I feel you. Empathy - what is it? Empathy levels

Even as adults, we always hope that fate will give us a person who will understand us perfectly. Such a person who will share with us our joys and sorrows as his own. This wonderful feeling that allows you to emotionally feel into your interlocutor is called Empathy.

Other people's emotions - as their own

The ability to consciously empathize with other people's emotions, unfortunately, is very rare today. The term "Empathy" in psychology was one of the first to be mentioned in the works of Sigmund Freud, who argued that psychoanalyst for the implementation effective work with the patient it is necessary to take into account his emotional state. The psychoanalyst enters this state, after which he gains the ability to understand it by comparing it with his own feelings.

Today, the concept of "Empathy" means a lot. First of all, empathy is a conscious empathy for a person, his emotional state, without losing a sense of external control over such a state. In medicine and psychology, empathy is often equated with empathic listening - demonstrating that the specialist correctly understands the emotional state of the patient. In forensic science, having the skill of empathic listening means the ability to gather information about the feelings and thoughts of the subject.

For psychics, empathy is considered a special feeling, available only to some people. The value of this ability in extrasensory perception is great: it serves as a tool for perception emotional states other people "directly", as well as broadcasting their emotions, while the lack of direct contact with a person is not a hindrance. Such a feeling is equated with the concept of emotional telepathy.

The manifestations of empathy are very different: from complete immersion in the feelings of a communication partner (emotional or affective empathy), to an objective understanding of the experiences of a communication partner without strong emotional involvement. In this case, the following types of empathy are distinguished:

sympathy - emotional responsiveness, the need to provide assistance;
empathy - a person experiences the same emotions as a communication partner;
sympathy - a very friendly and warm attitude towards a person.

Empathy is not associated with the perception of any specific emotions (as with compassion). This feeling is used to indicate empathy for any state. There are many professions in which empathic listening is not only desirable, but even necessary. These professions include almost all professions focused on communication with people:

psychologists, psychotherapists;
doctors;
teachers;
personnel managers;
leaders;
detectives;
officials;
sellers;
hairdressers and others.

As you can see, the application of this amazing property of our psyche can be found anywhere. People with the ability to empathize are called empaths.

Can you become an empath?

You can often hear: "He is a born psychologist." Often such a phrase indicates a person's ability to emotionally empathize without special professional skills. Can you become an empath? Is empathy an innate or acquired ability? What are its signs?

According to biology, brain activity, which reflects the actions and state of other individuals, directly depends on the activity of mirror neurons. Biologists suggest that the strength of empathy depends on their activity.

An indirect confirmation of this is that people suffering from alexithymia do not have the ability to empathize, since their neurophysiological problems do not allow them to distinguish even their own emotions.

Modern experts believe that empathy is an innate and genetic property, but life experience strengthens or weakens it. The strength of empathy depends on the presence of rich life experience, accuracy of perception, and developed skills in empathic communication. Initially, women have a more developed ability to empathize, especially those who have children.

Given the innate presence of at least the rudiments of empathy, its development can be accelerated by various training methods and special exercises that develop the skills to effectively use this ability in professional and personal communication. If you want to learn to understand the emotions and feelings of others, it is useful to practice such artistic studies, such as "Memorizing Faces", "How Others See Me", "Reincarnation". They also develop the ability to empathize and sympathize with any fortune-telling, the game "Association". Helps develop empathy general development emotionality through dance, watching movies, listening to music, and other methods of art therapy.

To identify the level of empathy in people, as well as certain aspects of this ability, there are various methods and techniques. The most reliable diagnostic aimed at determining the level of empathy is called "Empathy Quotient", for Russian-speaking users there is an adaptation of it called "Empathy Level".

Advantages and disadvantages

Empathy is a real gift that not everyone knows how to use for its intended purpose. Often this property of the psyche brings suffering to a person, because people do not always experience only joy, happiness, love and other positive states. What for one person seems to be the ultimate dream, for another is a heavy burden.

The ability to empathize and sympathize presupposes that a person has a developed personality, since an immature mind is unable to cope with a flurry of other people's emotions. Having decided to develop empathy, it is not superfluous to evaluate the pros and cons of such a decision.

pros	Minuses
Inexhaustible possibilities for the development of fantasy.	Man is not capable of healthy aggression and competition.
Effective assistance in many professions.	Hypersensitivity, as a result of this - emotional burnout.
This state produces many original solutions.	Easy onset of anxiety and fear, a high percentage of mental illness.
The ability to help other people, give them support and acceptance.	There is a high probability of a relationship of the “one-sided game” type, when a person only gives without receiving anything in return.
An empath cannot be deceived.	An empath is easily offended and hurt.

Develop or get rid of?

Each person must decide for himself what level of empathy he needs for a comfortable life. There are 4 types of empaths in total:

Non-empaths: have completely closed their empathy channels (consciously or under the influence of trauma). These people cannot recognize non-verbal and verbal cues.

Ordinary empaths: constantly in a state of stress and emotional overload, acutely experiencing other people's problems. They often suffer from headaches. The ability to empathize is not controlled by them.

Conscious empaths: manage their ability to empathize, easily adapt to other people's emotions, knowing how not to let them through themselves.

Professional Empaths: They have great control over their ability, often using it for professional purposes. They can control any other people's emotions, change a person's mood, relieve mental and physical pain.

If fate endowed you with a developed ability to empathize, maybe it’s still worth developing it? At least in order to fulfill its purpose - to help other people.

However, a strong capacity for empathy and empathy often comes at a cost. Empaths quite often enter into asymmetric relationships without getting enough support from the partner. Such people feel uncomfortable in conflict, are not inclined to compete and defend their interests.

They often suffer from depression as well as anxiety disorders. Empaths have a hard time coping with fear, so panic attacks are possible. The ability to feel the pain of others leads to what psychologists call empathic stress.

For effective work with people, the presence of developed empathy is a real find. But empaths often have problems with personal relationships. They are so sensitive that it is impossible to hide anything from them, and any negative emotions of a partner literally “hit on the head”. Therefore, the partner of an empath must be a kind, faithful and non-conflict person.

The labyrinths of the unconscious, this is the eternal road of numerous puzzles that will once be solved by man. The unconscious is everything that concerns our karma, our experience, our mind and our abilities. The role of the unconscious is great in our life. The role of the conscious, even more so. How do these undivided parts of our mind exist? We are used to using these terms in our lives, but in fact, many do not fully understand their meaning. After all, the unconscious is a "factory" for the production of Karma. And the conscious is a "workshop" for the distribution of karma, where they decide where to send it to the conscious or leave it again in the unconscious.

So, the numerous reactions of human behavior are an integral experience of evolution acquired by human ancestors. That is, if 100 people learn something in one generic branch, then this, what they have learned, will be transmitted genetically to future generations. This is due not only to survival instincts and adaptation. This is also related to what is called disease. Yes, this is how hereditary diseases are transmitted, inherited by certain individuals of the genus, only because before them, many individuals of the same genus used such unconscious experiences for their own purposes.

The unconscious is everything that the mind remembers throughout life. There is a big difference between the conscious and the unconscious. If we take an average person, then his conscious in relation to the unconscious in percentage terms looks like this, the unconscious is 99% and the conscious is 1%. If you take an enlightened person, then it looks exactly the opposite. Why? Yes, because most people live unconscious. And this means that their behavior is due to spontaneous emotional decisions that are associated with unconscious experience. They have always acted and reacted this way. Therefore, the absence conscious analysis does not lead a person to a form of awareness of certain actions in his life. And the difference between those who know and those who don't know is that the one who knows is trying to realize what he only understood before. And, the one who does not know is content with the knowledge that he will receive at the initial stages of his development. That is, living with old experience, reactions, behavior, a person does not think about why he does this. He can refer to heredity, to a bad character, and to the fact that all this can no longer be corrected, “I was born, they say, like this.” If you figure out why we live, then final goal of any person is to know oneself one day. But this happens when the karma-experience is realized by the person.

Any action of the conscious and unconscious leads to the birth of new karma, that is, situations. It doesn't matter if they are good or bad in terms of what is good or bad, it is still karma. Therefore, in order to transform karma, it must be given the opportunity to enter the third, neutral state. And this is knowledge! That is, in a neutral state, karma loses its force. And in the conscious and unconscious, it increases strength.

The unconscious is what we have been accumulating for thousands of years as an experience. And in this experience, not only our individual experience, but also the experience of our ancestors. Our joy, kindness, our anger and resentment, these are experiences that we have acquired unconsciously. The moment a situation is present, the human mind makes millions of neural combinations about how to act. In fact, the mind finds these combinations among the experience that a person once acquired. No more no less. So, since the active force of our consciousness is our choice, then we are guided by this choice in order to choose the unconscious, that is, what is in the field of the unconscious. Our grievances, jealousy, our kindness and our compassion are energies that cause a certain chemical reaction in the body, shaping our body in the likeness of these energies. That is, our body becomes the consonance of what we represent in the unconscious.

In fact, this path is not easy. This is the path that leads to knowledge. After all, if you thought badly 100 times, then at least 100 times you need to think well, so that what was previously unconscious becomes conscious. And then, in order to become aware of your actions, you need to let this conscious experience pass the test in life, gaining practical experience and strengthening yourself in awareness. And only then, this conscious experience, as the Spiritual quintessence of God, envelops the Spiritual body of a person.

Everything around us is our karma. You think she came just like that. No. She came so that we could realize her. After all, karma is us! Believe that everything that is around us is the world of energies, which is our shadow. And the second half is contained in us. This is our knowledge. So, any situation, objects or subjects, is a mysterious algorithm that we all need to solve. After all, our environment is what potentially expresses our world within us. That is, our contents of the mind, conscious or unconscious, are energies that have their own vibration, which in turn attract another kind of energy. No, not similar. Similar, on a vibrational level. But the difference lies in the fact that this kind of energy in us causes the SHADOW. Why do you think? In order for them to unite and a transformation occurs. It looks as if a person were irritable, then there will always be irritants around him, not because this is done on purpose, but because the irritation of a person calls out his other half-shadow from space, as these people, as another type of energy. And the task of such relations is Awareness. As long as an irritable person does not understand the harm of his behavior, and that by his behavior he creates a conflict, until then there will be people around him that cause him irritation. Until a jealous person realizes that his jealousy is a manifestation of his Ego, and his greedy ambitions. Until he realizes that there is nothing in this world that he can own. Until then, there will be people on his way who will betray him and betray him. For only in this way, a person receives the experience of awareness. And then, when a person comes to realization, that's when this part of the realized karma is separated from his being and fills his Spiritual body. And the more such alchemy happens, the more a person will be freed from karma.

But in fact, what surrounds us is what we believe in. And this is also a product of our mind, just like what is in our mind. We are what we believe in. Many people say that life is simple. But in order to simply understand it, you need to go through a very long path of knowledge. For example, why does a person get sick? Everything, of course, begins with what a person thinks and feels. And the more he feels it, the more biochemical reactions occur in the body with a change in hormonal levels. Thus, the person becomes ill. And this means that for many years of life a person unconsciously believed in something. For example, if a person has cysts, then he is touchy. Which means he long time believed that the world was somewhat cruel and could offend him. And the more often a person thinks about it and experiences it unconsciously, the faster cysts will form in him. But the simplicity lies in the fact that everything that exists in this process is just the work of our mind, which unconsciously believed in its resentment towards the world around us. What you believe is what you get. Whole material world are atoms and molecules. So, who controls this process, that this world in our field looks the way it does? Our mind!!! It is our mind that creates this world the way we imagine it and experience it within ourselves. Therefore, to change the world, you need to change yourself.

One morning, a woman, as usual, got into the car and went to work, which was ten kilometers from her home. On the way, her imagination played out and she imagined herself the heroine of a grand adventure. She imagined herself as a simple medieval woman, living amidst wars and crusades and famous for her strength and sacrifice. She saved her people and met a powerful and noble prince who fell in love with her.

