Conscious vs. subconscious mind, who am I?

WHY IS THIS TOPIC IMPORTANT?

The subconscious mind and the non-voluntary behavior of our nervous system gives us much trouble in life. I, therefore, find it extremely important to understand the mechanisms and what I can do about it to gain control over my behavior on all levels of life, both body and mind.

We have all heard about the subconscious mind as something outside yourself or a part of our mind we cannot control. Sometimes it works against us and we, therefore, need to reprogram it. We know very little about it and this can be frightening, especially when we realize how much it can impact our lives.

WHAT IS THE SUBCONSCIOUS MIND?

I suppose a shrink will have a much more precise definition and answer, I will only present a simple, but for me very understandable picture I have made to explain it to myself.

My body is a magnificent and wonderful machine and it is a product of billions of years of evolution, refinement, and design. It has a unique property and skill. It can operate autonomously in any situation with the purpose of keeping me alive, well and secure so I get an offspring that can both take care of me when I get old and can make sure the human race continues to exist in this world.
This is the main focus of every living body, from the cell of the smallest amoebae to the trillion of cells that form the colossal biggest whale.

This enormously complicated machine is controlled by a supercomputer with working parts, not only in the central nervous system, i.e. the brain and spine, but in every little cell in your body. It is actually a misconception to divide the body into the nervous system and the rest because it all work together in a very intricate way.

My body lets me feel through my senses and operate, move and communicate in this world. But, as I wrote in an earlier post, I am not my body. The body is more like the vehicle that lets me participate in and experience this world. An analogy that can illustrate this, is a gigantic cruise ship being the body (with the subconscious mind) and the conscious mind is the captain. The ship with its crew and all technical machinery can operate completely autonomous and can soon navigate from A to B anywhere in the world without any captain at all, but luckily we all are the captains in our lives.

THE CONSCIOUS MIND IN THE EVOLUTION CONTEXT

As a matter of fact. The conscious mind is evolution’s latest addendum to the body of a living creature in this world. It resides in a part of the brain called the frontal lobe.

THE CONSCIOUS AND SUBCONSCIOUS MIND USING A COMPUTER ANALOGY

There are only a few problems with this. One of them is this:
If you use a computer as an analogy for the brain and the mind, the conscious mind is like a simple calculator in comparison to the subconscious part that is like a supercomputer. It is a vast difference in both computing speed and bandwidth when you compare the two. So when they are competing with each other, the subconscious is enormously more effective and powerful. The conscious mind is still the captain, but he has to know how to handle the enormous, powerful and complicated machinery he wants to control and master.

Another problem is this: The two minds are learning (i.e. is programmed) differently. The conscious learn by reasoning and understanding, but the subconscious learns through observation and repetition. Therefore as humans, we spend the first seven years of our lives, just recording and programming the subconscious mind in order to be able to operate autonomously in this world and society.

HOW DOES THE SUBCONSCIOUS MIND LEARN?

A child watches his parents how they operate in different situations and learns in that way how to behave themselves. It also learns how to walk and talk in the same way. A child will automatically learn a new language just by listening, trying and failing, or how to walk by watching trying and failing.

The subconscious learning mechanism is, therefore, best compared with a tape recorder. While you can reason with the conscious mind to make it change, you cannot do the same with the subconscious mind. It is like trying to argue with a tape recorder to play different music. It is impossible because it is no one listening. The tape recorder is a static “dead” machine, and you have to physically change the tape to make it play different music.

CONCLUSION

It is no problem to see why it is so difficult to change behavior and habits since it, for the most part, resides in the subconscious mind and we are not even aware of them. 95% of the time we operate on autopilot, thus only 5% is actual conscious living. If I do nothing about it, 95% of the time I live the already programmed life and only 5% I operate out of my own free will.

Every driver has experienced driving for hours without remembering anything from the traffic, landscape or road that has passed outside. Who was driving the car? Was it you? It was the subconscious mind controlling everything needed to bring you from A to B in a car even with complicated traffic to relate to.

As the captain on the ship, it is both our duty and in our power to control the ship, no matter how big or complicated it is. There are numerous methods to reprogram the subconscious mind and behavior of our body: hypnosis, repetition, tapping, NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming), Energy Psychology to mention a few, but I have to be conscious about doing it, knowing what I want and address it with the correct method or tool.

By taking control over the subconscious part of our mind we can, therefore, gain 100% control of our life, instead of being victims of our own faulty subconscious mind.

NEXT POST

The topic is very complicated and vast, but I will share what I understand in the future. Next post will describe one of the techniques used to change the subconscious programs, i.e. tapping. I will start with a simple technique called temple tapping. What is tapping and how / why does it work? So stay tuned and subscribe to this blog to be notified when stuff is published.

Have a nice day 🙂

RESOURCES

 
Do you like what you read?
 
[vifblike btntype=”iframe”]