The ‘unconscious’ - 'third key' to reclaiming your personal Sceptre

It is in the challenging practices of 'presence' and 'reflexivity' that we integrate the unconscious and conscious and continue to reclaim our Personal Sceptre.

In the lead up to King Charles' coronation this coming weekend we are seeking, through daily postings, to draw inspiration from this ceremony to metaphorically 'reclaim our personal sceptres' and to restore our individual sovereignty - see https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/recovering-your-personal-sceptre-claudius-van-wyk/

Individuation

In 1921 Carl Gustav Jung first described 'individuation' as the process individuals go though to attain wholeness, some simply call that 'balance of mind'.?Jung suggested that this balance can only be attained when one is able to integrate the unconscious mind, into the conscious mind, declaring:

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

Inwardness

In 1926 Jan Christian Smuts, in 'Holism and Evolution', employed the notion of individuation as increasing 'inwardness'. As with Jung this represented a deep engagement with 'self' in which identity transcended the physical boundaries to include not only the greater enabling living milieu, but indeed the cosmic evolutionary process.

Subconscious?

There is sometimes confusion between the notion of the unconscious mind and the subconscious mind. Sigmund Freud, for example, saw the subconscious mind as that element of the mind that was suppressed — holding content that we had learned to filter out of our conscious awareness because it makes us uncomfortable.

While Freud divided the psyche into the unconscious, preconscious, and the conscious, Jung divided it as the ego (conscious mind) the personal unconscious, and the collective unconscious.

Jung felt Freud's concept of the unconscious was limited and instead of simply being a reservoir of repressed thoughts and motivations, argued that the unconscious was a source of creativity.

The question we'll explore here is how this issue plays out in daily life and how a deeper and practical understanding of the unconscious might assist us in reclaiming our Personal Sceptres.

Habits

To this notion of the unconscious we now couple the practical implication of habits. We are all born with human instincts – these are unconscious habits. As a baby we are able to cry and to suckle without being taught to do so. Our body works without our conscious intervention. Jung saw these natural instincts as controlled by the ‘collective unconscious’ – the field of humanity and life that we all share. This he differentiated from the ‘personal unconscious’.

'Self', for Jung, could be seen as the centre of three interactive spheres of consciousness; the consciously aware 'ego', the personal unconscious, and the collective unconscious.

Personal unconscious

Think of it in this way. You might try to remember a name of someone and for the moment not be able to access the memory. It’s there all right – but not in your conscious awareness at the moment. You might say, “It’s on the tip of my tongue.” Later you’ll get it. So the memory is in your personal unconscious. Now that memory might relate to some exciting experience you had on a vacation. When you get the memory you again feel excited and motivated – and when you are motivated you get on enthusiastically with whatever task is at hand. What this suggests is the way you experience the world is deeply experienced by what’s going on in the unconscious.

Memories

All your memories are stored in the unconscious – whilst some say actually in the neurological complexes of your brain – others have more esoteric ideas of information not being limited to the material brain. Nevertheless these memories are?beyond your awareness - until they come back to you. Now here’ the important piece – much of how you respond to the events of the world – its challenges and opportunities – happens without you thinking about it. It’s a habituated reaction. Or it's an unconscious response. That's why Jung said:

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

So ‘habits’ are unconscious responses. And thank goodness for habits. Your capacity to understand this writing is enabled by a good habit - you don’t have to relearn the language each time. The words and phrases making up the English language have been generalised in your experience - habituated. This ‘habituation’ saves an enormous amount of time and effort. It also allows for your conscious mind to be available to deal with newer and more interesting, or even challenging, issues.

Deeper self

The unconscious, both the personal and the collective instinct, is thus a powerful ally, as Jung suggested. The more you learn, the more that learning becomes habituated in your unconscious. The implication of this statement is that there is an enormous portion of ‘you’ at any time that is outside of your conscious (ego) awareness. So you, your Self, are both a vast reservoir of information that is constituted by both the information itself and the capacity to store, or access, that information in your own unique way. It is this uniqueness that constitutes your personal Sceptre. There is much more of you in the unconscious than there is in the conscious mind. In a way the unconscious is probably your truer self.

But Jung said that to truly know yourself you need to know and acknowledge your unconscious contents – including that suppressed stuff we referred to.

