The Subtle Trap of Success

Becoming successful, without first clearing our unconscious toxicity and becoming aware of who we really are, may present a clear and present danger to our internal balance and well-being. As our degree of success increases, we may think that the unconscious toxicity lodged in the core of our being is irrelevant, or alternatively, we may believe that we don’t have any unconscious toxicity to deal with. But dismissing the effect of that unconscious toxicity on our lives, or denying its existence, does not mean that we have deactivated it. That unconscious toxicity is still alive deep inside us, watching and waiting, luxuriating in our denial of its existence, biding its time, attracting scant  attention, building its force and making its plans, all the while lulling us into thinking that it is no longer a threat.

The Threat of Unconscious Toxicity

Unconscious toxicity is always a threat. It will strike when it is ready and we are not. It will appear on its schedule and with its own agenda, one that is certain to be in conflict with ours. It will come when it has all the advantages and we have none. It will throw us off balance, and it will most assuredly wreak more havoc in our lives. Of course, when that unconscious toxicity surfaces, the most likely way that we will react to its appearance is by unleashing the three forces of alienation in an attempt to control the damage to our lives. In following that strategy, all that we will succeed in doing is to strengthen the very thing we wish to defeat, the patterns and manifestation of our unconscious toxicity.

Our young man from an earlier post may do well for a time, thinking he has finally walked away from his childhood and defeated his past manifestations of unconscious toxicity. Then one day, he may fall hopelessly in love with a beautiful young woman, who, in due course, will come to treat him as contemptuously and critically as his mother ever had. Or, he may land his dream job only to discover that his boss is as verbally abusive to him as his father once had been. Or even worse, he may simultaneously fall in love with the wrong woman and get a new job with a boss who is highly toxic to him. Too late, he is forced to realize that his unconscious toxicity rules his life.

Why Repression is Dangerous to Your Growth and Evolution

The lesson is clear. What we repress and deny is highly charged, although we may not feel it, and it is always dangerous to our interests, although we may not know it. I once wrote a short verse to describe the potency of unconscious toxicity. Unconscious toxicity has a purpose and a mission of its own, which is always antagonistic to our conscious hopes and plans. Its purpose is to defeat us by defeating our dreams and to render us frustrated and unfulfilled by continually repeating the toxic unconscious patterns of our past.

Within each and everyone of us,

Lives a shadow that never sleeps.

Its goal is deprivation.

It exults in our defeat.

External accomplishment does not automatically translate into inner achievement. Material success cannot compensate for internal emptiness and the loss of the Self. Greed is not a substitute for inner peace, and desire can never tell us who we are.