Unconscious

What it is

The unconscious is the vast part of our being that is hidden from our awareness. It contains not only buried pain and mistaken beliefs, but also our creativity, talents and wisdom. Much of it became unconscious because, at some point, we turned away from painful truths.

Why it matters

The unconscious is continually creating our life experiences, whether we know it or not. Whatever remains unconscious continues to operate beyond the reach of our conscious mind. The goal is not to eliminate the unconscious, but to gradually make it conscious.

From Bones

~1~

Early in life, we each draw a similar conclusion: “If I don’t feel, I won’t be unhappy.” Rather than taking a brave and appropriate step of living through immature and therefore negative emotions—which would afford them the chance to mature and become constructive—we suppress our childish emotions.

We bury them deep in our awareness—in our unconscious—where they stay stuck, destructive and inadequate, even though we have long-ago forgotten we even hid them. (Chapter 1)

~2~

As we grow up, these wrong conclusions, along with the attitudes they sprout, sink out of our awareness. There, in our unconscious, they settle in and start molding how our life will look. This is the way it happens for every human being, to some extent. (Chapter 9)

~3~

The black hole of our unconscious includes our petrified wrong conclusions about life, as well as our destructive patterns of behavior. It also holds our negative emotions caused by our unresolved problems.

All this we have stuffed down in there and forgotten about.

But there’s something else we tend to forget. Which is that our unconscious is a repository for the constructive building blocks of the universe too. This means unending creativity, utter wisdom, divine truth and love are also all in there.

If we want to tap into this well of positive energy, we must clear the obstructions that are walling off everything hidden in the unconscious. (Chapter 15)

~4~

While we’re busy unearthing what’s lurking in our unconscious, we need to start understanding, on a deeper level, where our destructiveness comes from. What’s the origin of this evil we’re uncovering?

Actually, the real evil lies in our denial of what exists. This includes our vulnerabilities, our shame over our feelings of helplessness, and our feelings that we are unlovable.

These themselves aren’t the evil. The evil is that we won’t look at them and come to terms with them.

To be evil then is to defend ourselves against suffering. (Chapter 2)

~5~

Some things get hidden from our awareness and tucked away into our unconscious. There, regardless of how misguided they might be, they keep operating. But now, they do so without our reasoning mind stepping in to change them. (Chapter 15)

~6~

To know that we were bothered by something that we couldn’t explain made us feel uncomfortable and guilty. So we pushed it down into our unconscious, as far out of sight as possible.

And there it remains.

As long as the hurts of our early years stay tucked away in hiding, we can’t come to terms with them. No matter how much we might love our parents, unconscious resentments still simmer under the surface. And these block us from forgiving them for hurting us. (Chapter 8)

~7~

There’s a very good reason why images exist in our unconscious minds instead of our conscious awareness. The wrong conclusions that we formed at a young age were made in ignorance.

We simply didn’t have all the facts. (Chapter 9)

Continue with: Awareness • Meditation • Out-picture