A Writing Journey of My Memoir Part 2: Know Thyself

"To know thyself is the beginning of wisdom." – Socrates

I’ve been deeply engaging in this work officially since 2017, and unofficially my entire adult life. This work—Individuation, starts by getting to know myself as much and as deeply as I can in every aspect. To do that, I needed to begin confronting my fears and entering into the unknown world. This shady side refers to the unilluminated half of our psyche that lies below the consciousness.

We neglect to bring awareness into this part of us and avoiding looking at it because it’s dark, and therefore, uncomfortable and even scary. So what we auntomatically do is suppress and disown it. We treat it as if it wasn’t part of what’s made us who we are whether knowingly or unknowingly.

In order to fully become who we are and can be to reach our full potentials we need to fully integrate with both parts of our psyche and reconnect with our original Self (or Source, or Soul, or whatever you want to call it)—this means, to embrace and accept all the aspects of what makes us who we are; light or dark.

This doesn’t have to be just the bad things, it can even be positive traits that unfortunately are not deemed appropriate in the cultural or social background you are in or were brought up in. I talk more in detail about what this can mean in a separate post here, but for this time, let's just talk about my case and the journey to begin walking the path of individuation, which is to become who I really am and was meant to become.

“That which we need the most will be found where we least want to look.” ― C.G. Jung

It needs to begin with the knowledge that what we think we know about ourselves is not all that we are. This awareness doesn't come to us by age or life experience but we need to seek it, of course, in the area we least want to look. This above quote is rooted in an ancient branch of philosophy of nature called the Alchemy which was quoted as "In filth, it will be found."

This somehow holds a powerful message that has been resonating with me for a long time– I need to begin carrying out a very difficult task to achieve the profoundly meaningful answer to the question I've been asking myself for as long as I remember– "Who am I?" and "What am I doing here in this life, this world, at this time, and with all these people?". So which pile of filth or that scary dark place should I look at first?

“The most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely.” ― C.G. Jung

My life hasn’t been through that extremely bad of a trauma and I am forever grateful for that. There was no history of trauma in a general sense; things like physical abuse by parents, repeated molestation throughout adolescence, or overcoming drug addiction— no, nothing like that, and that is precisely the trap I kept falling into. I granted myself a reason to be hard on, and discount my own feelings; not allowing myself to ‘accept’ the flaws when a bad time presented itself.

When approached with adversity in life, I would look around and observe people from all walks of life fighting and surviving the cruel world every day to remind myself that I had it quite good compared to the rest of my (small) world. This would work if it was followed by a deep sense of gratitude, but my time in the world then wasn't long enough to be able to understand that sense of deep appreciation, especially in an environment where the practice of it was not preached.

What I learned was that I shouldn’t let myself feel the pain, or embrace any negative emotions. We were taught not to feel by suppressing and avoiding; sweeping matters under the rug was our common practice. Our family paid little attention to one another's feelings simply because we didn’t know how to observe and validate our own feelings and needs. Talking about the healthy expression of how we felt would be like a discussion on the existence of a ghost finding its way out of the Black Hole– where the heck to start?

We (my siblings and I) didn't have that much time with our parents, we grew up with our maids who were also our nannies. I can only think of two childhood memories of us at the dining table, all together. The first one was when I was around seven or eight, and the other one was maybe fifteen. I'm not sure what the average figure would be, but my point is in order for a person to begin a basic understanding of him or herself, one should have enough childhood memories about how the family communicated, how they connected, or how were they when they were all together; but I had two.

We were quite lonely growing up, and I used to shame myself for being sad, lonely, feeling hurt, or having any negative emotions. That developed to be my default operating system, in order to fit into the norm of things, I must disown my feelings and even pretend as if they didn’t exist at all. My heart was accustomed to putting so little use to it that its muscles grew withered by day.

I didn’t know what it meant to feel traumatized. All my life, I thought trauma meant something that bad has to happen to you and leave a wound on your body—but no. According to Dr. Gabor Maté, trauma is what happens inside of you as a result of that event that happened to you. It’s a psychic wound that hardens you psychologically and then interferes with your ability to grow and develop.

I am forever thankful to this exceptional teacher for his insightful definition and other knowledge on this topic that has widened my eyes on a new aspect of who I am, and that is the Wounded Healer archetype. So yes, I have been wounded; my childhood vulnerabilities need healing, and they compelled me to begin to confront, and hopefully, heal my own wounds—this time, once and for all.

It took me a long time until later on into adulthood, to be aware and understand the responsibility for my own mental well-being. To look into the dark closet full of stuff, to overcome emotional suppression and avoidance, is my duty. This was my most important duty especially then that I wanted to pursue the journey of knowing all about myself– and it should begin with shining the light of consciousness inside of me.

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” ― C.G. Jung

In the next post, I will share with you the process from the beginning of how and where I began to look through my dark places and the documenting part of it. Also the motive for attempting this difficult task and the reward at the finishing line.

Until then, be happy :)