Your Ego is an Awful DJ

Jung believed that a precise diagnosis could, in and of itself, spontaneously launch the healing process. Clearly, Jung investigated, worked with, and wrote about healing in a psychological context (although there is much to suggest the potential connection of the mind and spirit to the wellness of the physical body as well).

Your psycho-spiritual wellness is very much dependent upon the messages playing in your interior dialogues and communicated through your relationships with others. The whole point of psychoanalysis and talk therapy is to identify (to become conscious of ) what messages are playing within you, how they got there, who authored them, where they came from, and when you either chose to adopt them or had them forced upon you.

You were not born with any of the messages that are currently playing in your mind. Absolutely everything you say (to yourself, about yourself) was written by someone else. Your words are not original, they are always repeated. (Even if you have an “original” thought, it must be expressed through or translated into language, and language can be broken down into basic parts which you did not invent. Even if your ordering of words or your unique literary devices have never been expressed in quite the same way before by anyone on earth, the building blocks of the language itself — the vocabulary, the words, the letters, the phonemes — are inherited from an enormous collective culture that has traveled to you across thousands of generations.)

Where do these Voices come from?
You downloaded these messages, you absorbed them, you parrot them — you either consciously hear them and take them within you or you unconsciously become infected with them — a concept called mind viruses.

These messages and fragments of everyone else’s opinions and beliefs become a part of your own database, your own collection, your own interior library.

These messages have the capacity to organize around archetypal energy patterns and become Voices — personae with whom you develop on-going, persistent relationships. If you’ve worked with The Money Shift then you are already familiar with how this phenomenon plays out regarding the Voice of your Money (Abundance) archetype. Similar relationships are taking place with any number of archetypes, beliefs, issues — your Self-esteem, your Inner Child, your Saboteur, your Rebel, your Artist, etc.

You can investigate absolutely any relationship you have with any template or archetypal energetic pattern within your psyche and begin to make conscious choices about the conversations you are choosing or allowing to play. This is quite literally the basis for much of the private intuitive counseling sessions I offer — helping you identify and consciously shift these interior dialogues to more empowered, spiritually “healthy” channels.

“Your” Songs
Think of the music (mp3) library on your computer. Although you call these songs “yours” — they are very representative of who you are as a person — of course you are aware that you did not write, sing, play, or record these songs. You have the ability to identify these songs and their artists as separate from you, even as you employ them to assist you in expressing your thoughts and emotions.

When you listen to your music collection, you have no problem behaving as an active director — even a highly-discerning, music-snob tyrant — in choosing what you want to hear in that moment.

• You repeat your favorites obsessively.
• You will skip a song that you don’t want to hear.
• You may even delete one that you never wish to hear again.
• You make choices according to present energetic requirements — to chill out, to get yourself revved up and moving, to have a good cry or to dance around the room…
• You adjust the volume to appropriate levels for specific circumstances.
• You can even shut the whole thing off.

It’s relatively easy for you to identify the Songs, Messages, Voices that you love, in the context of your literal music collection — you know who’s singing, you know the lyrics by heart, you know when the song was released… You can recall the first time you heard it, where you were, what you were doing, who you were with… You can do the same with the songs that get on your nerves, drive you nuts; and you have no problem avoiding them or ignoring them.

Now, approach this metaphor as it relates to your Self-Talk — the inner dialogue of Voices, Messages, and Beliefs that you allow to play in your mind every day of your life.

Isn’t it interesting how you unconsciously assume you don’t have the same power of choice? Notice how the negative Voices seem to get so much more airplay. Why is that?

You were not born hearing and believing and identifying with these words — fag, fat, lazy, slut, stupid, ugly, ungrateful — every single one of them came from somewhere outside of you.

• What are some of the messages/voices you have downloaded that cause you pain or hold you back?
• Who are the original authors?
• Who introduced you to these messages?
• Where were you when you first heard them?
• What are some of these Stories that No Longer Serve You?

Your internal mind chatter feels much more like some god-awful musak channel you are forced to listen to and have little control over. The gentle, supportive, loving Voices of your spirit are out-numbered, drowned out… Are you just waiting and hoping one of those “nice” songs will come on sooner or later? Who says you cannot delete the ones that aren’t serving you, or at least skip over them when you hear their opening strains, replace them with one that brings you joy and power?

Hang the DJ

Your Ego is an obnoxious DJ — it has taken over the playlist, endlessly spinning a heavy rotation of fear-based tunes.

Observe this station more carefully, more consciously. Diagnosis in this context means identifying where these Voices and their Messages came from — that they were never originally yours; they came from somewhere, externally, and you internalized them.

This Identification is the first powerful step in consciously separating from the Voices that are not you — were never you — and do not serve you.

image credit flyzipper via Creative Commons on Flickr