When you think of yourself, you think of your conscious mind, the only mind of which you are fully aware. It is your “me”. It seems to make all your decisions and direct all your activity. But the largest and most dominant part of your mind is the part you are generally unaware of: the subconscious.
Although your conscious mind may seem to call the shots, it is ruled by the desires of the subconscious, which is the real you. And until you learn to understand it, you do not know or understand yourself.
The subconscious houses the emotions, imagination, memory, habits and intuition. It also regulates our autonomic body functions. The subconscious is an existing mind which is only in the “here and now”, we use this to our advantage during trance.
We spend our lives doing what we feel like doing. Although we have free will to do anything we want to do, we base our decisions on the strength of our desires. And subconscious desires always outweigh conscious ones. Since the subconscious is the seat of the emotions, you can never “fool” it, when for instance, attempting to achieve a goal through self-hypnosis. The motivating desire must be real and sincere.
Example 1: Imagine yourself being at your backyard a hot summers-day (100°F). If you hypnotize yourself and tell your subconscious to make you dig a hole seven feet deep to get your job finished on your swimming-pool, you won’t get much cooperation because it knows you don’t have a real desire to word in the hot sun. However, if you tell your subconscious mind you want to earn more money, and mean it, it will work day and night, even when you sleep, to grant your wish. The subconscious never takes a break.
When your subconscious mind is being programmed toward a goal you want to achieve, in a correct and constructive way, with daily reinforcement, it never gives up until it gets there (other than the conscious part of the mind which uses willpower and often gives up too soon). It will keep striving toward that goal until it is achieved.
We are also controlled by fixed ideas in the subconscious mind.
Example 2: A man may desire to remain in his warm bed on a cold winter morning instead of getting up and going to work. But if his subconscious mind has established a desire of wanting to get up to avoid losing his job, he will act seemingly against his will. He will get up in spite of the unpleasant weather.
Although our conscious mind has the ability to reason and to decide upon the most advantageous course o action, it cannot implement its decision unless the subconscious agrees and directs its energy toward that end. Our source of energy is the subconscious mind. No amount of willpower exerted by the conscious mind can override it. Willpower can only dent the surface. (More of this can be read under change.) It is an enormous power that we store in our subconscious mind and it is we that have to take control and direct it toward where we want it to go – not the other way around, since the subconscious does not have any kind of “radar track check” for what is positive and beneficial for us.
Our subconscious mind is supposed to take orders from our conscious mind and be the obedient servant. It does not make a good master because it is incapable of choosing a proper goal. It is like a gushing fire hose. Properly directed in the hands of a fireman, its force quenches a fire and saves lives and property. But if the fireman lets loose, it can play havoc, knocking him off his feet and causing a great deal of damage.
The subconscious mind is not supposed to think, but to react to the thoughts you give it and carry out your orders.
The subconscious serves as a memory bank or computer: It acts the way it has been programmed to act, exactly as a computer does. Although our subconscious mind is way superior to any IBM in the world, the disadvantage is that all information that has once entered it remains there forever. It is like a permanent memory that can never be erased and it is therefore so important that we learn to direct it right so that it will work for us, for our benefit and not against us.
Take command over your subconscious mind, let it work for you and become a winner in life.