Safe Haven Sober Living

“Until you make the unconscious, conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” – Carl Jung

Our unconscious mind performs without us knowing. It is in charge of our breathing, our healing and many other functions. It is also in charge of our dreams, creativity and intuition, giving us hunches when we need to make a decision without enough evidence.

We form unconscious patterns and behaviors from consciously making decisions over and over until it becomes integrated into our unconscious. These unconscious patterns can be given to us from peers, parents and our environment and early in our lives we may not even be aware we are picking up these patterns, since we are too young to think for ourselves and rely on many people around us for survival.

“The immediate goal of analysis (analytical psychology) of the unconscious is to root out these negative complexes so that their content becomes conscious, and the person can stop ‘acting out’ from them and being ruled by them” (Teach Yourself Jung, 51).

To dive into the unconscious and figure out the patterns, habits and beliefs that are driving us, we need to get rid of the resistance from the conscious mind. When we are sleepy, our conscious mind steps aside and there is no longer resistance. The conscious mind also steps to the side when we are involved in a creative endeavor. This provides the best way to understand and explore the unconscious mind, when the conscious mind is no longer getting in the way.

The goal of Carl Jung and his work was the ‘individuation process’, which meant for a person to become whole, they needed to integrate the different parts of their psyche, the unconscious mind and the conscious mind, making them work together as one and balancing them out so we do not become too lopsided.

From a great analysis on Jung and his works at www.walden43200.com,

Jung says that disorder is the “other half of the world” and by writing this, we see how he was aware of the polarities of individuals and the world around us.

The world is full of chaos and order, good and bad, beautiful and ugly. We are thinking and feeling beings. The process of individuation is balancing our polarities, finding the grey between the black and white. When we lean on one side too much, we will become unbalanced. When we think too much, we lose feeling, when we feel too much, we lose our rationality. When we become to immersed in our external world, our internal world is neglected and vice versa.

In a world where it seems that we are constantly ‘doing’ and not ‘being’, we become too reliant on our conscious minds.

To explore our unconscious and what drives us, we have to take away the resistance of the conscious mind and let our imaginations wonder, usually from some creative activity, whether it be writing, drawing, painting, music. Journaling could be a great way to uncover the forces that are directing our lives. Allowing yourself to write on a page, your feelings, thoughts and what is happening in your life usually will expose the negative aspects of your personality and what needs to be focused on and changed. We can only change something by first becoming aware of it and consciously choosing a different path over and over until it becomes unconscious again (like riding a bike, or car). Our conscious minds and unconscious minds should be working together, not against each other.