How and what is to know thyself?

Some authors do well with this:

The Path of the Higher Self, Mark Prophet

Man, Master of His Destiny, Omraam Aivanhov

The Great Divorce, C. S. Lewis

Long Pilgrimage

The Teachers of Gurdjieff

For Couples Only

To know thyself is to have the necessary tools to control thyself.

I doubt any Atheists can lay claim to this level of insight.

Socrates belief in the best way to live one's life. But unlike modern philosophy he treats the study of wisdom itself as the most serious way a human being can live( Plato, the Republic, Book I). Philosophy is not an academic subject to pay tuition over as the Sophists, and the world we live in treat it. Philosophy rather is a subject for all human beings contained in the innate ideas of nature. To examine them is to fulfill the human function.

Awareness is shared by 7 billion humans, but we all think its ours. Me, him, her, i. Once you realize everything is a thought and the only true thing is that you;re aware of it. That realization removes you from the physical plane and you'll look at this world from a whole new perspective. Simply be aware bring all your problems to awareness, do no hide anything that will make you feel depressed, these emotions are indicators you're alive.

I think we have to start with our weaknesses and know what to stay away from. Like me I'm an alcoholic and know that I can't drink. If I simply stay away from booze my life instantly gets better in a lot of different ways.

To know thyself is to know your strengths and weaknesses, and to know solidly your personality, and to not be embarrased by it. Even if you like somthing someone else does, or does not like. And to be able to explain your personality to others if they ask.

Knowledge about oneself requires assessments about one's abilities, habits, tendencies, emotions and character traits, but also an evaluation of our value as a human being. We acquire this knowledge through experience and interactions with other people and, of course, it might be sensible to consider that this can lead to more or less accurate depictions.

Suppose your friends and acquaintances spend a generous fraction of their spare time making fun of you, perhaps even whispering comments about their disliking of your presence. Of course, this behavior would question their status as friends and the value of hanging out with such people, but that was not the point. The point is that this sort of feed back is cannot be constitutive a positive outlook on oneself. How would you be modelling yourself as a valuable human being if all you hear about you is that people dislike you?

Another scenario would call for a mistake with regard to capabilities and, in this respect, the clumsiness of small children and the infamous carelessness of teenagers comes to my mind. How many times do you hear a kid brag about how much weight he'd lift? Put him underneath a real barbel and ask for repetitions to see how far above or bellow the mark he likely falls. Overly confident kids can always make it, or so they say, but reality and their internal self-model do not generally match up well because you have to try stuff before you can start guessing properly about stuff you have yet to try.

Same goes for small children. For some of them, holding a pen adequately is challenging, but they'd rather do what Daddy or Mommy does. However, we all know that letting them pick up a glass actually made out of glass or some piece of china is a recipe for disaster. Fragile objects require care and some touch and, most of all, some awareness about how exactly you tend to screw things up so you can most carefully avoid such circumstances -- all of which they lack.

Moving back from contemporary psychology to the philosophers of Ancient Greeks, what we now talk about isn't so different from what Socrates talked about. In the mind Socrates, knowing oneself can be brought down to an extensive realization about one's own most important predicament -- that is, you need to be aware of how much you do not know. If you ever read Plato's work, you might have figured out a pattern: his dialogues mostly leave matters unsettled. His characters debate and argue, but, as far as solving the philosophical problems they sought to figure out, it does more to raise questions than to answer them conclusively. Furthermore, if you remember how Socrates always works out the problem in these dialogues, he asks a lot of questions to the other parties involved. He does so until they no longer seem so sure of their own opinion -- and that's exactly the lesson the famous quote you begun with is about. Be critical of your own thoughts and, at some point, you might realize that they aren't as well structured and solid as you have believed they were -- that is, at some point you will figure out how ignorant you are.

Personally, I study economics at college and I enjoy philosophy as a hobby, you could say. With respect to both of them, learning mostly implied that I got better at asking questions. Education makes you realize how little you know. It feels like I know about only one paragraph out of an entire library filled with an untold numbers of books. What I learnt about economics and philosophy lies well beyond what an average person would learn in their entire life and, in both areas, experts are many, many times to me what I am to an ordinary person. And, this is the case for so many more fields of inquiry.

It is very simple;

PAY ATTENTION!

There is no other than 'Self' to Know!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Know_thyself