Are We At The Mercy Of Our Unconscious Mind?
The conscious vs. the unconscious, which one wins?
As a hypnotist, I spend my days helping people let go of life long fears, habits, and release thought cycles that keep them stuck.
In order to do this work, I get my clients into a state of theta brain waves so I can more easily communicate with their subconscious minds — this allows the client to find the core belief behind the challenge they are facing.
Influencing the subconscious, and changing its beliefs are key to making real lasting changes happen in your life.
But does that mean our conscious minds are little help when it comes to creating the life we want? Are we at the mercy of our subconscious?
And is everything in the subconscious… unavailable to us?
Understanding The Conscious Mind
Before we discuss this in-depth, let’s get a thorough understanding of what these aspects of our minds are.
Let’s first start with the conscious mind.
The conscious mind is the portion of your mind that is directed outward to observe and respond to the data of the physical world.
This is the part of your mind that you use to interpret your surroundings, make sense of things and make decisions based on its interpretations.
The conscious mind is also designed to turn inwards and receive data from our deeper self — the unconscious.
Many Western ideas are still rooted in the assumption that the conscious mind is only alert when we are awake. But this is not true.
The conscious mind is also aware in the dream state, because you have a sense of self — your “ego” — is present, which means your conscious mind is present.
The conscious mind is a psychological structure that is called the ego: the portion of your consciousness that focuses psychologically.
The conscious mind connects to the brain and allows you to perceive and experience the physical world.
It’s important to understand that your conscious mind is not awareness.
It’s merely a portion of the human psyche that is directed outwards, towards the physical world.
We can liken this part of your mind to the captain of a ship who watches the waters and makes decisions based on the information he receives.
Understanding The Unconscious Mind
The unconscious mind is the “inner self” — or the psychological structure created by “spirit — or Infinite Intelligence.
It’s the part of ourselves that contains universal memory and uses that date to form the tissue in the womb of our mothers.
There is a reason you look like your relatives, the cells remember the structure of your ancestors.
This universal memory seems to stretch further than our ancestors, as contained within this memory is the data of all of mankind.
We are creatures that have evolved over time, and the collective psyche of mankind has created a collective “unconscious.”
This gave birth to the Subconscious mind.
According to the “3 Level Mind Model” introduced by Sigmund Freud 1915, the subconscious mind, which is the part of your mind that controls all of your automatic responses, like your breath, heart beat and healing processes that occur when you’re sick or get injured.
It’s also the part of your mind that retains muscle memory and learns from repetition.
You know when you start learning a new skill, like riding a bike. The first few times you make some mistakes and fall down, and you have to really engage your conscious mind and think about nearly every move you are making.
But when you successfully ride the bike, your subconscious mind remembers it and begins engaging all of the muscles automatically the next time you ride the bike. As time goes on, think less about riding carefully and just riding.
The subconscious is the part of yourself that basically allows you to walk from one room to another without having to consciously engage each muscle required in the simple act of walking.
It’s our “automatic response center.”
It’s called the “sub”conscious mind because you can override these responses consciously (ex: breathwork, mindful walking, etc.).
Conscious Vs. Unconscious, Which Is In Control?
Now that you have a thorough understanding of these “different” parts of the mind, let’s answer the nagging question.
“Are we at the mercy of our unconscious minds?”
Well, let’s look at it this way.
I woke up this morning around 7:00am, really wanting to write . I had no idea what I wanted to write about, I just knew one thing, “I want to write.”
And here I am, sitting on my desktop already half-way done with a blog that just came to mind when looking at the blank screen.
Somehow, someway I ended up doing exactly what I’ve been thinking about.
Why am I telling you this?
Yes, it’s a simple phenomena but it still illustrates one important thing:
You always experience what you end up thinking about.
Just take a brief observation of the conditions or circumstances of your life today and you’ll find perfect reflections of the things you consciously focus on.
The circumstances of your experience can always be traced back to a thought, you maybe didn’t pay attention to it — but you definitely entertained the thought at a point.
No beliefs are unconscious, because all of your thoughts are byproducts or the “offspring” of your beliefs.
Therefore the act of observing your conscious train of thought will lead you to becoming aware of conscious beliefs that you were choosing not to pay attention to before.
You can direct your conscious attention wherever you please, which is the point I am making here.
You clearly are not at the mercy of the unconscious — let me break this down a bit more for you.
An Empowering Perspective For All
There are many ideas, especially in my field of work (hypnosis), that the unconscious mind “controls” our destiny and is inaccessible to us.
That we are somehow doomed by this wild and compulsive mind, and our past is dictating our every decision.
What they forgot to mention was that the “conscious” mind was created to interpret the present environment and make its decisions based on the data it receives, and that it was designed to operate spontaneously.
It was literally created to operate freely and creatively to the present moment, but when you believe that you are at mercy of the unconscious, you will consciously filter our “inner data” that is very present.
It is quite a conscious act. Even now, you can decide to stop reading this blog — regardless of what happened yesterday.
Clearly you are not at the mercy of the unconscious, but you have to believe that you’re not in order to be more aware of conscious unexamined (not unconscious) ideas and beliefs that you hold to be true.
If you are constantly working hard and not seeing the kind of success you want, it’s not because there is an “unseen block” preventing you from success.
The belief in an unseen block holding you back is exactly what makes it seem so, but if you paid attention to your streams of thought for one day you’d clearly see the ideas you hold of your ability to be successful.
