Conscious Guidance

[Malkuth]

Conscious Guidance includes the ‘unconscious’.

The unconscious is, in short, what is being guided. Or at least influenced.

Similar to getting into a taxi and telling the driver that you would like to take a particular route to get to your destination. The driver is still an intelligent person directing the car; but you can talk to them and have influence over how they direct the car.

The so-called ‘unconscious’ is your own mind. It’s just parts that are less easily accessed. In the same way, your spleen, your heart, your lungs, and your gallbladder are still your own body. They’re just parts that are deeper within and that you can’t easily access with your hands.

But be clear that inaccessible does not mean ‘non-intimate’. The unconscious levels of mind just like the visceral and deeper parts of the body are inaccessible precisely because they are deeply intimate.

Anyway, back to the point:

Conscious Guidance includes ANY method, practice, or behavior by means of which the more surface and accessible (or ‘Conscious’) levels or areas of mind are able to communicate with and influence the deeper and less accessible levels or areas of mind.

This can be much less mysterious than it sounds. And it can also be even more profound and mysterious than it sounds. But either way, a helpful pointer is to know that part of how our Deeper Mind communicates and expresses itself is in the form of perceptions, beliefs, and emotions.

So, in other words, if you are aware of any of your perceptions, beliefs, and emotions, and if you have ever influenced any of your perceptions, beliefs, and emotions; then you have engaged in ‘Conscious Gudiance’. (And everyone has.)

Ever used music to amp yourself and to get energized before an activity?

Ever attended a workshop, a talk, or an ongoing social meeting that changed the way you experience yourself and others?

Ever engaged in a new activity (like scuba diving, climbing a mountain, volunteering in a psychiatric hospital, and so on) that changed the way you felt about the world?

Those experiences or ‘methods’ all helped to shape your emotions, perceptions, and beliefs. They were all Conscious Guidance.

The list of possible approaches to Conscious Guidance is probably endless.

[Malkuth]

Another Example:
Yogis and biofeedback practitioners learn how to directly sense and directly guide a greater number of their physiological processes:

Blood pressure, heart rate, brainwave activity, galvanic skin response, sweat gland behavior, pain perception, and beyond.

For most of us, those physiological processes are regulated unconsciously. But yogis work to expand the sphere of what can be regulated directly.

But even if you don’t spend years practicing as a yogi, you can still indirectly influence all of those processes right now.

Just going for a run will lead to elevated heart rate. And going for runs over a 6-week period, will lead to a lower blood pressure.

So, with regard to cardiovascular function and blood pressure (which are ‘unconscious’), ‘Going for Runs’ is an example of conscious guidance.

[Jade8]

Great topic @Malkuth. So if the conscience mind is the passenger and it tells where the driver where to go, where do the thoughts for the conscious mind come from?

[Malkuth]

Thoughts arise from the interactions between Mind and world (or mind and mind). But they are transformed and shaped along every step of their journeys.

[Serafim]

Is there a difference between the sub conscious and the unconscious mind? There are articles online explaining the difference but I want to hear it from @Malkuth.

[Jade8]

are you familiar with Neville Goddard @Malkuth? I was wondering what your take on his philosophy of the conscious and subconscious mind. He says the subconscious mind is like a lover that needs to be persuaded, rather than forced.

[Malkuth]

@Jade8

He says the subconscious mind is like a lover that needs to be persuaded, rather than forced.

My opinion:

The conscious mind trying to ‘force’ the unconscious is like a surfer trying to force the waves and the ocean.

But I don’t really even think of it as a lover to be persuaded. Maybe that was Goddard describing his own experience. We don’t all have to do the same things.

Right now, I’m trying to feel my way into it and to learn from it. It has a lot to teach me.

But I can also appreciate the metaphor that you shared. It will probably be relevant to me at some point.

[Malkuth]

@Serafim

Is there a difference between the sub conscious and the unconscious mind? There are articles online explaining the difference but I want to hear it from @Malkuth.

These terms are not precise.

I use the term ‘unconscious’ myself (for now); but I actually think of it as a misnomer.

I often joke that dividing Mind into Conscious and the Unconscious seem to me like dividing geographical regions into ‘Brooklyn’ and ‘The Un-Brooklyn’; or dividing the entire Universe into Earth and The Non-Earth.

The main thing such categorizations reveal is that the speaker has not really left their own neighborhood. Imagine a globe of Planet Earth with all of the continents and oceans labeled ‘The Un-Brooklyn’!

