You're Not Unconscious. You're Just Denying Ownership

Find to whom this cruel world appears and you will know why it appears so cruel. Your questions are perfectly legitimate, but just cannot be answered unless you know whose is the world. To find out the meaning of a thing you must ask its maker. I am telling you: You are the maker of the world in which you live -- you alone can change it, or unmake it. –Nisargadatta

I thought that it might be helpful for myself (and to continue the dialogue that Marmalade and Davidya have commented on) to further postulate this crazy idea (meaning that it does not fit any typical paradigm of 'awakening') that there really is no such entity as an "unconscious" and that the concept is a construct that helps the ego conveniently deny responsibility for the world it experiences and, in fact, creates.

I do understand that through the belief that we are separate individualized egos, it is necessary to enlist a concept of an unconscious realm where all our 'bad' stuff, or so-called obstacles to 'awakening,' reside outside awareness. Yet, as the theory goes, we know NOT what stuff until it somehow serendipitously appears in consciousness. Or, as the masters teach, we practice for years in unpacking our baggage to finally receive our reward for all that suffering and struggle that this unpacking involves.

Clearly the “unconscious” can be defined as our relationship to certain things and, being that it is an “unconscious,” this seems to assert NO relationship whatsoever. How can we know what exists outside ego consciousness if some part of that 'outside' is non-awareness? Seems like an ego convenience to me and it does serve to keep the machine humming.

However, if the individualized separate ego consciousness is not reality, but an illusion, then there cannot be an individualized unconscious, which would mean there is only a collective unconscious (ode to Jung).

Yet, collectively we are all aware of the hell “out there” in the world, so what’s actually repressed outside of awareness and into an "unconscious"? It’s there and you see it clear as day.

Ahh.... but the real defense mechanism is in denying ownership of what you SEE.

I merely posit that an unconscious does not exist since we are aware of all our nasty impulses collectively, yet in the illusion of individuality we separate ourselves off from certain aspects, but we do experience it, only as someone else’s problem. All the obstacles to “awakening” are available for full observation IN THE WORLD. It’s all there and we see it all the time. Every violent terror we could dream up is there for us to see. So what’s repressed?

Maybe "repression" is a poor descriptor since repression asserts unawareness. Yet, we are most certainly aware of the hell "out there" we just dissociate and deny we made it.

There is no repression because, luckily, the individualized ego easily separates itself off from what it SEES as being NOT OF IT, because what is SEEN is quite simply associated with someone or something outside itself. But if there is no individualized consciousness, then everything is you and nothing is outside YOUR consciousness.

I suppose it’s an issue of responsibility, because as I stated in the first “unconscious” post, to maintain individuality we must avoid responsibility for much of what is IN consciousness. To accept full responsibility for the hell in the world is to recognize that you created that hell- all of it.

Any scientific study of an unconscious, as in Freud and Jung, demands the ego validate this unconscious. However, just as consciousness cannot be studied, the “unconscious” is a speculation that clearly seems real for an individualized ego that needs to continue such an individual interpretation. The fact is we have an experience of consciousness, but who has reported on the experience of an "unconscious"? No one, since it is symbolic of dissociation and not repression. But what you have dissociated from is there and you are aware of it, you just refuse to own it.

An individualized unconscious will easily fit everyone’s experience, since everyone believes they experience an individualized ego. This makes it easier to live in hell, when hell is “other people” and if hell is other people, you're (ego) off the hook. What responsibility need “I” (individualized ego) apply in repudiating that hell? None at all, since within my consciousness I’m only responsible for the tiny microcosmic hell I personally create in denial that all of it belongs to me.

This juxtaposition makes hell 'real' and my ‘self’ set firmly in place within that hell, but still acutely dissociated from the terrors ‘out there.’ The violence of hell is in consciousness, yet the individualized ego only accepts tiny parts of that violence as its own and thus, maintains its powerlessness to end it ALL.
But, if there is NO individualized consciousness, the violence is owned by all, no matter what hierarchy, level or degree that violence exists on.

I suppose when we all take full responsibility for what we SEE in consciousness, we will all then seek to abolish it. Until then, we will separate ourselves off from it to avoid guilt for what we created.

But, as always, I’m just saying….
mikeS