The idea that we can resolve or release all of the unconscious material is ultimately a myth. Even highly revered spiritual figures imagined as “perfected beings” have not completely transcended conditioning. When I use the term “psyche”, I’m pointing to dimensions that can never be fully deconditioned.

Take the example of a dream. There may be specific conditioned patterns, like tension with your spouse, that can be worked through and released via dreamwork. But there are countless aspects of the dream that are intrinsic to the human condition – the fact that we dream at all, the archetypes and associations the dream draws upon, all the cultural conditioning around relationships, communication, gender. These are never going to disappear.

So skillful psyche work involves both: 1) Diligently investigating and deconditioning specific patterns that create suffering and separation. 2) Deeply accepting that conditioning permeates our existence and experience all the way down, and much of it will never be rooted out.

The endpoint of the psyche thread is seeing absolutely everything we experience is the product of conditioning. Paradoxically, truly accepting this allows the whole construct of “conditioning” to collapse. The “me” who was working with the conditioning is seen as just more conditioning. With no separation between the conditioned and the unconditioned, the whole frame of reference dissolves.

Things simply are as they are, but this is very different than saying you’ve eliminated all conditioning and become some ethereal, perfected being. The notion that you can fully transcend the human condition is a seductive spiritual myth. The invitation is to embrace the totality of conditioning, at which point the problem of conditioning ceases to be a problem.