But practically speaking, when it comes to the world of Mind, we are, most of us, pretty similar to a local who has barely ventured outside of his apartment building. For that person, it really did make some practical sense to divide the entire world into ‘My apartment’ and ‘The Un-My apartment’.

And I am no exception.

So for now, I continue to use the term.

I was about to keep typing, but it occurred to me that I’d already written the same ideas here on some earlier date. So I’ll just link it below.

[Malkuth]

@Serafim

Is there a difference between the sub conscious and the unconscious mind? There are articles online explaining the difference but I want to hear it from @Malkuth.

Conscious or subconscious action?

There’s a slight mischaracterization in this question. The idea of ‘waiting’ for ‘the subconscious’ to act is a bit off. Part 1: Thresholds I think we need to add in the concept of ‘Thresholds’. Imagine that you are living, like most people, on land. Moreover, you almost never dive into seas, oceans, and lakes. They are beautiful to you, but 1) you are not an avid swimmer, and 2) you feel that there may be perils or risks in the water that you’d rather not encounter. So, for you, the sur…

[emperor_obewan]

This is a common problem I’ve found when talking about consciousness. The terminology can be difficult to pin down especially since different people give different meanings to words like subconscious and unconscious etc.

In Mesmerism there was this state that was discovered when a patient had been put into a trance called mesmeric sleep, in which the patient could be asked to answer questions by the magnetiser and they would answer with an expanded awareness often displaying knowledge that wasn’t available to them in their conscious state. But it was erratic and prone to the will of the magnetiser. The way I now understand that is that by capturing or calming and nullifying the sensory input via passes or audiovisual cues a greater depth of the awareness of pure consciousness could be accessed free of the cross talk from the body.

When you begin to understand how these trance states work, it becomes easier to dive into the different levels of being. Some people call subconscious what would be called superconscious by others. And you could use unconscious to mean the parts of reality that have faded into the background and are not “audible”. But that direct access to reality that becomes possible by removing the ordinary sensory input, etc., doesn’t really have a name in English, unless you maybe call it remote sensing/influence. I suppose the typical restrictiveness of our habitual way of consciousness is present even in our language in that way. There’s not a lot of well established terminology except in special circles because many people arent even aware that there are multiple levels of consciousness beyond waking and dream/sleep etc.

[Malkuth]

Agreed. Various people and groups who have prioritized the exploration and cultivation of this domain come up with their own frameworks and terms of nomenclatures/ categorization. Some quite sophisticated.

A number of Buddhist schools and traditions, for example, have been rigorous, precise, and thorough in their phenomenological mappings of ‘consciousness’.

I don’t find myself too concerned about this point, to be honest. I’m just happy to explore the land. The labeling and mapping are secondary for me. ‘Use as Needed’

[aaa]

How might the unconscious be working against conscious goals—and what would it take to make them finally align?

[Malkuth]

@aaa

How might the unconscious be working against conscious goals—and what would it take to make them finally align?

This is a perennial question.

Most myths, legends, and fairy tales are exploring this question.

Jonah and the Whale

The Magician’s Apprentice

The Hobbit

Prometheus Brings Fire to Humanity

Jacob Fights the Angel and Jacob’s Dream

Pandora’s Box

A Wizard of Earthsea

The list goes on and on.

Because reconciling the levels of mind and choosing how the levels of mind will struggle with, negotiate with, harmonize with each other is the central drama of human life.

[aaa]

Ah yes, got it @Malkuth. The conscious and unconscious are like two sides of the same stream. Harmony comes not from control, but from listening deeply and letting each guide the other without resistance.

[Malkuth]

@aaa

Ah yes, got it @Malkuth. The conscious and unconscious are like two sides of the same stream. Harmony comes not from control, but from listening deeply and letting each guide the other without resistance.

And sometimes harmony doesn’t come.

Or, rather, sometimes harmony looks a whole lot like struggle.

Like riding the ocean waves.

“How do I guarantee that I’ll never face rough seas?”

I don’t know that there is one final answer to this question.

Staying close to the shore will help, sometimes.

But that in itself is another form of sacrifice.

Sometimes struggle seems worth it. The price of living in a larger world.

I guess we can learn from master sailors.

@aaa

Harmony comes not from control, but from listening deeply and letting each guide the other without resistance.

That sounds wise to me.

Also:

The greater part of Harmony involves Recovery from Disharmony.

Strive to get really good at recovering.