Her mind was completely occupied with these thoughts, and yet she drove through several streets, stopped at traffic lights a couple of times, signaled appropriately when turning, and safely reached the parking lot located under the windows of her office. When she regained consciousness, she realized that she did not remember at all how she got to her destination. She could not remember a single intersection or turn. Her shocked mind asked, "How could I drive this far without realizing it? Where was my mind? Who was driving while I was dreaming?" But this had happened to her before, and so she threw everything that had happened out of her head and went to her office.

While she was sitting at her desk and making a plan for the day, her work was interrupted by one of her colleagues who burst into the office, threw on the table a memorandum, which she had shortly distributed to employees, and made a scandal over some insignificant point, with which he disagreed. She was shocked. Such fury over such a petty cause! What got into him?

He himself, listening to his elevated tone, realized that he was making an elephant out of a fly, was embarrassed, muttered an apology and, backing away, left the office. Returning to his office, he asked himself: "What came over me? Where did it come from in me? Little things, as a rule, do not piss me off. I was not like myself!" He guessed that his anger had nothing to do with the colleague's memorandum, but had been seething in him for a long time, and this insignificant reason only became last straw, because of which anger broke out. But where this anger came from, he did not know.

If these people had time to think, they might guess that this morning they felt the presence of the unconscious in their lives. In the endless stream of banal events of daily life, we encounter the unconscious in various forms, which operates in and through us.

Sometimes the unconscious works in parallel with the conscious mind and takes over driving while the conscious mind is doing something else. We've all, at least once in our lives, driven a few blocks on "autopilot," as the woman in our example did. The conscious mind is distracted for a short time, and the unconscious takes over the direction of our actions. It stops the car at a red light, pulls off at a green light and enforces the rules traffic until the conscious mind returns to its normal state. It's far from the safest way to drive a car, but the unconscious does provide us with such a great vital "safety net" built into us that we take it for granted.

Sometimes the unconscious creates a fantasy so filled with vivid, symbolic images that the fantasy completely dominates our conscious mind and holds our attention for a long time. The fantasies of dangerous adventures, heroism, sacrifice and love that fascinate a woman on her way to work are an excellent example of how the unconscious invades our conscious mind and tries to express itself through imagination, using the symbolic language of emotionally charged images.

Another form of manifestation of the unconscious is an unexpected and strong emotion, inexplicable joy or unreasonable anger, which suddenly invade our conscious mind and completely subjugate it. This influx of feelings is completely incomprehensible to the conscious mind, because the conscious mind did not generate it. The man in our example could not explain to himself the inadequacy of his reaction. He asked, "Where did it come from?" He believed his anger came from somewhere from outside and that for several minutes he "was not himself." But, in fact, this tide uncontrollable emotions was born in himself, in a place so deep within his being that the conscious mind cannot see it. This place is called "unconscious" because it is not visible.

The idea of the unconscious comes from simple observations of everyday human life. Our minds contain material whose presence we are mostly unaware of. It happens that, quite unexpectedly, some memories, pleasant associations, ideals, and beliefs come to life in us. We feel that these elements have been somewhere within us for a long time. But where exactly? Yes, in that unknown part of the soul, which is beyond the reach of the conscious mind.

The unconscious is a wonderful universe, consisting of invisible energies, forces, forms of mind, even individual personalities who all live within us. Most people don't imagine true dimensions this great kingdom, which lives its own completely independent life that runs parallel to our daily existence. The unconscious is the secret source of most of our thoughts, feelings, and actions. And the power of its influence on us is great also because this influence is imperceptible.

When people hear the term unconscious, most of them intuitively understand what in question. We relate this idea to the myriad of events, large and small, that make up the fabric of our daily lives. Each of us had to do something at a time when his thoughts were in "another place", and then look with surprise at the result of his work. Another thing happens - during some kind of conversation, we suddenly begin to get excited and, quite unexpectedly for ourselves, express a sharp point of view, which we did not even suspect we had.

Sometimes we wonder: "Where did this come from? I didn't know I could feel so strongly about this?" When we begin to take such outbursts of energy from the unconscious more seriously, we understand that the question should sound differently: "What a part of me believe in it? Why does this particular topic cause such a strong reaction in this invisible part of my being?

We can learn to treat this problem with more attention. The term "something came over me" implies a sudden intrusion of the energy of the unconscious. If I say that I didn't look like himself, it is only because I do not understand that the concept of "I" includes my unconscious as well. The hidden part of our being has strong feelings and wants to express them. And if we don't learn how to make inner work, this invisible part will remain hidden from our conscious mind.

This hidden personality can be very harmful or violent, and when it comes out, we are in a very awkward position. On the other hand, we may awaken strong and beautiful qualities that we did not even suspect. We activate hidden resources and do things that we would never do in a normal state, we express such wise thoughts that we were not capable of before, we show nobility and tolerance that are completely unexpected for us. And in each case, we are shocked: "I never thought that I could be like that. I have qualities (both positive and negative) that I did not suspect." These qualities lived in the unconscious, where they were inaccessible to "neither sight nor mind."

Each of us is something more than the "I" that he thinks he is. At any given moment, our conscious mind can focus only on a limited sector of our being. Despite our best efforts towards self-knowledge, only a very small part of the vast energy system of the unconscious can be connected to the conscious mind or can function at the level of consciousness. Therefore, we must learn to get to the unconscious and understand the meaning of its messages: this is the only way to comprehend the unknown part of our being.

Approach to the unconscious - conscious or involuntary

The unconscious manifests itself through the language of symbols. We can come into contact with the unconscious not only in the course of involuntary actions. The unconscious can bridge the gap between it and the conscious mind in two ways. One way is dreams; another - imagination. The soul has created these complex communication systems so that the unconscious and consciousness can communicate with each other and work together.

The unconscious has invented a special language that is used in dreams and imagination: the language of symbolism. As we will see later, inner work requires, first of all, an understanding of this symbolic language unconscious. Therefore, we must devote most of our time to working with dreams, imagination and symbolism.

Many attempts by the unconscious to contact our minds end in failure. The unconscious will surface in dreams, but very few people have the information needed to take their dreams seriously and understand their language. The results of the activity of the unconscious are also clearly visible in the flights of our imagination: fantasy, like a geyser, appears on the surface of our conscious mind, but we hardly notice it; many people do not even notice the whole streams of fantasy, which, like rivers, often run along the edge of their minds. We think we are "thinking" or we think we are "planning", but more often than not, we are just daydreaming, immersed in a river of fantasy for a few minutes. Well, then we get back to the "land", that is, we return to the physical situation, to urgent work, to the people with whom we are talking.

To understand what we really are, to become more complete and whole human beings, we must go to the unconscious and connect with it. The unconscious contains a significant part of our "I" and many determinants of our character. Only by approaching the unconscious do we get a chance to become truly thinking, full-fledged, whole human beings. Jung proved that living a fuller and richer life is possible only if you get closer to the unconscious and understand its symbolic language. We enter into a partnership with the unconscious instead of constantly at war with it or surrendering to its mercy.

However, most people approach the unconscious not of their own free will. They become aware of the existence of the unconscious only when they have problems with it. Modern people are so out of touch inner peace that face it, mainly as a result of stress. For example, a woman who thinks she has everything under control can fall into a terrible depression and at the same time can neither shake off this state, nor understand what is happening to her. Or a man may suddenly find that the life he leads has come into complete conflict with the ideals lurking in that part of his being that he has never looked into. He will feel oppressive anxiety, but he will not be able to determine the cause.

When we feel an inexplicable contradiction that we cannot resolve; when we are captured by the irrational, primitive or destructive emotions; when neurosis strikes us, because our consciousness comes into conflict with our instinct, then we begin to understand that the unconscious really has a place in our life and we need to meet it "face to face".

Historically, Jung and Freud rediscovered the existence of the unconscious through some kind of pathopsychological suffering of patients in whom the connection between the level of consciousness and the level of the unconscious had broken down.

He himself, listening to his elevated tone, realized that he was making an elephant out of a fly, was embarrassed, muttered an apology and, backing away, left the office. Returning to his office, he asked himself: "What came over me? Where did it come from in me? Little things, as a rule, do not piss me off. I was not like myself!" He guessed that his anger had nothing to do with the colleague's memorandum, but had been seething in him for a long time, and this insignificant reason was only the last straw, because of which the anger broke out. But where this anger came from, he did not know.

Sometimes the unconscious works in parallel with the conscious mind and takes over driving while the conscious mind is doing something else. We've all, at least once in our lives, driven a few blocks on "autopilot," as the woman in our example did. The conscious mind is distracted for a short time, and the unconscious takes over the direction of our actions. It stops the car at a red light, pulls off at a green light, and enforces traffic rules until the conscious mind returns to its normal state. It's far from the safest way to drive a car, but the unconscious does provide us with such a great vital "safety net" built into us that we take it for granted.

Another form of manifestation of the unconscious is an unexpected and strong emotion, inexplicable joy or unreasonable anger, which suddenly invade our conscious mind and completely subjugate it. This influx of feelings is completely incomprehensible to the conscious mind, because the conscious mind did not generate it. The man in our example could not explain to himself the inadequacy of his reaction. He asked, "Where did it come from?" He believed his anger came from somewhere from outside and that for several minutes he "was not himself." But, in fact, this rush of uncontrollable emotions was born in himself, in a place that is so deep within his being that the conscious mind cannot see it. This place is called "unconscious" because it is not visible.

The unconscious is a wonderful universe, consisting of invisible energies, forces, forms of mind, even individual personalities who all live within us. Most people do not imagine the true dimensions of this great kingdom, which lives its own completely independent life, running parallel to our daily existence. The unconscious is the secret source of most of our thoughts, feelings, and actions. And the power of its influence on us is great also because this influence is imperceptible.

When people hear the term unconscious, most of them intuitively understand what is at stake. We relate this idea to the myriad of events, large and small, that make up the fabric of our daily lives. Each of us had to do something at a time when his thoughts were in "another place", and then look with surprise at the result of his work. Another thing happens - during some kind of conversation, we suddenly begin to get excited and, quite unexpectedly for ourselves, express a sharp point of view, which we did not even suspect we had.

Approach to the unconscious - conscious or involuntary

The unconscious has invented a special language that is used in dreams and imagination: the language of symbolism. As we shall see later, inner work requires, first of all, an understanding of this symbolic language of the unconscious. Therefore, we must devote most of our time to working with dreams, imagination and symbolism.

However, most people approach the unconscious not of their own free will. They become aware of the existence of the unconscious only when they have problems with it. Modern people are so detached from the inner world that they face it, mainly as a result of psychological stress. For example, a woman who thinks she has everything under control can fall into a terrible depression and at the same time can neither shake off this state, nor understand what is happening to her. Or a man may suddenly find that the life he leads has come into complete conflict with the ideals lurking in that part of his being that he has never looked into. He will feel oppressive anxiety, but he will not be able to determine the cause.

When we feel an inexplicable contradiction that we cannot resolve; when we get caught up in irrational, primitive, or destructive emotions; when neurosis strikes us, because our consciousness comes into conflict with our instinct, then we begin to understand that the unconscious really has a place in our life and we need to meet it "face to face".

Jung's model of the unconscious

Jung proved that the unconscious is not just an attachment to the conscious mind, a place into which "forgotten" memories are driven and discomfort. He presented such a significant model of the unconscious that the Western world has not yet grasped its full meaning. He proved that the unconscious is the creative source of everything that becomes the conscious mind and the full personality of each individual. From the raw material of the unconscious, the conscious mind is born, which then matures and expands to include all the qualities that we potentially carry in ourselves. It is from the treasury of the unconscious that we draw strength and qualities that we are not even aware of the possibility of possessing.

Jung has shown us that both the conscious mind and the unconscious play a crucial role in maintaining the balance of the total self. If the balance between them is disturbed, then the result is neurosis.

