Enlightening the Unconscious

Most of would agree that we have what psychologists call an unconscious or subconscious mind, but we are not aware that this aspect of our mental processing can be made fully conscious.

Doesn’t it make sense that this aspect of our mind should be fully in our control, whether it is conscious or not at the present time? It is, after all, our own. It is not something thrust upon us, perhaps we just need to pay attention to it.

Perhaps you are not convinced of this. I should then detail what I found in my own unconscious mind when I endeavored to make it fully conscious.

I can categorize the contents of my unconscious into three categories. One is what I call learned strategies, one I call sentient programs, and the other I call delusions.

When I began to discover the learned strategies I realized that they fit into certain groupings that I call paradigms. An example of a group of learned strategies would include:

1. Regret

2. Remorse

3. Resentment

4. Knowledge

5. Experience

6. Wisdom

Another group I distinguished was:

1. Acceptance

2. Surrender

3. Forgiveness

4. Allowing

5. Resignation

6. Withdrawal

Obviously some of these strategies are revered in our society and some are far less so. Each of the learned strategies that we have acquired is valuable, even the less revered ones. What makes them undesirable is the simple fact that they are unconscious, not that they are inherently “good” or “evil”.

Even though you may view these strategies positively the fact that they are unconscious, learned, and in a way controlling your thoughts and behavior may give a clue to why Socrates would write, “An unexamined life is not worth living”.

It may be that it is not really living at all, not the life that is available to us as human beings. Perhaps it is more like plant life and the life of far less complex and aware beings. Perhaps this is why the Genesis “god” stated that “…in the day you eat of it (the tree of the knowledge of good and evil) you will die…”

The second category of unconscious mind content, sentient programs, consists of a number of ways our mind is conditioned to believe certain principles. Some of these programs I have identified in my own subconscious are:

1. Duality

2. Causality

3. Linearity

4. Conditionality

5. Spaciality

6. Polarity

These programs seem to run constantly in the “background” of mind. These programs initiate thoughts, often a ceaseless barrage of thoughts that create the constant chatter that people often try to stop by learning meditative techniques.

Seeing these as programs opens the idea that our minds run on an operating system. This operating system may be related to our ideas of how our world works, what is actually called the science of physics.

Aristotle, 2,300 years ago had complicated mathematical formulas to define the physical world that we navigate through in our everyday life. Galileo and Isaac Newton defined the world with more precision and gave us many tools to build our technological and mechanical world that allows us to travel though space and distances, etc. Had we continued “believing” Aristotle, we never would have been able to master space travel, perhaps even been unable to design airplanes and other vehicles.

Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr, for example, further defined this world with the discoveries of quantum mechanics. When these concepts are “accepted” and incorporated into our models, our minds operating system (they are certainly not at the present time), our means of travel, computing, our mechanical devices, our entire technology will evolve. Perhaps traveling at the speed of light(or faster) may not be out of the realm of possibility as it seems right now.

I have found that enlightening the generation of these thoughts, the sentient programs, making them conscious rather than unconscious is a huge leap toward quieting the mind and entering into the true meditative state.

As an example, the duality program goes way back to the Garden of Eden and seems to be one of the programs that are fairly consistent in cultures throughout the world. This program operates to judge all events and experience as “good or evil” and encourages the human being to desire that which is judged as good and avoid that which is judged as evil.

This causes the being to be kind of in a state of limbo rather than a vibrant and fulfilled life. Never really able to avoid the evil and never quite acquiring what is desired.

Another example of a sentient program is linearity. This program is related to our concepts of time and the sequence of events. As in all the programs, linearity is a form of insanity that overlays the thought process with ideas that may or may not be true.

The best example of this is our conception of time. The linearity program convinces us that time flows in a linear, progressive fashion, rather than circular, spiral, or otherwise. There is a book called “Einstein’s Dreams” that discusses the perception people have about time and how different perceptions will lead to quite different ways of living a life.

The fact is that NO ONE knows how time behaves, how it “flows”, or even if it does flows at all. Our experience affirms that what we believe about time is true, that time flows from the past, through the present, and into the future. Unfortunately our “experience” is so related to our perceptions that we cannot tell whether time appears to “work” as we believe or whether our experience is a total delusion.

This leads us to the third aspect I found in my own unconscious, delusions. These delusions are related, of course, to both the learned strategies and the sentient programs. However, they may be seen as a form of insanity. Do you realize that you can only accomplish what you believe you can accomplish?

Had Aristotle’s science of physics persisted until the present time there is no way we would have ever got an airplane off the ground. The delusions I found in my own subconscious were very closely related to the “laws” of physics that I accepted as my reality.

Modern physicists will agree that the “laws” of physics according to Newton do not describe our physical world very well. They will also admit that quantum mechanics does not describe it very well either. However, they will all agree that quantum mechanics describes our physical world far better than classical or Newtonian physics.

There are numerous arguments, one that quantum mechanics does not apply to the macroscopic world, the one we live in, and only defines the microscopic world of atomic and subatomic particles. This argument makes no sense to me as the basis of our reality is the atomic world. Of course, there will be some relationship to the origin of the physical world and the physical world itself.

The other argument is that quantum mechanics is too hard to explain to us “common folk”. Again, I do not accept this. I think that the reason it is so hard for physicists to explain it is that they are looking at their quantum discoveries from their own learned perspective of classical physics.

That is exactly why I am suggesting that we all examine and enlighten this subconscious mind, and it is not that difficult, so we can all evolve and begin to live in a world of light rather than a world of half darkness.