Part I, Chapter 2. HUMANS;
HOW WE ARE BUILT. (2) Continued
CONSCIOUS AND UN-CONSCIOUS. (2C)
In general, most of us understand that we have the 3 levels of
conscious, sub-conscious and unconscious within our awareness. When we discuss
the conscious and unconscious we are talking about those things that we are
aware of, in contrast to the things we are not aware of.
DEFINE CONSCIOUS, SUB-CONSCIOUS AND UNCONSCIOUS. (2C1)
Conscious.
This is our light side; it is available to the light.
BECK uses the terms ‘social self’.
“The person I own and operate; civilized but fragile”
LOPKER p.92
These are the things I think I know about myself, or my
concepts/ideas about myself.
I will refer to it as the ‘outer self’ or ‘outself’ for short.
The conscious mind is actually built to cope with quite limited
amounts of data at any one time. 5 plus or minus 2 (5+/-2) bits of information.
(Although there’s plenty of information/data coming into the unconscious.)
This is not to say that we do not know more than a computer or
that there is not great potential within, but it is to say that it is wise to
allow for that. It seems to be part of the design for being human and it may
have to do with de-emphasizing and limiting the importance of external data to
the mind and/or forcing us to narrow our focus on whatever.
Sub-conscious.
These are the bits of me I’m vaguely aware of but are just below
consciousness. If someone tells me something that’s in my sub-conscious, I
would say ‘I know that’, because I can recognize it even if I’m unable to name
it.
Most people use the word sub-conscious to refer to the unconscious,
but it is only part of the unconscious and a very small part at that. We just
don’t like the idea that we don’t know about what’s ‘in there’, but the
unconscious is indeed unconscious and extremely important and I will be using
this term in this discussion.
UNCONSCIOUS. (2C2)
“ ..Each of us carries within us a whole other world, shadowy and
fantastic, to be sure, but teemingly alive with inner figures, melodramas,
grievances and fears, that are constantly exerting their influence over our
every word and deed”
This is from WOOLGER’s 'Other Lives, Other selves', quoting
Liliene FREY-ROHN, ‘From Freud to Jung’. 1974.
BECK uses the term ‘essential self’.
In feeling (sensate and emotional) terms, I’m not aware of this
part of me at all. This part of my self is not available to my awareness; I
don’t know or have forgotten about this bit of me completely. This part feels
like ‘not me’.
“This is the person I do not know; the person I disown and deny.” LOPKER p.102
The unconscious contains the …
·
History of our emotional
memories.
·
Functions that drive the
body and maintain homeostasis.
·
Observations and
information/data received through the body, including eg, all the music we did
and didn’t (jingles) want to remember, that we have learnt on the way.
·
Connection to all Life, and
our concepts of same. All our decisions, values, beliefs and attitudes.
·
Connection to our Higher
Self, hence God and our comprehension of God.
·
Potential of the whole
Self which is at the centre of all that is encompassed by the conscious and the
unconscious.
·
Anima, animus, inner child,
internalized parents, archetypes, complexes and lots more.
·
Stuff which we’re afraid to
own including our best and our worst (both of which frighten the socks off us).
Which is rather a lot, really.
The conscious and the unconscious function in different ways and
live on different sides of the brain, so the outself has very little idea about
the ‘other side’.
In terms of the amount of ‘stuff’ that it contains, it’s very big;
as big as the world ‘out there’. Psychologists use figures such as 10% for the
conscious and 90% for the unconscious to give us an idea of the difference
between the known and the unknown.
OUR EMOTIONAL MEMORIES. (2C3)
What is stored in our emotional memories is very important. This
is not about remembering the things you wish to be conscious of, such as a
sportsman’s name, or where you stored the Lilo after last year’s trip to the
beach. This is about some of what is actually stored in the unconscious.
The things we store in our memories mostly have strong emotional
energy; from positive to negative. We don’t tend to remember the day-to-day; we
remember the feeling or a sensation associated with a memory (the smell of
lily-of-the-valley reminds me of my grandmother).
We store all our important emotional memories. The good ones are
our assets and are resources for us because they can be used to help us steer
our lives in that direction for more of them. The ‘bad’ ones are also stored.
These are extremely important because they affect our decisions about our
lives, which is what we ‘make of’ our lives; and thus they continue to affect
our future, no matter what we may think. (Many psychotherapists speak of them
as ‘programs’, because that's exactly what they are like.) The business of how
(and whether) we clear, resolve, understand, negate or whatever we manage to
‘do’ with these memories is a crucial aspect of this discussion.
We also store memories and their attending decisions about life
from past lives.