Jung's work and research led him to conclude that the unconscious is the true source of all human consciousness. It is the source of our human ability to think logically, collect information and feel, the unconscious is the original mind of humanity, the primary matrix from which our species received the conscious mind, and then, over the millennia, developed it to its current high level. Every ability, every property of our functioning consciousness, was first contained in the unconscious, and then found its way to the level of consciousness.

Jung offered us a magnificent vision of this human capacity for awareness, a vision of its role and significance. He saw the result of the impact on the nature of the creative force. He saw the cosmos plod through countless light-years to eventually give birth to that rare quality we call consciousness. By means of the human race the great unconscious soul of Nature gradually made one part of itself conscious. Jung believed that God and all the forces of creation have been working over time to bring consciousness into the universe, and that the role of human beings is to further develop consciousness.

Human consciousness develops from the primary matter of the unconscious. Its growth is provided by a constant stream of particles of the unconscious, gradually rising to the level of consciousness in their desire to form a more complete, thinking personality. The conscious mind must continue to absorb the material of the unconscious until it reflects the entire volume of the complete "I".

Jung believed that in this evolution every mortal plays his own individual role. For if our collective human ability to consciousness is born from an unconscious soul, the same can be said about the individual human personality. Each of us, in the allotted time of his life, must repeat the development of the human race, and each of us must be an individual receptacle in which consciousness continues its development.

Each of us is a microcosm in which universal processes are realized. Thus, we all participate in the movement of the contents of the unconscious towards the level of the conscious mind. And each of us is involved in the opposite movement of the ego mind moving back to the unconscious in order to reconnect with the progenitor matrix that gave it life.

Within the unconscious of every personality is the primary blueprint, the "blueprint" if you will, according to which the conscious mind and the fully functioning individuality are formed. This process begins at birth and, after all the slow years of psychological growth, reaches true inner maturity. This scheme, this invisible frame of energy contains all the traits of character, all its advantages and disadvantages, the basic structure of the character and its constituent parts, from which, in time, a complete psychological being will be formed.

The conscious personality of most people has absorbed only a small part of this "storehouse" of raw energy. Only a small part of the original project was realized at the level of consciousness.

The internal, unconscious model of the personality is like the plan of a majestic cathedral. At first, when the plan is transferred into physical reality, only the general outlines are visible. Time passes, a small part of the building is erected, according to which one can imagine what the whole work of art will be like. Year after year, stone by stone, grows majestic building, and now, finally, the masons lay the last brick, the painters make the last stroke. Only then will our gaze reveal all the splendor generated by the imagination of the architect.

In the same way, the true depth and greatness of the individual human being will not be fully manifested until the basic elements of the personality leave the level of potentialities that are in the unconscious and are not realized at the level of functioning consciousness.

Each of us builds his life, builds a majestic structure. In the depths of the unconscious of each person, a plan and basic structure of life is created. But in order to understand the full potential of possibilities built into us, we must consult with and interact with the unconscious, we must be ready for the trials and painful changes that are always associated with inner growth.

Ego at the center of the unconscious

The unconscious is a vast field of energy, much larger than the conscious mind. Jung compared the ego, the conscious mind, to a ball bouncing on the surface of a vast ocean of the unconscious. He also compared the conscious mind to the tip of an iceberg rising above the surface of the water. Ninety-five percent of an iceberg is hidden in dark, icy water. The invisible part of the iceberg? this is the unconscious. The unconscious is as powerful and as dangerous as an iceberg, and therefore must be handled with care. Many people have drowned after colliding with the unconscious, just as the Titanic sank after colliding with an iceberg.

"Ego", in Latin, simply means "I". Freud and Jung understood the “ego” as the conscious mind, since it is this part of the soul that calls itself “I”, it is it that is “self-conscious”? aware of itself as a being, as a field of energy, independent and distinct from others. When we say "I", we mean that small sector of our being that we are aware of. We assume that "I" contains only that personality, those traits, those values and attitudes that are on the surface, in the field of view of the ego and are available to consciousness. This is my personal, very limited and highly inaccurate version of who "I" am.

The ego mind does not realize that the common self is much greater than the ego, that the part of the soul hidden in the unconscious is much grander and much more powerful than the conscious mind.

Our ego tends to think of the unconscious as something outside of our being, despite on the that, in fact, its content is hidden deep within us. That's why we have to hear from someone a phrase like: "I was not myself when I did it." When we do something unexpected for ourselves that does not fit into our concept of our own personality, we talk about this act as if someone else did it, and not ourselves. The conscious mind is shocked because it pretends that there is no unconscious mind. Since the common soul is much larger and more complex than what the ego mind can encompass, unexpected actions always make it feel as if their cause lies not in ourselves, but somewhere outside.

In dreams, the conscious mind often appears as an island. Like the islanders, for whom their island is the whole world, the ego creates its own little world - a strict system and set of ideas about reality. Our ego does not realize that beyond its little island, beyond its very limited field of vision, there is a whole universe of realities and truths. This universe is hidden in a vast sea of the unconscious that our ego cannot comprehend.

Deep beneath the surface of this invisible ocean of energy, powerful forces are at work. Deep in this ocean are those mysterious kingdoms whose existence is reflected in the legends of Atlantis. They live parallel to the daily life of our conscious mind. Centers of alternative consciousness, alternative values, assessments, ideas - all these are other islands of the same ocean. They are waiting for the moment when the inquisitive conscious mind will open them and recognize their existence.

We must learn to work with the unconscious not only in order to be able to resolve conflicts or deal with neuroses. In the unconscious we will find an inexhaustible source of renewal, growth, strength and wisdom. We will connect with the source of our developing character; we will take part in the process by which we can bring together the complete self; we will learn to develop this rich vein of energy and intelligence.

The Unconscious and the Inner Life

The inner life, according to Jung, is the secret life of any of us, which he leads day and night in permanent company your invisible, unconscious, inner self. If there is balance in a person's life, then this means that the conscious mind and the unconscious coexist peacefully with each other. When these two levels come into contact with each other in conditions of sleep, imagination, magical ritual, visionary, then a completely normal exchange of energy and information takes place between them.

The catastrophe that has befallen the modern world is the complete separation of the conscious mind from its roots in the unconscious. All forms of interaction with the unconscious that our ancestors valued so much - dreams, visions, rituals, religious ecstasy - are mostly forgotten by us, because the modern mind rejects them as primitive superstitions. Because of our arrogance, our proud belief in the omnipotence of our mind, we cut off from ourselves the deepest part of our own "I" and our origins, which are in the unconscious.

We, who live in modern Western society, have come to the point where we try to dispense with the recognition of the existence of an inner life altogether. We act as if there is no unconscious mind or soul realm, as if we can live a fulfilling life by focusing solely on the external, material world. We try to solve all the problems of life by resorting only to external means: we try to earn more money, acquire more power, start a new love adventure, in general, we are trying to "do something" in the material world. But, to our surprise, we discover that the inner world is a reality that, sooner or later, we will have to face.

Jung noted that in the modern world, neurosis, the feeling of disintegration of the personality and the loss of the meaning of life, for the most part, result from the isolation of the ego-mind from the unconscious. As thinking beings, we all experience a vague feeling of losing some part of ourselves, something that once belonged to us, but now does not.

Our isolation from the unconscious is tantamount to our isolation from our soul, from the life of the spirit. It causes us to lose interest in religious life, because it is in the unconscious that we find our individual concept of God and communicate with deities. The religious function - the innate desire for meaning in life and for inner experiences - is cut off along with the rest of the inner life. And this function can only return to our lives by force: through neurosis, internal conflict and psychological symptoms that require our attention."

Several years ago I was invited to speak at one of the seminars organized by the Roman Catholic Church. At the last minute I was seized by an irresistible desire to have fun, and I titled my lecture as follows: "Your neurosis, as a form of primitive religious feeling". The audience was shocked. Never in my life have I been bombarded with such a hail of questions asked by loud, excited voices. That is, as you understand, I hit a nerve. People were amazed when they heard that if we do not go to the spirit the spirit itself comes to us in the form of a neurosis.Such is the direct, practical connection between modern religion and psychology.

Every person has to live an inner life in one form or another. Whether we realize it or not, whether we like it or not, the inner world will come to us and demand to pay tribute. If we want to consciously reach this realm, then we do this through internal work: prayers, meditations, dream-solving, ceremonies and Active Imagination. If we ignore the inner world, which is exactly what most people do, then the unconscious will make its way into our lives through pathologies: psychosomatic symptoms, depression, obsessions and neuroses.

The term "individuation" Jung called the lifelong process of transformation into a full-fledged human being, which, in fact, a person should become. Individuation is our awareness of our complete self, the development of our conscious personality to such an extent that it includes all the basic elements that are present in each of us at a preconscious level.

Why should this process be called "individuation"? Because this process of self-realization and transformation into a more complete person also reveals an individual structure that is peculiar only to this particular person. He demonstrates how versatile human features and ability in each specific person add up to a certain unique combination.

Jung emphasizes the uniqueness of the psychological structure of each individual. Thus, it was no coincidence that he called this process individuation; this name reflects his conviction that the closer one gets to the unconscious and the more one connects its contents with the contents of the conscious mind, the stronger becomes one's sense of the uniqueness of one's individuality.

At the same time, individuation does not mean isolation from the human race. As soon as a person begins to feel more self-confident, a more complete person, he naturally also begins to look for many forms of his similarity with other human beings: values, interests and exclusively human qualities, thanks to which we have united in a tribe of people. If we take a closer look, we will see that the unique individuality of each person consists of universal psychological images and energy systems common to all. Jung called these schemes archetypes.

Since archetypes are universal, they are all present in the unconscious of every person. But archetypes add up in an infinite number of combinations and thus create individual souls. The same can be said about the physical body of a person. In a certain sense, the bodies of all people are similar to each other. We all have arms, legs, hearts, kidneys, skin, etc. They are universal characteristics. human species. But you can't find two people who have the same fingerprints or strands of hair.

So the universal psychological energies and abilities of the human race in each individual person are added up in a special combination. Each person has his own unique psychological structure. And only by living in accordance with this innate structure, a person understands what it means to be a person.

If we work on individuation, then we begin to see the difference between the ideas and values generated by our own self, and the social ideas and values that we absorb from the world around us. Then we can stop being a mere appendage of a society or a group of people: we realize that we have our own values, our own way of life, which correspond to the "I" given to us from birth.

The process of individuation generates a great sense of self-confidence. A person begins to understand that it is not at all necessary for him to strive to be like others, because it is much safer to be yourself. We understand that it will take a lifetime to fully know ourselves and develop all the abilities given to us by nature. We don't need to make our life an imitation of other people's lives. We do not claim anything else, because what we already have exceeds all our expectations.

1.2 Inner work: Quest for the Unconscious

The purpose of this book is to give the reader practical advice on the gradual entry into inner work. Among other things, the reader will find here a four-phase method of working not only with dreams, but also with Active Imagination. In the course of our study, we will also touch on the question of the suitability of ceremonies and fantasies as roads to the unconscious.

I refer to this technique as "inner work" because it is a direct and convenient way into the inner world of the unconscious. Inner work is the effort by which we become aware of the presence within us of more deep layers consciousness and move towards the integration of the full "I".

No matter how well we master the theory, we cannot do without a practical approach. Although we have all picked up a lot of psychological theories, very few of us know how to directly approach the actual work with dreams and the unconscious. As a rule, our energy remains at the starting point, at the level of theory, and does not transform into a concrete, direct collision with the inner self.

In the world of the soul, consciousness is created not by theoretical ideas, but by work. If we take up our dreams and work diligently with the symbols found there, we tend to learn most of what we need to know about ourselves and the meaning of our lives, no matter "how well we understand numerous psychological theories on the subject.

The essence of inner work is to build consciousness. By learning to do your inner work, you gain an understanding of the conflicts and trials that life throws at you. You gain the ability to explore the hidden depths of your unconscious in order to find the power and resources that await you in these depths.

