What is the relationship between the conscious and the unconscious mind? Like can you talk to your subconscious? Give it commands? How to deepen the connection?
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The subconscious & unconscious are two different things.
Subliminal’s are a way of making an impression upon the subconscious, obviously.
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You’re about to go down a (very productive) rabbit-hole.
Enjoy the journey.
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Oh, and p.s.
It’s more like the reverse.
Can you stop talking to your subconscious?
no
You’ve been giving it commands for your whole life, up to and including right now. It never stops.
We’re all just trying to get better at it.
You’re actually already pretty good at it.
For example,
That was a good one. 
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Can u give us a starting point that might help guide us better
Self-hypnosis might be an option.
The Betty Erickson induction from the wife of the world famous late Milton Erickson is a simple way to enjoy benefits. You might even give your subconcious commands before you do the induction and let it work out the best way to help you during trance.
http://ericksonian.info/therapeutic_scripts/self-hypnosis-the-betty-erickson-special/
Another option is repetition as in Affirmations or Afformations.
Affirmations are positive statements about yourself repeated a loud in front of a mirror every day until they are true. Afformations is different in the way that you ask yourself questions which presume that which you want to belief is already true, like “Why am I so confident in meetings at work?”
Then there are guided visualization. Like visualizing a computer which is in your brain and has all the capabilities it needs to change your life. Imagine the room the computer is in and how it looks like. You can play around which this computer and ask for memories you already forgot. Whatever you ask it, it will reply. Maybe sooner, maybe later. You can also give commands to this computer. It will help you because it is programmed to do so.
In the province of the mind what one believes to be true either is true or becomes true within certain limits. These limits are beliefs to be transcended. (John C. Lilly Beliefs Unlimited)
About the relationship between those minds. They are both mondels in my opinion.
One model to describe it is. That there is your concious mind, then the filter or guard and then the othe concious mind. The filter/guard will suspiciously look at your suggestion and will only let those in that are fine with your current world view. So the question is how to get around this guard? Maybe tranquilize it by a trance, an alpha brainwave state or just repetition? Maybe by flooding it somehow? Seducing it by imaginative language and metaphors? Is there really a guard? Is there really a mind?
Which metaphor would be better, more useful then this?
Yours for transformation
Matt
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Not to be annoyingly opaque or inscrutable, but, I really do think you don’t need a starting point, because you’ve already started. Subliminals are one way of getting messages through to your subconscious. Also, the subconscious mind is extremely natural. So you’ve been working with it throughout your life.
The most important step for working intentionally with the subconscious mind is also deceptively simple: Acknowledging that it is there.
No need to get mystical about it. You can even get hyper-scientific about it: You do have a subjective flow of sensations that make up reality. This is clear from your moment-to-moment experience of living. Those sensations are generated by your nervous system, partially in response to external stimuli, partly in response to the neuroendocrine system’s own structure and processes.
Just get curious about how those sensations are made, how your sense of reality is generated. That’s all. Check to see where your sensations are coming from. (That is also meditation in a nutshell.)
If you’ve ever flown on a plane, you know that there’s an area called Baggage Claim where you wait for your luggage to be delivered to you.
That conveyor belt that delivers your luggage must be coming from somewhere, right?
Our sensations and experience of ‘reality’ come to us like that. Sort of mostly formed, like your order being delivered from the kitchen of a restaurant. So…what’s going on in the kitchen?
Every so often, just make some time to observe. You don’t want to mess up the process. The chefs and the waiters are very good at what they do. Much more qualified than you are. But watch and learn.
Anyway. Here are some general recommendations:
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some form of observation, contemplation to improve your relationship to the generation of reality
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physical exercise
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creative work - (chances to take something from the idea phase to the fully formed phase; could be a business, a painting, a song, an article. what it is is depends on your own nature.)
