Our Collective Unconscious

Deep Psyche

“Each of us is like a great, untamed sea, obedient to deeper currents that are seldom visible.”

Mark Nepo (The Book of Awakening)

          Once, when I was a young woman, my husband tried to teach me to water ski. I'm a good swimmer and enjoy the water, but I wasn't keen on learning to ski. But he loved it and thought that I would too if I just gave it a try. So, we went boating on a bayou in Florida with friends. Bayou water is murky, even at the surface. After several clumsy attempts, I managed to stand up on the skis and to stay up if we traveled in a straight line. But when the boat turned, I hit the wake hard, flew into the air and then crashed down, hitting my head on one of the skis that had fallen off my feet. In the boggy water, I couldn't tell which way was up because it looked the same in every direction—greenish-gray, and cloudy. I spent a few terrified seconds before naturally rising until sunlight came into view. That was my first—and last—water skiing lesson. 

          Murky water is a good metaphor for the deep layers of the unconscious mind. Consciousness consists of what we are thinking about right now, and what we're aware of with regard to ourselves, our surroundings, and others. It’s also our beliefs and all the information and knowledge we have in the forefront of our minds. The personal unconscious is that layer that contains the things, people, and events in our past that we can pull up to consciousness and remember, as well as things that are only images and impressions of actual experiences that we “feel” rather than remember. The deepest layer of the unconscious mind is what Jung termed, the collective. It is inherited from our ancestors and our cultural history. We access those deeper levels of the unconscious by way of dreams, images, and stories. Myths, legends, and fairy tales, all of which contain archetypal characters, are especially fertile ground for understanding the collective unconscious.

          Suffice it to say, we are deeper and more multi-faceted than we think. Listening to your dreams, writing them down to study the images, paying attention to your thoughts, and to the way you speak are ways of exploring the depths of your unconscious mind. Reading myths, legends and fairy tales is another way. For example, Davy Crockett, Daniel Boone, Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox, as well as Spider Man and the other super-heroes, tell us a great deal about the American psyche—that it is both fiercely independent and inflated. We made Elvis “the King” and Marilyn Monroe “the Goddess,” neither of which ended well. This overblown sense of ourselves is what has propelled us into many amazing feats and inventions, but also into the arrogance and self-delusion that we are experiencing right now. 

          This seems like a great time to examine our collective unconscious, since many of us are asking, “How did we get here? How did this happen?” We are confused and “in murky water” because we are not connecting the dots at the level of our deeper psyche. What is happening today is a natural progression of all that has happened before that we simply barged our way through without giving much thought. It is time to think about it. I hope you will give it some thought today.



                                        In the Spirit,

                                        Jane