The key to understanding this lies in the term 'the evaluative mind' – the process of evaluation involves (we could say) two steps, one being the act whereby we impose our own framework of meaning on the world, the other being the step in which we reference everything we come across to the framework of meaning. Alternatively, we could say that the process of evaluation involves comparing incoming information to our assumed categories such that when there is a match (or a 'fit') it's a YES and when there isn't a match then it's a NO. The YES and the NO are our evaluation, obviously, and no matter how sophisticated the process gets it always comes down to this basic 'act of comparison' of information to our assumed framework of meaning.
There is huge security in YES and NO; there is immense security. What does this thing we're calling 'security' mean, however? We use the word very easily, and we all think we know what we're talking about, but what exactly is it? Obviously, security is some we are magnetically drawn to, something we unfailingly gravitate to, and feel safe with, but why? What's going on here? One answer is to say (the sense of) security is what we get when we live in a purely conceptual reality! A purely conceptual reality is – clearly – a reality in which everything has already been decided; it is a reality in which everything has already been allocated its right and proper place (according to the all-important framework) and where – on this account – nothing will ever radically surprise us. How can our concepts ever 'surprise' us after all? Didn't we make them ourselves? The purely conceptual reality is therefore a reality in which 'the radically new' has been forever excluded and it is precisely this 'impossibility of us ever encountering the radically new' that constitutes security for us. That's what makes us feel safe!
So this gives us one way of explaining what is meant by the term 'security' (or ontological security as it is sometimes called) and the other, complementary way of approaching this is to say that living in a fully mapped-out terrain represents security for us because it allows or facilitates the existence of the everyday self. Naturally the concept of 'security' boils down to the self – what else would it come down to? It's only ever the insecure everyday self that keeps going on and on about 'security', and those things that stand for security; it's only ever the insecure everyday self that finds 'security' so damn important. The reason for this (which we could see as clearly as day if we sat down and reflected on it) is that the everyday self doesn't actually exist. It's merely a construct, an arbitrary 'made-up' kind of a thing. It's something we choose to believe in just for the sake of having something solid to believe in! We choose to believe in it and then we conveniently choose to forget that we made this choice. That's the whole game in a nutshell.
The only reason we find validation important is because we don't actually have any. We don't have any 'validity' and so we have to keep on arranging it for ourselves; we have to keep on arranging it for ourselves because we know dam well (no matter what we say to the contrary) that we wouldn't have any otherwise. The great thing about the purely conceptual reality is therefore is that the everyday self feels right at home in it – the everyday self feels right at home in the conceptual world because it too is a concept, like everything else in this world. It fits in perfectly – like a key in a lock or like a little cog in a big, smoothly running machine. It never stands out, it never 'looks weird', it never fails to engage properly with all the other concepts, all the other 'machine-parts'. There are no discrepancies anywhere, no odd dissonances, no mismatches, no funny feelings, no unpleasant feelings of 'not belonging'. The self fits into the purely conceptual world as well as it does because it is a concept in a world that is made up of them, a world where everything has to agree with the all-important 'assumed framework'….
What a situation this puts us in though. We are obliged to maintain the integrity of the conceptual world without ever owning up to the fact that this is what we are doing, which puts a very odd strain on things. What's more, we are obliged to keep reality itself at bay and make do instead with our cheap plastic substitute. Just to consider this, even for a moment or two, is enough to send a chill up our spines. Who on earth could be OK about this? What a fantastically bizarre (not to mention freakishly unpleasant) business this is and who – in all honesty – could claim that this is not our situation? No matter how dumb we might pretend to be, underneath it we're not dumb at all – we know more than we let on to ourselves to know. We're all doing this very strange thing therefore – we're all keeping up this collective pretence (or pretence for the sake of the collective) that there isn't a deeper truth than 'the truth of our concepts' when actually everyone knows deep down that there is. We have this 'allegiance' to the act going on, even though the act (or the pretence) is never actually going to do anything for us other than produce suffering.
