Who am I?

Identity is so fundamental to how we participate in the world. It is multi-layered and hard to define. For many people, who we say we are, rests in our roles defined by profession and relationships. Is that who we are? For others, who we are is defined by self-talk and shame. However, can we really rely on our self-talk to give us an accurate assessment of our strengths, weaknesses, gifts, and talents? Then there is how our country of birth, our gender, our cultural identity or our religious affiliation define who are. But is that who we are?  

Spiritual traditions distinguish between our true self and false self. The latter is sometimes called the conditioned personality – i.e. a personality that stands in opposition to becoming all that we can be. This conditioned personality comes from what parents, teachers, society, friends and other outer influences say. Many times this sense of identity is dysfunctional and it does not allow us to be in life and in the world in an authentic peaceful way. Modern medical thinking tends to resort to a diagnosis and defines our dysfunction as something to be fixed and medicated.

Who am I that this is happening to me – Finding the Key

This question of identity is central to our psychological well-being and to our spiritual development. In that light, embracing our struggles and dysfunction can create a more empowering and ultimately positive approach to the work.

Carl Jung, in his deep exploration of the ancient alchemical texts, believed that our life task is to work with the baser/ conditioned parts of our personality and transform them. For Jung, our personality is TAO – that is, our personality elements can reveal everything that we need to become authentically ourselves. John Welwood in Toward a Psychology of Awakening offers this analogy. “Like sanding wood so that the true grain reveals itself, the journey of awakening would involve transforming our personality so that it became a transparent vehicle, which the deeper qualities of our essential being could shine through.”

The key element in alchemy is the “prima materia”, i.e the baser parts of the personality need to have a sealed container to develop. It is this sealing that ensures that the subject of the alchemical opus remains contained and not contaminated from outside influences.

Dreams as Container

I have often said that once the key of the dream is found, then the dream is unlocked and the wondrous message of the dream can be revealed.
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In the characters that show up, dreams can reveal the “prima materia” of the alchemical world.  Working with these dream characters are the starting point of transformation.  Thus, just as in the alchemical world, the aim is to bring these energies into order, raising the vibrations by a series of operations over future, prè-determined moments in time, until the essence becomes distilled into a purer form or essence.

Thus, our psychological and spiritual growth means working with all the elements of our personality – light, dark, strength and weakness – as it is in the service of living our authentic and true self. Our personality becomes the path of awareness and awakening.

If you want to delve deeper in the mystery of dreams,  there is an 9-week online course starting September 17, 2019  “Unlock the Wisdom of your Dreams:  Masterclass in Jungian Online Dream Interpretation” 

Christina Becker
August 2019

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