Carl Gustav Jung, the father of analytical psychology, was asked by John Freeman in an interview in 1959 if he remembered when was the first time he felt conscious of his own individual self. Jung answered, "That was in my 11th year. Suddenly, on my way to school, I have stepped out of the mist. It was as if until then I had been walking in a mist and I stepped out of it and I knew I AM. I am what I am. But then I thought, 'what had I been before?' And then I found out that I had been in a mist. Not knowing to differentiate me from other things. I was just one thing among many other things."
Like Jung, I became aware of my own existence at a very young age. Unlike Jung, whom upon his own awakening went on to find out everything about his own existence, whether conscious or unconscious and proceeded to translate his findings into facts that revolutionized the way we think about the human mind, I had felt that my awareness of my own existence was inconsequential in the grand scheme of things.
I tried to observe everything around me and make sense of everything, but not having the luxury of possessing an exceptional intellect, I could not come up with any rhyme or reason for the way things were and for the way I was in relation to them. As a consequence, my awakening wasn't such a pivotal moment in my life as it would have been had I been some genius. By the time I was a teenager I had such a great collection of questions about everything that I was drowning in them. They were not existential questions mind you, but things like why didn't I have wings like the birds, or if an apple tasted the same to everybody, or if tears were squeezed out of one's core with the same pain for everybody. I remember I was spending hours upon hours in one spot looking at the clouds and thinking. I liked my own company even though it frustrated me that I couldn't find any answers. More than one person concluded that I wasn't right in the head but I was too self-absorbed to hear any of that as more than a momentary offence.
I just needed to find some answers. Or better yet, I needed to find better questions. Needless to say, I wasn't successful in my quest so I concluded that it was all in vain. Whenever I had asked a question of people that were meant to teach me, they threw a title of a book at me as if the answer was in there. I had resented their solutions because it felt as if even if they had read the book they suggested, it hadn't altered their mind to the point where they could be bothered to remember whatever answer I was supposed to find in those books, but maybe that was just my mediocre opinion.
I remember when I was in high school and we were studying philosophy it felt like - finally! - finally, I shall have my answers. So I began to read Emil Cioran (Romanian philosopher) whom in my opinion makes Nietzsche look like an optimistic child, and I had started to contemplate suicide with a passion. My philosophy teacher suggested that I should read some Kant or Soren Kierkegaard to find some balance but it was too late. Cioran's ideas of doom and gloom and nothingness had imprinted in my average brain and refused to go away. So I attempted suicide several times, twice ending up in a coma to my mother's everlasting shame. After my failure to even die I concluded that even that was pointless and I should just exist. Oh, and to stop reading philosophy.
I had exited my teenage years as an angsty bundle of confusion. I suppose that's not unusual for a mediocre mind, but due to the fact the mediocre mind in question was mine, it had made all the difference. With a selfishness characteristic to all teenagers that think their feelings trump all others and their experience should affect everyone around them, I had managed to scar many people in my quest to save myself from what felt like drowning waters. But like all ignorant people, I failed to recognize anybody else's pain except my own.
Being born in a Christian Orthodox country I had the misfortune to be raised in a Protestant household. We were a minority in Romania and I remember how embarrassed I was all the time having to explain at school a belief that I didn't have but my parents were insisting on shoving down our throats. I hated it. I didn't believe any of it. So I was aware of the idea of God but had despised it. I thought I would continue to do so for a long time, but as things turned out, in a vulnerable moment it had caught me by surprise and the idea of all this love seduced me and one day I gave in to it. I thought I had nothing to lose except a few years, but I was determined to give it a fair shot. I was nineteen when I was surprised by Kindness.
Now, I could be unbelievably untrue for the sake of appearing righteous and say that I have found the answer to all my questions the moment I believed, but that's not what had happened. I didn't find the answer to any of the questions I had and I truly believe that if I wouldn't have been in a very vulnerable season in my life and wouldn't have been offered a little rest at that precise moment, I would have never believed at all. My reason and my conclusions, as poorly formed as they were, would have prevented me from ever considering the path I have chosen. So no, my beginning with Christianity wasn't some miraculous understanding of everything. I had merely found other questions and a different setting in which to consider finding an answer.
Becoming conscious separates us from animals. Reasoning, reflecting and meditating are traits that humans enjoy. Conscious awakening is desirable in a human and to some extent most people have a self awareness. A lot hate it so much that they hide it with self confidence or material things to the point that they themselves can't tell who they really are. A lot of people love it so much that they feel the need to shove it in everybody's faces and convince them that they are someone worth emulating. Then there are sages in every culture on earth, people that have reflected from the spot they find themselves in and concluded principles that their culture guide themselves on. Then there are philosophers. You can find them deep in thought on every subject imaginable or unimaginable. They are the loneliest people in the world for they are cursed with an intellect that can articulate whatever ails humanity but can't suffer mediocrity or even worse, stupidity. Sadly for them there are just too many of us!
The world is filled with proof of people's conscious awakening, in religion, science, art, politics, etc. It is desirable for a human to become conscious of his own existence. As for me becoming aware of my own existence was not enough.
I had concluded that the moment I have believed was the moment I had become conscious. Not conscious of my own existence because that didn't have a strong enough impact on my psyche, but conscious of God's existence. To my nineteen-year-old self, the understanding that I wasn't alone has made all the difference. The awareness of God's existence has made sense of mine.
by Cristina Pop
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