Conscious and Unconscious; ITS&FYD.ch1,pt7.

How We are Built continued.

In which we define Conscious, Sub-conscious, and Unconscious.

We have a Psyche/Mind of a particular structure.

Conscious, sub-conscious and unconscious.

When we discuss the conscious and unconscious we are talking about those things that we are aware of, in contrast to the things we are not aware of.

Define Conscious.

This is our light side; it is available to the light.

“The person I own and operate; civilized but fragile” LOPKER p.92

These are the things I think I know about myself, or my concepts/ideas about my self.

I will refer to it as the ‘outer self’ or ‘outself’ for short.

The conscious mind is actually built to cope with quite limited amounts of data at any one time. 7 plus or minus 2 bits of information. (Notice that there’s plenty of information/data coming into the unconscious.)

This is not to say that we do not know more than computer or that there is not great potential within, but it is to say that it is wise to allow for that. It seems to be part of the design for being human and it may have to do with de-emphasizing and limiting the importance of external data to the mind and/or forcing us to narrow our focus on whatever.

Sub-conscious.

These are the bits of me I’m vaguely aware of but are just below consciousness. If someone tells me some information that’s in my sub-conscious, I would say ‘I know that’.

Most people use the word sub-conscious to refer to the unconscious, but it is only part of the unconscious and a very small part at that.

Few people like the idea that they don’t know about what’s ‘in there’, but the unconscious is indeed unconscious and extremely important and I will be using this term in this discussion.

Unconscious.

In feeling terms, I’m not aware of this part of me at all. This part of my self is not available to my awareness; I don’t know or have forgotten about this bit of me completely. This part feels like ‘not me’.

“This is the person I do not know; the person I disown and deny.” LOPKER p.102

The unconscious contains the …

·      history of our emotional memories.

·      functions that drive the body and maintain homeostasis.

·      Observations and information/data received through the body, including eg, all the music we did and didn’t (jingles) want to remember, that we have learnt on the way.

·      Connection to all Life, and our concepts of same. All our decisions, values, beliefs and attitudes.

·      Connection to our Higher Self, hence God and our comprehension of God.

·      Potential of the whole Self which is at the centre of all that is encompassed by the conscious and the unconscious.

·      Anima, animus, inner child, internalized parents, archetypes, complexes and lots more.

·      Stuff which we’re afraid to own including our best and our worst (both of which frighten the socks off us).

Which is rather a lot, really.

In terms of the amount of ‘stuff’ that it contains, it’s very big; as big as the world ‘out there’. Psychologists use figures such as 10% for the conscious and 90% for the unconscious to give us an idea of the difference between the known and the unknown.

Our emotional memories.

What is stored in our emotional memories is very important. This is not about remembering the things you wish to be conscious of, such as a sportsman’s name, or where you stored the lilo after last year’s trip to the beach. This is about some of what is actually stored in the unconscious.

These memories are above all emotional. The things we store in our memories have strong emotional energy; from positive to negative. We don’t tend to remember the day-to-day; we remember the feeling or a sensation associated with a memory (the smell of lily-of-the-valley reminds me of my grandmother).

We store all our important emotional memories. The good ones are our assets and are resources for us because they can be used to help us steer our lives in that direction for more of them. The ‘bad’ ones are also stored. These are extremely important because they affect our decisions about our lives, which is what we ‘make of’ our lives; and thus continue to affect our future, no matter what we may think. (Many psychotherapists speak of them as ‘programs’.) The business of how (and whether) we clear, resolve, understand, negate or whatever we manage to ‘do’ with these memories is a crucial aspect of this discussion.

We also store memories and their attending decisions about life from past lives.

Defining the unconscious is a solid cow, because it extends from our highest potential which is unknown to us, all the way down to what we consider to be the worst we could possibly be as well as our worst fears. It is a whopping mix of stuff we wish we knew (the potential as well as the ‘good’ stuff) mixed up with stuff we really don’t want to know (our worst memories from all lives including our judgement of them).

