I read this quote by Carl Jung the other day and it’s been on my mind ever since.
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
Here’s the thing. It’s easy for us to get caught up in what we see on the surface and be convinced that this is all there is to consider.
But when we look a little deeper under the “Iceberg of Consciousness”, we realize a little more is going on.
Often we can be convinced that everything we do is a matter of willpower and logical thinking. However, when we actually take the time to explore what is deeper than the conscious mind, we discover an entire world below in the subconscious.
And the problem is that we try to use willpower to control our behaviours, our habits, and our beliefs. This lasts for a short while but over time we lose out to the greater influence of the subconscious mind.
In the end, we begin to say things like…
- “It’s too difficult to change”
- “This is just the way things are”
- “I can’t control this part of me”
- “This is just who I am”
But as Jung points out, this would only be a miss-attribution of the unconscious. We are acting as is if there is some mysterious force that we can’t control that is dictating our lives.
We call it “Fate”.
When in reality, if we simply went below the surface and took some time to explore our subconscious, we would discover an entire part of ourselves we rarely investigate. Here we might discover our core values (or lack thereof), we can see what beliefs might be hurting or helping us, and we can check in with our habits that are guiding our daily actions.
We may even discover an entire world of creativity, joy, and emotion that we have left untapped. But without spending time with our thoughts, we never get here.
In a “busy” world where your mind never has time to explore what’s below the surface, you can get caught fending off the never-ending the waves of life.
Don’t be afraid to see what is under the iceberg, you might find a more calm world than what’s above.
