For quite a while now I have been explaining and talking about things that have mostly to do with the conscious mind and its devices and mechanisms. Today I thought I would switch gears and speak about the other part of the mind that we are, by and large unaware of most of the time and that is the unconscious mind. What I would like to do now is to give your conscious mind a better understanding of the unconscious mind. One thing I thing I think that is really important about the unconscious mind is that the unconscious mind is the part of our minds that is responsible for all of the changes in our lives we make at any time.
I believe it is also important to take a moment to define the meaning of the unconscious mind which is: The part of your mind that you’re not conscious of… right … now. Think about that for a moment, until I mentioned it you weren’t conscious of the feeling of your feet against the floor, or possibly you’re back against the chair, maybe you weren’t conscious of the sound of some of the things around you, like the sound the air makes passing thought ventilation system in your home, or the sound of the muffled noise coming from outside of your home, all of those noises you weren’t conscious of, certainly you weren’t conscious of your eyes blinking, or the beating of your heart.
The prime directives of the unconscious mind put the notion of change into perspective, because when we create changes the changes we make they are going to happen at the unconscious level and in conjunction with the unconscious mind. So let’s examine the prime directives of the unconscious mind.
1.) The unconscious mind primary function is to store your memories; it stores your temporal and temporal memories and their relationship to your personal timeline. The word “relationship” is important here as it is also the job of the unconscious to create relationships and connectedness at the unconscious level, which is also in regards to the unconscious in storing our memories.
2.) The unconscious is the domain of the emotions, its where all of our emotions “live”, someone who is not very in touch with there emotions may not be very well connected to their unconscious as well as someone that is well connected to their emotions. Simply the unconscious is the part of us that feels, although certainly we are conscious of our emotions, typically emotions are stored, organized and kept in the unconscious mind.
3.) The unconscious organizes our memories; it maintains and creates our personal timeline chronicling the events and moments of our lives. The unconscious stores our memories in chronological order, but also it organizes them by subject and to feelings, this is what allows us to have chains of memories that feed each other when we think of them.
4.) The unconscious will repress memories that have unresolved negative emotions. Often times I have heard an expression to the effect of “I just took it and stuffed it down, or I took it and went on” well where does all this negative feeling go? The answer is straight into the unconscious. If you have moments in your life where your memory is dim or someone has told you about a time they shared with you that you have no memory of, chances are that your unconscious has taken these memories and hid them from you.
5.) The unconscious presents repressed memories for resolution; it waits until another time to bring those memories back to you when they can be handled when it is more rational for you to do so to release stored negative emotions. Primarily I believe that it does this because both your conscious and unconscious mind realizes how potentially harmful or stressful these emotions can be. This is also why you may from time to time have memories that just pop up seeming out of nowhere that you feel like “oh maybe I need to think about this now” and gain resolution on them, if you have had something like this happen to you, you may have noticed that since having gained resolution on it, it has ceased to bother you.
6.) The unconscious does have the right to keep repressed emotions repressed for your own protection. This is the mechanism that keeps from recalling the full content of a certain memory.
7.) The unconscious runs the body, this couldn’t be considered as anything less than entirely wonderful, imagine if you had to remind yourself to breathe all the time, or remind your kidneys to function, or even keep tabs on what your spleen is doing. Not to mention how well would we all sleep if we kept waking up to remind our bodies to just function? Gratefully we don’t have to do this; our unconscious is maintaining these things for us at all times. (*note: A lot of times people have told me that they are afraid to trust their unconscious mind. I usually have to ask “well who ran your body last night while you were asleep?” and they usually ask “what do you mean?” and I then ask “did you sleep ok” and they of course say “yes” and then I ask “well whom did you trust all night to run your body while you are sleeping?” and of course that is their unconscious mind. The unconscious mind also has a blue print of your body, and it also has a blue print of perfect health, it keeps inside what’s known as “the higher self” or if you like in the deepest part of the unconscious mind. This is what our bodies utilize when we are healing from any injury.
8.) The unconscious mind preserves the body. This is the highest prime directive of the unconscious mind. Sometimes the unconscious can forget this directive or become confused and have difficulty following this rule, this is how things like disease set in and can be very troublesome if not fatal.
9.) The unconscious is a highly moral being, it accepts the moral you have been taught, or have grown to accept in time as you have developed through out your life via experience. Whatever form of moral you have the unconscious holds to these and will follow them exclusively.
