seven layers

We learned id, ego and superego, for instance. Another set is conscious self, unconscious self and dream self. I have started wondering if the unconscious is the abused self. I wonder if those instinctual, unknown, unrecognized responses are from that spiritual scar tissue that protects us from what we experiences or witnessed. I wonder if healthy people have less unconscious because they have less to protect or to hide from.

I am not Freudian, so that's why I think Id, Ego, Superego fails to resonate with me. I prefer the Jungian collective unconscious...it feels more real to me. Where Freud laid the groundwork of the unconscious as sexually deviant and conflicted, Jung saw it as the connection to the spiritual world or realm. Jung thought that people could tap into that realm through dreams, while Freud used some dream analysis and associations made during psychotherapy but always to show sexual repressions. I have often wondered what his childhood was like to be so perverse and fixated on sexual tensions and dysfunctions.

So where does that place the scars from the abuse that we and so many carry?
I am thinking of the number seven...instead of three. Some of the great catholic mystics wrote and taught about seven story mountains and interior castles with seven layers. I think it is more complex than the three. I do wonder if, we lived un-scarred, we would need seven layers to work through to self-actualization (Jungian term)...or divine intimacy...

This is how St. Theresa of Avila's interior castles were described...
"...a most beautiful crystal globe, made in the shape of a castle, and containing seven mansions, in the seventh and innermost of which was the King of Glory, in the greatest splendour, illumining and beautifying them all. The nearer one got to the centre, the stronger was the light; outside the palace limits everything was foul, dark and infested with toads, vipers and other venomous creatures."

Thomas Merton's Seven Story Mountain originally began... "When a man is conceived, when a human nature comes into being as an individual, concrete, subsisting thing, a life, a person, then God's image is minted into the world. A free, vital, self-moving entity, a spirit informing flesh, a complex of energies ready to be set into fruitful motion begins to flame with love, without which no spirit can exist..."

I love that...but often wonder why we allow our soul energy to be repeatedly trapped in this mass...one day I will understand.

So, enough rambling, what do I think? I think the layers of the psyche are complex...too complex to be explained in 3 easy steps...but I do believe that at the deepest level we are all connected...that the collective unconscious is the one complete energy...all of us are a part of that whole...you might say it is the 'body of Christ'...and we are all of the pieces.

I had several dreams this week and I was determined to remember them...but cannot recall any except for a piece of one...
I was high on a staircase...it was metallic and switched back and forth, much like a fire tower, but it wasn't outside.
I was trying to descend, kept encountering obstacles.
One of the things that I remembered clearly was me climbing to the outside of the railing, trying to jump down a landing...to hurry the process...and being afraid...paralyzed by fear...but then I asked for help...and I was able to jump to the next, further down landing.
I asked for help...That's huge for me...I never openly admit to needing help.
I've been thinking about that for a few days.

Sorry for the ramblings.
Love and Light,
Maggie