The 'deeper truth' is that certainty doesn't exist at all in this world; certainty only exists in the game, or – as we might also say – certainty only exists when we are too afraid to look deeply into things. When we're too afraid to look deeply into things (which is the usual state of affairs) then the purely conceptual world suits us down to the ground. The PCW suits us down to the ground because there's nothing beyond it, because 'what it says on the label is all there is'. It's true that there can be frightening things in the conceptual world, but no matter how frightening they might be they're not frightening in the sense that they cause us to question the reality of the conceptual self! The contrary is true – all those fears and worries that are related to the conceptual world confirm the existence of the conceptual self. In terms of 'the game', we can equivalently say that being afraid of losing at the game – no matter how afraid we might be – doesn't cause us to doubt the existence of the game – rather, it makes the game all the more real to us.
There are those desires and those fears which belong to the conceptual world, and there are also those feelings that connect us or relate us to the non-conceptual realm, and which can on the one hand be frankly terrifying, but also on the other hand can be marvellously thrilling and magically evocative. Which way it goes depends upon our relationship to the 'radical unknown' – whether we are well-disposed towards it or not-so-well disposed to it (i.e. whether we are adventurous or conservative in our outlook). Insofar as our allegiance is to the Polar Self (the self which is made up of YES and NO reactions, positive and negative judgements) then our relationship with the non-conceptual world is going to be one of flat uncompromising terror, terror with no 'give' in it at all. This is not the ordinary everyday type of fear, which we can relate to something known, something specified, but the type of 'super-fear' that is evoked by the radical unknown, which is something that we have successfully (if temporarily) denied, and then forgotten about.
This is of course what happens every time we deny something that we are afraid of – by refusing to admit that it exists we make it not just a thousand times (or a million times) more frightening, it puts what we are afraid of into another league of fear entirely. Our denial (which is supposed to protect us from fear) actually creates a whole new dimension of fear. The PCW is both a support system for the everyday self, and it is our full-scale denial of reality itself, which has no relationship whatsoever with our concepts. What sort of relationship can our literal descriptions have with the non-literal world that they are supposedly describing, after all? Or to put this another way, what sort of relationship does our 'imposed framework of meaning' have with the reality that we are imposing this meaning on? Do we really imagine that our cut-and-dried categories of thought are to be found anywhere outside of our thoughts? The whole point of this business of 'imposing a framework of meaning on the world' is that if we don't impose it then it won't be there; that's why we have to 'impose' it, after all!
Reality itself is different order of thing entirely from the models that are made of it by the thinking mind – there's no comparison. The conceptual reality is made up entirely of boxes, of categories, of YES's and NO's; it is made up entirely of 'predetermined answers to closed questions,' in other words. Non-conceptual reality, on the other hand, is just what it is – it doesn't relate to anything and it isn't an answer to any question. Non-conceptual reality doesn't have to relate to anything, it doesn't have to fit into any predetermined scheme of things, any 'framework'. Reality is free to as be 'as odd as it pleases', so to speak. From the point of view of any framework we might be using to orientate ourselves, reality is actually the oddest anything ever could be – it's right off the scale! That's why we always discount it. Reality – obviously enough – doesn't need to relate to anything or fit into anything; it doesn't need to relate to anything or fit into anything because there isn't anything apart from itself. What is there apart from reality, after all?
Living in the PCR is an utterly preposterous business – there's absolutely nothing good about it apart from the fact (important to us) that it confirms the existence of the conceptual self! No matter which way we turn we keep on bumping into our own over-used concepts, and if this isn't claustrophobic then what is? Our house, our dwelling place, is full of junk, and all for the sake of maintaining the conceptual self, which is itself junk! The whole thing keeps chasing itself around in circles. The conceptual self is junk and yet we are very much attached to it, which is to say, we are very much afraid of losing it. We're very much afraid of losing the conceptual self because we 'don't know anything else' and we're afraid of 'knowing anything else' because 'knowing something else' would fatally jeopardize the integrity of the illusory conceptual self! This is nature of the loop we're stuck in.
