Our Internal Guide
I've talked an awful lot throughout my blogs about the part of our psyche that attempts to guide us throughout our lives. Seemingly, this is a controversial topic due to the fact that it has been drowned out by all the noise that we are surrounded by nowadays or the loan fact that people are simply unaware of it's existence.
It may sound like an idealistic notion and something that is merely a ploy to provide us with false hope, this to me is a drastic misconception and one that must be addressed. Socrates believed that every human is born with an unlimited source of knowledge and that as we age we slowly lose this knowledge and replace it with the knowledge that we accumulate throughout our individual lives. Whether this is the case or not I do not know. It is however a compelling concept and one that relates closely to Carl Jung's concept of 'The Self' as well as the Buddhists notion of the 'True Self'. These two conceptualisations have an undercurrent of awareness and stability, combined with an existing wisdom and potential.
Jung believed that 'The Self' was the aspect of a person that could rebuild them after a psychological collapse, such as a tragedy or an encounter with the ultimate unknown. Essentially, the things that can flatten us psychologically can cause a metaphorical internal demolition in need of repair and rejuvenation. 'The Self' is capable of accomplishing this task, hopefully rebuilding and strengthening the individual. Jung also believed that 'The Self' contained all the relevant knowledge deriven from a person's life, therefore implying that it transcended the dimension of time and space and could act as a regulatory system for our interests and attention. Jung was a frighteningly intelligent man and as a result we should tread carefully before dismissing any of his ideas.
Back to the main point of my blog; how can we cultivate the accuracy and magnitude of our inner guide? For me its down to two things, one is truth and the other is awareness. I have a theory that if a person abstained from lieing to others as well as self deception throughout their entire life, they could cultivate this ability to a tremendously high standard. I am of course aware that there is some discprency over truth and that humans are capable of unconscious repression and dilusion. Nonetheless I perceive the truth to be a far more concretised than fluid entity from a practical standpoint. If a person was capable of completing this task is it plausible that by the near end of their life, maybe even before, they could have developed a near perfect discourse with this facet we all have at our disposal. Eleciting an utterly truthful answer and one that may even combine with Jung's notion and subsequently border on the realm of being rationally impossible.
From an empirical perspective I belive that this ability can be trained and is ubiquitous amongst all humans. Unfortunately we now exist in a society that has manufactured enough 'noise' so that this guidance can easily be drowned out of our awareness. Leaving us dependent upon external resources to regulate our lives.
Imagine an emulsion of oil and water, if you continuously shake it the two liquids will never separate, but if you let the container rest they will separate out. This is partly how I conceptualise modern society in terms of mental health and psychological wellbeing. Obviously it doesn't tell the whole story, but it does tell part of it.
So my advice to you is to embrace the silence, trust the inner guide that calls out from within you and believe in your ability to transcend the omnipresent state of confusion we all exepreice collectively.
Thank you 🌍⚖