Looking at the Onion

Looking at the Onion

I talk about unconscious material here fairly often. You know, the stuff that is buried deep in our minds. We react to it. It directs a lot of our behavior. It makes decisions for us. They are often not very good decisions because they are born from our mislearning. And then we wonder what the heck happened.

Part of coming to know ourselves is being willing to look at our unconscious stuff. Many of us try to avoid it. We are afraid that we will uncover stuff that might wreck our relationships. We are afraid that we find things we don’t like about ourselves. We are afraid that we will unearth terrible secrets. Or that we will find out that we have to make a change we think is too scary.

One way to tell what is going on in our unconscious minds is to look at our circumstances. Our situations can let us know what creative questions we are asking unconsciously.

Do my days feel effortful or effortless? Do my days feel easy or challenging? Do I feel peaceful? Do I relax?

Why am I alive? What makes me choose? How do I feel when I feel alive?

Sometimes, we have a situation that feels overwhelming. We feel like we can’t solve the problem, so we push it deep down into our unconscious and start asking bad creative questions, like, How can I avoid dealing with this problem?

Uh, oh.

We are wildly, wonderfully creative beings, and we will come up with amazing ideas for avoiding stuff. We get busy, we get pregnant, we have affairs, we get in trouble at school or work, or with the law, we have a bad accident, we get sick, and if it feels really big, we might just die.

Maybe we get obsessive about work, or housekeeping, or exercising, shopping, or glamorizing. running errands, taking on commitments, volunteering, extra jobs, well, you get the idea.

If we discover that we are doing some of these big avoidance things, we can start to look for our big topic. We may get caught up in details, the trivia of the situation. I can usually tell that I am doing this if I am feeling like there is a lot of drama going on around me, that I am all caught up in it. And this may well brings my buried situation to a head, so I have to take a look at it.

Why would I let go? How am I peaceful? What makes me notice?

When I let go of the drama, when I choose to breathe softly into the situation, I can often see what is going on under the frothy excitement. Frequently, it will have to do with my personal doubt, that first piece of mislearning I took on when I was very little. In fact, the more I deal with my stuff, the more I will need to look at this piece, to integrate the experiences that support that mislearning.

It’s like the onion analogy, where we peel away a bit, and peel away some more, and some more. It may be a process, but it is often the best way to clean up our stuff. When I choose to look at my unconscious stuff, and for me, getting help makes this much easier, I am way more efficient. I am choosing to be alive, to live as fully as I can, and enjoy my life effortlessly.

How have I changed from hiding from my own mislearnings to choosing to live fully?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2014 all rights reserved 07102014