This world that we're living in a 'PCR', of this there can be no doubt. If the world as we experience it is 'intelligible to the rational mind' then it must be the conceptual reality that we're talking about. It wouldn't be intelligible in the rational mind's terms otherwise. The world we rationally understand (the intelligible world) is something that – as we have said – we have obtained for ourselves by imposing our 'assumed framework' on the world and then compelled everything to make sense in relation to it. The world doesn't make sense though – not really. Nothing 'makes sense'. The universe is an enigma, as Umberto Eco says. How often do we find ourselves in that world which fundamentally doesn't make sense to the rational / conceptual mind however? Or as we could also say, how often do we relate to the world not as the conceptual self, not seeing things only as they appear through the distorting lens of the self with all its biases and prejudices? How often do we 'step outside of ourselves', in other words? Are we even interested in such a thing?
'Therapy' is one thing, whilst 'living our life consciously, just as it is' is quite another. Therapy implies fixing – it's hard not to use the word and yet not mean that we want to 'do something about ourselves'. The whole point of therapy is that we aren't happy with ourselves the way we are and we want to do something about it. One definition of counselling that has been used (just to give one typical example) is that if we engage in it we can make 'meaningful and permanent changes' to our lives. Simply living our lives consciously (which means something to the effect of 'not looking the other way when something we don't want to see happens') has nothing to do with effecting change, either of a temporary or permanent nature. It just means being with ourselves during our day-to-day lives, and this is a very different kettle of fish. If we really do want to change ourselves then this business of 'simply being aware of ourselves' is not by any means an attractive prospect. It is in fact the complete opposite of an attractive prospect!
There is a good reason why becoming conscious of one's own life as it is without putting any kind of a spin on it is deeply unattractive to us. Stuff doesn't come any more unattractive. One is that we are bound in his case to see all the things about ourselves that we don't like, which is what Jung referred to as being aware of the shadow – there's nothing guaranteed to put us off as much as the prospect of seeing stuff about us that we would rather keep hidden. The shadow – as Jung says – is ultimately repellent – we'd do anything rather than see it. We will do the most extraordinary things rather than see it.There's another reason too, which is not quite as straightforward to understand, and that has to do with the over-throwing of our most prized assumptions about life. We could phrase what we are talking about here in terms of 'living your own life consciously instead of unconsciously' which has a nice ring to it. If we did phrase it in such a way this would however be entirely misleading since the more consciously I live my life the more clearly I start to see that the life in question (the life that is supposedly 'being lived') isn't actually mine!
There are two possibly ways we could take this dawning revelation, each being the 'mirror-image' of the other, so to speak. One way would be to find this insight tremendously interesting, tremendously exciting so that we want to go into it further and see where this particular road leads to, whilst the other way would be to find the whole thing deeply disturbing and unwelcome and – on this account – want to back away from it as fast as possible and go back to what we know and are comfortable with (which is the perception of this life being solely my life). If I start to perceive that the life I am living isn't really mine at all and I am attached to the idea that it is, then this perception will of course be very unwelcome to me. If I am attached to the idea that this familiar and comfortable sense of self is a real thing and not a construct then any awareness that falsifies this sense will manifest purely as fear, purely as threat, and I will resist it with everything that I've got.
But the reason we resist the awareness that 'I am not this self' (and that as a consequence 'this is not my life') is simply because of fear, not because there is anything genuinely interesting or worthwhile about the familiar and comfortable belief in the concrete self and its viewpoint. We're not 'upholding a positive value', we're simply hiding from a challenging truth. The safe and familiar viewpoint of the everyday self is – when it comes down to it – unrelentingly tedious. We may not want to admit this to ourselves, but it is nevertheless true. Honesty would show it to be true every time. This business of seeing everything from that narrow, limited, eternally fixed viewpoint seems, at the start, to have great possibilities in it but this perception of possibilities is entirely illusory. The self can be pleased with what is happening or it can be displeased, but this polarity (i.e. the polarity of 'like versus dislike') represents the limit of what is possible for it.
Life has only one direction – we might say – and that is the direction of moving beyond the self. The other direction – the trying of trying ever harder to successfully act out the narrow agenda of the self – isn't a direction at all. It isn't a direction at all because it doesn't lead us anywhere, because it doesn't take us anywhere. The self and its sterile game of 'advantage versus disadvantage' is not anywhere. It's not anywhere because  This is self is not who we are, and so it is always taking us away from who we are, and  it doesn't actually exist in the first place!
