self-analysis

• understanding self and others leads to craving to know God

1:6.6The more com­pletely man un­der­stands him­self and ap­pre­ci­ates the per­son­al­ity val­ues of his fel­lows, the more he will crave to know the Orig­i­nal Per­son­al­ity, and the more earnestly such a God-know­ing hu­man will strive to be­come like the Orig­i­nal Per­son­al­ity. You can ar­gue over opin­ions about God, but ex­pe­ri­ence with him and in him ex­ists above and be­yond all hu­man con­tro­versy and mere in­tel­lec­tual logic. The God-know­ing man de­scribes his spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ences, not to con­vince un­be­liev­ers, but for the ed­i­fi­ca­tion and mu­tual sat­is­fac­tion of be­liev­ers.

• God alone, aside from his divine co-ordinates, has perfect appraisal of himself

2:1.3Not­with­stand­ing the in­fin­ity of the stu­pen­dous man­i­fes­ta­tions of the Fa­ther’s eter­nal and uni­ver­sal per­son­al­ity, he is un­qual­i­fiedly self-con­scious of both his in­fin­ity and eter­nity; like­wise he knows fully his per­fec­tion and power. He is the only be­ing in the uni­verse, aside from his di­vine co-or­di­nates, who ex­pe­ri­ences a per­fect, proper, and com­plete ap­praisal of him­self.

2:1.4The Fa­ther con­stantly and un­fail­ingly meets the need of the dif­fer­en­tial of de­mand for him­self as it changes from time to time in var­i­ous sec­tions of his mas­ter uni­verse. The great God knows and un­der­stands him­self; he is in­finitely self-con­scious of all his pri­mal at­tri­butes of per­fec­tion. God is not a cos­mic ac­ci­dent; nei­ther is he a uni­verse ex­per­i­menter. The Uni­verse Sov­er­eigns may en­gage in ad­ven­ture; the Con­stel­la­tion Fa­thers may ex­per­i­ment; the sys­tem heads may prac­tice; but the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther sees the end from the be­gin­ning, and his di­vine plan and eter­nal pur­pose ac­tu­ally em­brace and com­pre­hend all the ex­per­i­ments and all the ad­ven­tures of all his sub­or­di­nates in ev­ery world, sys­tem, and con­stel­la­tion in ev­ery uni­verse of his vast do­mains.

• science and religion need searching, fearless self-criticism

103:7.7What both de­vel­op­ing sci­ence and re­li­gion need is more search­ing and fear­less self-crit­i­cism, a greater aware­ness of in­com­plete­ness in evo­lu­tion­ary sta­tus. The teach­ers of both sci­ence and re­li­gion are of­ten al­to­gether too self-con­fi­dent and dog­matic. Sci­ence and re­li­gion can only be self-crit­i­cal of their facts. The mo­ment de­par­ture is made from the stage of facts, rea­son ab­di­cates or else rapidly de­gen­er­ates into a con­sort of false logic.

• Jesus did not provide for spiritual self-examination
• prevents conceited egotism

140:8.27The three apos­tles were shocked this af­ter­noon when they re­al­ized that their Mas­ter’s re­li­gion made no pro­vi­sion for spir­i­tual self-ex­am­i­na­tion. All re­li­gions be­fore and af­ter the times of Je­sus, even Chris­tian­ity, care­fully pro­vide for con­sci­en­tious self-ex­am­i­na­tion. But not so with the re­li­gion of Je­sus of Naz­a­reth. Je­sus’ phi­los­o­phy of life is with­out re­li­gious in­tro­spec­tion. The car­pen­ter’s son never taught char­ac­ter build­ing; he taught char­ac­ter growth, declar­ing that the king­dom of heaven is like a mus­tard seed. But Je­sus said noth­ing which would pro­scribe self-anal­y­sis as a pre­ven­tion of con­ceited ego­tism.

• vs. self-forgetfulness

143:2.2At one of the evening con­fer­ences, An­drew asked Je­sus: “Mas­ter, are we to prac­tice self-de­nial as John taught us, or are we to strive for the self-con­trol of your teach­ing? Wherein does your teach­ing dif­fer from that of John?” Je­sus an­swered: “John in­deed taught you the way of righ­teous­ness in ac­cor­dance with the light and laws of his fa­thers, and that was the re­li­gion of self-ex­am­i­na­tion and self-de­nial. But I come with a new mes­sage of self-for­get­ful­ness and self-con­trol. I show to you the way of life as re­vealed to me by my Fa­ther in heaven.

• defeat is true mirror in which to view real self

156:5.17The mea­sure of the spir­i­tual ca­pac­ity of the evolv­ing soul is your faith in truth and your love for man, but the mea­sure of your hu­man strength of char­ac­ter is your abil­ity to re­sist the hold­ing of grudges and your ca­pac­ity to with­stand brood­ing in the face of deep sor­row. De­feat is the true mir­ror in which you may hon­estly view your real self.