Defining the unconscious is a solid cow, because it extends from
our highest potential which is unknown to us, all the way down to what we
consider to be the worst we could possibly be as well as our worst fears. It is
a whopping mix of stuff we wish we knew (the potential as well as the ‘good’
stuff) mixed up with stuff we really don’t want to know (our worst memories
from all lives including our judgement of them).
Internally, some part of the unconscious feels like a child; it is
the part of us that is afraid, slow, inept, weak, unsure, and it does lots of
hiding, especially when it does not trust our own attitude to it. Hence it is
often referred to as our inner child. If you tend to ‘bash yourself up’, you
are indeed bashing this part of you. It feels like the klutz and the ‘idiot’
internally. This inner child is also the source of our emotions, creation,
recreation, spontaneity and intimacy. The more apart we are from our inner
child, the less internally satisfied and happy we will be. The more we hate the
slow, inept, klutzy bits of ourselves, the less we will be able to relate to
our inner child and thus to others as well, particularly our own children.
There is much to be gained by treating our unconscious as an inner
child if we are able to care about it as we hopefully would be able to nurture
and care about our own child. This is a very valuable exercise that can bring
great delight.
“The unconscious therefore is to be seen not as a storehouse of
dead memories, but as a rich resource where images thrive and participate in
one’s life” YABROFF Inner Image p.44
However, our inner child is not the only part of the unconscious.
There are quite a lot of other parts of us or ‘members’. Our feminine (anima)
and masculine (animus) also live in here. In fact there’s ‘a world of people’
in here. As we re-member these parts we come to feel more resilient/complete.
There is also our concept of and direct connection to God and to
Life. The connection to God is through our Higher Self which feels very
large and quite remote and is probably the part of us that we must face up to
in the end, which is not easy at all. Most of us dodge off till next time… It
is the part that knows what we were wanting to achieve in this lifetime. This
would be the source of our dreams.
The other point to understand here is that our own conception
of God is God as far as we’re concerned. We can’t conceive of God any
other way than what is inside us. It can be modified and changed etc, but our
little bit stays just that; our little bit; big enough for us but without the
comprehension of the whole, which would be just too much. Similarly with our
‘scoping’ of Life; and all Life is God. Thus for us, our own unconscious is
God and Life and this inner self.
I will refer to this unconscious part of ourselves as the ‘inner
self’ because it is inside us, and I will use InSelf for short. I am using ‘In’
for Inner and Self with a big ‘S’ because it is actually bigger than our known
or conscious self.
But it is also our direct connection with God/Life/Self (GLS).
From this connection then, we can start to face the concept that
God, Life, and our Inner Self are the same thing within our own
comprehension; (therefore InSelf = GLS, and I will use both concepts
as a method of emphasizing this).
There really are a lot of ‘selves’ in this discussion and I have
mentioned a Self a few times as well. Jung used Self as “the whole Self at
the centre of all that is encompassed by the conscious and the unconscious”.
A lot of the problem with trying to define names is that the
unconscious is dynamic, as in, it changes over time within any person as we
realize more about ourselves, and it is basically unmeasurable by us or others.
The upshot leaves us trying to get a handle on a basic set of ‘selves’ which
together can make a whole or a unity. I will use Self (’big S’) for the United
or Whole Self. Learning to know InSelf and learning to love this ‘other’ is the
path to the Self, and thus to partnership with God.
THE PROBLEM FOR THE INSELF, IE. THE UNCONSIOUS. (2C4)
The problem is that we are unconscious of the unconscious, by
definition, and thus it is not ‘real’ for us. To spell this out, our internal
‘other’ is not ‘real’ to us, and therefore we consider that it does not exist
at all. (This is what Jung was busy proving all his life, although normal
society takes very little notice of this.) Our society’s focus on the external
world simply exacerbates this. As far as most people are concerned the
unconscious is something we would prefer to leave thoroughly alone. In fact, we
tend to treat it a bit like sewage, and would rather it were not there at all.
It’s certainly not ‘nice’, whatever we would like to think.
The other problem is that the unconscious does not like being
‘unreal’. The more you make it ‘unreal’ the more it makes its owner (=you) feel
like a ghost which is a primary example of ‘not there’ and begins to protest
and get upset when it doesn’t get a look in as far as the action is concerned.
It feels trapped and starts to rattle the cage. Thus, there is no peace when
the InSelf is not ‘real’ to its owner. Also, the more we ignore it, the more we
have to meet it 'out there', which is not always what we want.
The difference between us and God therefore, is that God is Giving
Life to Her Unconscious all the time; that’s what we are a part of. Our
business is to do the same; giving Life as we make our InSelf Real to our
outself. This is our Realization of our InSelf. Notice that as we Give Life to
the internal ‘other’, we also become able to give life to the external ‘other’.
