The Unconscious Mind: Play or Be Played

Getting a window into the nature of the unconscious mind through my shamanic healing practice has been very educational. What I’ve learned is that the unconscious (or subconscious) mind has a tremendous amount of power and because of the stealth way it operates, it’s not a stretch to suggest that we have a less than slight idea of its impact on our experience. This discovery has led me to come to the following conclusion:

Humans are 95-99% unconscious when we’re awake.

We’re just creatures of habit who behave, think, feel, and react in the same ways over and over again.

This presents a bit of a challenge if you’re interested in changing something about yourself. Specifically – how do you become of aware of something you’re not aware of?

Perhaps the biggest obstacle we face when it comes to making changes that actually stick is a lack of internal discipline. Yeah, I know. I used the “d” word. But hear me out (especially after the terrible analogy I’m about to use). Most of us are going through our days focused on the external world (i.e., what’s happening to me, around me, to him, to her, on facebook, etc.) – going through the routine of our lives bouncing around from interaction to interaction and event to event like a pinball in the super flashy, colorful pinball machine called life.

The down side of being in the habit of living this way is that you can become a veritable reaction machine – responding to your environment, events, and others in kind of a rote fashion but having little awareness of the cascade of internal processes that led to your reaction.

The trick is to find a practice that you enjoy that brings your focus inward so that you can begin to acquaint yourself with yourself. Putting energy into developing a regular meditation, yoga or martial arts practice takes time, but is well worth the effort. I’m a fan of shamanic journeying myself, which is an intense, but highly entertaining (e.g., cigar smoking ducks) form of meditation that invites you to directly engage and interact with elements of your internal world.

Cue pep talk: The key to success is to not give up when the process begins to suck (that’s the discipline part). And it will suck. When you get to know yourself more intimately you bump up against aspects of yourself that you may not be crazy about and probably prefer to ignore. But when it comes down to it – get ready . . . I’m bringing the bad analogy home – would you prefer to remain the poor pinball trapped under glass and catapulted through the same obstacles over and over again OR would you rather become the Pinball Wizard?

(My apologies to The Who)