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beneficial work, just done to beautify or improve your corner of the physical/social/moral world
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values clarification - conversations, journals, thinking about what really matters to you
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vision work - symbolically represent and express the specific realities you want in life (draw pictures, write words, create songs, cut out pictures from magazines, download images from Internet) However you do it is fine. The act of placing your attention on what you want and what you think is good is already a communication to the subconscious mind.
(A bunch of those can be combined too. You can make them overlap.)
As you start to do those, resources will come to you. Some you’ll want and others you won’t. It’s your own journey.
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Let me start with a little disclaimer before this massive post: I don’t hold degrees in this stuff, I speak only from research and personal experience. Read this post or not. Consider it informative or a load of …, it’s entirely your choice.
There is a theory called the triune brain. Although it may not be widely supported anymore, I find it to be the best explanation for the concept of the subconscious.
The first (reptilian) brain is in charge of your instincts and physical processes. Something has to keep telling your heart to beat, your diaphragm to keep forcing air into your body, to make you run from a huge fireball coming your way or keep you from french kissing an electrical outlet. Something triggers your need to reproduce. All the basic instincts that ensure your survival are governed here.
The second (mammalian) brain governs emotions. Bit harder to name the examples here, obviously there is love, but also jealousy. Joy and sadness. Many of these can be triggered by chemicals in the body and vice versa.
The third brain is the neocortex, the conscious mind. Your willpower. It makes alterations to the programming and allows for temporarily overriding the programming as well as rewriting the programming with consistent effort.
These three brains get weaker as you move down the list, with the conscious mind actually being the weakest.
Weakest may not be the best word though. The amount of possibilities and complexity of language and instructions increases as you move down the above list, with the conscious mind being capable of a great diversity.
However, the actions initiated by the first brain will always override the second and third brain, and the instructions from the second brain will always override the third brain. To grasp that concept, watch M Night Shyamalan’s The Happening (which I think is pretty decent even though IMDB seems to disagree). That’s subconscious behavior right there.
That said, you can (temporarily) override this automated behavior, which is an ability exclusive to your conscious mind.
In order to do so, you need to tap into your willpower, which is like a battery that you recharge while you sleep. As long as there is “juice” in the battery, you can create new habits or change old ones. As soon as it gets empty, making choices becomes very hard (often called decision fatigue). Which is why some of the most productive and successful people get up at the crazy time of 0500 and do the important things first, before interacting with people or going to work. Their battery is full, which gives them the energy to override their programming.
So how does this translate to the subconscious?
The first and second brain contain a list of rules, a program. If your conscious mind does nothing, this code is constantly determining your life’s path.
This is the expression of your subconscious mind, essentially the “agent” that is constantly executing this code. It is an automated process. Because it is inflexible/rigid (it does not do creative solutions, it always and constantly does exactly what the rules say and nothing beyond that), it is capable of dealing with everything that comes at us at incredibly high speeds, categorizing and contextualizing life, showing your conscious mind only what the rules say you want to experience.
Imagine your conscious mind having to deal with everything. Every scrap of information your senses bring in 24/7, as well as extra-sensory information, while continuously reminding your heart to beat, your lungs to breathe, your digestion and the gazillion of other processes in your body. Even when your body is asleep.
It is too much. You’d go mad. Or forget something, which could kill you.
Now how do we communicate with the subconscious?
Well, if you take the above into account, spoken and written language is actually a very slow and inefficient process. The processing speed of the subconscious is simply too high to speak in (for example) English. So the ability to use “simple” languages exists in the conscious mind alone.
The subconscious contextualizes. If you’ve ever heard the expression “a picture is worth a thousand words,” that’s an approximation.
Say you want to tell your subconscious what your perfect life would be like.
You can write it down.
But words do nothing, the subconscious can’t work with words alone.
But, as you are writing it down or imagining it, you are creating a mental representation of those words. A picture. The clearer the picture, the better. So you describe/visualize more and more, adding on details, smells, sights, sounds, tastes and so on.
