Be Conscious About Your Subconscious

Because it decides a lot of what you do

This time let us consider matters of the subconscious. Your subconscious mind has been creating events for you throughout your life. Indeed, nothing can occur in your life without the activity of your subconscious mind causing it to happen. Your subconscious mind will do only what you consciously or unconsciously tell it to do.

You may have heard that your mind is like an iceberg, with 9/10ths of it below the level that we can see. An iceberg illustrates the differences between the conscious and subconscious aspects of our Mind. The tip of the iceberg represents the conscious mind - your awake, reasoning aspect of mind. That part of the iceberg, which is submerged beneath the water line, is symbolic of the subconscious aspect of mind - an incredible memory repository. More importantly, your subconscious mind is in direct contact with, what is referred to as Universal Consciousness, represented by the ocean surrounding and extending far beyond the iceberg. 

Our conscious awareness is like the tiny exposed part of the iceberg where our logical, rational, and sequential mind resides. We reason, doubt, and demand substantiating evidence. Our subconscious awareness is like the huge submerged part of the iceberg. We visit this part rarely, except through dreams, meditation, hypnosis and infrequent “aha!” experiences. This is where memories, dreams, imagination and creativity reside, a theoretical “place” full of powerful, mostly untapped and often unknown resources. Subconscious thought processes may play a crucial role in many of the mental facilities we prize as uniquely human, including creativity, memory, learning and language.

Roughly 10 per cent of our thought-processing occurs within the conscious part of our mind. The other 90 per cent or so of our thoughts and decisions take place in our subconscious mind. It permanently records absolutely every sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch that we experience -- every single one -- from birth to death. Beyond contention, it is the most sophisticated computer we shall ever see; at least in our lifetimes, and possibly ever. More than one hundred million separate neurons (brain cells) functioning up to a million times every quarter of a second. 

With each of life’s experiences, a mental tape is created. Each and every time we talk about, write about, or even just think about, a sight, smell, taste, touch, sound, or experience that we’ve encountered, a new and duplicative tape is recorded within our subconscious. This is what enables us to visualize things that are not actually in front of us.

If you see an object which has four legs, and a flat surface about three feet off the ground, you instantly recognise it as a ‘table’. You could walk into a room you’ve never been in before, see an object matching this description but of a design you’ve never come across and made of a material you’ve never seen, and yet you would put something onto this ‘table’ without a second thought.

Your subconscious mind is the real brains behind what you do. It does most of your thinking, and it decides a lot of what you do. When you’re awake, your conscious mind works to evaluate a lot of these thoughts, make decisions and put certain ideas into action. It also processes new information and relays it to the subconscious mind.

Surprisingly, it is the subconscious that can be in control of our behaviour most of the time. This is the reason people find it very difficult to stop smoking - they have consciously decided that smoking is bad for their health, costs a fortune, is ruining their breath, etc. However, they have not taken into account their subconscious reasons for wanting to carry on smoking. Go back to the iceberg analogy; if the little bit at the top wants to go one way and the huge bit at the bottom wants to go the other way, guess who’s going to win?

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Thought for the Week

“Art is a marriage of the conscious and the unconscious.”
Jean Cocteau
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First published in Gray Matter - The Hindustan Times

Going Beyond Thought

Meditation is not just a spiritual practice. 
It is all about setting the mind free.

Most people consider meditation a form of worship or prayer, in which one sits down with eyes closed and empties the mind to attain inner peace, relaxation or even an experience of God. But meditation does not belong to any culture or religion and is not a spiritual practice. Meditation is really about awareness. It describes a state of consciousness, in which the mind is free of scattered thoughts and patterns. Published scientific and medical evidence has proved its benefits, but it still needs to be much understood.

Earlier meditation was considered something just not meant for modern people, but now it has become very popular with all types of people. These days it is commonly understood to mean some form of spiritual practice, where one sits down with eyes closed and empties the mind to attain inner peace, relaxation or even an experience of God. 

One of the definitions of meditation is “self regulation of attention, in the service of self-inquiry, in the here and now”. 

Abdu’l-Bahai, the son of Bahaiu’llahai, the founder of the Bahai faith, is quoted as saying: “Meditation is the key for opening the doors of mysteries to your mind. In that state man abstracts himself: in that state man withdraws himself from all outside objects; in that subjective mood he is immersed in the ocean of spiritual life and can unfold the secrets of things-in-themselves.”

When you meditate, the key is not to ask the mind to think about a concept, but to go beyond thought.

Therefore Meditation is not concentration or contemplation. Neither is it hypnosis or autosuggestion, where there is an attempt to program, manipulate or control the content of the mind. When you meditate, you simply observe the mind and let it become quiet and calm, exploring and experiencing the deeper levels of your being.