In fact, any form of meditation that tunes your mind to receive messages from the unconscious can be considered "inside work." Mankind has developed an infinite amount approaches to the inner world, each of which has been adapted to the corresponding period of history, the corresponding civilization, religion, or point of view on our relationship with the spirit. Examples are yoga meditations, za zen in Zen Buddhism, Christian contemplative prayer, meditations on the life of Christ practiced by Tom Kempis and Ignatius Loyola, Sufi meditations, and Confucian ethical meditations.

Jung noticed that Australian aborigines two-thirds of their lives, except for the hours of sleep, were spent in some form of inner work. They held religious ceremonies, discussed and interpreted their dreams, turned to the spirits for advice, went “wandering”. All these constant efforts were devoted to the inner life, the realm of dreams, totems and spirits, that is, establishing contacts with the inner world. That is why, despite all our technology, we know less about the soul and about God than, at first glance, primitive peoples.

But there is another cardinal difference between us and the natives: they hold on to their ancient forms of religion and methods of approach to the inner world. If they want to appeal to the spirit, then they have ready-made recipes for everything: how to ask the spirit questions, how to understand dreams and visions, how to conduct ceremonies for meeting the gods in magic circle or at the altar. We have lost most of the ancient methods. Those of us who want to learn how to make our way back to the Land of Dreams, to communicate with great spirits, must learn anew how to go towards our dreams, how to use the energy of the unconscious to kindle ancient fires, how to awaken memories of long-forgotten tribal rites. We must go to a modern Carl Jung-type shaman to find our way to the soul that gives meaning to the modern world.

The forms of inner work that we will be discussing in this book are based on the teachings and brilliant insights of Jung. And the origins of working with dreams are, of course, in the method of dream analysis developed by Jung. Dream work involves knowledge of the symbolic language of dreams. Active Imagination is a special way of using the power of the imagination to establish a working relationship between the conscious mind and the unconscious. Jung transformed this age-old process into a technique that modern people can use.

Active Imagination is not the same as some modern methods"mental representation" when a person imagines something with purpose. In this case, there is no "scenario": Active Imagination is in a completely different relationship with the unconscious, based on the recognition of the reality and power of the unconscious. In Active Imagination, you go to your unconscious in order to understand what is there and what it has to offer to the conscious mind. The unconscious is not fit to be manipulated to please the conscious mind - it is an equal partner in a dialogue that leads to greater human maturity.

Many people guess that the unconscious communicates with our conscious mind through dreams. Many people have become familiar with various theories of dream interpretation. But when it comes to working with our particular dreams, many of us become completely helpless. Events unfold according to such a typical scenario: I had a very vivid dream, I decide to deal with it "on my own" and diligently write down the contents of the dream in a notebook, intending to start its "interpretation". But my mind can't come up with a single thought. I ask myself: "What should I do? Where do I start?" - and look at the written page. The dream is either completely lucid or completely meaningless.

Sometimes we try to find some associations with images from our dreams. But we quickly lose patience. We feel that this is not the right path and decide to return to this dream the next day, but by that time other things have piled on to us.

AT initial period In my work, I have found that all my patients and friends face this problem. Somehow, no matter how much we read about theories of dream symbolism, when it comes to practical, direct work with our own dreams, we immediately hit a dead end. People came into my office with notebooks filled with descriptions of their dreams. When I asked them what they learned from their dreams, they usually answered, “I don’t understand them. When I come to you for analytical work, we make so many wonderful discoveries based on my dreams. But when I try to work on them alone, I don't see anything in them, I don't know where to start"

The starting point for working on one's own dreams is not only a problem for amateurs, it is the same for many psychologists. When I work with the dreams of my patients, I can shine, but when I work on my own dream, my brain short circuits. This is normal, because every dream communicates information that the dreamer is simply not aware of. Thus, in order to understand the meaning of sleep, real efforts are required from us, a certain strain of our abilities. If the interpretation of sleep was easy for us, then most likely it is inaccurate or not deep enough.

To meet this practical need, I began to develop the four-phase approach to dreaming that you will find in this book. I set myself the goal of enabling people to interpret their own dreams. Most people need to be taught how to approach their dreams, their unconscious, their source. But in order to be able to do this, we must first master certain practical skills, the ability to take a series of physical and mental "steps" that will enable us to approach our dreams, break them down into symbols and discover what these symbols mean specifically to us.

Years of observation since my patients and I developed the four-phase method allow me to conclude that most people who have truly mastered this method are able to realize the true content of their dreams and give them quite exact interpretation They determine the essence or main energy of their dreams, and this is the most important thing.

Too much theory is a major hindrance to working with dreams.

In his book Memories, Dreams and Reflections, Jung wrote:

"Of course, every doctor should become familiar with the so-called "methods" But he should beware of using only one, specific, routine approach. In general, one should be careful about theoretical assumptions. It seems to me that everyone individual person only an individual approach should be used. With "each patient a different language must be spoken. In the course of the same analysis, I can speak both Adler's and Freud's"

From Jung I learned the courage to advise my patients to give up believing in abstract concepts. Man must believe in his own unconscious, in his own dreams. If you want your dreams to teach you something, then work with them. Live with the symbols in your dreams as if they were physical companions of your daily life. And if you do so, you will discover that they are indeed your companions in the inner world.

Analysis and homework

This book is not meant to replace the advice and help of your psychoanalyst, if you go to one, of course. It is designed to help you with your homework. You should discuss the methods in this book with your psychoanalyst and follow his advice on how to use these methods.

People benefit most from analysis when they do their daily work. homework and come to the therapist with their dreams, fantasies and Active Imagination only after they have worked on them and partly “digested” them. A session with a psychoanalyst can be devoted to honing the results of the work you have already done. This will allow the psychoanalyst to make the most productive use of the patient's time.

Work without a psychoanalyst

If you do not have access to a psychoanalyst, you may want to consider whether you should deal with your dreams instead of resorting to some other technique of inner work. I am sure that you can safely work on your dreams and that the methods in this book will be of benefit to you. Remember just one rule: You need to be careful.

As you read through the chapters of this book, you will find a number of warnings and tips to help you stay out of trouble. Please treat them Seriously and keep them. You must understand that when you approach the unconscious, you are dealing with one of the most powerful and independent forces that a person can face. The inner work technique is designed to activate the forces of the unconscious, but at its core, the process is like releasing a geyser. If you are not careful, events can get out of your control. If you do not take this process seriously or try to turn it into mere entertainment, you may harm yourself.

Be especially careful with Active Imagination. They should not be practiced until you meet someone who is well acquainted with this art, someone who knows how to find the way back from the inner world to our ordinary earthly world. Active Imagination is quite safe if you follow the rules and use common sense, but it is possible to go too deep into it and experience the feeling of drifting too far into the unconscious. Your assistant can be either a psychoanalyst or an amateur with some experience in Active Imagination. In general, the main thing is that you have a friend to whom you can turn if you lose your bearings.

All of the above should in no way deter you from doing your inner work. We just have to remember universal rule: any powerful force for good can become destructive force if used incorrectly. If we want to make friends with the mighty forces of the inner world, we must also respect them.

1.3 Alternate Realities: Dream World. Realm of the Imagination

Our speech patterns testify to the automaticity of many of our assumptions. If you discuss your dream with your friend, then the friend will definitely ask something like: "Did this event really take place or did you only see it in a dream?" That is, it is implied that a dream is something “unreal”, “unreal”. In fact, the question should be asked like this: "Did this event take place in the dream reality or in the physical reality too? In the dream world or in the ordinary world too?"

Indeed, there are both realities, both worlds. But the world of dreams, if only we delve into it, has a more practical and concrete effect on our life than external events. For it is in the world of dreams that the unconscious sets its powerful dynamics in motion. It is in this world that great forces fight each other or unite to give rise to the ideals, beliefs, beliefs and impulses that are the motives for most of our actions.

As we become more receptive to our dreams, we find that the dynamics of any dream manifests in its own way in our practical life in our actions, relationships, routines, desires and feelings. We believe that we have quite conscious control over these elements of life. But this belief is a great illusion about ego control. In fact, these aspects of our lives are driven from much more deeply hidden place. It is in the world of dreams that we can see their roots in a form that is understandable to us.

Dreams Express the Unconscious Dreams are a dynamic mosaic of symbols that express the movement, conflict, interaction, and development of the great energy system of the unconscious.

The unconscious has a special ability to create images and use these images as symbols. It is these symbols that form our dreams, creating the language through which the unconscious conveys information to the conscious mind.

Just as a blazing fire tends to give off heat, so does the unconscious tend to create symbols. It's just in the nature of the unconscious. As we learn to understand these symbols, we gain the ability to comprehend the work that the unconscious does within us. This ability to create symbols does not only affect our dreams: the stream of symbolic images gushing from the wells of the unconscious feeds all human life. Neumann, in his book The Great Mother, writes:

"Symbolic images of the unconscious are the creative source of the human spirit in all its manifestations. Not only consciousness and its philosophical concepts of understanding the world were born from symbols, but also religion, rituals, cults, art and customs. And since the process of formation of symbols by the unconscious is the source of human spirit, a language whose history is almost identical to the origin and development of human consciousness, always begins as a language of symbols. Therefore, Jung writes "The archetype expresses itself primarily through metaphors"

Images-symbols of the unconscious make their way to the level of consciousness, mainly in two ways - through dreams and through imagination. It is relatively easy to grasp the symbolism of dreams, because dreams are often inhabited by beings and filled with situations that have no place in ordinary physical life. Dream images tend to confuse people until people learn that these images are symbolic and should not be taken literally.

Since the literally perceived images from dreams do not make any sense, seem completely meaningless, people dismiss them as something “incomprehensible”, but, in fact, dreams are an absolutely clearly stated thought. And if we take the time to study their language, we will find that every dream is a masterpiece of symbolic message. The unconscious speaks in symbols, not to confuse us, but simply because this language is given to it by nature. In Jung's book "Memories, Dreams, Reflections" we read:

“I could never agree with the point of view that a dream is a “facade” behind which its meaning is hidden; the meaning is already known, but, so to speak, it is deliberately not allowed to consciousness. I believe that dreams are part of nature, which no one does not intend to deceive, but simply does everything in its power to express something, just as a growing plant or an animal looking for food also do everything in their power.These life forms also have no desire to deceive our eyes, but we deceive ourselves because we suffer from myopia.Long before I met Freud, I believed that the unconscious and dreams, which are its direct expression, are natural processes in relation to which no arbitrariness and, certainly no swindle.

We can compare dreams to a screen onto which the unconscious projects its inner drama. We see on it the various inner personalities of which, for the most part, our general character consists, and the dynamics of the forces of which the unconscious is composed. These invisible forces and their activities set in motion, so to speak, the charges projected onto the screen. They take the form of images, and the interaction of these dream images gives us an accurate picture of the inner dynamics of what is going on within us.

In order to learn to understand these images, we must begin by realizing that they are not to be taken literally: we learn to look for the attitude, inner personality, inner development, or inner conflict that clothe itself in the shape and color of the given image in order to become visible to us in the Land of Dreams"

Imagination and symbols

We have already said that dreams are the first of the two great channels of communication with the unconscious; the second channel is imagination.

Many people are shocked at first when they learn that the imagination is an organ of communication, using a highly developed Difficult language symbols to express the contents of the unconscious. And yet, it is true: if we learn to watch the imagination, we will discover that it is a true stream of energy and full of meaning Images, almost constantly gushing from the unconscious.

We can visualize two channels that run from the unconscious to the conscious mind. The first channel is the ability to dream, the second is the ability to imagine. Dreams and imagination have one special quality in common: the ability to transform visible forms the unconscious into images perceived by the conscious mind. That is why we sometimes have the feeling that dreams are the product of the imagination that continues its work during our sleep, and that the imagination is the world of dreams that visits us during waking hours.

