As you research alternative treatments or holistic therapies just like Creative Homeopathy, the terms “individuation” or “individualization” come up a lot—both mean the same thing. If you scroll through our website, you will find this word mentioned many times. What does individuation mean exactly? Why should it be at the very base of every therapeutic endeavor? These are the question that I like to answer in laymen’s terms without sounding profane.
Suppose this is not challenging enough; I also like to put this concept into the bigger picture of health and spirituality. In the end, I will explain how Creative Homeopathy or other holistic approaches in alternative medicine can help to facilitate the process of individualization. Let’s start with a definition of this term.
The common definition of individualization
Look up the idea of “individualization” in an encyclopedia. You will learn that the term originates from sociology and refers to the transition of the individual from heteronomy to self–determination. This concept became popular in the Renaissance and progressed with the industrialization and modernization of Western societies.
The philosophical expression of individualization is individualism. Fair enough, we all should become individuals—an ideology which nowadays every advertisement propagates, or should I say, has been highjacked for their agenda? So what has individualization to do with health and therapy? Let’s start with mental health because this is where all well-being derives from.
Jung’s therapeutic understanding of individuation
The core meaning of “individualization,” as most holistic therapists use it, originates from Jungian psychoanalytic. Carl Gustav Jung is like the modern godfather of the notion that body and mind, subconsciousness, form a deeper connection. Most practitioners following a holistic, “interconnected” approach in medicine have read one or more of his books.
How Jung found the Holy Grail of individuation
For Jung, it all started in 1936 with a trip to India. Discovering Hindu mythology, he fell ill with dysentery and approached death. During this time, Jung, in a state close to a coma, has a series of dreams that refer to the Holy Grail, a recurring image in his visions. He later said that he understood that the Holy Grail represents the concept of individualization in the quest for the true self.
Individuation and the unconsciousness
Of most significant importance to his self-analysis, individuation for Jung goes beyond the classical diagrams of the representation of fate or providence to encompass a process of confrontation with the unconscious state of total psychic equilibrium, in which the categories of good and evil are meaningless:
Jung described individuation as a mystery that no one will ever understand.’ It was a ‘lonely quest’ resembling a ‘process of successive deaths,’ and to achieve it, one had to accept ‘confronting the impersonal.’ “Few people can endure such a search,” he believed, attributing his thoughts and vague and curious images to “the distance that separated him from Europe, from this environment so completely different” from the one he found in India.
Don’t get discouraged by Jung’s early statements. Individualization can be much more straightforward as he perceived it back then. Still, it is a lifelong conquest with elements of a rollercoaster. The dawning process of confronting one’s shadow aspects lurking in the unconscious is challenging.
Duality as a catalyst of enlightenment?
Jung believed that he connected his dreams in India to the fundamental question he had asked himself: in what way and why was evil, as he had perceived it in India, supported by educated people as a divine power?
For Jung, the concept of individuation is to be understood only in terms of the identifying and neutralizing hidden imprints in the unconscious that control our lives:
“The growth of the personality takes place from the unconscious.”
Carl Gustav Jung
Individuation in holistic therapy
To sum up Jung’s understanding of individualization, I need to simplify his concept and put it in the broader picture. The fundamental idea he conveyed was that we have unconscious programs hidden like malware in the System of our being. We acquired these “mental viruses” through trauma, conditioning, family, or society.
Some imprints got copied via epigenetics or have been on our soul’s “cloud drive” since many incarnations. These programs steer our lives and make us kind of predictable. But this determination is not even the most significant issue. The “problem” is that the imprints conflict with our true higher self. Through adaptation, we compromise our inherent free will. We are fixed on a karmic path if you will. Accordingly, we won’t be able to break free from our destiny until we deal with our subconscious imprints.
“Until you become aware of the unconscious, it will control your life and you will call it destiny.”
Carl Gustav Jung
According to Jung’s understanding, which is coherent with most other holistic philosophies, an individual can’t be without inner conflicts unless he understands and harmonizes his hidden imprints—the malicious programs, as I call them. These internal conflicts not only create mental issues like depression. It also can somatize and produce physical symptoms.
“Your visions become clearer when you look inside your own heart. He who looks outward dreams. He who looks within awakens.”
Carl Gustav Jung
Symptoms and diseases push individualization
The basic meaning of symptoms or diseases is rooted in their symbolic insinuation. They are a cryptic form of communication that indicates unconscious conflicts. In Creative Homeopathy, we call this communication “symptom language.” Suppose the mental conflict is not harmonized or even recognized through an illness. In that case, the soul might even give up on its current incarnation and uses the disease to restart the evolutionary game of life—well, knowing that a “respawn” in the following embodiment is inevitable.
The tragedy of death for the soul is nothing more than a shortcut to progressing its evolutionary process when confronted with a dead-end incarnation where the mind got so rigid and fearful no further advancement is possible. Here we also might find one reason why some kids go through intense episodes of illnesses in early childhood.
Communication of the unconscious
In holistic therapy like Creative Homeopathy, we use the language of symptoms to identify the imprints and harmonize them. There are many ways to do that. From traditional psychotherapy, as Jung used it, to techniques like Holotropic Breathwork or even the therapeutic application of LSD or Ayauvasca are all aimed at resolving these imprints and, thus, facilitating individualization. These methods are geared to confront the patterns and their underlying traumata straightforwardly.
Individualization and homeopathy
As Creative Homeopaths, we are convinced that homeopathic remedies are a subtle but powerful way to neutralize/harmonize these obnoxious programs. It still needs the inner effort of the individual to become “healthy,” but homeopathy supports the process in a significant manner. After all, healing is an inside job. We explained this process meticulously in our “Organon of holistic healing” series of articles.
When we talk about individualization in one of our articles, we always refer to the intention of getting rid of foreign programs. The healing facet is instead a side-effect of this process. Even more important is the aspect of liberation from the herd mentality, which is part of the System that keeps us stuck in loops of suffering and cycles of incarnation until we face our greatest fear—our own shadow aspect of our being.
Liberation from the System
The System is the prison and the catalytic element for evolution because there is no progression without any challenge. The grand goal is to become liberated from all imprints and inner judgment, freeing us from karmic destiny and the wheel of incarnation. This allows us to proceed to the next level inside the Matrix. A wide variety of instruments that can help accomplish this objective can be found in holistic therapy. Creative Homeopathy is undoubtedly a great asset in this toolbox.
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