If you want to access the subconscious mind, it’s easy. You just need to close the conscious mind.

The problem is that this is almost impossible. The conscious mind is a big part of our day. So big, in fact, that we tend to think of our conscious mind as ourselves.

It’s not. If we were exactly the same as our conscious mind, we would cease to exist when we sleep. Or dreaming. Daydreaming of gold. If we were our conscious mind and nothing else, we would never have an intuition, gut feeling, or gut feeling.

Brain scans of sleeping subjects have shown that at various stages of sleep, the brain can emit brain waves of greater amplitude than when awake, and even consume more oxygen than when awake. This means that our brain may be more active when we are unconscious than when we are conscious. They are happening further up there when we think nothing is happening up there. And they happen even further up there when we are not thinking at all.

Clearly there is more to me than my conscious thoughts.

The conscious mind is the thinker. The subconscious mind is the knower.

The conscious mind is a thinking tool. It really is like a train, a vehicle. It is meant to be used, not to be the user. As both asleep and awake brain scans show, the conscious mind really is similar to the oft-cited tip of the iceberg, with most of it, the subconscious mind, lying below the waterline.

When your conscious mind has gone crazy, it will be anxiously trying to figure out who you are and what you should do; you will be trying to think of yourself to be. When your conscious mind is quiet and your subconscious mind takes precedence, you will know who you are, because your subconscious mind knows.

Descartes said: “I think, therefore I am.” Cogito ergo sum. And since then, most modern people have equated the ability to reason as proof of their humanity. However, ancient scriptures describe the revelation of divinity when God said: “I am that I am.” That is, to be is to be, without reason. The reason comes from being, not the other way around. Existence just is. Mind cannot be involved in being because mind is a subset of being, and the subset cannot encompass the superset.

With the purpose of know, thinking must cease. Not by knowing simple facts like two plus two, but by knowing mysteries like the vastness of a mountain range or the infinite depth of a night sky. And why do they inspire feelings of transcendence in some people but feelings of annihilation in others? The rational mind can lead us to understand how brain chemistry comes into play, but it cannot lead us to know the experience of wonder itself, let alone because experience is important. You can guess, but you can’t really know.

To quiet the conscious mind and access the subconscious mind, we have to offend the conscious mind, interrupt it, quiet it.

Why would I want to bypass my conscious mind to reprogram my subconscious?

First, because the subconscious mind is the real driver of the action. Willpower can keep you from having a few cigarettes or a few extra slices of cake and ice cream, but eventually the subconscious gets its way. This is how Saint Paul describes it in Romans: “Because I do not do the good that I want, but the evil that I do not want, that is what I do.”

For real change to occur, the conscious and subconscious minds must be aligned; so here are some practical principles for accessing the subconscious mind:

First, get enough sleep.

Studies are increasingly revealing that sleep is absolutely crucial for proper brain function. No longer dismissed as a waste of time and weakness, sleep has been shown to be essential for processing memories, balancing body chemistry, and clearing the mind of negative emotions that have a detrimental effect on the whole person. Get enough sleep.

How much does it cost? Studies suggest between 7.5 and 10 hours. Your needs probably fall somewhere in between. Err on the sleepier side. Imagine how long you would sleep in a natural environment without artificial light. You would go to sleep shortly after sunset. Suddenly ten hours of sleep a night seems pretty reasonable, doesn’t it? This is how our ancestors would have slept, for millennia. Night culture is younger than Thomas Edison.

waking techniques

Wakefulness techniques such as hypnosis and meditation are also helpful in quieting the conscious mind. Here are three practices you may find beneficial in quieting your conscious noise, opening your mind, and accessing your subconscious. These are practices that can be practiced for short periods daily or more frequently:

1.Meditation

The basis of meditation is observing one’s own thoughts without judging them, without labeling them as good or bad. Just to watch them as you would watch birds and insects flying by your window.

