“Hundreds of shoppers flood Oxford Street, London, before 7am” Daily Mail, December 26th 2011
It is curious how modern people will go to almost any length to stay busy and thereby avoid examining unlived life. Contemporary people have an almost insatiable appetite for amusements and addictions – to drugs, food, television, shopping, wealth, power, and all the other diversions of our culture. For many years I believed that our avoidance of soulful engagement is the result of a fear of being overtaken by “uncivilized” qualities from the unconscious. But I have come to understand that we resist our highest potentials even more persistently than we reject our so-called primitive energies. Much of what remains undeveloped in us, psychologically speaking, is excluded because it is too good to bear. We often refuse to accept our most noble traits and instead find a shallow substitute for them. For example…. instead of our god-given right to the ecstatic, we settle for temporary highs from consuming something or possessing someone.
We all have places where we cut ourselves off from potentially exciting and fulfilling experiences due to habit, fear or laziness. A simple way to locate some fo your complexes (which are by definition, unconscious) is to reflect upon the past week and notice what situations disturbed you. Where did you have a run-in with someone? When and how did you procrastinate or avoid something? In what ways did you fail to engage life fully? There are a diverse number of complexes, as many as there are typical situations in life. These clusters of experiential energy are trying to protect you…by drawing on past experiences, but they also limit your freedom and bind you to the past.
Robert A Johnson, Jungian Analyst, Living your Unlived LIfe.
