Building blocks of the mind

I have been interested in learning how everything works since I can remember. I just had to know what made everything tick. Including smashing my late grandfathers wristwatch at the age of two to see what was inside. And to put it back together. Of course I wasn’t capable of putting it back together, but as you say, I had to see it to believe it. While the other children were watching cartoons, I was often watching documentaries. Even to this day, on any given day — given the chance — I might end up watching hours and hours of videos on anything from the animal kingdom, to human ancestry, to medicinal herbs, to theoretical physics and anything in between. I’ve learned that in the end, things aren’t as complex as they first seem to be. Most of the time anyway.

There were a few things I just couldn’t figure out, no matter how much I studied. One of these things was human behavior, or more specifically the human mind. In high school, I took all seven courses of psychology the school had to offer. In university, I completed three major courses of it. On top of all the research I would do on my spare time. But none of it had exhaustively answered the questions I had.

There was simply something about our minds that I was dying to figure out. “Why did he do that?”, “Why did she say that?”, “Why on earth can they believe that?”. Questions that arose in me constantly and I had no clear answers to. Sure I could understand the “why” in terms of basic psychology as we know it. Trauma, biases, “how they were raised”, genetic differences etc. However, none of these are the foundational blocks of our psyche, but rather emergent properties, results of untold functions. What on earth is actually going on underneath? What are the building blocks of the mind?

A problem I couldn't solve

As fascinating as it was to study, it felt like every part I learned just opened more questions than answers. Over those years, the subject kind of fell to the side and I forgot most of it.

Fast forward 10 odd years. I’m now in my early 30’s. I’ve dropped out of university after struggling with motivation for seven to eight years, managed to get myself into game development courses and ended up working in quality assurance for an actual international game studio. I was finally in my dream field! I was making enough money to have some left over for fun. Regardless, I didn’t feel any happier than I did all those years as a dirt poor university student. I had achieved a major dream I’d had since I was a kid, I was “living the life” of simply working, playing games with friends and drinking the weekends away.

Even with that goal achieved, I didn’t feel any better for it. If anything, I felt worse. I guess it had dawned on me that something was wrong. Turns out that I had simply traded being poor to feeling empty and alone. I had been so sure that if only I could get that and be that, I’d surely be happier. But the fact was: Achieving goals didn’t make me any happier. Sure, they felt nice in the moment, but that moment was fleeting as ever. I was emotionally numb. The little feeling I used to have was mostly gone. Of course, I had no idea this was going on in my mind at the time. Not consciously anyway.

Rabbit hole of human psyche

On lunch break I often watched YouTube videos, still learning about everything that interested me that week or day. One day, I stumbled upon an interesting title “Are You Autistic? 25 Questions To Ask Yourself!” and clicked on it. It was entertaining to watch, but during a slower section I got a bit bored and scrolled down to the comments section. A conversation about personality types caught my attention. Surely I had read about them before, but I didn’t really believe in them that much. Most of it wasn’t backed up by science after all. But something did pull my attention. Something had resonated with my unconscious mind. I had to know more.

In this rabbit hole of research on personality typing systems, I did stumble upon the works of the famous late 19th century and early 20th century psychiatrist and the creator of analytical psychology, Carl Gustav Jung. The father of such concepts as “extrovert”, “introvert”, “persons shadow”, “archetypes” etc. A true genius and visionary of his time.

At first, it was simply a fascination to concepts and theories of the mind that seemed to explain so much. However, the more I read, the more I realized that the same concepts that he wrote nearly a century ago were still true in my life today. This and the fact that his main theories just seemed to all click. They all fit together with everything I had learned.

I dove deeper into Jungian branch of psychology and typology. During this time I also met my girlfriend on a typology Discord channel of all places. She is much more experienced with self-improvement and self-care topics, so we got along very well from the beginning and we had a lot to talk about.

Darkness and despair

Over time it started to dawn on me. The more I understood of psychology and how our minds worked, the more I could see how skewed my own perception of reality was. Before diving into this vortex of cognitive knowledge, not in a million years would I have guessed that I was depressed or anxious. I didn’t have any drastically traumatic experiences in childhood - or so I though. I wasn’t beaten, I didn’t go hungry, I had clothes, a mom and a dad. So how would it be possible? Others have it so much worse, there's no way I could be have unresolved trauma, I thought. However, this was exactly what was going on.

In June of 2022, after seriously struggling for two years, I scheduled an appointment at my health care center and told the nurse sitting across me that I was depressed and that I had possibly been this way for decades. She asked some questions about my history and how I perceived myself and this condition. Then I filled out some test questionnaires. The scores indicated a severe depression, which I did not expect. Through having discussions with my girlfriend — some of which were extremely difficult — and learning about the human mind, I had managed to reconnect with myself enough that I could feel it. That utter abyss inside of me. Like a pit of darkness and despair where no joy can be found. The abyss I had hidden even from myself all these years.

Light and hope

The culmination of Jung’s work, a state of being. One that every human — unconsciously if not consciously — aspires towards. It is called Individuation. Some call it enlightenment, Nirvana, awakening, heaven and so on.

In modern Western society, this concept is so very foreign that most brush it off with “I already know what I want and who I want to be” without seeing or realizing all the pain and suffering that’s going on under the surface. All those empty goals and possessions we think we want to achieve. Western society has it so bad that we have literally banished this natural and blissful state of being to a place outside of our reality. In some alternate dimension filled with clouds, singing winged people and a robed bearded man who sees and knows everything. While I definitely don't agree with any main stream religion, I do think there is some truth to it, as with all popular things. 

There is however no need to make Individuation any more mystical than it already is. Individuation in it’s simplicity is a state of being where one’s conscious self is completely aligned with their true inner Self (yes, with a capital ‘S’). It does not mean that one simply serves themselves and goes along with any and all impulses. Not at all. It is simply becoming the person you were meant to be. Who you really want to be. Not what the society, your parents or extended family want you to be. Not what your ego — conscious self — tells you to be, but who you deep down know to be.

It is not as simple as it sounds, sadly. I’d say most of us in the West are so incredibly cut off from our feelings that we don’t even know when we are going against or along our inner Self. For this requires practice in stillness. Something that’s almost a dirty word these days. Every waking moment, we are doing something. Watching something, reading something, playing something or talking about something. Notification here, notification there. Instant messages on multiple platforms. Dozens of emails a day. There is no space for our inner world. Thankfully it is becoming more mainstream — as of late — to be into self-improvement, sadly many are too good at fooling themselves into thinking that they are on the right path when in actuality, they are going in circles in the starting square.

It is naturally part of the ego to be threatened by such endeavors. To it, this would mean losing some of it’s power, some of it’s control. Of course, this isn’t true in the slightest. One does not lose control by learning about themselves, but rather gains it. Without trauma responses, automatic negative thoughts, defenses flaring up and suppressed emotions waiting to explode, we can think, feel and act more freely, with much more control over ourselves. Only after removing these barriers and noise from our minds can we be still enough to hear what our souls tell us.

To be very honest, religions across ages have had these methods laid out in the open for everyone to see for thousands and thousands of years, most simply misunderstand the messages. Either taking them too literally or complicating the simple things. This is only natural however. Evolutionarily it is advantageous to not face your fears, so our minds will do anything to not face its internal ones. It's much easier to think that there's a blissful place you'll go to once you die, than to let your ego die in the here and now. Sadly what we don't see is that we are already there. All we have to do is to let go of the prison that is our own mind. But that is a topic for another time.

Part of my personal journey to individuation is to try to help others on their journeys. Something I would have never thought I’d end up doing, but here we are and I’m a little bit happier for it.

- J.M.J. Rapids