An unbalanced psyche in the direction of overwhelming conscious direction to action will unerringly result in an overwhelmed psychic state. A clear distinction must here be made between conscious awareness – an awareness of consciousness’ contents, and conscious direction – an arising thought in consciousness with the intentional content of directing an action or proceeding subsequent phenomena. While conscious direction is an emergence from the unconscious, and conditioned by prior factors, its biological role is useful in everyday life to override automatic instincts, emotions, and other natural hindrances, as well as for understanding and maneuvering through complex social behavior and innovation and exploration of unknown frontiers. The conscious rational faculty always is employed in conscious direction, and is a tool we have at our disposal for intuiting and planning, for evaluation and contemplation. This is entirely useful, most of the time, but as we will see, employment of rationality, and conscious direction, can often be sub-optimal and a hindrance to progressing towards our aims, and in manifesting action in accordance with our values. That being said, one can be aware of the content of consciousness while limiting consciousness’ desire to counter the unconscious in controlling every moment of the individual’s life.

Wisdom dictates the appropriate action in a given circumstance, in certain circumstances it is most beneficial to consciously employ the use of the unconsciousness in acting spontaneously or emotionally as opposed to the rational attitude of consciousness. This is possible to do, and can cause relief in circumstances of “overthinking” minute decisions of little importance, by consciously employing a spontaneous unconscious mode of being (reciprocity) in the face of the present moment’s perceived qualities. We can opt for this mode of being marked by spontaneity rather than conscious direction when the situation calls for acting quickly rather than having a delayed, rational response. The conscious employment of this method doesn’t upset the ego and the controlling nature of the ego, neither does it give too much free roam to the unconscious as it is conditionally put into play. 

A conscious direction to walking on the muscular or individual motion level, is increasingly impractical as you grow past the infants initial understanding of the action. It is something best picked up, learned, and delegated to the employment of the unconscious. You can spend all day focusing on the raising of the heel, the bend of the knee, the twist of the hips, in making a single step, or, as we normally do, we merely walk without conscious direction of the individual motions. We can see here how overthinking in the form of over directing in many cases is entirely impractical. In this way one can delegate, or resist the urge to have a consciously directed mindset, and in turn utilize the psyches unconscious to the benefit of the individual, this is part of the integration aspect in the growth of consciousness. The ability for the psyche to use its parts to the best of its abilities is here the topic in question. One wouldn’t want to unconsciously direct an army, just as one wouldn’t want to consciously direct every movement of every soldier, we don’t want to remain unconscious through life, neither do we want to focus on blinking or inhaling and exhaling every moment of the day.

While the unconscious is not conscious by its very nature, the relinquishment of control by the conscious part of the psyche is possible, enabling a spontaneous, perhaps emotional, instinctual response. This instinctual or habitual response can be trained in accordance with our consciously uncovered value system, through the prior employment of conscious direction. Every experience seeks to better inform our knowledge, both consciously integrated and unconsciously collected, and the conscious direction towards patterns of behavior can serve to form the body and its responses to the environment in an optimal way. In terms of recognizing the difference, and evidence towards the usefulness of the employment of unconsciousness, we can attempt to experientially realize it in our everyday experience. Just try consciously either smiling or mean mugging any passing human as they pass you on the street, then consciously choose to stop, and just allow the whole of the psyche to naturally give the response which is most naturally manifests, given the individual interaction. Or consciously choose to blink your eyelids down, then back up, then restrict the conscious directing of the activity, and see how every moment of the day your unconscious is directing your eyelids. This demonstrates the effect, and ability of consciousness in both its own ability to be a direct causal precursor, which yet is still determined by causes, but also to relinquish the conscious knowledge in the form of a thought depicting the bodies next action, causing an “unconscious” reaction.

I say all this to say, we don’t know exactly when and what we should be consciously aware of, or in which situations to rationally or spontaneously enter into, this is a question of wisdom, and I think a mixture of both is the only answer, and a well-integrated psyche is that mode of being which is best prepared for such an endeavor. Through experience we learn which things we value enough to provide optimal conscious direction in response to, and which things are better off handled unconsciously. It is possible to consciously direct the implementation of unconscious behaviors and this can often be useful and wise.