Ask: Questions about consciousness, ego structures, and Jung's archetypes, Part 1
(This questioner [CS] had many questions, which are answered in this week’s and next week’s articles. I present each question and then its answer.)
Considering the nature of ego
and its structures as it correlates with Jung's collective unconscious archetypes
in ‘Facing the Structures Left Behind’ (last week’s article), an
encompassing understanding is sought with respect to how the terms ‘consciousness’,
‘awareness’, ‘conscious awareness’, and ‘unconsciousness’, are expressed or
could be applied respectively to:
‘Ego is the idea
that consciousness is reality, and its structures are ideas and beliefs that
uphold this idea [and] symbolize ego, the personal identity and its story,
and the material universe in which it seems to be." Is the process
of ‘sorting out ego from consciousness’ the sorting out of
the unconscious ‘person identified ego’ that one defends through
ideological belief structures as ‘self’, from the expression of consciousness
as the ‘person’ that is; ‘not just the body but the personality as well’ – ‘our
person’s traits, preferences, and interests [that] are not ego, but are
expressions of consciousness’?
First, awareness is
synonymous with consciousness. A seemingly individual consciousness
consists of conscious awareness, the subconscious, and the unconscious.
Your conscious awareness is what you are immediately aware of, in the
material world that you perceive as well as in your mind. Your subconscious
is what is just out of your conscious awareness, in the world and in your mind.
And your unconscious is what is in your mind but is not in your
conscious awareness. This consists of what seems like your personal story as
well as all of consciousness, what is often called the “collective
unconscious.”
Consciousness, and the forms
of consciousness, are neutral. They have no meaning in themselves and do not
assert any meaning. The process of sorting out ego from consciousness means
sorting out the ideas that uphold consciousness as reality from neutral
consciousness and its neutral forms. As I pointed out, that means sorting out personal
traits, preferences, and interests from ego’s
assertion that these are reality, that they have real meaning, that they define
you, and that they therefore need to be defended.
How does Liz understand ‘person’
as an ‘expression of consciousness’ and how might it correlate with, or
deviate from, Jung's understanding of ‘person’ as an archetypal product
of unconsciousness? Are ego structures unconscious and in the sorting process
brought to consciousness through increasing awareness of Spirit (hearing the
Voice for God) reconstituting Spirit in the domain of consciousness with
the recognition that ‘Spirit occupies consciousness’? And is it this
recognition that brings about the collapse of time referred to as accessing the
vertical axis, the quantum leap that short cuts the timeline which Liz's
personality experiences with more intensity?”
Most ego
structures are unconscious, and they come to awareness as one studies the mind.
Spirit may illuminate the ego structures as you advance in your awareness of
Spirit. Spirit is always in consciousness, so It never has to be
“reconstituted” in consciousness. It has been my experience that as ego “winds
down” I have come to see its structures and to watch them come down, but it
does not seem that this is universal to everyone who shifts from ego- to
Spirit-consciousness.
It is consciousness, not Liz’s personality—which is merely a neutral form—which experiences time collapsing. This seems to come about as consciousness is released from the ego’s story for the person as reality. Consciousness becomes aware it is now occupied only by Spirit, Which has no past. The sensation is of coming out of a delusion of a deep and true past to a timeless ever-present
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If you have a
question the answer to which you feel may be helpful to others, send it to Liz@acimmentor.com and indicate that
you want it answered in this newsletter/blog.
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