Internally, some part of the unconscious feels like a child; it is the part of us that is afraid, slow, inept, weak, unsure, and it does lots of hiding, especially when it does not trust our own attitude to it. If you tend to ‘bash yourself up’, you are indeed bashing this part of you. It feels like the klutz and the ‘idiot’. Hence it is often referred to as our inner child. This inner child is also the source of our emotions, creation, recreation, spontaneity and intimacy. The more apart we are from our inner child the less internally satisfied and happy we will be. The more we hate the slow inept klutzy bits of ourselves, the less we will be able to relate to our inner child and thus to others as well, particularly our own children.

There is much to be gained by treating our unconscious as an inner child if we are able to care about it as we hopefully would be able to nurture and care about our own child. This is a very valuable exercise that can bring great delight.

However our inner child is not the only part of the unconscious. There are quite a lot of other parts of us or ‘members’. Our feminine (anima) and masculine (animus) also live in here. In fact there’s ‘a world of people’ in here. As we re-member these parts we come to feel more resilient/complete.

There is also our concept of and direct connection to God and to Life. The connection to God is through our Higher Self which feels very large and quite remote and is probably the part of us that we must face up to in the end, which is not easy at all. Most of us dodge off till next time… It is the part that knows what we were wanting to achieve in this lifetime. This would be the source of our dreams. [Any well-interpreted dream gives the feeling of someone ‘out there’ (ie not me) who knows more about me than I do myself, and that person is trying to tell me something that I need to know. ]

The other point to understand here is that our own conception of God is God as far as we’re concerned. We can’t conceive of God any other way than what is inside us. It can be modified and changed etc, but our little bit stays just that; our little bit; big enough for us but without the comprehension of the whole, which would be just too much. Similarly with our ‘scoping’ of Life; and all Life is God. Thus for us, our unconscious is God and Life and this inner self.

I will refer to this part of ourselves as the ‘inner self’ because it is inside us, and I will use InSelf for short. I am using ‘In’ for Inner and Self with a big ‘S’ because it is actually bigger than our known or conscious self, and because it is our direct connection with God/Life/Self.

From this connection then, we can start to face the concept that God, Life, and our Inner Self are the same thing within our own comprehension; (ie. InSelf = GLS).

There really are a lot of ‘selves’ in this discussion and I have mentioned a Self a few times as well. Jung used Self as “the whole Self at the centre of all that is encompassed by the conscious and the unconscious”.

A lot of the problem with trying to define names is that this stuff is dynamic, as in, it changes over time within any person as we realize more about ourselves, and it is basically unmeasurable by us or others. The upshot leaves us trying to get a handle on a basic set of ‘selves’ which together can make a whole or a unity. I will use Self (’big S’) for the United or Whole Self. Learning to know InSelf and learning to love this ‘other’ is the path to the Self, and thus to partnership with God.

However much we have difficulty defining the unconscious and however much we don’t know who is ‘in here’; it is still an extremely important part of us, because…

·      The unconscious is emanating or broadcasting your vibrations to Life. This is what Life is Mirroring back to you.

·      It comes out in our behaviour, as in, what we do. It is our actual truth about ourselves whether we like it or not, and other people can see/feel/sense it even if we cannot.

·      It drives the show. It is the part that is actually in charge here, not the conscious part. It is thus more powerful than ‘you’ ie, your outself or your ‘me’.

So, if your life is not doing what you think it should be doing, then basically it’s a good idea to make friends with your unconscious and start talking to it. ‘How’ is further down in this discussion.

The upshot of all this business about conscious and unconscious is that we might as well consider ourselves as 2 people; one we know about and are quite sure about who is here, (’That’s the way I am’.) and the other we do not know about at all. This internal ‘other’ is as unknown to us as anyone else out there with no relevance or relationship to us, and the grand question is ‘Who is this internal other? Who is actually there?’ Hence ‘Know Thyself’.

Now I wish to discuss the relationship between your 2 internal ‘people’.

Spirit and Soul; ITS&FYD.ch1,pt6.

How We are Built continued.

In which we define Spirit and Soul, and consider their relationship with the Body and the Mind.

We have a Psyche/Mind of a particular structure

We talk about being made up of the trio of Body, Mind and Spirit, but some people use the terms Body, Mind and Soul.

Spirit and Soul are treated as almost synonymous in our society. Are they the same or 2 different things? If we have no definitions of these or don’t even consider them as different, we don’t know what is being talked about in any previous or current teachings and are unable to communicate clearly with others and build on our experiences. Without definitions, everyone ends up reinventing the wheel over and over; not to mention total confusion in trying to work out what anyone wants to say.