Clearly all your learning through life is stored in the unconscious and happily most of that learning manifests in behaviour at the appropriate time as acted out through habits. If the habitual responses to the prevailing conditions of life, what you are experiencing, are appropriate, are creative, then those can be seen as good habits. We then define that condition, or state, as being ‘Unconscious Functionality’. see that as a quality of expertise – it’s like driving a car. You don’t think about it after a while – it comes naturally.

So the state of happiness is probably experienced when most of our habits are?‘unconsciously functional’ – when we are automatically getting good results. But now what’s going on when we don’t get good results? Well, you see, here’s the catch. Life conditions change, and at this time of the world history it is changing dramatically.

Unconscious functionality

Think about it. In times past what father taught son and what mother taught daughter about life was probably generally appropriate to those circumstances. Our survival as a human species is surely proof of this contention. Parents had gone through the experiences that their children were going to go through and so could advise and admonish. But today by contrast, how much do our parents know about the technology that we now use – be that electronic communication, transportations systems, information storage systems? You see much of what they learned to habituate would no longer be regarded as ‘unconscious functionality’ – in fact you might see much of it as ‘Unconscious Dysfunctionality’.

Unconscious dysfunctionality

Any habit that is inappropriate to the current situation can be seen as a function of ‘unconscious dysfunctionality’. This also includes beliefs and attitudes. So, for example, what do you think would your grandparents have thought about gay marriage? It’s now quite acceptable in many societies, and to talk out against it might be seen to be prejudiced – even to disrespect human rights. You might even be branded fascist! So the notions of ‘functionality’ and ‘dysfunctionality’ are also relative – that makes it even more complex. Shakespeare's Hamlet poetically describes a mind populated by bad habits "...tis an unweeded garden that grows to seed - things rank and vile in nature possess it merely..."

Globally interconnected world

There are so many beliefs and attitudes that impinge on each other in this globally interconnected world where so many creeds, cultures and ideologies come into contact with each other. Thus many of our previous habits that could have been seen as ‘unconscious functionality’ in a certain situation, can now come to be regarded as ‘unconscious dysfunctionality’ in another. This of course functions at the more mundane level. Just move from a country where driving takes place on the left side of the road to another country where driving takes place on the right side – and notice how the previous apparently good driving habits now are suddenly bad habits.

Adaptiveness

But what’s the point of this? In a world of rapid change we’ve got to be able to change our minds quickly as well. That capacity is described as 'Complex Human Adaptive Intelligence' - see: https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/21-century-challenges-demand-adaptive-intelligence-claudius-van-wyk/ . And since most of our ‘mind’ is in the unconscious world of habits we’ve got to learn to change our habits as well. This is simply called learning – this is called growth – and this is the path to reclaiming your personal Sceptre. The capacity to adapt and change easily is surely a feature of intelligence. Does this mean you need to change your deep-seated beliefs and values as well? Yes, in a way it does – that's what reflexivity is all about - disturbing as that might sound. We’ll come to that shortly.

Becoming self-aware

Firstly it is really important to recognise when your habits have become dysfunctional. You need to become sensitive to and identify the clues, the indicators that tell you what you are thinking and doing is no longer working effectively – they’re dysfunctional. Here they are:

? Getting negative feedback: The responses to how you are doing life – both from others and in your own experience – are increasingly uncomfortable – you’re just not ‘making’ it anymore

? Having an increasing tendency to criticise and complain: You are increasingly projecting the source of your problems on to others and the world – whether its the government, economy, weather, humanity, and bad luck!

? Displaying hostility and blame: You are increasingly seeking out individuals (even communities) you consider to be the cause of your discomfort

? Experiencing victimhood: You feel helpless and hopeless – you feel you’re at the mercy of others and life’s circumstances.

Most of the above conditions can probably be traced back to attitudes and habits in your unconscious that no longer support you successfully in your world – and they need to be revised. Of course unfortunate things do happen – and they happen to ‘good’ people as well. So-called ‘bad’ people indeed do bad things to so-called ‘good’ people. Incidents do happen. What we are looking for is a trend – a tendency towards – this is the key that indicates bad habits.

So then how do we change? What must we do? The answer is to practice greater awareness. And it is in the ‘challenging’ practice of 'presence' that we continue to reclaim our Personal Sceptre.

We will explore this practice tomorrow