10.) The unconscious mind enjoys serving, and requires really clear orders to follow. Most people give their unconscious mind very conflicting messages unintentionally and this causes the unconscious mind to become confused. Example: One day a person will say to themselves they are a good person and the next day; tell themselves they are no good. This leaves the unconscious confused and unclear what to do to help resolve the conflict. One of the most important things we can do is to give our unconscious mind very clear and consistent directives to assist it in following our wishes, if we did; I believe we would all find ourselves in very desirable positions or situations frequently in our lives.
11.) The unconscious mind maintains and controls all perceptions. This is a unique ability of the unconscious as this also directly controls our senses such as hearing and vision. Once a good rapport is established with ones unconscious you can literally ask it to tune your senses and find that you can sharpen your hearing, eye sight, sense of smell, touch and taste. Additionally this is also includes any type of abilities that are referred to as extra sensory perceptions aka sixth senses such as telekinesis, telekinetic, psychic, etc…
12.) The unconscious is charge of the generation, storage, transmission, creation, and distribution of energy through out the body.
13.) The unconscious mind is in charge of instincts, such as our fight or flight responses.
14.) The unconscious mind is in charge of generation habits, both good and bad habits. All habits typically required repetition in order to be installed in the unconscious. It is important to note that the repetition that is required to install such habits are not purely a physical exercise, you can practice a habit mentally and achieve the same results as if you have been doing it for years, by just running through the pattern of performing the habit repeatedly ones mind. Most often habits that most people will call addictions are formed in this manner. The person will repeat the harmful pattern or the practice of performing the habit in their minds over and over again, so that is it like a circle that keeps them performing the habit over and over again in their minds, even when they are not performing it. This is why the habit that we call addictions can be problematic at best to change, most people focus solely on the physical acts/cravings/problems and spend very little effort in changing the mental processes associated to the habit, this I believe is because practicing the habit mentally becomes such an automatic process that it is not very easy to recognize when the pattern is running through the persons mind. But if we can sensitize ourselves and change these internal processes then the physical aspect of releasing a habit becomes very easy and is 99.9% effective in achieving a permanent change for any type of habit.
15.) The unconscious mind is programmed to always seek more and more, which means there is always more to discover. When ever we hear about any subject we often assume that there always is more information to be learned than what we are initially presented. This is primarily because our unconscious mind works by comparison, and in this we always seek more and more examples to compare any experience to in order to provide us with answers when needed at any given time or in any situation to gain not only understanding, but also to provide resolutions to any problems that may arise.
16.) The unconscious mind functions best as a whole integrated unit. The habits one can have are often driven by what is referred to as a part. Essentially it is a part of the person that is drives them to perform a habit, or is responsible for actions or behaviors that the person displays. I.E. “part of me wants to stop smoking, and part of me doesn’t.” The only way this can be resolved is by having both parts in conflict re-integrated back into the whole so that hey can serve their purpose for the whole person and not the habit or behavior.
17.) The unconscious mind is symbolic it uses and responds to symbols. The first person to really point this out was Carl Yung (Psyche and Symbols.) Remember that most of what the unconscious gives us may be very symbolic and may actually not be a memory of the event or item that is represented.
18.) The unconscious mind takes every thing personally. It’s important to remember that what you say about others around you your unconscious can and will interpret that as how you view yourself. This can be both a good and bad thing, if you can get control of how you think then you can control the messages your unconscious receives frequently. A wise man once said “See everyone as if they are divine” (Swami Vivekananda), when it comes to our unconscious nothing could be more beneficial, because if all you see before you is divine then the more you see yourself as divine, and in turn your unconscious will follow this and assist you accordingly.
19.) The unconscious works on the principle of least effort. It will always take the path of least resistance to achieve its ends, or it will do as little as possible to achieve all that you have asked it to do.
20.) The unconscious mind does not process negatives. I have talked about this in a previous posting, but I felt that it was so important it bears repeating. In order for us to not think of something we have to think about it first and then negate the original thought. I.E. “Don’t think of a blue tree.”
This is as complete a description of the motives and methods of the unconscious mind. Always remember the unconscious is very much like a 7 years old child that loves you very much and will do anything you ask of it, although it can be confused and splintered just like our conscious mind can. But in know this powerful resource you have available and at your disposal everyday all day and every night of your life can be most helpful and an enriching experience.
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