“Know thyself,” Apollo commands.

Okay. But how? And which “thyself”? — for there is more than one. Two roads diverge before us: the path of self-consciousness and the path of self-awareness

Most take the path of self-consciousness, which tries to know the self objectively. One’s self is taken as an object of knowledge. We call it “reflecting on ourselves”. We look into the mirror, and we are absorbed in the image we see there. We identify with it.

But we can also take the path of self-awareness, and take ourselves as subject, the subjectivity to whom objective data is given, including our objective third-person self.

But self-awareness includes an insight that we are given only what we know how to take, and that changing our way of taking  can change our givens.

We can experiment with our taking (our receptivity) and see how observing from various angles or focusing on various aspects changes our objectivity. Or we can experiment with our conceptivity by asking different questions about what seems objectively true to us. Or we can experiment with our selfhood by participating in new realities, physical and/or otherwise.

What we take “self” to mean makes all the difference in who we are, and who we may become.

Etymological cheat sheet:

Conceive = together-take

Data = given