The Journey To The Self

​In the recent five years, I have spent some time in contemplation and solitude, which has impacted the direction of my life. Also, I have realised the importance of stillness and how much it can impact an individual's wellbeing and psyche. Stillness can often be achieved during solitude but demands an individual to deal with their unconscious and emotional residues of the past. The path to stillness often demands cathartic releases due to the undealt or poorly managed unconscious conflicts, which often leaves an individual with various suppressed or repressed emotions. Specifically, feelings of frustration or various forms of tension can often prohibit an individual from reaching a calm state.
 
Calmness or stillness is not similar to apathy, and often our current society mistakes apathetic states for an elevated level of consciousness. The term apathy can be described as a lack of feelings, emotions, eagerness, and concern for others or anything. Moreover, individuals who suffer from an apathetic state have entirely neglected their emotional life by suppressing distressing emotions or other elevated emotions. An apathetic individual's main issue is feelings depletion, which often leads to poor decision-making because of a lack of concern, passion, care, and absence of interest in most social, emotional, and physical aspects of their life. Additionally, individuals who suffer from an apathetic state often lack a sense of purpose or meaning in their life. Last of all, individuals that suffer from an apathetic state are often at greater risk for mortality, and some reach severe levels of apathy, which can often lead to institutionalisation. The apathetic state can also be connected to a lower quality of wellbeing and life.
 
The stillness I am referring to often emerges after appropriately dealing with experiences of traumatic events and the emotional residues that are often left behind. On the other hand, the stillness has increased the connection to the Self and brought clarity to my life path. The Self is often constructed by both the unconscious and conscious aspect of an individual's psyche and is often considered as the entire personality. Additionally, Jung emphasised that the Self is present from birth, but the ego often develops during the early stages of life. On the other hand, the Self is equally seeking to fulfil biological drives and advance spiritually because it has contained transcendent qualities. The main purpose of the Self is to make an individual complete and developed, which the health of one's ego is dependent on.
 
For the majority of individuals, their relationship with the Self often further develops during their late twenties or early thirties. The main reason individuals develop a stronger relationship to the Self is because the first stage of life is often governed by the ego and the person's development, which supports navigating and functioning in the external world. However, the development of the ego and persona also comes with excessive projections, and often projecting negative attributes onto others. Despite the projections of negative attributes, individuals will also project positive attributes or idealise others.
 
 The Self often demands decreasing the number of projections from an individual and integrating these lesser or desired attributes into oneself. In other words, the Self demands an individual to integrate various aspects of their personality and often leads to a higher level of consciousness. On the other hand, few individuals are able to obtain such a level of consciousness or even progress in the individuation process. The individuation process refers to the development of the personality to become complete, which is achieved through becoming more aware of the personal and collective unconscious. Additionally, the process also requires integrating the content but is often almost an entirely natural process that functions on a personal and fitting time for each individual.
 
The Journey is long and odd, soooo kick back your feet and enjoy it!