The Subconscious Mind - A Deep Dive

While we're all familiar with the fact that we have a Subconscious mind, there's very few of us who know how it works, what it's role is, how much of what we do is governed by it.

Maybe you'll ask the 'Why'...... 'Why do we need to know?'

                                         

Because....it can be a powerful ally. Once you understand it, you can actually learn to harness it. It's after all you. It's just that it's highly programmed based on past experiences, and functions from that space. It's just about how we can access it.

Think about it. There's tons of books out there that tell you how to be a great leader, and they're all good stuff..... yet we have very few great leaders.

There's tons of books on how to get rich, good stuff again, yet we all think....if we could read a book and get rich, the whole world would be rich, haha.

There's books on how to make relationships work. Again, the same...we all want to, but how many of us can sustain great relationships.

So, Why?

Why is it that we seem to know what we want, know what we need to do....... yet don't get there?

It's because it's the Subconscious mind that's controlling your behavior....and believe it or not, to a large extent it controls your external reality as well.

Let's try and get a little more familiar with this hidden and mysterious facet of ourselves.

I'll take this in two parts. First, what it's about and how it controls behavior. (the controls external reality, another time, another day :)

                      

Recall Understanding the Mind?  We said the conscious mind was 12% and the Subconscious mind 88% of the mind. And because it works on pre-programming it's way way more powerful.

And the subconscious mind in turn had two components; the modern memory,and the primitive memory. For the purpose of this write up, let's stay with Modern memory. 

Modern memory is each and every memory that's been sensed by the body since the time of birth. Sensory plus Feeling. It is a ware house, a data base of every single memory of your's, and it's capacity is unlimited. 

Under hypnosis, older people can often remember, with perfect clarity, events from fifty years before. Your unconscious memory is virtually perfect. It is your conscious recall that is suspect.

And it stores all of these experiences in patterns, and the patterns start to form early in life, pretty much done by the age of 8.  And that's set the stage for the programming.

And then, it's job is to ensure you respond exactly the way you were programmed. Your subconscious mind makes everything you say and do fit a pattern consistent with your self-concept, your “master program.”

The subconscious mind has no volition of its own. It will simply act upon what resides and vibrates within.

Your subconscious mind has what is called a homeostatic impulse.

Homeostatis by definition is the tendency to come back to balance or equilibrium.

For instance, the heartbeat...in fear or exercise it gets rapid, and its the subconscious that brings it back to equilibrium. It's also for instance what keeps your body temperature at your 98.4 C.

And on the same principle, the subconscious works on the mental realm, by keeping you thinking and acting in a manner consistent with what you have done and said in the past, based on which it's been programmed. For instance, if the child has been exposed to clear hierarchy in decision making in childhood, that will be the homeostatic state for that adult.

Which is why behavior patterns are so difficult to change.

But then, this is exactly where we can harness it. It does not think. Your conscious mind commands and your subconscious mind obeys.

"Your subconscious mind is an unquestioning servant that works day and night to make your behavior fits a pattern consistent with your emotionalized thoughts, hopes, and desires. Your subconscious mind grows either flowers or weeds in the garden of your life, whichever you plant by the mental equivalents you create."

All your comfort zones, pleasurable or painful are memorized and patterned, and it works to keep you in them.

Your subconscious mind causes you to feel emotionally and physically uncomfortable whenever you attempt to do anything new or different, or to change any of your established patterns of behavior.

The key is to change those patterns. First become conscious of them. We are so attached to this image of what we are and how we think, that even the thought of consciously changing a pattern seems alien.

But think about it. Think of other perspectives. Better still....think of non judgmental. Think of it deep..deep...deep.

Play around with the idea. How empowering would it be to move from that 12%......move to 20, then 40, then 70, then 90......and at 100, you'd be Jesus. 

Freud said, “We learn as children how we react emotionally and this is carried into adulthood. When we are children, we do not have the faculties that we do in adulthood. We do not know what we are going to need in adulthood to cope. Therefore, as adults we (often) react as children.”

Whether Buddha or Jesus....what they really did was to harness their entire minds into the present.

Maybe we don't want to be Buddha or Jesus........ but we can surely shift that bar....become better me's :)