Tag: Jung

Things we are not aware of

Karl Duffy2 Comments

When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate. That is to say, when the individual … does not become conscious of his inner opposite, the world must perforce act out the conflict.

C.G. Jung

A lot of the time, we are not fully conscious of everything that is going on within us; our unlived life, or the parts that have been formed by the unlived lives of others,  is out of sight but exercising influence over our choices. We can see this sometimes when we look back at decisions made or life choices and wonder why we ended up in a certain place. Or when we see repeating patterns in our relationships. Jung suggests that if we do not attend to what is going on inside us, things or people appear in our outer lives in accord with that inner dynamic, and the outer choices we make reflect this inner drama. He suggests that the more we ignore the inner issues, the more we act them out in the world  around us. If we do not do this work, we risk remaining on the surface of life, rather than than incorporating our opposites into healthy choices.

Where to look when things are not clear

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Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart…

Who looks outside, dreams.

Who looks inside, awakens.

Carl Jung

Confusion

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My work often reminds me that a lot of people have, to a greater or lesser degree, some amount of confusion within with regard to their identity. And often the roots of that confusion are to be found in the messages received from parents when they were children. For the most part these parents did their best to love and provide for their children. However, having unresolved emotional issues themelves they inevitably conveyed mixed signals, saying or doing one thing, but unconsciously expressing in their energy or mood something else. In my experience, this sends the signal that the child’s emotional independence and autonomy are subtly not accepted. As a result the child grows into an adult with a clear internal message of not being fully lovable. This can then manifest itself in persistent anxiety that seems to be present without reason, in depression, self-doubt, repeated failed relationships or the belief that one has to push hard to achieve any sense of worth.

Jung reminds us that whatever we do not pay attention to, or is lacking within ourselves, we compulsively seek in the outer world instead. So when we encounter something or someone that corresponds to our archetypal inner schema, we can often rush to compulsive solutions for the inner lack. He went on to say, in his seminar on Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, The self is relatedness. Only when the self mirrors itself in so many mirrors does it really exist. . . You can never come to your self by building a meditation hut on top of Mount Everest; you will only be visited by your own ghosts and that is not individuation. . . .Not what you are, but what you do is the self. The self appears in your deeds, and deeds always mean relationships.”

Putting these thoughts together, he seems to suggest that the lacks we inherit inside ourselves from our relationships with our parents can become manifest in the relationships we choose to have as adults. We can only travel with another person as far as we have travelled by ourselves. The stronger the dynamic is from childhood, the more likely it is that we will see it being played out in later relationships.

The unconscious must out

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The psychological rule says that when an inner situation is not made conscious, it happens outside as fate. That is to say, when the individual remains undivided and does not become conscious of his inner opposite, the world must perforce act out the conflict…

Carl Jung, “Christ, A Symbol of the Self”,

Sometimes we can see repeating patterns in our own lives or in the lives of others. We find ourselves in similar situations to before, or saying the same, self-defeating words, often based on deep-seated, limited, views of our own capacities. For example, some people say “I always end up in rotten relationships”, or even “life has it in for me”. Despite the painful nature of such experiences, these people do not gain the insight that would help them understand, for example, why they always end up in relationships that end badly. They continue to make choices based on patterns laid down in their own early relationships, which can end up running the show despite their best efforts. One way of dealing with this is to blame life or the other person and put the responsibility onto them.

However, the quote from Jung seems to suggest that the person needs to look inside themself for the real solution to this problem. He suggests that this can be due to unconscious parts of the self, the individual remaining unaware of his or her unconscious patterns and attitudes. He suggests that what we do not face inside ourselves will come into our lives from the outside, as “fate”. Unconsciously we will attract the parts of us that we deep down, unconsciously, know that we need. In other words, life will bring us into situations where we are asked to look at our unconscious or shadow side and bring it out into the open, in order to grow to our full potential.

He further seems to suggest that when we come to an important period in our life for growth, this new potential inside us does not always simply go from the unconscious to consciousness. Rather, it comes to full consciousness through outside circumstances or with the help of another person who comes into our life. This can then mean going in new directions in work or relationships, as we move from old patterns and things that once seemed important.

Thus, a person who spent a significant part of their life investing their energies into their work or their family may find that they neglected other aspects of themselves in the process. Jung suggests that they will be brought face to face with these unlived parts and given the possibilitiy of integrating them. He suggests that to be fully happy we need to bring to light those parts of ourselves that have been repressed or neglected.

Jung on Patterns

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“Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment and especially on their children than the unlived life of the parent.” Carl Jung

Factors which can lead to stress come from many sources. They can be due to external circumstances such as the current economic situation or being far away from family and familiar supports.

However some factors are internal, such as those caused by the patterns or conditioning we have built up over the years. Thus we may have learnt that we need to push ourselves hard in order to get attention and worth, and this manifests in our life as a compulsive, driven focus on work or success.

There also seems to be patterns that have been passed on to us, unconsciously, when we were very young. Jung’s observation prompts us to consider how where and how our caretakers were stuck in their development, and how this can becomes an internal paradigm for us also to be stuck. Jung goes on to say: “The child is so much a part of the psychological atmosphere of the parents that secret and unsolved problems between them can influence its health profoundly. The participation mystique, or primitive identity, causes the child to feel the conflicts of the parents and to suffer from them as if they were its own. It is hardly ever the open conflict or the manifest difficulty that has such a poisonous effect, but almost always parental problems that have been kept hidden or allowed to become unconscious”

Without developing some non-judgmental, gentle capacity for awareness of these influences on our inner life we can fail to transform or integrate them into who we are. Thus even into adulthood, our psyche can remain trapped and unconsciously serve the agendas and the lacks of others. In this way we can fall short of achieving our own potential and end up repeating patterns in relationships and in our work life. An awareness of these repeating schemes seems to frequently happen in mid-life when some of the paradigms adopted up until can fail. It was in this period of our lives that Jung said that we need to “decently go unconscious“.

The first step in doing this is to slow down, to make space, to stop the constant flood of information and activity that assails the mind. Making space for art, for meditation, journaling and reflection are all ways we can be kind to ourselves and develop a greater understanding of the factors that lead to our freedom. Slowing down in meditation quickly reveals the first type of internal stressors – our compulsive repeating conditioning – and can perhaps go on to heal some of the unconscious processes which have left their mark on our inner lives.