During the night, the unconscious activates charges of energy that create images on the screen of the sleeping mind, but even during waking hours it does not stop functioning. It radiates a constant stream of energy impulses that find their way to the conscious mind in the form of feelings, moods, and, above all, images that arise in our imagination. As with dreams, the symbolic meaning of these images can only be understood by the person who is willing to learn.

The material passing through our imagination takes the most different forms- from frivolous to visionary. At the bottom of the scale is passive fantasy - a whimsical dream that visits us at the most inopportune time of the day and, sometimes, distracts our attention for a long time. Such fantasies are purely entertaining or distracting in nature and give nothing to consciousness.

At the top of the scale is visionary insight, that is, the fusion of Active Imagination and Religious Ecstasy Active Imagination is one way to constructively use the imagination to approach the unconscious, there are many other ways, including forms of deep meditation.

Twentieth century civilization is characterized by a massive prejudice against the imagination. This attitude is reflected in phrases like "It only seems to you" and "These are just your fantasies, and they have nothing to do with reality."

In fact, the imagination is not "fiction" at all. The material that appears in the imagination must first originate in the unconscious. It would be more correct to call the imagination the channel through which this material flows into the conscious mind. And to be even more precise, the imagination is a transducer that turns invisible material into images that the conscious mind can perceive.

The root of the word imagination is a latin word image - image Therefore, imagination is the ability of the mind to create images, an instrument that has the ability to clothe creatures from the inner world in a figurative fabric. So that we can see them, Imagination generates symbols that the unconscious uses to express itself.

Numerous historical and psychological factors, developed over many centuries, have led to our current misunderstanding of the true essence of imagination and fantasy.

Numerous historical and psychological factors that have evolved over many centuries have led to our current misunderstanding of the true nature of imagination and fantasy. how fantasy and imagination were understood by our intellectual ancestors - the ancient Greeks.

"Fantasy" is a Greek word. The original meaning of the word was informing" "that which makes visible." It comes from a verb meaning "to make visible, to reveal." The relationship is undeniable: psychological function our ability to fantasize is to "make visible" the dynamics of the unconscious soul.

So Greek psychology knew what modern analytical psychology had to rediscover: the human mind has a special gift for turning the invisible realm into visible forms so that the mind can see and contemplate them. It is this invisible realm that we call the unconscious. Plato called it the world of ideal forms; for other ancients it was the realm of the gods, the realm of pure spirit. But they all felt one thing: only our ability to create images gives us the opportunity to see these images.

Among the ancient Greeks, phantasia denoted that special gift of reason, which contributed to the creation of poetic abstract and religious images. Fantasy is our ability to "make visible" the content of the inner world by giving it a form, its personification. The Greeks took the reality of the inner world for granted and expressed its ideal forms or universal qualities in the images of their gods. For them, phantasia was the instrument through which the divine world communicates with the human mind.

In European psychology (at least until the beginning of the Middle Ages), the ability to create images, called imagination (phantasia), was seen as a tool through which one could receive messages from the spiritual and sensory worlds and turn them into an internal image that could be stored in memory and make it a subject of thought. In religion, the imagination was a perfectly legitimate path to religious inspiration, revelation, and ecstasy. The fact that information made its way into the conscious mind through imagination did not in any way discredit this information, for, as the Oxford English Dictionary says: "Poetic imagination has been universally regarded as belief in the reality of imaginary things."

The word fantasy began to take on a different meaning - "fiction", "something unreal and incomprehensible," - most likely in Elizabethan times. The word "fiction" appeared - something arbitrarily generated by the imagination for the sake of pure entertainment. Unfortunately, this misunderstanding of the nature of the imagination has been fully inherited by the civilization of the twentieth century.

If you think about this question even for a moment, it becomes clear how stupid such a downplaying of the imagination is. Poetry, literature, painting, sculpture, and in general any artistic, philosophical and religious activity of man depend on this ability to create images, called imagination. Were it not for this ability to create images, we would not be able to develop either abstract and logical thinking, or exact sciences, not even the language. And here it is appropriate to repeat the above quote from Neumann:

"Symbolic images of the unconscious are the creative source of the human spirit in all its manifestations ... And since the process of forming symbols by the unconscious is the source of the human spirit, the language, whose history is almost identical to the origin and development of human consciousness, always begins as a language of symbols"

Active Imagination: Conscious Use of Imagination

Active Imagination, like the unconscious, has always been present in human life. As with so many other aspects of our inner life, humanity has regained this lost art thanks to Jung.

At first glance, Active Imagination may seem too simple and naive to be taken seriously. psychological technique: it is addressed to the images that have arisen in the imagination and the dialogue with them. And that includes communicating with images. In fact, the conscious ego-mind enters and participates in the imagination. Often this means normal conversation with emerging figures, but sometimes this includes taking part in activities, adventures or conflicts whose story unfolds in the imagination.

This is precisely what is conscious participation in an imaginary event and turns ordinary passive fantasy into Active Imagination. Connecting the conscious mind with the unconscious in the no man's land of the imagination gives us the opportunity to break down certain barriers separating the ego from the unconscious, to establish a genuine connection between the two levels of the soul, to resolve some of our neurotic conflicts with the unconscious, and, therefore, to learn more about our personality.

Because the imagination is widely held to be fiction, many people, when they hear of such an experiment, react purely automatically, declaring that it makes no sense. They think, "Yes, I'm just going to talk to myself." But if we work with Active Imagination, we soon become convinced that we are in dialogue with the true inner part of our "I". We come face to face with powerful personalities who live within us at the level of the unconscious and are often in conflict with our conscious ideas and behavior. Actually, we are invading the dynamics of the unconscious: we are traveling in a region, the way to which is unknown to the conscious mind.

Of course, this event is purely symbolic. The images we encounter are symbols, and we encounter them on the symbolic plane of existence. But there is a magical principle at work here: when we communicate with images, then directly communicate with the inner part of our "I", dressed in these images. This is the power of symbolic sensation. human soul when it consciously intrudes into it: the intensity of this sensation and its effect on us is often as specific as the effect and intensity of a physical sensation. It has the power to change our perception of the world, to teach us something on a deeper level, and its power is much greater than the power of external events that we can experience without even noticing it.

When we communicate with symbols, we simultaneously communicate with the complex, the archetype, the inner psychic being that is represented by this symbol. When an image speaks, it speaks with one of our own inner voices. When we answer him, the invisible inner part our own "I" listens and remembers. She stands before us in the form of an imaginary image.

During Active Imagination, a person does not speak to himself, but to one of my "I". It is in the course of this exchange between the ego and various images rising from the unconscious and appearing in the imagination of a person that he begins to collect the separate parts of his "I" into a single whole. He begins to get acquainted with hitherto unknown parts of his "I".

When people ask me if Active Imagination is "reality" or if dreams are real, I always think of Don Quixote of La Mancha. Don Quixote said he was looking for "bread that is made from something better than wheat". He was, of course, referring to the Host, the bread that is part of the Christian ritual. The host is made from wheat, but it constituent parts are also an archetype, the body of Christ, and something that is better than wheat.

Speaking figuratively, I can say that Active Imagination is "more real than reality." It is real not only in the sense that it has a practical and concrete effect on our physical lives, but also because it connects us to the world of superpersonal and sublime forces. It allows us to take part in the formation of the general flow of the main streams of energy, which, when combined in each of us, form the long-term patterns of our lives, our relationships, our beliefs. It affects us at a much deeper level of reality and affects us in a much more than any local event from our daily life.

Compared to these powerful internal forces and the priorities they set within us, the problems and solutions of everyday life are, for the most part, only small ripples on the surface of the vast river of life, which slowly and inexorably moves towards its goal. Dreamwork and Active Imagination attune us to a larger vision of life, to a vision of the direction of this river. They on a short time divert our attention from the small ripples and minor countercurrents that occupy us most of the time.

Thus, we begin to understand that dreams and imagination connect us to a level of existence that is not only "real" in the sense of external reality, but is more real than external reality itself.

1.4 Archetypes and the Unconscious

In dream work and Active Imagination the concept archetypes often reminds of himself; therefore, it makes sense to discuss this important concept now, at the beginning of the material in this book. As a result, when examples of archetypal images come up in our study, we will be better equipped to understand their meaning. We will now turn to the main ideas contained in the concept of archetypes; below, when we get to examples of concrete dreams and practices, we will have the opportunity to deepen our understanding of this subject.

Jung's audacious idea of psychological archetypes is one of his most significant contributions to modern thought. It is widely used not only in psychology, but also has had a great influence on many scientists working in such disciplines as anthropology, cultural history, mythology, theology, comparative religion and literary interpretation. This is because Jung proved the presence of archetypes in their symbolic form not only in the dreams of individuals, but also in mythology, cultural history, religious symbols and rites, and in all products of the human imagination, such as literature and art.

The idea of archetypes is very ancient. It is close to Plato's concept of ideal forms already existing in the divine mind - images that determine in what form the material world will appear. But we owe Jung the concept psychological archetypes - characteristic rites that originally exist in the collective soul of the human race and eternally repeat themselves in the souls of individual human beings, determining the basic ways of our functioning as psychological beings.

Jung became aware of the existence of archetypes when he noticed that the symbols that appear in human dreams often correspond exactly to images from ancient myths, art, religion, from those times and places that the dreamer could not possibly know anything about. He began to guess that in the human unconscious there are some primary symbols with a certain universal meaning that can spontaneously break out of the unconscious at any time and in any place, without any cultural continuity.

At the same time, Jung noticed that these, as he called them, "primary images" form a biological scheme, according to which the basic psychological structure of a person is formed. We can think of them as natural "blueprints" that dictate the shape of our inner mental structure, or basic shapes that define our roles, values, behaviors, Creative skills and type of perception, feeling and thinking.

Since these types are built into the basic collective substratum of the human soul, they do not need any cultural, temporal, or spatial continuity. They spontaneously, at any time and in any place, rise from the unconscious and arise in dreams, visions, imagination of any individual. And because they are universal images belonging to all mankind, their symbolism evokes the same feelings, raises the same questions and generates the same behavior, wherever they arise and invade the life of an individual or an entire civilization.

In Jung we read:

"The term" archetype "was used by Philo of Judaea, speaking of the God-Image in man. The same term can be found in Irenaeus, who wrote:" The Creator of the world did not create things by himself, he copied them from archetypes that were outside of him ... "Archetype" is an explanatory paraphrase of the Platonic ideal of form. In our case, this term is very appropriate, because it tells us ... that we are dealing with archaic, or - I would say - primary types, that is, with universal images that have existed since the beginning of time."

"The unconscious has a decisive influence, which, regardless of tradition, guarantees each individual the similarity or even complete coincidence of sensations, as well as the way they are represented in one's imagination. One of the main proofs of this is the almost worldwide parallelism between mythological signs, which, by virtue of that they are primary images, I have called archetypes".

"We can only assume that human behavior is the result of those patterns of functioning that I have called primary images The term "image" denotes not only the form of the activity taking place, but also the typical situation in which this activity takes place. These images are "primary" if they are characteristic of the whole species, and if they were ever "created", then their creation must coincide at least with the appearance of the species itself. They are the "human qualities" of a human being, a specific form his activities."

Archetypes, and this follows from their very name, are associated with types(types in the sense of traits or a set of qualities that come together again and again, forming recognizable, involuntarily repeating patterns) "virtuous girl" is a type, "wise and kind queen" is a type, "brave warrior" is a type , "Puritan" is the type. Almost no human being fits perfectly into any type, since types, by their very nature, are idealized models of traits and patterns of behavior. In literature and in our dreams we find characters who fit the type perfectly, but real human beings are combinations many types combined to form one colorful, inconsistent, multifaceted human being

If we find our way back to the primary schema that gave rise to all these universal types, which we instinctively recognize as personality traits that potentially exist in all of us, in that primary way that existed in the mind of the first human being just as it did in your mind or mine, then we will, in a certain sense, also find original type (first type, cliché) with which the page was printed

root word arche in Greek means "first", and type means "impression, imprint or scheme" Therefore, psychological archetypes are the pre-existing "first images" that have developed into a basic blueprint for the main dynamic components of the human personality. If we look closely at these types, we will find that it is their combination that has made human beings different from other beings. As members of the human race, we have inherited them from birth.

