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plum
United Kingdom
641 Posts |
 Posted - 02/03/2013 : 06:39:39
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"The unconscious is the psyche that reaches down from the daylight of mentality and morally lucid consciousness into the nervous system that for ages has been known as the "sympathetic".
This does not govern perception and muscular activity like the cerebrospinal system, and thus control the environment; but, though functioning without sense-organs, it maintains the balance of life and through the mysterious paths of sympathetic excitation, not only gives us knowledge of the innermost life of other beings but also has an inner effect upon them. In this sense it is an extremely collective system, the operative basis of all participation mystique, whereas the cerebrospinal function reaches its high point in seperating off the specific qualities of the ego, and only apprehends surfaces and externals - always through the medium of space.
It experiences everything as outside, whereas the sympathetic system experiences everything as an inside."
~ Carl Jung
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All1Spirit
USA
149 Posts |
Posted - 02/03/2013 : 06:54:58
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What is known about the Unconscious or what we think we know is that it does not use language for memory. It uses bioelectrical and biochemical paradigms and abstractions like visual, olfactory and sense memories all encoded into a neurological language. For this reason it is difficult to access and more difficult to work with.
In years past dreams were thought be the doorway to the unconscious, then it was psychodynamic and regressive therapies. For myself I find meditation is the best access point.
When the thinking cortex is in control the unconscious is largely silent to our awareness. When it perceives a threat or elicits an intense emotion the limbic system shuts off the cortex and we can get glimpses of the forces that drive 90% of out internal states. |
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All1Spirit
USA
149 Posts |
Posted - 02/03/2013 : 07:04:35
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While Jung considered himself a scientist and a mystic he and Freud did not have the access to the tools of neurophysiology we have today. Just as people in the times of Jesus thought someone rolling on the ground and out of control to be daemon possessed we now know they were having seizures.
Or malaria was once thought to be caused by mal-air or bad night air so people would stay home after dark. Then it was discovered mosquitos were the vectors...and guess when mosquitos come out.
What we don’t understand we make up stories about and while these men were pioneers much of their conclusions were simply stories.
I can take a patient that is locked into their limbic system and switch them to the cortex and watch the transition before my eyes –these men had no knowledge of these neural structures or their operation. However mothers have done with with 3 year old’s tantrums for eons. |
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plum
United Kingdom
641 Posts |
Posted - 02/03/2013 : 07:26:20
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| Many thanks for these answers. For clarification, is the unconscious essentially the reptilian, primitive brain; the oldest, deepest brain structures. Do you include the limbic system as part of the unconscious or is it bridging, as it were? |
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chickenbone
Panama
398 Posts |
Posted - 02/03/2013 : 12:28:32
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I have read a good deal of Carl Jung, I really like the mystic part and I think he was really ahead of his time. One of the things he said is that there is a small personal unconscious that each of us have and a collective unconscious, which is public.
I use a pendulum to get in touch with this. You know, a chain or string with a weight. From asking it a lot of questions about itself, I get the feeling that it is mostly collective and much bigger than myself. I have gotten some useful information from it, but it is difficult to make sense of it because it does not seem to exist in time or space, but some other dimension. It will not tell me anything that it thinks my conscious mind cannot understand or handle.
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plum
United Kingdom
641 Posts |
Posted - 02/03/2013 : 13:48:40
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chickenbone, my love,
You understand the deep, the dark, the mythic, the green world. Few do. My heart tells me this is the way.
Blessed be. |
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chickenbone
Panama
398 Posts |
Posted - 02/03/2013 : 17:19:27
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Right on, Plum
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What is the Unconscious?
