When you observe yourself you must not condemn or approve what you see. If you tell a lie there is no need to judge yourself. The judge cannot be the judged, and even to accept is to judge. The fact is that you lied. There is no need to tell anyone else, just face the truth alone.

As you continue watching yourself you will observe that you are an habitual liar. Even recounting a simple happening you will observe yourself lie or exaggerate for no reason. If you try to find a reason you are judging again, trying to justify.

You will be amazed at what you see. The scientist when he is observing the results of an experiment is often amazed at what he sees; and he can laugh at it too, without changing the results. If you try to change what you see you have failed again. To succeed in any endeavour you have to keep coming back to your object. Your object is to see yourself exactly as you are. You are not just a liar; you are many other disagreeable things.

If you try to change them all you will not have time to know yourself or change yourself; and then you will be back with all the others before you who tried to change themselves but never succeeded. If we could easily change things by opposing them what a mess we would be in. What is good to some is bad to others. Some would change the good; others would change the bad.

There is no escape from the old in the old, or we would all be free. Self-knowledge is the discovery of the new: it looks beyond the world that has all the answers and no solutions.

You buy a diamond ring. It costs a lot of money and for years you wear it with the satisfaction that goes with owning something beautiful or valuable. One day an expert proves that it’s a worthless imitation. Do you continue to wear it with the same pleasure? No. You discard it. You leave it in the drawer or let your children play with it.

The truth is that once you discover something is false you lose interest in it. Man no longer treasures what he thought was genuine once he discovers it is false. In this way truth is its own solution.

Self-knowledge is the discovery of the false. You do not have to find what is true: when the false is discarded, truth is there.

It always was...