Not all images that come to us in our dreams are archetypes. To begin with, we should note that the unconscious consists of energy and composes itself into various energy systems(or what we may call "forms of energy"). These forms of energy can be feelings, values, value systems, or whole personalities that live within us. In fact, inside any of us, at the level of the unconscious, there are many different personalities. These inner "personalities" are the "characters" of our dreams.

Among those forms of energy that appear to us in the form of images in our dreams, there are also archetypes. But a much larger number of them are not archetypes and do not correspond to universal schemes, they are simply the dreamer's personal energy systems. Many people, when they first hear about archetypes and the terrible symbols in which they manifest, find themselves in a difficult situation. They may think that every image in their dreams is an archetype. They may get the impression that somewhere there is a complete list of all archetypes, and the meaning of any symbol that appears in a dream can be understood by finding the most suitable archetype in this list and combining it with a given symbol.

Both points of view are wrong. The number of archetypes is probably incalculable, and just as the number of properties and characteristic schemes ubiquitous in the human community. The definition of the archetype lies in the feeling of belonging to the global human energy system, the vision of a powerful symbol emerging from the depths of our collective human nature; it doesn't consist of reading someone else's list of types. In this area, we not only have the right, we simply have to put our creative imagination into action. We are free to give archetypes the names that matter to us as individuals. We'll talk more about this below.

A few examples should help give a clearer idea of how we encounter archetypes. From the very beginning of history, in all civilizations and religions, the idea souls arose involuntarily. Man has always intuitively suspected the existence of an invisible but active being within him. In poetic and religious allegories, men often spoke of the soul as female beginning. Sometimes the soul is represented as inner woman who is married to Christ or has the opportunity to communicate with God. Sometimes men imagined a female muse who inspired them to create poetic, literary, pictorial, musical and sculptural works, or who gave them extraordinary receptivity. Women, on the contrary, often imagined the soul as a masculine principle, giving wisdom and strength.

Jung discovered that the "soul" that religion speaks of has a psychological counterpart, a specific and objective part of the inner soul that acts like the "soul" of religion and poetry and performs all of the above functions. In men's dreams, the soul appears in the form of a woman. In women's, as a rule, - in the form of a man. To draw the line between this objective psychological being and the religious conception of him, Jung called the female figure from male dreams anima, and a male figure from female dreams - Animus. In Latin, these words mean, respectively, "soul" and "spirit".

In the following chapters, we will give some examples of the appearance anima and animus in dreams and imagination. The bottom line is that the main characteristic of the archetype is its universality, its ability to create structures or forms of energy that exist everywhere, in psychological structures all men and women. This is the essence of the soul, both as an objective being and as a universal symbol. It is part of our human heritage, part of what makes us human.

The soul not only exists in all people, as inner reality, but it also generates a universal character set - various images"soul" and "spirit" - through which it manifests itself. Therefore, in the dreams of most men, as well as in the myths, legends, religions and works of art created by them, we find the same set of symbols. The same can be said about the feminine universal symbolism of the spirit.

If an archetype can be easily defined as an internal structure, then in the case of anima or animus they can be defined as a universal quality recognized by all people or a way of feeling and behavior inherent in all people. For example: a woman may dream of meeting a god or goddess of love. Love is an archetype; it is an intrinsically human tendency, part of the original pattern of our human way of feeling, connecting and acting with other people. It is present in every person and in every civilization. It's so versatile that it doesn't even need to be discussed.

A woman who dreams of this archetype is imbued with more than just the desire to love. Like all of us, she has both hatred and malice hidden somewhere in her full personality. But in her dream she encounters an image that represents the archetype of love - love as a universal, transpersonal force, breaking out from the primary soul of our species.

In the presence of this image, if only a woman can see that it represents the universal universal energy of love that tests and affects her, she will be able to better understand her feelings, emotions and behavior.

Above we talked about the fact that in the human unconscious there are countless archetypes. To understand whether an archetype really appeared to us in our dream, we must feel whether some universal human instinct or pattern of behavior is hidden behind this image, or whether we recognize in this symbol one of those primary images that denote eternal and omnipresent human quality.

We do not need to know which of these images were officially approved by Jung as archetypes. We don't need to know what names the Jungians gave to these images, although it would be useful.

As a rule, Jungians choose the names of archetypes from myths and ancient religions, because it was there that these images first appeared, and often in the most vivid and easily remembered form. For example, the archetype of the heroic journey, during which fate subjects a person to all sorts of trials, is often called an "odyssey", because the most vividly such a journey is the journey of Odysseus. But all such names are, to a certain extent, arbitrary. We are all free to use our common sense, our feelings and our imagination to decide if we are dealing with an archetype; we are free to name these images as we see fit.

Many years ago, a young university graduate came to me to work on his dreams, and a male figure began to constantly appear in his dreams. The student involuntarily came up with his own name for this friendly companion, who was a universal character. He called him "companion".

The dreamer and his “tribesman” belonged to an ancient European Viking tribe. In some dreams, they acted as warriors and fought side by side. In other dreams, they acted as healers. In one of the dreams they met a beautiful mysterious woman dressed in white, who became the friend of the dreamer's life. Together they went through all the trials and discoveries that a young man encounters. The dreamer's friendship with his inner figure was so close and seemed so real that he felt lonely if this figure did not appear to him in his dreams for several nights in a row.

There is no doubt that "tribesman" is an archetype and corresponds to the archetype of "tribeswoman" in female structures. Boys and girls often dream of such figures - of the same age and sex as they are, faithfully and disinterestedly helping them overcome the obstacles erected by life. And this image corresponds to objective reality, because the energy system really lives inside the personality, its strength and consciousness take part in the development of a person in the way that the image tells about. For a woman, "tribeswoman" is an archetype of female consciousness that enhances her sense of herself as a woman, and strengthens her personality when she reaches middle age.

I gave this example to emphasize that you have the right to evaluate and choose the names yourself. You will not find the word "tribesman" in any dictionary of symbols or in the standard list of archetypes. Nevertheless, the dreamer saw this symbol in his dream, recognized in it an image universal for human life and picked up a name for it that came from hoary antiquity. Your capabilities in this sense are no different from his capabilities.

Perhaps it will be easier for you to understand how the personalities in our dreams correspond to the great forces of human nature if you compare the archetypes with the ancient Greek concept of gods. The Greeks represented the gods as strength, interacting with the life of the individual. These forces were present in the life of every person, and, at the same time, were universal, eternal and existed beyond concrete life or specific time. These "gods" could well be called "energy fields" affecting the human race. And at the same time, their images are integrated personalities, who are like "characters" from our dreams, wearing an aura of great power and corresponding to some great type of person.

For this reason, Jung said that the heroes and gods of the Greek pantheon were, in fact, symbols that can be equated with archetypes with absolute certainty. These images expressed the universal, primary types that make up the human personality.

Strictly speaking, archetypes are not forces, but rather preexisting images that give typical shape the forces within us. However, when we encounter archetype images, we always feel the power that has been transformed into that image. We feel that we have gained access not only to the symbolic type, but also to the vast reservoir of superhuman power that resides in the collective unconscious of humanity. We can feel the archetype as a charge of energy. It feels like it's outside of us, like it's something that the conscious mind has to interact with. When we see the archetypes at work as forces that move us and influence us, we begin to understand why the Greeks and other ancient peoples perceived them as supernatural forces.

Since the energy systems formed by archetypes are transpersonal, universal, correspond to timeless and primordial realities, in our dreams we perceive archetypes as gods. We perceive them as Great Forces. They either help, or threaten us, or strengthen, or suppress us, or liberate, or enslave us, which depends on what stage of evolution we are at and what happens to us. We experience them as great, supernatural, eternal energies that we cannot control, despite the fact that they are part of our life and nature.

As in most other psychological concepts, there is much in the idea of archetypes that is connected with ordinary everyday life. In our daily life, we feel the work of archetypes, although we do not realize that this is precisely their work.

For example, if we know a woman who fought when she had no chance of winning and showed superhuman courage in doing so, we say, "She is a heroine. She acted heroically." Without even thinking about it, we recognize that the heroine archetype lives in this woman, which is part of her character, and that she lives in accordance with this universal type, which we instinctively know.

Of another acquaintance of ours, we can say that he behaves like a "miser". What we mean is that the archetype of the cynical greedy person - another personality type or schema that we all acknowledge the existence of - manifests itself in the attitude and behavior of this person.

The hero or heroine archetype lives in each of us. Just like the greedy archetype. That is why we instantly recognize them in other people. In some people, a certain archetype is expressed especially clearly, which is called "everything is written on the face." For other people, archetypes are potentialities that reside in the unconscious. For example, the heroic archetype may rise to the surface of a given specific person only when required by some critical situation or when that person is inspired by love or devotion.

None of us is one thing. We are not one-sided creatures; we are intricate combinations of an infinite number of archetypes. Each of us is part hero and part coward, part adult and part child, part saint and part criminal. By learning to identify these great archetypal symbols living in us, by learning to honor them as natural human traits, by learning to constructively use the energy of each of them, we will turn inner work into a great odyssey of the spirit.

The unconscious often represents archetypes in a divine, regal, magical or mythical way. If an archetype of a universal heroine appears in your dream, he can take on the appearance of some legendary person like Joan of Arc. She may be wearing sparkling armor and holding a magic sword. In general, there will be some kind of symbol that speaks of a high origin and power.

Even if the specific, awe-inspiring divine or magical creature is not present in the dream, the dreamer may have the feeling that he is looking at a prototypical example of a universal type, quality, or occurrence Mother of Mothers, Father-Time, war-Armageddon, love, which includes all human experience of love.

1.5 Conflict and Unity: Credo in Unum

Since inner work is a dialogue between the conscious and unconscious elements, it always leads to a whole range of conflicts: internal conflicts over values, desires, beliefs, lifestyle, morality, loyalty. Of course, conflicts exist in any case, regardless of whether we recognize their existence or not. But our work with dreams forces us to acknowledge their existence. And Active Imagination, more than any other form of inner work, exposes these conflicts.

How can we bear the escalation of these conflicts? For the most part, people generally turn a blind eye to the presence of internal conflict; they create a kind of artificial unity with life by clinging to the prejudices of their ego and suppressing the voice of the unconscious. As a rule, we do not want to hear that another part of our being has different values and different needs.

We have already talked about pluralism our internal structure. We know that although "personality" is a singular word, it is actually a plurality of beings. Inside the body of each of us coexist a great many personalities that make up one full soul. We also know that the human mind perceives the world as a duality: we divide the world and ourselves into darkness and light, good and evil, and we are always faced with a choice, taking one side or the other, and very rarely risk taking on yourself a huge responsibility to bring everything together.

Perhaps it is this human tendency to perceive everything only in terms of "good" and "evil" that is the biggest obstacle to the recognition and use of our various inner personalities. We do not realize that our concepts of good and evil are, as a rule, arbitrary and subjective. For the most part, these concepts are inherited from our family, civilization and our childhood, and we never question them. If we have the courage to admit that we have instincts and energy systems that we are ashamed of, we will almost always find that they have and positive side and that they are simply parts of the general human character. Like the rest of our inner content, they should be recognized, respected and used in an appropriate and constructive way.

It takes courage to address the "bad" side of our personality, to recognize it as an integral part of our being, to assume that it can play a constructive role in our lives. It takes courage to acknowledge the fragmentation of our desires and aspirations. One side of our personality says yes and the other side a furious no. One side of my soul stands for strong ties, degree and stability. The other side wants crusades, dizzying adventures in exotic countries, travel to the ends of the world and life in a gypsy camp. And yet another person wants to build an empire and consolidate all of my energy systems. Sometimes these conflicts seem irreconcilable, and we are torn between our desires, our obligations, and our duty.

