I’ve touched a little bit on consciousness and the conscious.  But what about the unconscious?

I defined consciousness as the totality of what we hold in awareness.  Almost like the lens through which we see the world.  The unconscious, on the other hand, are the automatic process which we do not hold in awareness.  My recent readings have had me very interested in this “unconscious”.

We saw how our consciousness can shape our reality.  But our consciousness, we hold in awareness.  We know what it consists of.  The unconscious, on the other hand, is out of our awareness.  It, then, can shape our reality in ways unbeknownst to us, for better or for worse.  That is, if we do not acknowledge and listen to it.

But what is contained in the unconscious?

One of my first writings 2014 and 2015 I spoke about how past occurrences in my life had begun to “build up”.  These occurrences were manifesting themselves in my daily life for some time.  They caused me to feel restricted, depressed, and anxious, among other things.  These occurrences caused these types of reactions within me because I repressed them.  I did not see the occurrences properly, they caused me feelings I did not want to experience, and so I repressed these feelings.  Feelings of guilt, sadness, anger, and shame.  Rather than become correctly conscious of these feelings, I chose to repress them and send them away.

These occurrences and feelings do not simply disappear.  They instead, reside in the unconscious.  These are all memories, fears, wishes, needs and duties which we have not been able to come to terms with that create a complex that can interfere with our conscious life in disturbing ways.

A couple of conclusions about the unconscious:

• The unconscious has a very large impact on our conscious living.  The first step in understanding this impact is to reflect and examine whether there is some sort of disturbance hindering us or some sort of underlying theme to our daily efforts.  Am I causing myself unnecessary pain?  If the answer is yes, then we need to look deeply within to first acknowledge and then make these repressions conscious.  When we do this, then we can start to more fully understand ourselves through our unconscious complexes.
• We will always have these complexes.  They are not only hindering disturbances; they also can drive certain positive inclinations (eg. inferiority complex rooted in a childhood sibling rivalry driving consistent motivation for achievement). The goal is not to necessarily to eliminate complexes (although that may occur) but by bringing the unconscious into awareness we are able to get a deeper understanding of ourselves and, in effect, a deeper understanding of others, the world, and universal Truth.
• I am currently of the belief that dreams are messages from our unconscious.  Certain thoughts or feelings that we have repressed into the unconscious often reveal themselves to us in our dreams when we are unable to block them out.  If we are stuck and unable to identify and understand repressions and complexes consciously, our dreams may be able to give us some sort of direction.