conscious & unconscious

These two parts of our mind are working together all the time. By unconscious we mean those parts which we cannot seem to have direct awareness of: old memories that have been buried so deeply in our mind that we cannot recall them. And yet those experiences are still affecting our behaviour – who we are, and our moods, our whole attitude towards life. But this is a duality, a split, a division, between the conscious and the unconscious parts of the mind. And like all dualities, it is ultimately without foundation.

Another way of saying this is that we can, with care, gain awareness of the unconscious parts of the mind. We can bring them into awareness, into consciousness. And when the whole mind is conscious then this division disappears. To begin with, we can delve into our unconscious using therapeutic approaches – regression, primal work – there are many techniques, Western psychological techniques, designed to bring to light things that are buried in the unconscious. But eventually something else happens: that our awareness itself expands in a mystical fashion. And even though this may not bring specific memories into the light of consciousness, there is the feeling that the whole mind is visible to the awareness, in a holistic way that is beyond words. The feel of it becomes undivided.

This also requires us to go beyond the thinking part of the mind. Thoughts and words are also just a part of the mind, and whilst we are obsessed with the thoughts, we tend to overlook the rest of the mind. So all of this is involved in allowing the mind to become whole, undivided. And with this wholeness, the duality between the conscious and the unconscious disappears.