In that case, how can we, in the course of our inner work, get to the unconscious and plunge into this fragmentation and duality? We may not have the courage to recognize this deepest division of our personality unless we instinctively feel that conflicts must eventually be resolved, belligerents reconciled, and fragmentation will reveal to us a deeper reality - the basic fundamental unity and meaning of life.

A good starting point for understanding the inner workings, although it may seem strange to you, is the Creed, the Nicene Creed: Credo in Unum Deum"I believe in one God."

Millions of people repeat this statement every week in different languages. Of course, most of us have never thought about its meaning, it has become just another thoughtlessly repeated phrase. Whatever you think of the Creed as a religious statement in its literal sense, you should also consider what it means on a psychological level. This statement says that there is only one subject, one Source, one beginning, one unity, from which all the diversity of our life flows and to which it returns.

Because we feel this principle, we know that whatever conflicts we have to deal with, whatever confusing situations we have to find ourselves in, they are all branches of the same tree.

Without this conviction, we are helpless, in which case serious dream work and the use of Active Imagination seem completely impossible. By itself, the multiplicity of our inner selves will overwhelm us. But the Credo teaches us that all these “I”, all these energies come from one indivisible source, and if you follow their footsteps in the opposite direction, you can come to this One. One of the ways of this search is a bold entry into pluralism, into duality through inner work.

Who among us hasn't been plagued by this duality of life for years? Masculine and feminine, duty and desire, good and evil, the dictates of the heart and the dictates of the mind - we can endlessly list the opposites that express yin and yang our life.

Since we will continue to use the terms yin and yang, it makes sense to clarify what they mean. In ancient Chinese psychology and philosophy, these words denoted the initial involuntary division of the world into opposites light and dark, heat and cold, men and women. The ancient sages taught that full reality can be understood only when there is a balance between opposites.

Jan denoted the masculine principle: movement, activity, rigidity, warmth, dryness, light. yin denoted the feminine principle: peace, receptivity, softness, cold, darkness. In Jungian psychology, we use these terms to refer to the general human and psychological sense of duality. The attitudes contained within us always contradict each other and complement each other. One part of our being is “for” and the other is “against”. One part of our being wants to move forward, while another part wants to sit quietly and wait for events to unfold. One setting is given by the masculine principle, the other by the feminine.

Wisdom, the ancient sages said, is the ability to completely obey yin, when his time comes, and also completely obey yang, when it comes to replace yin. Regardless of the nature of the problem, balance is established only when both sides are given their due.

But without this duality, this division of the cosmos, human life could not exist as we know it. This is the price to be paid for our incarnation as sentient beings who will inevitably learn to divide the world and see themselves as something different from it.

The path to consciousness begins when we learn how to destroy the primary unity of our original unconscious. Like Adam in the Garden of Eden, we acquire the ability to see ourselves detached from the world and the people around us. We master the ability to divide the world into categories, to classify it. We begin to divide into opposites not only external phenomena, but also our characteristic features: this is good, but this is bad, this scares us, but this calms us, this supports us, and this humiliates us. This is how we achieve self-awareness, a sense of ourselves as a person who does not belong to the herd, an ego that does not belong to the collective unconscious.

But for this consciousness one has to pay a very high price: fragmentation, at first glance, an irreconcilable contradiction with oneself, the feeling that the universe has disintegrated, and there is no meaning in life. Our consciousness is enough to be tormented by the contradictions of life, and, at the same time, it is not so developed that we can realize the basic unity of life. And yet, following precisely this path, Nature became aware of her own existence, she gave birth to the only witness of this existence - human consciousness.

In Jung's "Collected Works" one can find the following lines:

"You may ask, 'Why the hell did a person have to climb out of his skin to reach the highest level of consciousness.' Truly, this is the main question, and it is not easy to answer. Instead of an answer, I can only offer my faith, I believe that after thousands and million years, someone had to realize that this wonderful world oceans and mountains, suns and moons, galaxies and clouds, plants and animals, does exist. Once, while in East Africa, I climbed a small hill and watched from there how, on the plain, in silent calm, huge herds of wild animals grazed in the same way as they have done since time immemorial, which were touched only by the light breath of the primitive world. Then I felt like the first person, the first being, who realized all this. The whole world around me was in its primeval state; he didn't know he existed. And then, at the very moment when I became aware of this world, it began to exist, if this moment had not come, this would never have happened. All Nature aspired to this and achieved its goal in man. The world expands only as much as we move forward on the path of awareness.

Yes, we separated, yes, we created this world by realizing our individuality in it, but our task has not yet been completed. Intuition tells each of us, each of us has a hidden conviction that all this, in the end, will add up to a common meaning. Human beings have a universal sense of the oneness of life, and we can consciously come to understand this. As far as I can understand, it is this realization of the primary and essential unity of the human soul that most religions and philosophies call "enlightenment."

Inner work reveals to us one of the most important paths leading to the unified self. Many people believe they can achieve unity by moving backwards, avoiding conflict, pretending conflict doesn't exist. Inner work proves to us in practice that we can deal with conflict, deal with duality, we can boldly enter the very thick of quarreling voices and work our way through them to the unity that they, in fact, express.

We cannot move backwards. We cannot retreat. We cannot find our original sense of oneness by canceling our consciousness and returning to the animal unconscious. Our evolution has taken a different path, and this path is embedded in our personality as firmly as in the structure of our physical bodies. Our path leads straight ahead, not bypassing duality, but through it, to the realization of basic unity. Our challenge is to find the fundamental unity and meaning of life without sacrificing our awareness of pluralism, our sense of ourselves as separate, individual beings.

Precisely because the cosmos is divided into heaven and earth, and heaven and earth are in dialogue with each other, the universe gave birth to Christ, Buddha, Mohammed and the prophets. Each of them carries the archetype of a single "I" and the message that the many are, in essence, one. Precisely because there is a conflict in our personal life and our will does not avoid it, but turns it into a constructive dialogue, we grow in the direction of consciousness.

Honestly, it's our lot to live in duality and paradox. Life consists of a dialogue of paradoxical elements. Strange as it may seem, this dialogue is also the surest road to unity. Our dreams are his stage, his workshop and his battlefield. And Active Imagination is his magnificent language.

Notes:

Jung Mentions, Dreams and Reflections, (MDR), p 131

In the Latin language of the ancient Romans, there was no word expressing the idea of a poetic, spiritual, or religious imagination that gave rise to a symbolic image of inner truth. In classical Latin, the word "imagination" corresponded to the word "fiction", in the sense that the image of an external object did not correspond to how it actually looked. When Roman writers referred to the ability of man to express the contents of the soul through poetic or spiritual images, they used the Greek word "fantasy". And Cicero even wrote this word in Greek letters.

I believe in one (lat.) Note ed.

Hello dear blog readers Leadership and Psychology of Success ". In so many of my articles, I recall certain possibilities of our subconscious. But he did not try to reveal this topic in detail, except for one small article called "". So I decided that the time has come to talk in more depth about one of the most little-known functions of the human psyche.
The influence of the subconscious on the fulfillment of desires is difficult to overestimate - it is from the main subconscious programming (unconscious beliefs) that the events that occur or do not occur in our lives depend.

CONTENT:
- The term of the subconscious from general psychology;
- On the psychoanalytic concept of the subconscious;
- The subconscious mind as a limitless repository;
- The term collective unconscious;
- Subconscious programming of the future;
- The source of all that exists;
- What influences the formation of subconscious programs;
- The structure of the subconscious: sensations, automatism, impulse, information, attitude, imagination, intuition;
- The place of the conscious in the subconscious responses.

Let's start with the most difficult - the terms of the subconscious.

- The term " subconscious"from general psychology
The subconscious is a term denoting psychophysiological processes that exist without displaying them in consciousness and regardless of conscious control. But, nevertheless, all these subconscious processes depend to a greater extent on the conscious perception of the environment by a person.

- On the psychoanalytic concept " subconscious"
Subconscious (unconscious or unconscious) - the union of mental processes functioning with the absence subjective control. The subconscious is everything that is not an object of awareness for a person. The term "subconscious (unconscious)" is widely used in psychology, psychiatry, philosophy or in unrecognized sciences studying all sorts of ways to attract success. And, of course, it is often used in this blog =)) The unconscious can also describe automatic actions that are not controlled by the human mind.

- "Subconscious"as a repository of everything that was, is or will be
The subconscious also explains one of the functions of our memory to automatically and instantly record everything that has ever happened to us or will happen to us, regardless of the activity of our consciousness at certain moments. That is, with the right appeal to the subconscious channels, everyone will be able to remember any actions, events, objects, thoughts ever arising on his life path. The subconscious mind stores any small feature of this world that interacted with our energy field to one degree or another. For example, we are all able to remember what happened to us ten, twenty, thirty years ago. Recall what kind of thought at a certain moment was comprehended, what smells surrounded us, what feelings prevailed in the mind, and even, for example, what was happening at that moment outside of our attention. And if we sleep, all the same, everything that happens around our energy field is deposited in the subconscious.

- collective unconscious
In 1916, Carl Jung introduced the concept of collective unconscious - this is a subconscious form, common for the whole society as one whole and being a product of inherited brain structures. The main difference between the collective subconscious and the individual is that it is common to different segments of the population. This is perhaps one of the deepest layers of the hidden unconscious that is known today. And at the individual subconscious level, any creature on the planet interacts with the collective unconscious.
As an example of the work of the collective unconscious, I will give the results of one interesting experiment, which I can hardly retell, but I hope the meaning will be clear. At one time, some kind of natural disaster happened on several islands, which destroyed almost the entire crop for the local animal world. This led to the fact that the monkeys had nothing to eat and the government, I don’t remember which country =), decided to help the animals. Potatoes were thrown onto the islands, which the monkeys subsequently ate. The potatoes were heavily soiled with soil, which caused some inconvenience for the animals, but one day, one of the containers filled with food fell almost into the water and several monkeys realized that the potatoes could be washed. Subsequently, this method was used by every monkey on this island, but the most important feature was far from this, but that later on each of the remaining and unconnected islands, animals simultaneously began to act in the same way as the monkeys from the first islands.

Subconscious programming of the future

In the collective unconscious, theoretically, everything that has ever happened during the entire evolution of the planet is stored. It also programmed the nearest (in a sense, possible) future of both any person in particular, and humanity in general. But this does not mean that life is somehow planned in advance. We and only we are the masters of our destiny. BUT subconscious programming of possible events occurs according to this principle: people radiate a constant stream of thoughts and feelings, which are material energy. This energy vibrates in a certain direction and creates certain events that will happen only if this energy flow does not change, or rather the thoughts and feelings prevailing in the minds of mankind do not change. This is the secret of the prophets, who differ from ordinary people only in that they can read information from subconscious channels.

The subconscious as the source of everything that exists

Besides, all sorts of answers already exist in the subconscious channels in advance to any questions, riddles, secrets, as well as any ideas, works, discoveries, events. Everything that was or will ever be invented, in fact, already existed from the very beginning in the common subconscious of all mankind. Don't believe? Read the rules for working with the subconscious of such brilliant people as Einstein, Edison, Emerson, Ford and many others (). These channels are wide open in geniuses, believers (meaning not religious, but enlightened) or so-called sorcerers, prophets, magicians. The rest have to work very hard in a certain direction (for example, in business, in poetry, in literature, in art, and so on), so that ideas come in the form of visual clues or sudden mental decisions, which we will later consider to be the result of the work of our intellect alone. In a sense, it is, because for some reason it is we who come to this, and not anyone else, but all the same, all these thoughts / guesses already existed - we just found them as a result of our efforts. In theory, there may be questions that all levels of the subconscious at the moment cannot answer, but today's humanity has not reached even a small fraction of the level of awareness that could generate such questions in our minds.
Almost everyone can learn more freely. Such an ability to work correctly and interact with it makes it possible to find any event, find any information, come up with any discovery, solve any problem, create any work, plan and implement any action and any desire.

