Are We Safe? Look Inside Psyche for the Answer
We All Want a Safe Place in Times of Chaos
Chaos, vitriol, and heated emotions rule the day, or minute, if we plug into social media. With the highly controversial election season passing, we also find ourselves grappling with our citizenry marching closer toward Civil War.
One doesn’t have to look too hard to find evidence of this; Native Americans protect their water and sacred grounds at Standing Rock, the largest women’s rights march occurs on the capitol, and cities like Seattle, Chicago, and New York designate their streets ‘sanctuary cities’ for immigrants.
American angst and intolerance are high. Fundamentally we want truth, justice, freedom, and safety. Our belief systems run the gamut, which makes our nation great – the freedom to think and believe the way we want. However, when times are so powerfully uncertain the fabric of reality bends. We fill in the blanks with fear.
As this insensitive and toxic climate continues, it leaves many of us feeling hopeless, helpless, and confused. Hence, our senses are flooded. We search for meaning and security in places filled with a vicious discord, which throws us into a collective fight or flight.
Turn Inward with Psyche and Dream the Future
In order to have more clarity and understand what is truly happening around us, we must look within. We must trust our own psyche for guidance and protection. Prior to World War I, Carl Jung had a visionary experience of a coming conflict.
In the vision, which he described in his book, Memories, Dreams, and Reflections, he saw rivers of blood covering the land between the North Sea and the Alps. While a vast majority of society was denying war was brewing in Europe, Jung listened to his inner voice. He instinctively knew it was coming. He peered into the true reality through his psyche’s warning.
The psyche is a self-regulating system that maintains balance between conscious and unconscious thought. It is also the faculty in our dream life coordinating a sense of balance in our waking life. As a potent healing force, it uses the theater of the mind to cleanse emotionally disturbing content, work out intra-psychic conflicts, and heal through the energy of theta states. Thus, the psyche will never give us something we have already healed or mastered in our self-growth.
“The psyche will never give us something we have already healed or mastered in our self-growth.”
This fundamental property of the psyche assures us it will always warn, guide, and reconcile danger in our environment. It keeps us safe through profound intuition. Although somewhat mysterious in nature, it is an ancient human survival instinct.
How to Prime the Psyche
Set your intention to receive clarity and information through the dream state.
Ask this question, “How may I be in danger?”
Reduce or eliminate all social media for several days.
Provide calming influences to the mind, body, and spirit.
Reduce caffeine intake.
Use sleep-inducing essential oils.
Pick natural herbs that aid in restful sleep, such as chamomile (this is also a mild diuretic so take it early in the evening), lavender, passionflower, valerian, and poppy.
Keep a journal documenting the events that happened throughout the day.
Schedule time for mind-body therapies.
Get out and breathe with nature.
The key to feeling safe, therefore, is to use these habits to relieve stress periodically throughout the day. This approach frees the psyche-mind from having to use limited dream states to manage the day-to-day minutia of our lives. Entering sleep less stressed allows the psyche to work on our vital core issues. Opening awareness to the psyche with life-giving energy means providing the body a rest from tension, especially mental tension that gets stored throughout the day.
How Can We Tell When We Have Reached Our Psyche?
We recognize we have achieved contact with our psyche when we reach an intuitive dream state. We become lucid or ‘aware’ inside the dream. Once inside a lucid dream, we are within the psyche’s realm which is concrete, metaphorical, and imaginal. Entering this space gives the psyche an opportunity to warn us of events, people, and places that are unsafe. It does this through the vivid depictions of symbols, themes, and ideas accessible through the collective unconscious.
Jung wasn’t a magician or prophet, he was an explorer of the boundaries and influences of the psyche. Through his visionary experience, he learned what we all need to learn. We may also rely on the psyche now in these distressing times to discern our own ‘truth’.
Our psyche is the root and center of consciousness. It is literally the language of the soul which has been lost and buried in modern society. However, for those who are willing to chance the journey, psyche’s message will provide insight into our deep inner workings which restores faith, and peace in our lives. Once we develop faith in this process, we feel safer knowing this ancient instinct will always protect us and ensure our survival. The biggest choice is whether we listen.
