“A man,” wrote Meister Eckhart, “has many skins in himself, covering the depths of his heart. Man knows so many other things; he does not know himself. Why, thirty or forty skins or hides, just like an ox’s or a bear’s, so thick and hard, cover the soul. Go into your own ground and learn to know yourself there.” The dispassionate and scientific examination of distractions is one of the best ways of knowing the “thirty or forty skins” which constitute our personality, and discovering, beneath them, the Self, the immanent Godhead, the Kingdom of Heaven within us.
