Trust the spontaneous portions of your being. It is the unconscious portion of our being that assures the smooth functioning of all of the spontaneous, automatic processes of your body. The central nervous system, circulatory system, digestive system respiratory system, endocrine system, immune system, and so forth, all operate without the aid of conscious thought, repairing themselves constantly with a precision and purpose and intelligence that surpass our most sophisticated medical technologies. Those spontaneous processes that knew how to grow us from a fetus to an adult provide for our physical and psychological life. It is those inner spontaneous processes that propel our thoughts and that heal our bodies. Those very same spontaneous processes “represent the life of the spirit itself” (Butts, 1997a, p. 251) and are responsible for the health of both the physical body and the nonphysical mind.
People frightened of themselves. When people cut ourselves off from their inner Self, because of negative beliefs about the nature of the unconscious, then a distrust, uncertainty, self-doubt, and fear is generated of one’s own inner dynamics. When people view their own thoughts, feelings, and impulses as extravagant, excessive, dangerous, untrustworthy, unreliable, or filled with negative energy, then those individuals can become frightened of themselves and of those impulses that stimulate good health, effective action, bodily movement, expression of emotions, and the discovery of unconscious knowledge. They feel alienated and separated from the source of our being, or else, compensating for these felt lacks, they may see themselves instead as all-powerful to hide inner feelings of powerlessness, fear, and aloneness.
|
Why should the ego be afraid of its own source? Jung understood that we can indeed depend upon seemingly unconscious portions of ourselves. When we do so, we can become more and more consciously aware, bringing into our conscious awareness larger and larger portions of our identity. When the center of the total personality no longer identifies solely with the ego portion of its identity, and the conscious mind becomes aware of the existence of the inner Self, then the personality can consciously draw upon the Self’s greater strength, vitality, and knowledge. Jung once remarked, “One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.” The personality is not powerless to understand itself nor must the individual compulsively react because of inner conflicts over which he or she has little control.
We must give up ideas about the unsavory nature of the unconscious. The “unknown” portions of the self are as much a part of you now as any cell within your physical body. The psychological unconscious simply contains great portions of our own experience that are consciously unknown and with which we are not at all familiar in any conscious way. It deals with a different kind of psychic reality than the comprehending ego is used to dealing with, but with which the ego is natively equipped to deal, if it is flexible enough. To explore the “unknown” reality of ourselves, we must venture inward within our own psyche. To know the nature of consciousness, we must become familiar with the nature of our own consciousness. In order to be able to do this, however, we must first give up any ideas we have about the unsavory nature of the unconscious and those spontaneous inner processes that make life possible. “Value fulfillment of each and every element in life relies upon those spontaneous processes, and at their source is the basic affirmative love and acceptance of the self, the universe, and life’s conditions” (Roberts, 1997a, p. 253).
|
