Recently, I read a “Twitter tweet” by one of my many great friends from “Across the Pond” Natalie Lamb, who quoted the Swiss psychiatrist, Carl Jung:
“When an inner situation is not made conscious,
it happens outside as fate.”
Wow. Wow. And, Wowee Wow Wow!
How often do we find ourselves in uncomfortable positions or situations (emotionally, but could be in other areas, as well) that we chalk up to luck, fate, kismet or happenstance when, in reality, the signals were there all the time?
Probably, often. And, of course, we would never choose this consciously.
But, that’s hardly the point. Since our conscious is similar to the very tip of an iceberg — our unconscious being comparable to that massive, much larger part which is underwater — the vast majority of these situations take place on a subconscious, or unconscious level. And, since we’re not consciously aware that they are there, about to manifest as a thing on the outside, we are surprised when it actually does.
The answer? Well, it’s simple, but that doesn’t necessarily mean easy. In fact, it rarely means easy, and that’s especially true in this case.
We need to dig into our unconscious and actually become aware. Aware of those things that — if we’re not scrupulous in identifying — can, and most likely will, appear on the outside. And, it won’t be fate or any of its synonyms.
One question however, might be, what does being aware, or conscious really mean? Let’s explore that a bit in the next post.
Meanwhile, I would love to know your thoughts on Jung’s quote. How do you interpret it?
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Bob,
That is a great quote. To me an “inner situation not made conscious” would be thoughts we are wrestling with internally but not acknowledging. An example would be a major task we keep putting off because we fear the worse outcome in facing it. It churns in our mind and we remain bothered by it until we acknowlege and face it (become consciously aware of it). But, whether we acknowledge it or not, we will eventually have to face it. And more than likely, if it was put off long enough, it will manifest itself as the worse outcome we feared..as “fate”. It ties into the law of attraction, we attract what we think about.
The solution: Acknowledge those “inner situations” and tackle them head on, creating the positive outcome you want and not leaving it to “fate”.
Anand_Tampa
Now this one has me thinking for sure. Looking forward to the next installment. Thank you Bob!
What an interesting thought: when an inner situation is not made conscious, it happens outside as fate. Wow is right! To me, this means we need to really pay attention to how we are FEELING and when we’re not feeling good, we need to change it asap. If we continue to feel less than good, we can expect to attract less than good stuff; not because we want to…because it’s the law. Thanks for this thought-provoking post Bob! Happy I feel good, cuz I know what’s coming :o)
Bob,
I love this quote also. The way I look at it is that whatever is in our unconscious keeps showing up externally. Another way I like to say it is “The universe is always proving you right, no matter what you believe.” I further define belief as “A concept that we act upon as if it were true”. About 98% of our actions are unconscious and therefore guided by unconscious beliefs.
So putting this together, we are continuously acting out of our unconscious and getting validation from the universe that we are right. I don’t think the path to improvement is to rely completely on awareness, but to use the scarce and utterly important 2% of the time when we are aware to put into our unconscious what we want to act upon spontaneously and what we want the universe to validate to us.
We are all equipped with a beautiful ‘auto-pilot’ system called our unconscious that we can program. We simply (not easily) need to understand how it operates and program it for the destination we desire and make the occasional course correction.
Reprogramming? Did somebody say reprogramming? I love reprogramming 🙂 And it takes mere minutes. Right, Bob?
hugs,
susan
Thank you all for sharing your wisdom with us. Much appreciated!
Hello Linda Ryan, I think you’ve misunderstood the idea. Let’s suppose you have some pretty negative feelings about, say, rejection, but they are not conscious and you haven’t delved around and come to terms with them. Well, in this case, it is likely that your subconscious will cause you to act in such a way that rejection manifests itself in your outer world. You’ll end up in a relationship with someone who rejects you, for example.
So, it is better for you to explore your inner world and try to understand your negative feelings of rejection, then you are less likely to manifest rejection in your life.
Your idea that “when we’re not feeling good, we need to change it asap” is extremely dangerous! You are saying we should repress our negative thoughts, but this will just cause them to manifest themselves in an outward manner. Disastrous!
Cheers,
Zachary