What is Soul and what is Spirit? And does it matter?

Well, in the absence of any agreement whatsoever in trying to define these terms, I will try my own, and the best way I can think of is through internal description, as in, how it feels.

I would define Spirit as the part of us that can ‘jump’; and Soul as the part of us that feels like a ‘lump’. The Spirit part of us has the imaginative, abstract qualities and the Soul has the emotional qualities.

If we define Spirit as unlimited in Space and Soul as unlimited in Time, then when Time and Space come together we manifest as a single human being within a single time-frame, as in, now. But within this single human being are the 2 parts of Spirit and Soul, and for most of us they are split. Not to mention, what about the Body and the Mind? Does that mean that there are 4 ‘departments’ or sections?

I’ll deal with Spirit and Soul first.

What are the differences between Spirit and Soul?

Spirit

Is the part of us that can ‘jump’. It has unlimited space to move and roam.

It lives in the mind and appears to us to be synonymous with it.

It is our imagination. It can ‘see’ the bigger picture, abstraction (or chunking up) and meaning, as in, the ‘why’. It does have access to all the knowledge/concepts held in space, although that knowledge can be theory rather than actuality and is not necessarily congruent with reality on Earth.

Its characteristics are….

- Singular.

Free; singular and unattached; It doesn’t need anyone else. Detached; minimal to no emotions. Can’t attach, and not much ability to feel or sense others.  Doesn’t understand emotions, basically.

- Feels trapped in the body.

It feels trapped by the body and thinks it doesn’t need it. It doesn’t understand the body’s abilities, especially that of sensing the external world. Prone to treat the body as if it were a car/machine/robot/mechanical device for carting it around and doing what it wants. Spirit generally ignores what the body senses because it doesn’t ‘make sense’ to spirit’s accepted concepts or ways of ‘knowing’.

- It can access all ‘knowing/knowledge’ ‘out there’.

It thinks it has all the answers; for itself and everyone else. (If we think we have all the A’s, how do we ask any Q’s?.) Doesn’t listen to others. Doesn’t understand the difference between theory and practice. Has the Theory – hence channeling it always ‘sounds’ good. [That person may not have been able to live it tho’.]

- Impatient; used to ‘no time at all’.

Wants everything now, because it can conceive/imagine things in an instant.

- No memory because no experience of time.

Soul

- The part of us that feels like a ‘lump’.

It resides in the body and feels completely synonymous with it. (The western world has a long history of referring to bodies as ‘souls’.)

It is our memories and emotions.

It has unlimited time. The memory of an event with a strong emotional response sends us back in time, but bits of memory can get stuck and break away, as in, our memory can become fractured and that particular memory will repeat over and over in time like a stuck vinyl record forever. It doesn’t move and it doesn’t change.

The soul is earth-bound because it is unlimited in time, and time is only experienced on earth; hence ‘lump’.

- It carries our history.

We need memories for our resources, our ability to develop/build on our skills, relate to others (try talking to someone who has lost their short-term memory), and remembering/storing information for when it’s relevant next time, and to review our past and/or how we have got to where we are.

- The soul has attachments - to things and places as well as people, especially in the external world, and they are not always appropriate.

Attachments are made because of our emotions.

Our emotions are the source of our greatest sadness and our greatest joy, and of course, love, and really, our search for love and for life are our alpha and omega, and come from the soul.

Our emotions are our rudders. They are how we work out what’s important to us, and what we value, and point us in the direction of wanting more of what we like, and set us heading in that direction.

Memories and Emotions and the Soul.

The problem of the soul.

The soul is inextricably entwined within the body. The soul has ‘attachments’ to others and things and places. It’s the body that feels the emotions, and our emotions are our rudders. They are how, or really why, we make the choices that we make, and our choices are affected by our memories.

The problem here is that these emotions can be from past lives as well as this life. We are not ‘tabula rasa’. So, not only do we ignore emotions from this life as irrelevant, the concept of having emotions and issues from past lives is just even more to be ignored, and yet to do so leaves us without any ‘handle’ on what is actually happening with us at a very deep level in the unconscious.

