How Well Do We Know Ourselves?

There was this alien couple from outer space.  I think they are the ancestors of Thor.  They have not seen a mirror so they don’t know what a mirror looks like nor do they know what and how their faces look like.  They accidentally landed on our planet Earth, specifically in the country of 7,100 islands, the Philippines.  Let us give them a name.  We can call the man Odin and the woman Frigga.  Odin is a born seeker just like we all are.  One day he was walking along the streets of Tondo and he saw something that caught his attention.  He picked it up, looked at it and saw a face.  He smiled and thought to himself: “of all places, the photo of my Dad… I’d better hide it from Frigga since she does not really like Dad.” He placed it in his pocket and went home.  The normal routine for the remainder of the day happened: they ate dinner, watched TV and went to bed.  While they were already sleeping, he suddenly remembered the picture of his dad.  His wife might find it in his pocket!  So when he thought he saw his wife deep in slumber, he went to the strongroom to hide the picture of his Dad.  But then, Frigga is a light sleeper.  She saw Odin went to the strongroom and when she thought he was asleep, she moved quietly and stealthily into the strongroom to find out what he had hidden.  After a long search, she saw the mirror and saw not the photo of Dad but a woman’s face.  She then snorted: “Aha, this is the woman he is running around with!”   Well, believe it or not, this happens to most of us.  Sometimes, we see ourselves and don’t recognize ourselves. We need someone to guide us.  We need a mentor, a coach, an adviser.  All of us need spiritual direction.  Spiritual direction is a one-on-one talk with someone who can guide us along our path to Christ, the path to eternity.  In Opus Dei, we call this fraternal chat.  Every single week, I do my chat with a person in the Center where I live to ask for advice on how to better my life in all aspects: human, professional, doctrinal-religious, cultural and apostolic.  And little by little, I see a bit of improvement.  When before I get irritated driving in Manila one hundred times a day, now it has gone down to ninety nine!  Just kidding but believe me, spiritual direction helps.  Wanna try?