While embarking on a journey to know yourself is a directive from both ancient and modern teachers, knowing what we need to know about ourselves can be a stumbling block.
There are many perspectives on this issue. But I think that Carl Jung offers one of the best introductions on the topic. He advises three starting points on our self-knowledge journey.
To prepare ourselves for achieving our spiritual goals, we must understand our unconscious, our psyche, and our ego.
On the self-knowing journey, we also must overcome our belief that the process should happen quickly. Jung advises us to realize that self-discovery is a lifelong process.
We are not working to create a new identity. We are working to uncover what has been buried over time from both internal and external forces. Many call it a journey of remembering who we truly are—of remembering our essential innate essence.
Jung stated that if we do not actively seek to understand ourselves, external influences will define us. But it’s destructive to our spiritual journey to allow outside judgments and imposed roles that others create for us to rule our lives. It’s better to discover our authentic being and let its light shine from within. According to Jung:
“If you follow through on your intention to know yourself, you will not only discover some important truths about yourself, but you will also gain a psychological advantage. You will succeed in deeming yourself worthy of serious attention and sympathetic interest.”
Here is Jung’s advice on where to begin on your Know Your Self journey of discovery.
Your unconscious — exploring beyond your surface
Jung distinguished between our conscious mind and a much larger unconscious mind. The unconscious mind contains our suppressed memories, instincts, and potential. He believed that to truly know ourselves, we must explore what lies beneath the surface.
He identified two basic layers of the unconscious:
In The Structure and Dynamic of the Psyche, Jung described the personal unconscious this way:
“Everything of which I know but of which I am not at the moment thinking; everything of which I was once conscious but have now forgotten; everything perceived by my senses but not noted in my conscious mind; everything which, involuntarily and without paying attention to it, I feel, think, remember, want, and do; all the future things which are taking shape in me and will sometime come to consciousness; all this is the content of the unconscious.”
In the Archetypes and Collective Unconscious, Jung described the collective unconscious like this:
“There is in every single individual a similarity and even a sameness of experience and way it is represented imaginatively.”
A key part of this process of knowing yourself is understanding and integrating your shadow. It contains the hidden aspects of your personality. Jung taught that by confronting your personal darkness, you can better know and deal with the darkness in others you encounter in the world.
Jung used the term psyche as distinct from our mind. Our mind is commonly used to describe the aspects of our mental function that are part of our consciousness. By psyche, he meant the totality of all psychic processes, conscious as well as unconscious.
Here is a commentary from Jung on the human psyche from Psychologic Types:
“What our age thinks of as the shadow and inferior part of the psyche contains more than something merely negative. The fact that through self-knowledge, by exploring our own souls, we come upon the instincts, and their world of imagery should throw some light on the powers slumbering in the psyche, of which we are seldom aware so long as all goes well.”
Jung describes the ego as the center of consciousness. Its primary role is as the bestower of our sense of awareness of and identity with the external world. Yet, it’s just one part. Although the ego is often believed to be a center of control, it’s influenced by powerful unconscious forces.
Although it’s popular to believe that to rise spiritually we must kill our ego, Jung said that we should not kill it but transcend it. We need the ego to be our stable center as we explore our unconscious and our psyche. Then we can simply let it go.
Jung’s famous quote regarding the ego is:
“The first half of life is devoted to forming a healthy ego. The second half is going inward and letting go of it.”
Aya Ray is an author, archivist, and educator of mystic spirituality. Contact her for interviews and articles.
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