Living In Peace With The Dark Side Of The Unconscious

We all need to learn how to be living in peace with the dark side of the unconscious. Just as in the world outside conflict leads to violence – inner conflict causes inner violence. Not being at peace with yourself, disowning your shadow aspects will make you unhappy.  Peace and harmony comes from knowledge, acceptance and humility. I believe self-knowledge and using it thoughtfully are the ways we can live a happy, fulfilled and peaceful life. Self knowledge is acquired through befriending our shadow aspects, our unconscious.

Often we say things like ‘I can’t stop myself from shouting, worrying, being angry, eating, smoking or drinking?’ We often think we are right, and there is an external reason why we do these things. Sometimes we think if we don’t get angry the message won’t be understood, if we don’t worry we cannot take the precautions to protect our loved ones.  My work as a systemic therapist is to clarify your road to exploring so that you can follow your own path.

The Unconscious Is Our Ally

Lack of conscious awareness is often perceived as the cause of our most unwanted problems. However, this limited and one sided way of looking misses out how the unconscious can be a great resource, an ally in recognising and communicating with our shadow aspects, a sacred path to self-knowledge. Our unconscious communicates with us through dreams, synchronicities and even dramatic events, such as accidents and illnesses.  These reveal unaccepted aspects of ourselves as well as guidance on to integrate them.

Carl Gustav Jung expressed these concepts so eloquenty:

 “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” 

“Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people.”

Our conscious and unconscious need to know, respect and accommodate one another.  If we ignore our shadow by ignoring its messages it can get hostile.  Like another human being we can choose to befriend or not.  Integrating our shadow aspects into our conscious personality is a process and does not occur by trying.  It evolves gradually through letting go of attempting to control, through committing to know ourselves with all of our aspects.  This means recognising our shadow in our enemies and approach without fear or hostility.  Then there is a chance of mutual understanding. When integration is reached the most amazing results pour out, such as healing from illnesses, intuition about what you need to say or do in a certain situation for the best results, even intuitions about future events.

The Unconscious Takes You By The Hand Leading You Towards Experiencing Your Full Potential

Each of us has a unique task of self-realisation, looking at others development has little benefit.To activate this individuation process, we need to move away from what everybody else is doing or expecting from us but surrender consciously to the power of our unconscious.  Like the olive tree in the mountain we need to focus on sensing whether we should move to the right or to the left to reach the optimum conditions for our growth without plans or worries of possible obstacles.  All olive trees look alike but none is exactly the same. We need to resolve the riddle of individuation in our own unique way.  In the same way we can only become happy, serene, productive, whole, integrated when the process of individuation is complete.  This means our conscious and unconscious learn to complement each other and to live at peace.

We can befriend our unconscious to guide us to wholeness and to integrate our shadow.  What if you were fully at peace with your unconscious?  What would be easier, different and harmonious in your relationships, work and life?

In future posts and videos I will provide some ticks and tips to help you learn to be living in peace with the dark side of the unconscious.

In the meantime, if you have questions or an angle on this please post them in the comments below. I  look forward to hearing your trains of thought.