This is what happens when we manage to ‘Love our neighbour AS our self’.
However much we have difficulty defining the unconscious and
however much we don’t know who is ‘in here’; it is still an extremely important
part of us, because…
·
The unconscious is
emanating or broadcasting your vibrations out to Life, ie, others. This is what
Life is Mirroring or reflecting back to you.
·
It comes out in our
behaviour, as in, what we do. It is our actual truth about ourselves whether we
like it or not, and other people can see/feel/sense it even if we cannot.
·
It drives the show. It is the part that is actually in charge here, not the
conscious part. It is thus more powerful than ‘you’ ie, your outself or your
‘me’. "When an inner situation is not made conscious it appears outside
as fate.” JUNG.
So, if your life is not doing what you think it should be doing,
then basically it’s a good idea to make friends with your unconscious and start
talking to it. ‘How’ is further down in this discussion.
NB. In this UUS, the Soul is not necessarily synonymous with the
unconscious and Spirit with the conscious. I suspect it is more complex than
that, with both the conscious and unconscious holding information from both
Spirit and Soul. However, in this modern Western society of ours, our teachings
and conscious concepts of ‘out there’ derive more from Spirit’s attitudes to
physical life than to Soul’s. There is probably a fair convergence between our
ideas/concepts/versions of masculine and Spirit and those of feminine and Soul.
The upshot of all this business about conscious and unconscious is
that we might as well consider ourselves as 2 people; one we know about and are
quite sure about who is here, (’That’s the way I am’.) and the other we do not
know about at all. This internal ‘other’ is as unknown to us as anyone else out
there with no relevance or relationship to us, and the grand question is ‘Who
is this internal other? Who is actually there?’ Hence the primary commandment
of ‘know thyself’.
It is also very important to understand that your body is
part of your unconscious, your InSelf, and hence it is part of ‘the
other’. We assume that our body is part of ‘us’, our conscious/outself, as
in, my body is part of me, and it will do what I want, ie, it is under my
conscious control. But, anyone who has been ill has found that their ideas and
their body’s 'ideas' are not the same. Your body is part of the way your InSelf
communicates with your outself. This is a big topic and there is more about the
body later. Probably in Part IV.
Now I wish to discuss the relationship between your 2 internal
‘people’.
MERGE (2D)
You and Your Internal Other.
The Internal Relationship between the Outself and the InSelf.
This is about our inner world and to discuss this I wish to refer
back to the ‘coat-hanger’ of the
Absolute Opposites (part, apart, partner) introduced in Chapter 1 section D.
A diagram of the human being’s Inner world could look like
this. (2D Diag1)
The Left side lists attributes that tend to be conscious, and the
Right side those that are less conscious.
CONSCIOUS
|
MERGE
|
UNCONSCIOUS
|
Outer
self
|
Inner
Self
|
|
Mind,
Thought
|
Body,
Feelings
|
|
Spirit
|
Soul
|
|
Ideas
|
Actuality
|
|
Say/Speak
|
Behaviour/Do
|
|
Theory
|
These
are Split apart..
but
can find unity and can
Come
together (merge)
as
one and Create New Life
together,
and then
separately
and together as partners
Serve
this new Life as it grows.
|
Practice
|
This diagram is showing a Split between 2 equal parts; equal in
importance, but not necessarily size. Each needs the other, and they need to
come together to Merge to create the possibility of New Life. This Merging
feels pretty good; ‘heavenly’, in fact. This merger is our ‘partnership with
God’ through the logic that the Unconscious/InSelf = God/Life/Self (GLS). This
is the reason that new life is able to come in, ie, the merge activates the
Holy Ghost.
Creative people are able to access this merging and bring it into
their lives. The Creative process brings New Life into existence.
And now something wonderful happens. We have activated the
creative process and brought in new life, but now we need the attributes of
both our conscious and our unconscious separately, but working together to
Serve and protect the needs of that new life as it grows from germ to adult and
able to fend for itself in the cold world ‘out there’.
Notice also that the process of growing 'the child' changes the
person owning the conscious and unconscious; this person is not the same at the
end that they were before they began.
Note here that the attributes on the same sides of the lists are
not necessarily the same thing. viz. the Soul is not the same as the
Unconscious, and the Spirit is not the unconscious or all theory, and so on.
What the diagram is trying to do is emphasize that there really are a lot of
splits (or dualities), and creativity comes out of their merger.
