To know God, know yourself.

The clues to finding God are sprinkled throughout the writings of the world’s great thinkers, often appearing as small diamonds within thick texts.

“No one has known God who has not known himself,” said the religious scholar Meister Eckhardt. Socrates echoed a similar thought claiming that “our own self-knowledge is a knowledge of God”.

Yet, in a time when our leisure moments are so cluttered by diversions, how many of us really take the time to look within, to discover the true essence of ourselves?

The author Paulo Cohelo tells the story of three gods who want to hide the secret of life from humankind.

One day the gods were discussing the secret of life and where they should hide it so that men and women could not find it.

Bury it under a mountain, one god suggests.  No, the others counter, they will find a way to dig up the mountain and uncover it.

Put the secret of life in the depths of the deepest ocean, another god suggests.  No, the others say, one day they will find a way to travel to the depths of the ocean and will find it there.

Put the secret inside them, suggests another, they will never think to look for it there. All the gods agreed, and so the secret of life was hidden within us.