“The light was lit to illuminate the temple of soul”
“Prometheus stole fire from Gods and Zeus condemned him to a life of perpetual torture”.
The above examples do sound like total absurdity when we try to analyze them literally, don’t they? Talk about tricky and allegoric language of the unconscious!
This is the very first post and I am still not sure how to enter the topic. I’ve changed it million times already. Especially after second birth and months of breastfeeding, I think, some part of my brain has really shrunk. I think, before talking about unconscious, I should probably, talk about definitions ascribed to conscious. After all, that is the realm where we function in general. So, simplicity in mind, I’ll try my best.
Evolution….Not a Joke
We humans, obviously, are the product of long, tedious journey of evolution. Nature has been polishing functionality of our body to meet our physical needs and capacity (which itself kept evolving along the way). That means the same evolution process has taken place in our psyche as well. It is a part that we do not see, however it is the very part that has been honed and shaped the most by the evolution process. Just like how a huge tree grows from a single seed, the consciousness has grown into its current state over countless years… Does it make sense? If it does, we’ve started on the right foot!
Here Came that Light – Conscious
Let’s dig a bit deeper. Way back in times of our ancestors some big change took place. Extremely slowly, yet surely – our grannies acquired a new skill – The Consciousness! In language of the unconscious he learned “a well-concealed secret of revengeful Gods”. Thus “The Light illuminated the darkness of abyss”. In other words, reasoning shed light over the bottomless unconscious… Prometheus thus stole fire. Jung calls this painful and slow process “the Battle for Deliverance”. Just like how difficult it is to totally separate oneself from mother, separating itself from Great Mother (the unconscious) was the “mission impossible” for consciousness. It separated itself through a painful process. To make it worse, it had to fight hard against violent and compulsive impulses of the unconscious not to relapse. Or not fall into possession of one of them. In other words, He had to fight against “revengeful Gods” to keep this fire.
Now, let’s see why consciousness is symbolized this way and who are those revengeful gods? Once differentiated, The Conscoius – the New Hero became aware of himself just like a baby recognizes herself in the mirror for the first time. He was different and he became aware of this.
With it came a different mode of seeing and understanding things. His mode of thinking wasn’t vague and could control the train of thoughts. Also, his judgement was causal. For him everything had a cause and effect in a way that he understood. Thus, his mode of thinking was deductive, mathematical and calculated. He reasoned for the first time. Unlike predecessors, he rose above the free rein of instincts and felt, still very dimly, the capacity to control them. This new realm of psyche had its own small center, which we call Ego today. He was the intellect illuminating the dark mass of unconscious, the Great Mother.
Revengeful Underground Gods?…Seriously?
Here comes another question, who are those revengeful gods that condemned Prometheus to a life of eternal torture? They are our own instincts, urges, impulses, all the impetuous animalistic tendencies. They are our desires and fears that inhabit in the depth of our psyche. In the unconscious landscape they get personified just like in fairly tales and myths. They are living realities that are out of conscious control. They are capable of full manipulation of our mind. In a sense, they are creative powers of cosmos such as sexual desire, hunger drive, survival instincts etc. But if experienced in destructive form, they turn into obsessive impulses chasing one to insanity. These are the cases they are experienced as wrathful Gods and underground frightful creatures. This battle has been one of the major themes of fairy tales, myths, monuments (Rome is full of it), paintings etc.
Here the Hero is the consciousness fighting against primordial Semi-Gods in shape of half snake-half human monsters, flame-breathing, many-headed dragons, wrathful and scary creatures, ogres, treacherous trolls, deceitful sirens etc. These dark forces persecute this new Hero each trying to assume total control. It would take this New Hero a very long time to learn how to tame and subdue dark aspects of these forces of psyche. Once subdued, Hero experiences the illuminating, spiritual and celestial aspects of those same Gods. Interestingly, during our lifetime, our consciousness repeats – in a fast pace – the evolution of conscious development. That explains why toddlers up until five to six years can not tell difference between imagination and reality. At those ages the level of conscious development is still incipient and fragile.
Proportion of The Conscious – To be or not to be…
But this differentiation doesn’t mean that the “job” of Ego is over. Like any other acquired skill, there is always a danger to lose it. Relapsing back into the unconscious or “being swallowed by devouring monsters” is looming danger for each of us. However, too much separation of the consciousness is not good either as it will strip off that irrational, intuitional, “feeling” foundation upon which the Conscious has built its small kingdom and on which still nourishes and keeps its balance. The more separation, the greater the danger to be “possessed by daemon”. Meaning, the more danger to be associated with certain psychic forces that are already out of conscious control. So this Ego it is a bittersweet affair of mankind, which is too sweet to give up and too costly to keep in right proportion.