What influences the formation of subconscious programs

Subconscious programs are practically not controlled by human consciousness, but initially they are almost completely formed or corrected just during conscious processes. At birth, the subconscious channels of a person are almost completely cleared, except for some residual information from the previous existence of the soul - we will not now prove the possible immortality and transmigration of the soul (this topic is not about that), but the fact that the child comes into this world with some kind of his own program ( energy) is a reality. And for this, the first point affecting the formation of subconscious programs will:
- Previous energy features of the soul. In almost all cases, they do not have a significant effect on further fate of a person, but form certain priorities in the desires and features in the character of the child.
- Next item- this is parental heredity, or in other words, karma. I think everyone understands that we get some positive or negative energy, genetic characteristics, habits, health, beliefs, and so on from our parents. These channels are formed automatically and unconsciously, but are completely corrected by the third (next) and fourth point.
- The third point is education, the appropriation of certain beliefs in which parents, the state, relatives, and others believe. Constant study of the external environment in which one has to live. All sorts of information flows, prohibitions, rules, fears, desires. Automatic formation of the first positive and negative habits. In general, everything and everyone around and in any way interacting with a weakly conscious personality. This too is appropriated on an unconscious or partially unconscious level. All these programs are almost completely corrected by the next paragraph.
- The fourth point is the conscious formation or correction of subconscious programs or the consolidation of all previous reactions. It comes at the moment when the person becomes fully conscious. And later, either the consolidation of some previously assigned subconscious processes (habits, beliefs, ways of thinking, skills), or their blocking and interchange takes place. New (or old) views, ideas, images, rules, skills, fears, anxieties, aspirations, desires, dreams are formed or consolidated. This is the most important step in the formation of subconscious processes on which your life path will depend. But it is also the most difficult. It is now that faith in one's own possibilities or impossibilities is being founded, which later will become the cutting stone of your life. That is, it depends on this period whether a person will form his subconscious to attract success or to block all possible manifestations of it.

This is perhaps all of the most important moments that create a certain basis, a certain image of the subconscious. But it is very important to understand that no matter what stage a person is at or what he is doing, his subconscious is always awake and perceives a huge amount of various information, even if you do not consciously supply it to him. Almost all people do not attach any importance to this, but this flow of information strongly affects unconscious processes. And it can be both negative and positive (creative). On the one hand, it is not pleasant when your subconscious is constantly being corrected without your intervention, but when viewed from the other side, this can be used as a great advantage if you understand what the point is. And the bottom line is that you probably constantly watch your favorite television shows, listen to some music, watch certain films, unconsciously and consciously listen to public opinion, read some newspapers and magazines, use in your speech, constantly communicate with a certain circle of friends and acquaintances. And now I will reveal to you a not-so-secret secret: in approximately 96% of the people of the planet, all these sources, which I have listed a little higher, are at some negative level. This population is characterized by either complete failure or small manifestations of it. In the remaining 3-4% of the Earth's population, the flow of information is completely different, more positive and more creative. These people have 97% of all money and they are either successful or very successful. In simple words, if most of the incoming information is positive and with shades of success, abundance, opportunities, then beliefs and subconscious programs will be formed in this direction. If, on the contrary, most of this information will carry negativity, fears, helplessness, anxieties, poverty, losses and disasters, then, accordingly, the subconscious will work to attract even more of this into your life. And now remember how little useful and positive on television. How few positive and successful friends in your life speak not about problems, but about victories and success. How much in public opinion talk about problematic politics, about failures, about the insignificance of a person and his illnesses, about problems and shortcomings, the like. And which of these is yours, ONLY YOU CHOOSE!

Structure of the subconscious

The manifestation of the subconscious in certain forms, which in general create the structure of one whole.
-1. Feel. People feel everything that influences and affects them. But this does not mean that all this is fully realized by consciousness. In the subconscious of a person, certain conditioned reflexes reacting to all kinds of irritations of the internal organs and impulses from them come to the cerebral cortex, but at the same time they do not turn into conscious sensations as such, but still influencing some behavior of the organism.
There are subconscious sensations. Since we receive every second a lot of all kinds of impressions and influences, we miss a lot. Moving, for example, along the street, we contemplate an incredible number of movements, hear great amount various sounds that orient us during this movement. But we focus our attention on them only when something unpredictable, unexpected or important happens.
All this countless variety of vibrations, actions, phenomena, movements and properties are constantly happening in front of us, but they are not realized or perceived by consciousness in any way, unless something happens that still forces us to pay attention to it (that's why many people may not notice many potential opportunities in front of their nose until they diligently look for them, concentrating all their attention). It is impossible to consciously perceive all the impact, because trillions of terabytes of information are constantly bombarding us, and it is impossible to cope with such a task, because we would have to keep countless irritants in our focused attention and in an instant be aware, ponder hundreds of thousands of thoughts. And also we would not be able to switch from negative (destructive) thoughts to positive (creative) ones, and they would simultaneously disturb our emotions, and they, in turn, would not understand what kind of energy to radiate. To our great joy, we have the ability to switch off from some influences and focus on others, completely ignoring the third. And from all this volume of information coming to our subconscious, we unconsciously select, basically, only what excites or interests us. That is why, looking at the same thing, everyone can see completely different things, and also, being in absolutely equal conditions, one does the impossible, while the other drowns in his helplessness.
-2. Automatism. The activity of each person under normal conditions is perceived consciously. But nevertheless, some elements of any activity are carried out at a subconscious level, automatically. For example, in the morning we do a lot of mechanical actions, such as getting dressed, washing, eating, and the like. Or during movement (walking) we make all efforts subconsciously, except for the first instruction to move - we do not focus on which foot, how and where to step, but in childhood the child consciously focused and learned to walk with full concentration of attention. In this way, complex and automated skills, habits, skills are created in people's lives, in which consciousness is both present and absent at the same time. All automated actions are characterized as unconscious, but not all unconscious actions are automated.
Very interesting is the fact that fully conscious actions can be carried out only under such conditions when the maximum value of its elements proceed automatically. For example, only an individual who has complete automatism of the very act of making a speech (that is, he does not think about how to pronounce his speech correctly and can fully concentrate on the very meaning of the idea being presented) can fully focus his attention on the content of the oral speech being presented. In order to play any kind of sport with dignity, you need certain and well-developed skills, abilities, abilities inherent in this game and brought to full automatism, so as not to think about the action itself, but to choose which of these actions will bring the desired result.
Studies of all kinds of automatism have shown that it (automatism) is far from simple machine-likeness, since it is characterized by the ability to change or rebuild in the movement itself. Also in the mental activity of people there are areas that cannot be fully transferred to the level of automatism. For example, it is not possible to completely reduce the entire process of playing any musical instrument to automatic action.
Automation of many functioning human processes is a significant and necessary feature of various mental actions - thinking, speech, memorization, perception, and so on. These automations relieve our consciousness of the general and constant control and observation of all these actions. But no matter what, consciousness still carries out something like an indirect and general observation, and in case of need is able to take control of an automated action, speed it up, stop it or slow it down.
-3. Pulse. It appears during impulsive, spontaneous, emotional actions, when a person is not aware of the consequences of his actions and performs them completely subconsciously. The so-called "state of affect."
-4. Information. Information is constantly accumulated during the entire human life and is transformed into a certain experience, settling in our subconscious memory. And from the total amount of available knowledge, at a certain (necessary) moment, only a small and, in a sense, purposeful part of them will be displayed. But what part of the knowledge will be covered and the effect of its usefulness for this action It will just depend on the previous life experience.
-5. Installation. Installation - is a form of cardinal manifestation of the subconscious. This is a kind of mental phenomenon inherent in man and makes it possible to direct the course of our thoughts and feelings. The setting speaks of the general and holistic state of the individual, and expresses the certainty of mental life, a predisposition to any action, an orientation in any of the types of activity, a stable orientation in relation to certain objects and events.
The stable orientation of the subconscious to a certain object is maintained until such time as all expectations are justified. For example:
a) We would stop being afraid of wolves if, at each of our meetings with them, they wagged their tail affectionately at our feet;
b) When a person is endowed with a negative reputation, then any of his actions, even the most innocent, he will arouse suspicion.
Often, attitudes express an inflexible, overly stable, and morbidly obsessive character called fixation (people can feel intense fear, for example, of a mouse, while realizing the complete absurdity of this emotional state).
-6. Imagination. - this is the mental activity of a person, based on the creation of mental images, situations, ideas, which later will not be perceived as a whole as a reality. It is formed on a certain operation with specific emotional images or visual models of our reality, but at the same time contains the outlines of a generalized, mediated knowledge that connects it with thinking. The departure from material reality, which is characteristic of the imagination, provides an opportunity to substantiate it as a process of transforming the reflection of reality.
The main function of the imagination is based on the ideal representation of the results of the activity even before they are achieved in reality. In a sense, to experience anticipation of something that does not yet exist at the moment. Associated with this function is the ability to make discoveries, find new paths to success, and find solutions to emerging problems. Not a single discovery in the world has happened if imagination has not been involved in working on it.
Imagination is divided into creative and recreative. Creative imagination is the independent creation of new images and their embodiment in the form of original objects of artistic, scientific and technical activity. Recreating imagination is the creation of new images for pre-existing objects that do not correspond to previous images or descriptions.
There is also a special kind of creative imagination called "dream- imagination of images of the desired future.
The multifaceted sphere of the subconscious emotional world is the illusory world of dreams - an involuntary activity of the imagination. In dreams, pictures of reality are usually broken and not endowed with elements of logic. In the psychological and philosophical opinion, sleep is explained as a temporary loss of the senses of one's being, a partial deliverance from the negative and mundane own "ego".
-7. Intuition. Intuition is a kind of ability to sense the truth by way of direct observation of it, without any grounds or evidence confirming this truth. Many processes of scientific knowledge of the surroundings, as well as various types of artistic representation of the world, are by no means always carried out in a detailed, factually and logically proven form. Very often, people think about difficult situations (for example, during revolutionary and spontaneous business decisions, when determining the diagnosis of a patient, when perceiving a battle, when determining the guilt or innocence of the accused, etc.).
Intuition does not represent some special unidentified path of cognition leading to a certain bypass of sensations, thinking and ideas. It reflects a way of thinking, when many processes of the same thinking occur in consciousness to a greater or lesser extent subconsciously, at an unconscious level. But in the end, the truth itself or the complete result of all unconscious thought is clearly realized.

The Influence of Conscious Activity on Subconscious Responses

One of important foundations any creativity is purposeful mental work/activity. Maximum and long-term immersion in a certain idea or problem, as well as a passion for it. Once Charles Darwin was asked how he came to one of his discoveries, namely the discovery of lawful natural selection, to which he replied: "I constantly thought about it." If you just wait for a decision or the emergence of a desired idea, then most of all, they will not come. Only the person who thinks a lot, often, enthusiastically and consciously about the decision can catch the truth in a random observation or in a spontaneously flashing thought.
Thus the unconscious is not simply something "hidden" from the subject's self-knowledge. It is completely free from established patterns, more global and more flexible in all possible directions of its movement, in the types of formation (creation) of associative links. And therein lies its heuristic possibilities.

This concludes my scientific and so complex description of subconscious processes. But in the future there will be even more useful and simpler articles on the methods of development and correction of our unconscious. About the importance of the subconscious in the psychology of success, about its manifestation in our daily life and its unlimited power. Well, if you want now make the subconscious your strong ally and helper, then I advise you to visit another useful article that tells about effective methods of audio-correction of the subconscious:

Portal for the student. Self-training

Other people's emotions - as their own

Can you become an empath?

Advantages and disadvantages

Develop or get rid of?

Approach to the unconscious - conscious or involuntary

Notes:

Subconscious programming of the future

The subconscious as the source of everything that exists

What influences the formation of subconscious programs

Structure of the subconscious

The Influence of Conscious Activity on Subconscious Responses

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