A very mild example would be someone who is afraid of water and can’t learn to swim, with no logical reason why; they just are. Yet even a minimal realization for them that they may have drowned in a previous life can be sufficient to change their decisions in this life and view swimming in a different manner. And really, that’s all that is required; a change of mind and a fear has gone. Simple, but we don’t believe it, so it doesn’t exist, and yet, that person knows that something in their life is different. They are no longer blocked from the pleasure and social context of swimming.

A not so mild example would be that of a destitute father going out to find food for his starving family during winter and getting caught in a snowstorm and dying of cold. He has not been able to return, and some of his family may die of cold and/or starvation. The father may decide he is no good as a father; the mother may decide that others can not be relied upon, and the children may decide that parents don’t look after you, or fathers abandon you or that life’s too hard, and so on and so on. These are the decisions that get carried with us into the next life, (because there is a big emotional ‘bang’ attached to these decisions; the family died thinking these things) and however useless they may be, they hang around like bad smells and affect our next lives because Life reflects our unconscious back to us, and these decisions stay sitting in there until we decide something else.

We have already had a range of lives and experiences that have led us to make such decisions about the things that have happened to us. They are part of the Soul which holds our memories (because of Time). This is not absolutely all our memories; what is retained are the ones with strong emotional charge attached to them, whether positive or negative. (However, we don’t usually complain about the positive ones.)

The union of the Soul with the Spirit within the Body (ie, we’re alive) brings these memories into the Unconscious part of the Mind, and it is the Body that generates and feels the emotions.

But, some of these memories have such a strong negative emotional charge that they split off from the main ‘body’ of the Soul and get stuck in the time that they occurred, and in this time they just play over and over (which is what ‘stuck in time’ means), and start feeling like one’s worst nightmares; in fact, like hell, so we bury/repress them as much as we possibly can. We get stuck in fear.

If we have any of these ‘lost’ bits, they will ‘pinch’ energy from now, because they are awful and we want them to stay repressed, and it takes energy to repress them. If there are more than a few, (and many people have them), then there can be many bits up and down the time-line through our previous lives, and the owner may feel fragile or very easily shattered, and won’t know what’s going on. That person just feels ‘out of control’ and generally fairly anxious about being in situations where it may happen again. But really, if you feel shattered easily, you may well have ‘bits of you’ somewhere else in time.

In fact, these bits can be remembered and retrieved back into the present, at which time the owner may feel as though they have found or retrieved some part/member of themselves and feel internally stronger or more resilient. Hence re-membered.

However, this process of re-membering actually requires the overview or the ‘bigger picture’ that the Spirit is able to bring in. The Soul tends to get stuck in the detail of what happened, and needs the Spirit to provide the bigger picture of the why it happened to find its meaning for us.

Thus, we need Spirit and Soul working together to resolve the problems of these -’ve emotions, and thus able to bring the contents of the unconscious into the conscious. In so doing, we feel stronger or more integrated for it.

Well, what about the Body?

·      The body is an animal. (We just don’t like remembering this bit.)

·      It is our vehicle in this Life. But, it is not just a machine/robot to cart the Spirit around and do what it says.

·      It houses the Mind, along with the Spirit and the Soul.

·      It is made of earth/dust and will return to this. We like to forget this bit too. We have to maintain it if we want to stay alive. This involves effort.

·      It is our manifesting device; we can’t do things or make things or much else without it. It’s the part that ‘has and can mould the clay’ if we want to make things,

·      It is our energy exploring device; it’s how we get to experience things.

·      It is our energy sensing device, (all senses; not just VAKOG plus all the energy vibrations available to us; not just measurable ones either). We must understand that we are an animal and part of Nature and have access to the same range of subtle energies that surround all life. We cannot perceive/register/sense or ‘pick up’ these ‘vibes’ of Life without a body. People have enormous variation in their sensitivity to these energies, which is something we discount, generally because we are unable to measure these things. (The sooner we get rid of ‘if it’s not empirical, it doesn’t exist’, the better.) Don’t forget we can pick up others’ emotions as well; they are ‘vibes’ too.

