“Though by and large the Church has not known how integral the search for self is to the search for God, her saints have always preached that the two are inextricably bound together. Brother Lawrence is reported to have said, “When we enter upon the spiritual life, we should consider and examine to the bottom what we are.” In the fourteenth century, the author of The Cloud of Unknowing wrote, “Labor and sweat, therefore, in every way that you can, seeking to obtain for yourself a true knowledge and feeling of yourself as you are; and then I believe that soon afterward you will have a true knowledge and feeling of God as He is.”
–Elizabeth O’Connor, Our Many Selves, p. 103