Then you will realize that your thoughts are not you. You will then feel comfortable separating your sense of self from your driving thoughts. Then you will no longer be under the control of your thoughts but you will start to control them.

Sit comfortably for twenty minutes without interruptions and just watch your thoughts, like leaves floating on a river; you pick them up, look at them with a goofy grin on your face, and put them back down so they float away.

2. Hypnosis

The basis of hypnosis is to enter a relaxed and uncritical state in which the conscious mind ceases its judging function. This is the hypnagogic state, where post-hypnotic suggestions can enter the subconscious mind.

For many, the idea of ​​giving up critical control is terrifying. This is because they have been bred in Cogito ergo sum. If I believe that I am my thoughts, the idea of ​​giving up my thoughts is like suicide. At least, to the ego it looks a lot like death. But it is not really death. It’s just the quieting of a part of you, like the slowing of your heart rate. As essential as your heart is to you, your heart is not you. As essential as the mind is to you, your mind is not you. There is more for you. And when the lesser can be stilled for a moment, the greater can emerge.

Related to hypnosis are various forms of subliminal programming. These range from audio tracks like the famous quit smoking tracks with affirmations urging you to quit recorded with relaxing music, to sophisticated Paraliminals, which are a fascinating technology that uses a simple stereo recording to play a message in your ear. right and another in his left ear, with increasing degrees of overlap.

The theory with Paraliminals is that the conscious mind gets overloaded and gives up; this is the beginning of interrupting the pattern, of offending the conscious mind, letting the subconscious mind rebuild the input. This results in programming suggestions bypassing the gatekeeper, the conscious mind, and being accepted as truth by the knower, the subconscious mind.

To practice self-hypnosis, search online for great hypnosis, subliminal or paraliminal audio, and listen to guided hypnosis. They usually last half an hour to an hour.

3. Brain Wave Training

Finally, there are the methods that seek to modify the mind by changing the brain.

When we are actively thinking and solving problems, or feeling anxious, our brain emits an electrical frequency that neurophysiology classifies as beta waves. In the hypnagogic state in which we are open to suggestion and superlearning, our brain emits alpha or theta waves. In deep sleep, delta waves. *

Modern brainwave training methods, first developed in the 1930s, train the brain to work in specific bandwidths for short periods of time, training it to work more frequently in those states, namely, alpha, theta and delta states associated with relaxation, creativity and relaxation. learning.

Have you ever been in a mall when a familiar song came on and you found yourself tapping your foot and humming inadvertently? Brainwave entrainment audios use the same principle, but with much more precise frequencies.

Do a search for brain wave training audios and spend some time with them every day. They are really nice; I have tried a few and recommend the Morry Method.

Caution: Recordings that quiet the conscious mind should not be listened to while driving, operating machinery, or balancing your checkbook.

Is all this pseudoscience?

Compared to the realm of physiology, the field of psychology is more recently explored; and the area of ​​human potential and the science of mind even more so. Therefore, much of this may seem esoteric and unknown. This is expected of any new field of activity.

Before we’re done, some things will have been proven to be pseudoscience, while others will be legitimate. The increasing overlap of neuroscience, traditionally a domain of physiology, with the field of psychology is proving quite gratifying.

You can sit and wait until everything is settled, or you can roll up your sleeves and dig in. The path you decide on will largely depend on your temperament and values.

In summary:

Our conscious mind is the tip of the iceberg and just a part of our being, like a vital organ. We are much more than our conscious mind; we are primarily moved by the unconscious mind below the waterline.

In order to open the mind and access the subconscious mind, we just need to still and quiet the conscious mind through daily habits that can be practiced for twenty minutes or more at a time, namely:

– Meditation, which consists of observing our thoughts and disidentifying ourselves from them.

– Hypnosis, which consists of avoiding the critical and conscious mind.

– Brain wave entrainment, which consists of training the brain to function normally in alpha, theta and delta bandwidths.