Does this help?
In the spring of 1981, I first entered the main chanting hall of one of Second Teacher's ashrams, a place I lived for four months later on that year. On the wall were large photos of several more or less naked mendicant saints from modern India, and portraits of a few clothed women saints and goddesses. Above Second Teacher's seat, in the place of highest honor, was a photo of a man, head slightly back, forehead slightly wrinkled, mouth expressionless, eyes intent with something that I recognized.
I recognized myself there, and immediately, somehow, knew that this was a picture of me. Strangely enough he didn't look much like me, but I knew without question, I was that man, he was me.
I knew because I was just a year or two out of that period of my youth which I had spent in nearly constant and intense concentration on my youthful tasks of school, sports, and other activities, overcoming my own inner insecurities by climbing my available dominance hierarchies with the greatest personal focus and effort, in order to try my hardest, do my very very best, be my best, achieve the most. (From the intensity of insecurity came the intensity of effort.) In sports or math where maximum effort is called for, and mentally concentrated intensity achieves and finds its maximum effect at the limit of one's best effort, trying even harder at such a moment, such moments reliably bring the awareness of one's own effort and concentration, bring the awareness of the instrument of effort itself, the agentive mental apparatus itself, the part of you that tries most intensely to understand and to do. In such a long-lasting cauldron of great effort and discipline one comes to recognize, and learn as familiar, the feeling of intense, self aware concentration.
I saw in his eyes the self awareness that I knew as my own experience of myself, which I had by then for years simply referred to in my own mind as: Me. Equally intense and certain, equally self-aware. I hadn't seen it recognizeably in anyone else, but I knew it as my own essential nature, because that's what I experienced when I was trying my hardest for a long time. When you are really trying your hardest, you get to know what you are.
From that earliest date, seeing First Teacher on the wall, I always had complete faith in my tradition. Everyone has their own tradition, and I wish them faith in it. I know I am blessed to have such great faith in mine.