·      It is our energy transmitting device; our own energy basically, as in, our own unique vibration. This energy that we are transmitting is the energy of our Unconscious; our Inner Self. We tend to think it’s our outer self or persona or image that we’re transmitting, and that we can use our will to force this, but it takes energy to maintain this image if it is not aligned with the unconscious, which is usually the case.

·      It is how we make our communication and connection to others including being the way/means by which God/Nature/Life can communicate with us.

The Body is the ‘practice’; the actuality, and the Mind holds the memories of the differences (our collisions) between theory and practice.

In our current society we are more familiar with Spirit. We really devalue the body and the emotions, and in so doing we have lost the Soul. There is an awful lot of New Age stuff about our being a ‘spiritual person having an earthly experience’ as if Earth were not our true home, although this may be in response to a general tendency to simply use the body without ever thinking about the reason for having life. However, it seems to me that we are really failing to encompass the importance of the body and its energies and the importance of addressing our physical health, the lack of which can affect both the emotions and our mental health. Our physical health is totally wrapped up in the health of the Earth. (A nice sweeping statement!)

And the Mind?

Exists only while we have a body; ‘ipso fatso’ (as in ‘Perishers’). (We don’t like that one either.)

Has a lot of ‘stuff’ in it when you think about it. (‘Stuff’ being a technical term, of course.)

·      Data from this present life experience and all you have accumulated so far.

·      Data from all those ‘vibes’ we ‘swim in’.

·      Data from the Autonomic Nervous System running the body.

·      Data from the Spirit.

·      History from the Soul.

·      Our connection to Life and God.

And some of it is conscious and some of it is unconscious.

And some of the consequences of this ‘arrangement’?

Now, we can look at some of the consequence of these different departments as they come together.

Recognizing Concepts that come from the Spirit.

Anyone we know??

Freedom, singular ie detached, and few emotions.

Hence no attachments, to people or things and no love either; and no idea of their value or importance - attachments are seen as a weakness along with the body.

It may be able to feel ‘heavenly’ through stilling the mind, but it is unable to act upon giving love as effort or serve.

Emotions ‘mess up’ rational decision-making and logical thought. Rational is good. (Begs the question of what is good?)

Doesn’t really like having a body.

Because it’s an animal and requires effort to maintain, and it’s slow and an encumbrance to freedom, and for men it is a betrayer and will not stay under control; (hence many religions’ efforts to punish the body to keep it down for the lord’s sake, or punish those who might make it go up!). In fact, as far as Spirit is concerned the body with its Soul is a real pill, and the sooner it can get rid of it or work out how to use it to the max for its own satisfaction, the better.

There is no need to look after the body because it is ephemeral to this life and in the end it doesn’t matter, because ‘Heaven’s where it’s at’.

Has all the Answers already.

Why need anything else? And don’t need anyone else anyway; especially anyone else’s Answers. It knows it all already and doesn’t need feedback or actuality to counter that. This translates as thinking that what someone says is what they do. Well, not! This one is such a trap! Our ‘talking’ society increasingly ignores the difference, and relies upon self-estimation as the measure.

Impatient.

Used to no time. It’s used to imagining it and thinking it’s true, and no need to check anyway because it’s on to the next thing. No idea of the amount of time it takes to grow/build/make/real-ize something in the physical; or of working steadily and patiently to get to this ‘end’.

No memory.

Hence the belief that, if we ‘put it all behind us’ it’s gone. ( However much we may like to think this is so, this concept is entirely and utterly incorrect.)

Spirit has little to no concept of Nurturing, Protecting, Love or Serving.

It is always trying to dream up ways to escape, and justify it as well.

And, its creations tend to have no soul and are lifeless; offering utility and ‘bling’ rather than beauty or charm.

But we do need Spirit to..

·      Lift us up to get the bigger picture and the context

·      Provide inspiration and imagine possibilities

·      Provide the meaning

·      Provide the metaphors that form bridges in meaning across PEMS (the 4 dimensions of Physical, Emotional, Mental and Spiritual).

·      Stop us from getting stuck in detail.

But Spirit is here to learn…

·      The value and importance of love and to discriminate what to be attached to.

·      The value of effort and serve for love in creativity and relationship.

·      The value of the body and its senses in its connection to Life and Nature and our Inner Self.

·      The value of collaboration with the other for better ‘answers’.

