process, moment by moment and day by day and year by year.

What I want you to do now, is observe that this is true. It's true for you and it's true for everyone else. The only difference is that some of us are aware of the process of self-discovery, and others are dead to it, walking through life like zombies, unable or unwilling to come to grips with this relentless examination of ourselves.

And I want to encourage you, too, to accept the challenge. You never know the answers until you ask the questions. You never know the truth about yourself, until you push beyond your comfort zone.

It's then that you find out things that you never imagined, glorious things, and mundane things, too. Things like, yes, I am a trustworthy friend, are proven side by side with no, I don't really care for tomato aspic -- and as unnerving as all this flood of information can be, it's the stuff that our endless internal dialogue is made of.

Pay attention to that dialogue, if you would be wise, and if you would be free.

Ask yourself --- what's the truth about me? And change anything you don't like, knowing that you and only you, possess the power to change yourself and your world.

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See this article and over 3500 others on Anna's website here: www.annavonreitz.com

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