Unconscious to Conscious

 

The Human Psyche

“Every moment and every event

of every [person’s] life on earth

plants something in [their] soul. For

just as the wind carries

thousands of winged seeds so

each moment brings with it

germs of spiritual vitality that

come to rest imperceptibly in the

minds and wills of [individuals]…”

Thomas Merton (1914-1968) Found in Jerry Wright’s A Mystical Path Less Traveled Journal)

          I’m still processing the seminar with Jerry Wright about the mystical path less traveled. One of the handouts was his Jungian model of the psyche. It consists of a circle with three layers. The top layer is the ego self, which is the conscious mind—the layer we associate with “I.” In the middle, is the personal unconscious from one’s current lifetime that includes one’s Shadow and complexes. On the bottom is the collective unconscious which holds the Self, which is the divine spark or soul, as well as the universal archetypes—anima, animus, trickster, mother, father, hero, orphan and so on. Much of the collective unconscious is genetically inherited from one’s long line of ancestors and one’s culture. All three layers affect our behavior in the world. In Jerry’s words, “nothing is ever lost, nothing goes away,” but hopefully it moves up into consciousness so we can alter the way we relate to it.

          For example, in one’s personal life, if they had a very harsh, critical mother, they would likely mistrust other women and be critical of them, especially older women. As a woman, I might find myself acting like my critical mother and I might not be conscious of it until I hear words coming from my own mouth that I recognize as having come from my mother. That’s a little ping from the unconscious, saying, “Do you hear yourself? Where have you heard that before?”

          So much of how we encounter the world, how we perceive our place in it, resides in the unconscious, which Jerry Wright calls “the invisible world.” Our ego (the part of us that we call “me”) is the threshold between the invisible world and the visible world, which is our conscious existence. The more we can move the contents of the unconscious mind into consciousness and incorporate them into our awareness, the more likely we are to have clear and uncluttered relationships. We can be ourselves only to the extent that we know ourselves. And that self is far more complex and multi-layered than we think. It’s the task and the adventure of a lifetime to sort this out. It is, I believe, what we are here to do, and when we do that work, we assist our species in moving forward. We help the collective to evolve. And that evolution is what will make us more peaceful, joyful and whole. It's worth the work.

                                                  In the Spirit,

                                                  Jane