The amazing human mind is the last great frontier. Western science has only been exploring this terrain for a little more than a century. There is much we still don’t understand about how the mind works. We do know that our beliefs powerfully affect what happens in our lives.
Consciousness is a tiny fraction of our total mind. We most commonly use the word “subconscious” to describe the entire territory of our minds outside consciousness. The word has a lot of limitations which mislead us about the true state of the mind. When we say “subconscious” we make a mental image that puts consciousness above and the rest of the mind below:
CONSCIOUS MIND
SUBCONSCIOUS MIND
The image implies that the rest of our mind is younger, stupider, weaker than consciousness, and that consciousness is in control of our minds. In fact we know that the “sub”-conscious mind controls almost all our actions and responses. That’s a good thing too! If we had to consciously remember how to walk, breathe, read, or drive, we would soon be paralyzed.
The word “subconscious” also leads us to believe that there are two parts to the mind–the conscious part, and the subconscious part. That simple model works to point out to us that consciousness isn’t the whole mind, but it isn’t very descriptive of what actually happens with the rest of our minds.
Psychological disciplines have developed many metaphors to describe our total minds. These metaphors may change within a discipline over time. Each of them helps us to understand ourselves in a slightly different way.
One way to think of our total mind is as a machine which can be programmed. We might talk about the rest of our minds as being composed of many parts, like people, who get together in a room to talk. Or we might think about the whole mind as a vast dark library, with consciousness being a flashlight which briefly illuminates one book among all the stacks.
Our mind contains all our memories, all our experiences, all our skills. It is a storehouse of all the messages we learned as children, and the messages we continue to receive every day, about ourselves and our world. Our mind is shaped by the expectations and customs of our families. We absorb the prejudices and beliefs of the culture in which we live. In contrast, consciousness can keep about seven (plus or minus two) things in view at any one time. It is as if our total mind contains the entire phone book, while consciousness holds onto one phone number!
As we learn, we pay conscious attention to what we are learning. When we first started to read, we memorized the letters, then learned to put them together in sounded-out words. Now reading is completely automatic. We no longer recognize individual letters as we read. However, our mind is still processing that information. All our automatic actions are being performed by other parts of our minds.
Consciousness is the manual override of the mind. We use our consciousness to acquire information and skills which become automatic, that is, are accessed by other parts of our minds. We can also use consciousness to screen out false or harmful ideas.
What we mean when we say that we must know what we want and want it with all our hearts is that the conscious mind and the rest of our mind must agree that this is an outcome that will happen. Sometimes consciousness wants something that other parts of us reject as being impossible or bad for us. Sometimes old programming in other parts of our mind that no longer helps us limits us from achieving our dreams.
Magic teaches us to bring consciousness into dialogue with the rest of the mind. We can approach our total minds with conscious respect and gratitude for how well our minds help us function in the world. We enter into a partnership to override negative programming and overcome limitations. We can also tap into the sources of deep wisdom to help consciousness to better understand what to pay attention to in our lives.
Affirmation
I harness the power of my total mind.
Write this affirmation on a sticky note or 3×5 card and put it where you can see it every day. Repeat the affirmation every day for a week.
Practice: Reinforce positive affirmations
Bring out the 3×5 cards which contain your affirmations. If you’ve been reading the cards and saying them to yourself every day you should have them memorized by now!
Here is a simple exercise to reinforce the positive affect of the affirmations.
- Sit comfortably in a chair. Take a few deep breaths. Close your eyes. Count backwards from five to one.
- Repeat your affirmations silently to yourself.
- Count from one to five and open your eyes.
The first time you do this, you might feel a great relaxation and a sense of well being. You might be puzzled and wonder if you have done the exercise correctly. You might fall asleep! All these responses are normal and well within the range of expected results. Just breathe deeply, close your eyes, count, and say the affirmations. Over time you will come to recognize the sense of relaxation and calm that lets you know you have slowed down your mind.
Practice: Rewrite negative programming
Just as before, sit quietly, close your eyes and count from five to one.
Imagine a room filled with books and recordings. These are the old messages you have received that limit you in your life. Take a moment to read or listen to one of these. You might hear the voice of a parent saying “You’ll never amount to anything!” A schoolteacher might tell you, “Boys don’t cry” or “girls don’t play sports.” You may tune into the internal voice saying “I’m lazy, I can’t succeed, nothing will ever work out.” Take these negative messages off the shelves and stack them by the door.
Now see yourself picking them up and toss them. You might throw them out the window. You can drop them into a chute that leads to a basement incinerator. You can toss them into a river, or you can put them in a rocket to shoot out into space! Move the negative messages out of your life.