·      The value of patience and time especially in relation to our children and/or our manifestation and/or creativity.

·      The importance of our experiences and our memory as communication devices with our Inner Selves.

Our body with its Soul wants to be…

Safe - this seems to be no.1 (just). Wants it PMES. ie in all departments

Fed and Watered - no.2. What we ingest needs to be clean - how important and how ignored!.

Clean. Comfortable and the correct temperature for it.

Healthy and Well and able to move with ease and vitality.

Touched and stroked.

Fully able to play and explore according to its needs.

And, of course…

Loved. Nurtured, Protected and Served.

It also…

Likes to spend time and sense in to Nature, go with the flow. Patience.

It kind of has a mind of its own, which is usually unconscious.

It is the part that can nurture new growth as long as it understands how to nurture itself.

When we watch a well-fed, secure animal enjoying the sun and just Being, we can identify with that. That is Soul. (And how much do we get to these, and who does so?)

Creations made with Soul have a life of their own.

On the other hand, Soul does need to let go of those attachments, especially things in the external.

XXXX  DIAGRAMS REQUIRED HERE

Made in the Image; ITS&FYD.ch1,pt5.

EARTH STRUCTURES, or How We are Built. pt 1, Made in the Image.

In which we explore some of the features of being human beings, as in, the way we are built. This part is about 'Made in the Image' and what that might mean.

Who are we?

You as reader are a separate single human being who is a part of an enormous whole which we really cannot encompass, and are not meant to; it’s a Bigness.

This Bigness has an energy and some sort of design or control that we don’t really comprehend. We call it God, the Universe, Life, and we can also use the term Nature which does not have to be limited to just our planet Earth. (On the other hand is Nature on Earth going to be eternal considering what we are doing to it?)

What are You as this Spark or Part with a Mind?

We ‘come in’ with some built-in features.

·      We are Made in the Image of God

·      We have a Psyche/Mind of a particular structure.

·      We have filters.

·      We have a very large, mostly unknown potential – our ‘promise’.

·      We have a pack of expectations and assumptions from our previous lives.

·      A ‘larger design’ for our lives including Contracts, which we’ve chosen while off-earth, which we forget about when we are born.

Man is Made in the Image of God.

The difference between man and all (?) other forms on Earth is that we have an internal awareness; which is another difficult concept to define.

It is not ‘I think therefore I am’, it is ‘I am aware that I am thinking, therefore I am’. This self-awareness is of key importance. We have an awareness of our external world (Life ‘out there’) and we also have an awareness of our internal world (our self ‘in here’).  They are two different things, and we know that. We can shift our attention from one to the other, although we can’t attend to both at once.

Our inner awareness is our own Mind which can perceive things for itself. It is entirely individual with its own point of view. We think of it as ‘my self’.

Within our minds are…

Things we are conscious of, which is what we present to the outer world; our ‘outer self’,

And things we are unconscious of, which are actually completely unknown to this ‘outer self’, living deep within an ‘inner self’, and these ‘selves’ are split.

The conscious does not know the unconscious (by definition).

The difference between human beings and God is that God does know Her Inner Self, and therefore it is not unconscious. She has worked out how to learn about Her Inner Self and goes on learning because She loves doing so and Creates Life with it and explores it because it is enormous and there’s always more.

God does not need an external world because God is in everything. All Life as we know it is God’s manifestation of/from Her Inner Self.

But, we need an external world ‘out there’ to show us who is ‘in here’ for our own self. Life is serving us as a mirror for us to look into if we want to.

Our minds are built like God’s; they have to be.

It is as if God has understood that Her human creations need an external world in order to find out about their own internal world, and that it is extremely difficult to do it any other way. We need these conditions of our lives on Earth to find and understand our own energy/power/effect for ourselves, as well as how to use that energy/power/effect. The implication here is that the more we know and understand our inner selves, the more we are able to come into a unity of our own.

Another point I wish to make here is that our internal world and our external world are as large as each other, and they affect each other each way.

We think that the world affects us, and it does, but we are generally unaware that we are affecting our world.

Hence the primary instruction of ‘Know Thyself’.

The big risk of man being made in the image of God is that man will start thinking that he is actually god, which is an inflation (which see below). This is cured by time sooner or later.