There are several benefits of meditation : it lowers oxygen consumption, decreases the respiratory rate, increases blood flow and slows the heart rate. Meditation increases production of the “happy hormone” serotonin which influences mood and behaviour (low levels of serotonin are associated with depression, obesity, insomnia and headaches). Meditation also helps in faster post-operative healing by enhancing the immune system.

Most important, as far as brain functioning is concerned, it improves concentration and leads to deeper level of relaxation which enhance personal efficiency and performance.

There are several ways to start meditation. As a starting point, choose a time when you are not likely to be disturbed. Settle down in a place that has fresh air. You may sit in any comfortable posture (sukh-asana), taking care to keep your spine erect and straight and to stay in that pose.

Begin by learning to focus on something non-threatening, like a flower, a word, or the flame of a candle. Simply notice how your thoughts wander, without attempting to control them. Observe them with detachment. Practise this daily for a few weeks as a stepping stone to awareness. 

However, meditation can also be practised while walking or doing simple repetitive tasks. Walking meditation, for instance, helps to break down habitual automatic mental responses like being constantly distracted with recognizing and greeting people passing by. Just remember, whatever you do with awareness is meditation.

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Thought for the Week

“When Meditation is mastered, the mind is unwavering‚ 
like the flame of a lamp in a windless place.”
Confucius
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First published in Gray Matter - The Hindustan Times

Are you listening?

The first step to creativity is to be in a state of awareness and listen to your instincts

Can I be creative as a housewife, wonders Guneeta Mehra. Why not Guneeta? In fact, you represent the epitome of Creativity in whatever you do at home! Don’t you think up ways to beautify your home, cook up new recipes from leftovers for your family, find newer and newer ways of managing your kids?

Creativity can pop up anywhere, anytime. Sometimes it’s just Serendipity. What is serendipity? Well, it was voted one of the ten English words that are hardest to translate in June 2004 by a British translation company. (For the record Serendip is the old Persian name for Sri Lanka).

In movies you often see a scientist or inventor working hard for years on end until he, or she, as with physicist Marie Curie, finally makes a great discovery that wins the Nobel Prize. 

In real life, it’s not only about hard work or genius; sometimes its luck, that leads to a new invention or a scientific breakthrough. When that happens, that’s one manifestation of serendipity.

One of the most famous examples of serendipity is one of the oldest. Hiero II, king of the ancient Greek city of Syracuse (now Sicily), suspected his new crown wasn’t pure gold. People then knew how much gold weighed, so if the weight of the crown matched the weight of an equal volume of gold, the metal was pure. The problem: there was no way to calculate the volume of an irregularly shaped object, such as a crown.

One day Archimedes got into an full bathtub, and some water spilled out. And, in that everyday act, he realized that the volume of the water that escaped the tub was exactly equal to how much of him was submerged. That meant he could figure out the volume of anything, no matter how irregular its size, by immersing it, and measuring the amount of water displaced.

 Archimedes is said to have been so excited by this discovery that he ran through the street, naked as he was, shrieking “Eureka! Eureka!” (“I have found it!”). Archimedes was thinking about whether the king was getting ripped off or not when he got into his bathtub; his discovery was serendipitous. 

So too, the re-discovery of North America by Christopher Columbus, who was actually looking for a new way to India or Isaac Newton’s famed apple falling from a tree, which led to his formulating the theory of gravitation.

I am sure you must have had a similar experience some time or the other in your own life.
(As an aside, if serendipity is the effect by which one accidentally discovers something fortunate, the term “zemblanity” was coined to mean somewhat the opposite of serendipity: “making unhappy, unlucky and expected discoveries occurring by design”.)

There are some simple ways in which you can maximize the serendipity in your life. To start with, be in a state of awareness and readiness to expect the unexpected. Examine any seemingly chance event, explore why it happened and its significance in your life. Trust your instinct and inner voice. Creativity is about listening, and then acting in untraditional ways. 

You only have to believe. When you accept the possibility of serendipity, you will begin to notice it everywhere. Once you open your mind to its gifts, things that seemed impossible earlier will “pop up” around you. Your creativity will flow. 

On a more spiritual note, experience life with serenity. Accept all the events in your life with equanimity and let them flow. When you try to force things, they stop happening the way they were meant to happen. Creativity thrives when you do not hold it too tightly. Just go with the flow.

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Thought for the Week

“In the field of observation, 
chance favours only the prepared mind.”
Louis Pasteur
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First published in Gray Matter - The Hindustan Times