A Quote by Mason Cooley

The beginning of self-knowledge: recognizing that your motives are the same as other people's. — © Mason Cooley
The beginning of self-knowledge: recognizing that your motives are the same as other people's.
People are beginning to realize that self-knowledge is not an end in itself. It's for the purpose of better relationships, so that we can give to our community. You can give from overflow. It's very hard to give from emptiness. . . . People who avoid self-knowledge cause a great deal of pain to themselves as well as to their families and friends.
First, my people must be taught the knowledge of self. Then and only then will they be able to under-stand others and that which surrounds them. Anyone who does not have a knowledge of self is considered a victim of either amnesia or unconsciousness and is not very competent. The lack of knowledge of self is a prevailing condition among my people here in America. Gaining the knowledge of self makes us unite into a great unity. Knowledge of self makes you take on the great virtue of learning.
By this we may understand, there be two sorts of knowledge, whereof the one is nothing else but sense, or knowledge original (as I have said at the beginning of the second chapter), and remembrance of the same; the other is called science or knowledge of the truth of propositions, and how things are called, and is derived from understanding.
Everyone who comes within the reach of your knowledge is, as it were, on trial in your mind. It is easy to be an unjust, ignorant, and even a merciless judge. The real character of the actions of others depends in great measure on the motives that prompt them, and these motives are unknown to you.
Self-knowledge is not the knowledge of a dead self, self-knowledge is the knowledge of the process of the self. It is an alive phenomenon. The self is not a thing, it is an event, it is a process. Never think in terms of things, the self is not there inside you just like a thing waiting in your room. The self is a process: changing, moving, arriving at new altitudes, moving into new planes, going deeper into new depths. Each moment much work is going on and the only way to encounter this self is to encounter it in relationship.
I feel that all knowledge should be in the free-trade zone. Your knowledge, my knowledge, everybody's knowledge should be made use of. I think people who refuse to use other people's knowledge are making a big mistake. Those who refuse to share their knowledge with other people are making a great mistake, because we need it all. I don't have any problem about ideas I got from other people. If I find them useful, I'll just ease them right in and make them my own.
None of this is real. All of this is an illusion and your acceptance of that fact is the beginning of the pathway to self-knowledge.
Self-acceptance begins in infancy, with the influence of your parents and siblings and other important people. Your own level of self-acceptance is determined largely by how well you feel you are accepted by the important people in your life. Your attitude toward yourself is determined largely by the attitudes that you think other people have toward you. When you believe that other people think highly of you, your level of self-acceptance and self-esteem goes straight up. The best way to build a healthy personality involves understanding yourself and your feelings.
I invest because I love helping entrepreneurs and watching them learn and succeed. In my opinion your motives are driven by self serving factors around ego satisfaction and "making a buck". My motives and values are very different.
If you feel like the beginning of your history is rooted in slavery, that really, I think, messes with your sense of self, your self-esteem, and your self-worth.
The strength of collective decision making and political responsibility is not only a question of recognizing other people's ability. It is also recognizing one's own limitations.
Enlightenment is the culmination of self-knowledge, pure unadulterated knowledge. Not knowledge you can get from reading a book, it comes from perfecting your awareness, your mind.
Self knowledge is the beginning of self improvement.
Civilization has little to fear from educated people and brain-workers. In them the replacement of religious motives for civilized behaviors by other, secular motives, would proceed unobtrusively. . . .
Either melt by devotion the sense of separateness, or burn it by knowledge-for what is it that melts or burns? Only that which by its nature can be melted or burnt; namely the idea that something other than your Self exists. What will happen then? You come to know your Self.
I don't always understand other people's motives. I will repeat that for my own benefit, if you don't mind. I don't always understand other people's motives.
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