I am learning to see. I don’t know why it is, but everything penetrates more deeply into me and does not stop at the place where until now it used to finish. I have an inner self of which I was ignorant. Everything goes thither now. What happens there I do not know.*
(Rainer Maria Rilke)

Because the ego is inherently vulnerable, its predominant mood is one of anxiety.**
(Alain de Botton)

There is in each of us a desire to be acknowledged and recognised and respected for who we are and what we do.

Perhaps it is the False Self, where our ego finds a home, that seems to desire this most of all, more likely to be duped into wanting what it does not really need or find helpful. Our True Self, though, knows the recognition we need comes from the person we are serving, and certain others who make it possible for our contribution to be received by even more besides.

Which all goes to say that when we find our True Self, we can trust it to lead us.

(*Rainer Maria Rilke, quote in David Brooks’ The Second Mountain.)
(**From Alain de Botton’s Religion for Atheists, reflecting on the instructions of a Buddhist retreat.)