You may be telling yourself throughout the day, “I don’t deserve success. I’m worthless and a failure, nothing is working. I am going to lose everything.”
These aren’t unconscious, they are likely just unexamined by you — meaning you’ve been so busy thinking to the thoughts that you haven’t stepped back to realize they are there in plain sight.
It is up to you to make a conscious choice to take your power back and direct your focus to other ideas, while reminding yourself your past beliefs are just ideas about reality, but not reality itself.
Our conscious mind is designed to see these things clearly.
Unfortunately, we have forgotten this, and our beliefs have “clouded” our vision.
You were not given a conscious mind for nothing, you have the power to make conscious decisions in this moment, completely irrelevant from the past.
However when you are unconscious that your beliefs create your experience, you will simply not allow yourself to see that your life is a materialization of your own beliefs, which were all chosen very consciously.
But even if you know your beliefs create your experience, it’s vitally important that you also believe that all information is available to you.
If you believe that you are at the mercy of the unconscious then it will seem that way to you, there is no way around this.
You are always in power. You can observe your dominant thinking patterns and they will lead you to your “beliefs” about reality.
These beliefs direct your dominant thinking, and you can change them whenever you make the conscious decision to do so.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record:
You are not at the mercy of the unconscious. But if you truly believe you are, then it will seem that way to you — deepening the conscious belief that created it.
Beliefs begin as ideas in the conscious mind, and these ideas are then accepted as “truths” about reality.
It’s the conscious mind that gives way to it all.
We can liken the conscious mind to a captain of the ship who watches the waters and makes decisions based on the information he receives, and sends orders to his crew (the unconscious) to carry out those decisions.
The conscious mind supplies the material (beliefs) to the unconscious mind. It is not the other way around.
What I am trying to make obvious here is that your own conscious mind is the creator of your entire experience because it’s directed externally to the physical world.
You consciously create your own reality, whether you believe it or not.
Getting Back Into The Driver’s Seat
1. Meditate to observe
One of the best ways to become aware of your conscious thinking and beliefs is to spend 30–60 minutes a day sitting in a relaxed position with the intention of becoming aware of the contents of your conscious mind.
I hesitate to say “mediate” because most people associate meditation with the absence of thought, however I am not telling you to stop thinking, rather I am telling you to sit down and let the thinking happen and become aware of it.
It’s important that when you do this practice you set the intention of dissecting the contents of your mind, as this intention will give you clear direction.
As you complete the session, begin listing out the dominant thoughts that kept coming up.
2. Journaling or “Awareness sessions”
Simply keep a pen and paper in front of you and begin writing out every thought that comes to the mind.
Fill up one to two pages, then go back and read it over without attaching any meaning to anything.
Don’t make up stories about each thought, this will reinforce the belief structure that is supporting these thoughts.
Instead observe them for what they are, just thoughts, nothing more than that.
3. Reflection questions
In both of the above practices, once you have all of your thoughts listed out, ask yourself this question:
“What beliefs are supporting these thoughts?” with the expectation that your mind will begin making them apparent.
Start listing these beliefs out.
You can achieve the same thing by asking yourself, “What do I believe to be true about life and my experience of it?”
You will see that a lot of the beliefs are the same exact as the dominant thinking thoughts that you think, and that is because a belief is simply a thought that you keep thinking.
Once you have your beliefs in front of you, you may think you’ve tapped out all of your beliefs, when in reality you probably didn’t.
I would take it one step further…
4. Listing out your “core” assumptions
In becoming aware of our conscious beliefs, it is of extreme importance that you visit your assumptions about reality too.
Such as “Life is short,” “People are evil,” and “You have to work hard to be successful.
Understand that these assumptions about reality aren’t necessarily true, but you just assume them to be so that itself creates outer circumstances to reflect that and reinforce it.
Visiting your assumptions is crucial as you are typically blinded to these beliefs because to you they seem like facts, not “beliefs,” — which they ultimately are.
Don’t just focus on the negative beliefs though, make it a point to reveal the positive ones and the positive effect they have in your life so you can begin reinforcing those deeper, and do so consciously.
Keep in mind I am using phrases such as, “positive” and “negative” with caution as I don’t want you to believe things are negative or positive because that is not the case, they just are. I am speaking in these terms to help you build your dream life more easily.
Once you have these beliefs in front of you, begin finding the ones that are helpful and put them on a separate list, we can call this list your “Deliberate beliefs.”
Then Go back to the ones that you see aren’t working for you and wish to drop from your experience. At this point, write the “alternative” belief on the list of your deliberate beliefs.
For example, let’s say you find that you have a belief that the body grows old, sick, and frail as the years pass and you no longer wish to believe that.
Go to your deliberate list and write something like, “The human body is whole, healthy, and strong. It grows stronger as I age.”
Do this for every belief that isn’t serving you. Just flip it, because there is always another side to that coin.
Then you can spend time thinking those deliberate thoughts daily until they become part of your new thinking processes,
Click here to read more about changing beliefs in my article, “4 Of The Most Effective Ways To Change Your Belief System.”
A Valuable Investment Of Your Time
Truly spend time on this, there is no need to rush through this process.
Remember, changing your thinking will change your life.
Your thinking is the driving force of your life.
It creates emotions, which then create actions, which lead to results.
Thoughts and emotions are electromagnetic powerhouses — and they create.
And to close this out..
In Conclusion:
Your beliefs create your reality, so you are not at the mercy of your unconscious unless you believe that you are.
