Tuesday, March 6, 2012

The role of the unconscious in the awakening mind

Comes a new line of inquiry, from a dream I had this morning. In the dream I was beating up some guys, who i understood to be bad people, having hurt others.
I was brutal, throwing them against furniture and striking them with my fists. They kept coming, yet couldn't touch me. The light of dawn awoke me from the dream, and I did my analysis. I could only determine that recent number-fudging by Doctors For America in their educational campaign was the root of it. I received a call from the upset Executive Director at the Washington DC office, objecting to an expose I had written and emailed to some of the partner organizations. Privy to the information in my role as California State Director, I held fast to what I believed to be an easily demonstrated truth. They are claiming to have "educated" 300,000 people about the Affordable Care Act, in 2 months! Counting an audience based only on distribution numbers for a newspaper article, or numbers of tweets going out into cyberspace, should not be mistaken for the number of people who actually learn something. So, in the dream, I was punishing them as a way to uphold justice, and doing damage control by attempting to stop them. I wasn't succeeding. Aroused from the dream, I wrote a final letter extolling them to stop the deceit, and maintain integrity. Now, I'm done with it, and hopefully they are done with me. I resolved to accept any fallout that may come.
It occurs that the dream fight came from my unconscious. Much comes from that place, inspiring endless books, investigations, and entire professions in the behavioral sciences. But what about the role of the unconscious in an awakened or awakening mind? I haven't seen it addressed in the psychotherapy-nonduality literature. That doesn't mean it's not there, and I will find out as soon as I can ask an enlightened psychotherapist, easy to do here in the Bay Area.
In my experience and view, the unconscious likely undergoes a process of clearing out. I consider it a repository for memories, fears, desires, and experiences especially traumatic. But it's also a dynamic place where things get sorted and re-associated. If in fact, the debate with DFA settled into my unconscious, it may have become a thought-attachment. Recognizing the dream symbolism allowed a quick release of this atttachment, resulting in mind clearing.
Some questions come from this:
  • In awakening, is a complete clearing out of unconscious contents needed?
  • Does the process of clearing explain all the "stuff" that arises during spiritual "work?"
  • In a non-abiding awakening, is it the lack of clearing, or the return of the contents, that "loses" the awakening?
  • In the awakened person, does the unconscious remain essentially empty, and is that what allows the experience to be of the present moment?
  • Where do thoughts and feelings, albeit impermanent and free of ego attachment, come from, if not the unconscious?
  • This may be the mystery, yet is it a mystery that can be more fully explored?
  • What about the subconscious, what becomes of that?
  • Is the ego generated from unconscious attachments to how we think we should be?
  • Is awareness freed when unconscious attachments are released?
I will be told I am creating or holding on to more concepts when I share this. Yet if concepts are just constructs from thoughts, expressed orally or by writing, then all teachings are concepts. Should any assertion or expression be tossed because it is a concept, without further discussion? I can see that this line of inquiry may gain momentum. Now begins the search to see what has been done with it, and where it might go.

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