While a diagram of our Outer world could look like this. (2D2) and (2D Diag2)
‘MALE’
|
MERGE
|
‘FEMALE’
|
Masculine
|
Feminine
|
|
Yang
|
Yin
|
|
Active
|
Passive
|
|
Outgoing
|
Incoming
|
|
and
so on.
|
These
are Split apart..
but
can find unity and can
Come
together (merge)
as
one and Create New Life
together,
and then
separately
and together as partners
Serve
this new Life as it grows.
|
And
so on…
|
This diagram is showing a Split between 2 equal parts. Each needs
the other, and they can come together to Merge. This Merging feels pretty good,
(‘heavenly’, in fact) and is referred to as ‘sex’ or ‘making love’.
The merging process can create the possibility of the New Life of
a child. (The mystery of the Holy Ghost has been activated.) And now something
wonderful happens. We need the attributes of both the male and the female
separately, but working together, to Serve and Protect the needs of that new
life as it grows from germ to adult and able to fend for itself in the cold
world ‘out there’. Notice also that the process of growing the child changes
the parents; they are not the same people at the end, that they were before
they began.
THE INTERNAL MODEL AND THE EXTERNAL MODEL ARE THE SAME. (2D3)
This external model looks to me remarkably similar to our human
model for marriage and children, and hence family, but notice that it is
also the model for our internal relationship for creativity from within
ourselves; our internal unity.
This external model is in front of our noses every day; it is the
model for our internal selves hidden in broad daylight, you might say.
Thus we can use the most important human model in our external
world as the model for our internal world. We can use the external model of the
creation of the new life of the child and the need for the skills of both
partners in promoting (= Serve) the welfare and growth of that child, to
understand the internal mechanisms of our own growth in awareness
and consciousness and creativity, which leads to the expression of Self.
As 2 separate parts merge for a time, (they ‘know’ each other)
which feels ‘heavenly’, there is the potential for the true creativity of new
life. Yet both these parts are needed separately in a partnership to Serve this
New Life and bring it to fruition or maturity, so that it can create new life
and so on. Thus life renews itself eternally.
All parts of this model are useful.
·
The better we are at
knowing ourselves, as in, finding our own unity, the more we can partner with
others and/or with God, yet it works the other way as well.
·
What we create can teach us
about ourselves.
·
Bringing up children
ideally requires the separate and equal skills of both partners working
together to Serve the needs of each child. Both are Serving Life and in that
learn more about themselves.
MAKING THE TWO, ONE. (2D4)
The upshot of all this is that in healing our own internal split
between our 2 inner selves (outself and InSelf), we are making the 2 one.
This is an important concept that Jesus taught and said a lot. This concept
encompasses that we …
·
find our Self; our own
unity, and are able to Express this Self and in so doing we find great
satisfaction, fulfillment and true self-esteem (TSE), all of which feel very
good. (More detail about TSE in Part II Chapter 8a.)
·
learn how to come into
partnership with and talk to God.
·
become properly Creative
which helps our whole Self to Grow
·
are able to properly
mobilize all our separate attributes to Serve New Life.
·
begin to behave to others
as God does to us.
So the funny thing is that we have to find our own unity within if
we want to come into partnership with God, but that is because we are part of
God.
So, how do we get to this partnership with God? This is basically
the ‘raison d’etre’ of this discussion and requires more concepts or
‘building blocks’ to explain.
GOD AS UNITY. (2D5)
God has worked out how to unite Her 2 selves, and out of
this She is able to Create Life.
She knows Her internal ‘other’, and knows that both
are equally important, and each needs the other, but they are not the
same thing.
Proper Merging needs equality ie, proper relationship.
The more each self knows the other, the more they
love each other, and the more they love each other, the more they can unite,
‘as one’. This is called Merge, and it feels very good.
Merging feels heavenly, Gives life to an ‘other’
and Brings in the Holy Ghost.
New Life comes out of this Merging. This Merging
has given life to an other. But there is a mystery here. What is created out of
this Merge is a single possibility out of a plethora of possibilities for new
life. Think of the many possible DNA combinations between any human couple, yet
few are actually expressed as children. Why this combination and not that? How
do these new things really happen? We refer to this mystery as the Holy Ghost.
But the 2 separate entities are not meant to be
merged the whole time.
These different and separate things are also used
separately, as in, both have their place and their attributes and both are
needed for the growth of the new life. The making and nurturing of new life is
called Creativity.
As we are alive on earth, we have the possibility
of the inner merge between our internal separate selves, and the outer merge of
Male and Female as a model/reflection/mirror of the inner. Both are as heavenly
as the other but the inner Merge is what God is doing all the time. We want to
learn to do the same. That is Creativity. It is an expression of our united
parts; the expression from within.