So of course the direction of moving beyond the self is tremendously interesting and tremendously exciting – this is the direction of life itself. This is the greatest adventure there is; this is the ONLY adventure there is! The only adventure worthy of the name is the adventure of leaving the self behind – anything else is merely distraction. Anything else is merely entertainment for the self. The repetitively tiresome antics of the self do not constitute an adventure – they constitute the avoidance of the adventure.
The point we were making a moment ago was that anything which isn't a 'going beyond the self' is an avoidance tactic, is a red-herring, is a decoy with which to divert ourselves. 'Refusal of the call converts the adventure into its negative' says Joseph Campbell and it is by utilizing distractions or red herring that we facilitate ourselves in avoiding the call to adventure. Society specializes in the provision of such distractions, such red herrings – distractions and red herrings are its 'stock in trade'! The 'collective of us' – which we call society or 'the social system' – has nothing at all to do with our emergence as truly autonomous individuals; it stunts and represses our growth as the true individuals we are at every opportunity. It might seem strange (or hard to believe) that society should be opposed to our growth; we naturally assume it to be for our 'common good', as the expression has it. Society is however like a parent who provides us with food and shelter, but who refuses to allow our growth. They might say, "Aren't I looking after you?" but being a parent involves more than just providing food, clothing and somewhere to sleep; it involves fostering independence of thought, it involves fostering autonomy – not making your charges into your slaves.
There really is no other way that what Jung calls 'collective thinking' can work – collective thinking necessarily works on generic lines and the generic is always inimical to the individual, to the unique. Society (like all groups, like all 'collectives') is an equilibrium system and as such it values only the equilibrium. All mechanical or rule-based systems only 'care' about one thing and that is that the rules are obeyed. The inbuilt tendency of the group to inhibit the psychological growth of the people making up the group is a very well known phenomenon. What psychotherapist has not seen her clients' growth and mental health being compromised by either family or peer-group or society in general? The social group – if we may consider it as an entity in its own right, which is what it functions as – values only its own stability, it values only it own continuation, its own pointless perpetuity. If the group were to be favourably disposed to the psychological growth of its members then this would be the same thing as it being 'favourably disposed to its own dissolution'. This is just not going to happen – the true individual may sacrifice himself or herself, but the collective never will.
If we think in terms of a large organization, in which there are always rules and regulations for everything, we can easily appreciate that it is no good you or me deciding that there is a better way to do things, and as a result disregarding the protocols that are already in existence. As far as the organization is concerned, this is simply 'non-compliance'. It is simply 'an error in the system' and as such it has to be corrected – one simply can't exist as an individual in an organization, in a collective. It's either 'the organization's way or the highway'. Collective thinking rules supreme – one just doesn't 'go against the group mind'! Even if it were possible (which in theory it may be) to make changes by going through the correct channels no radical change will ever be approved, only those changes that fit in with the over-all aim of the system. The system may be optimized, but it will never be meaningfully changed from within!
All human collectives actively block and repress 'the Hero's Journey', therefore. You can't be a hero if you're owned by the system! The group of people (most of us) who agree to stay within the bounds of the world-view that has been provided for us by the group mind is the group of people who have tacitly agreed to allow themselves to be distracted or diverted from this Journey. Personal growth ends, individuality dies stillborn, and all in the name of our 'allegiance to the common good', all in the name of what is laughably called 'being responsible'. We get to feel that we are being 'responsible adults' and we get to live the safe, predictable life that has been mapped out for us, but only at the price of the loss of our true individuality (which equals 'our inner death') – which clearly does not bode well for the future of the collective!
In short, the social system offers us the means of maintaining, promoting, upgrading and accessorizing the 'self-construct', which is the denial of our true, undefined (or unregulated) nature. Society is a machine and so is the everyday mind – both are based on precedent, both are based on rules, both function on the basis of fear (which is to say, 'the automatic avoidance of the new'). So here we are caught between the two tyrants of the thinking mind and rule-based society (both of which being aspects of the same thing, as David Bohm says) and somehow we have to find our own way. Our way is not the machine's way, our way is not society's way. And as difficult as it is, this is the task that lies before us. This is the Hero's Journey. Living one's own life (and not some idea of what it ought to be) is the Hero's Journey, and if we find the courage to take this journey we discover that the one who we thought was having the life in question, or living the life in question isn't actually who we are at all.