Once the image goes beyond a daydream or fantasy and becomes clear and realistic enough, your subconscious starts paying attention. It notices the impression, but it doesn’t quite know what to do yet. It’s watching, asking “now what?”
As you get clearer, you start experiencing associated feelings and emotions. The image you see makes you feel happy, fulfilled. Your brainwaves change, your body starts producing associated chemicals, you get more and more into the experience.
At this point, your subconscious understands. Since the chemical and neurological effects on your body are considered a good thing for your life, your subconscious gets the message. By ensuring this image to be true, it will ensure those feelings. That would align with its mandate to ensure you survive and thrive.
And it lays a foundation for this to occur.
Every time you reinforce this scenario and the associated impressions, more building blocks are placed on that foundation. The drive to get there become stronger. The rules are checked to see which are aligned and which conflict. Over time, some rules are archived (never deleted) and others move up on the list as the gain priority.
Why doesn’t it work right away after the first time?
We rarely have control over our thoughts. From one moment to the next we can love someone with a passion because of a magical kiss or wish them to have an terrible accident because they stepped on our toes. If all these impressions became true after the first time you thought them, it is likely humanity wouldn’t exist anymore.
The subconscious needs to be certain that this is not just a fluke, a random thought. You need to reinforce it often enough.
So, in order to communicate with the subconscious, you need to speak in pictures and contexts and feelings. The language of the first and second brain. The better you get at it, the easier it becomes to reprogram yourself.
Which leads to the inevitable question: if the above is true, why the heck do subliminals work? They’re in a spoken language, right? And yet the subconscious seems to be affected by them.
When you learn to speak, you often do so by looking at something and speaking the word that belongs with it. Apple, Banana, Cat (yup, not a fruit, I’d advice against eating one.)
Suppose I tell you not to think of something.
Whatever you do, under no circumstance think of…
…a red stop sign.
I have yet to meet a person that did not for a split second see a red stop sign flash by. You’re telling yourself not to think of something, but in order to do so, you need to first think of it.
So we’ve learned to associate images and feelings to words. And as we hear or read words, we create images in our mind. The subconscious checks its rule database to see what feelings go with those images. And so we come full circle. The subconscious may not have any use for the words, but it knows the images that accompany the words, the answers to the questions being asked. And it will use those instead.
But the effect of a subliminal alone is not as strong as the above visualization, in part because you’re not actively showing it the beneficial effects that the subliminals will have on you if they were all true.
This is why writing subliminals is a lot tougher than it would seem. How can you write a subliminal statement/question/affirmation that will, without your help, remind the subconscious of positive feelings and emotions?
Also, subiminals take many many more repetitions to work than if you were amazing at the above visualization exercise.
And this is why we reinforce the subs. By taking action, journalling our feelings, writing out our goals, creating vision boards/movies, doing visualization and meditation exercises. All these things help to create momentum, to reach escape velocity where the subconscious finally considers these new instructions to be the guiding rules and it starts driving your life accordingly.
Well, that’s about it, I guess.
A personal anecdote...
One last thing. I have sometimes stated my subconscious and I talk to one another in plain English. In a way, that’s true. When I’m about to do something stupid, I am presented with a mental image of a James Bond like character, usually leaning casually against a door frame, that tells me I’m an idiot. This is my conscious mind translating the message from the subconscious back into something that IT understands. So my subconscious is not actually speaking English, my conscious is simply representing the message that way.
I’ve also named my subconscious, which seems to help whenever I need a question answered, find lost objects or need to resolve something that takes more than my conscious effort.
I can mentally picture me slamming a stop-sign on top of undesirable images, or smile and agree with desirable ones. I can ask a why or how question to which the answer is inevitably negative and immediately stay “STOP” or “Don’t answer that.”
After years of reframing and learning how to speak only in a productive way with oneself, this seems to work for me and my subconscious. It may not effect lasting change, but at least it seems to prevent regression in my behavior or negative self-talk.
Consider this another post in the SubClub Insider blog. 
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