Unity and its expression are where one’s greatest satisfaction and
fulfillment lie, and that is what I want. Hence I am writing this because I
think you may want it too.
DUALITIES. (2E)
By now we have 2 sets of dualities; Spirit and Soul with Conscious
and Unconscious. Hence what is their relationship?
We tend to equate spirit with the conscious and soul with the
unconscious.
It is the conscious part reflecting spirit’s teachings which
'says' 'I think therefore I am', because it is unconscious of the soul within
the body. It thinks that the conscious is all there is to it, because it only
knows what it is conscious of, by definition. It (the outself/conscious) considers
itself the be all and end all, and is prone to refer to itself as Big Mind
because it feels superior (because it can jump), and lumps all the unconscious
stuff into the category of 'Little Mind' (because that bit seems ‘childish’).
This latter category being all the weaknesses, problems, fears, attachments,
lack of control and general 'lumpiness' that stops it doing what it likes and
being 'free'. Considering itself as ‘Big Mind’ and the unconscious as ‘Little
Mind’ gets things the wrong way around in a very big way, and is the primary
problem with SBRs having no understanding of actual human (or God’s)
psychology. (See also Ch.6.)
But spirit is not the same as the conscious, and soul is not the
same as the unconscious, which leaves us with the problem of how to define them
apart.
In this UUS I posit that spirit and soul occupy different domains
of energy within us; the Spiritual (S) and the Emotional (E). But, our
conscious and unconscious are uniquely personal to us and contain a mix
of these 2 energies as well as the body and the mind. It is the
relationship between the conscious and the unconscious that changes throughout
our lives as we become more conscious of the unconscious. Hence the
relationship is referred to as 'dynamic'.
Thus, we could think of spirit and soul as being 2 parts of
the possible 4 parts of energy while on earth, while the
conscious/unconscious refer to our awareness of all these energies
within ourselves, while on earth.
The problem becomes even worse when we tend to equate
Spirit = Conscious = Masculine = the light = ‘good’, while
Soul = Unconscious = Feminine = the dark = ‘bad’.
There is a difference between masculine and feminine energies, but
we judge them so much that it is better to refer to them in the Chinese terms
of Yin and Yang.
The Yang/’masculine’ energies can be considered active and
outgoing, while the Yin/’feminine’ energies can be considered passive and
inward looking, and these are different qualities of energy. The main
point being that both are absolutely necessary for growth in life, and
our wonderful society is fast losing this understanding, and is having trouble growing
to any maturity at all.
Yin and Yang are dualities in a world of dualities; we need
both ends to See what we need to See. Each end informs the other. Night is
not night without day, waking is not awake without sleep; how many examples do
we need?
Spirit needs soul, the conscious needs the unconscious and the
masculine needs the feminine, otherwise it cannot experience itself; ‘consciousness
loves contrast’.
The warning here is that these are all different dualities, as in,
not the same, and we need to be very careful about how we think about them.
Equate them at your peril.
See also, contrast and opposites as part of Chapter 3 on Energy.
Conclusion for Dualities.
The Merge of 2 ends of a duality heals the split between them and
brings in the possibility of the creation of new life. Hence, healing the split
becomes a very important concept in our lives.
We need all 3 parts of the duality and its Merge to generate and
support that new life.
***************~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~***********************~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
We also come in with Filters.
FILTERS. (2F)
Another aspect of the way we are built is that we come in with
Filters.
All our perceptions of
our world are filtered through our own, well, filters. In other words, we
appear to be designed to deal only with our own small, internal versions of
what’s out there. Our filters are part of our personality and keep us utterly
unique. There are advantages and disadvantages. As a simplistic example, a pink
filter on a camera might make some things look ‘nicer’, which is why we may use
that filter, but many things will not appear as they actually are. This is what
our filters do to us. However something may appear to our own perception, it
may or may not be ‘the actuality’, and certainly not for someone else.
The thing to remember really is that we appear to ‘come in’ with a
pack of filters ready-made that have to be sorted out. They may or may not be
an issue for us, but it’s wise to remember they are always there.
We don’t know our internal world, and we have filters on.
MBTI. (2F1)
One of the most important set of ‘filters’ that we have is the
Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) which is a categorisation/description of our
personality type.
There appears to be a direct correlation between the energy
domains, the way we are 'built', and our personality as described in the MBTI.
There is a whole chapter about this in Part IV.
We have other filters, but they are a topic of some disagreement,
and by the time anyone deals with all the other factors of what we come in
with, (potentials, expectations, and contracts) that’s more than enough.
Now I wish to turn to the emotions.
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