CHAPTER 3: MAINTAIN A HEALTHY MIND
The mind is an iceberg — it floats with only
one-seventh of its bulk above water.
– Sigmund Freud, psycho-analyst
Doing things to keep your mind healthy and fit is just as important as doing things to keep your body healthy and fit. Mental exercise is as important as physical exercise; more about that in chapter 21.
For now, we’re just going to talk about your mind. While meditation can be a wonderful tool that you can use to help you to keep yourself mentally healthy and fit, understanding your mind also can play an important role in mental fitness.
You have in your possession an amazing and powerful tool that you can use at any time you choose to use it — that tool is your subconscious mind!
Let’s take some time to discuss this super power of yours...
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The Power Of The Subconscious Mind
Generally speaking, when you study psychology — the study of the psyche, or mind — you are introduced to the father of psycho-analysis, Sigmund Freud, and his concept of the division of the human psyche into the id, ego and superego.
Basically, the id represents the basic biological urges such as hunger, thirst, etc.; those body systems controlled by the subconscious mind. The ego directs and controls those urges with conscious action, and the superego is referred to as the moral part of the personality, or the conscience.
Carl Jung, a world-renowned psycho-analyst and a friend of Freud’s, posed the concept of the collective unconscious.
Basically, this collective unconscious is a collective “knowing” — a knowledge that all human beings share — that is accessed through our dreams and visions. Jung placed a lot of focus on the symbols in dreams (more on that in chapter 23), embracing the symbolism of the self, rather than on the literal translation of the symbols.
Homework assignment!
Study the work of these two men (Freud and Jung) to gain a bit of insight into the complexity and limitless possibilities of your mind.
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The Basics — How All Of This Relates To Meditation
There are things we do, decisions we make, and actions we take on a conscious level, and there are things that we do that are directed on a subconscious level.
Our conscious mind is in the here and now, aware of the phenomena and events within and outside of ourselves.
Your subconscious mind is the keeper of knowledge. Everything you have ever read, heard, seen, learned — it’s all stored in your subconscious mind; this is where you can find the answers to your challenges.
You can access your subconscious mind through meditation.
Think of it like the operating system of a computer that holds knowledge. You just have to know how to use it!
When you are in a relaxed state — like during meditation — your subconscious is open to the suggestions you choose to feed into it. When you reach this point, you can think about the goals you want to achieve, the habits you want to change, the problems you want to solve, the prayers you want to send — you choose.
When you keep your conscious mind occupied with high expectations and goals, you allow the subconscious mind to reproduce your habitual thinking, or to manifest the reality you want or expect.
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Conscious Mind vs. Subconscious Mind
One key difference between the conscious mind and the subconscious mind is that the subconscious mind does not distinguish between what is real and what is not real. To your subconscious mind, everything is real.
The subconscious mind never sleeps, nor does it ever rest. It is always turned on, always processing, always taking in information that is being fed in to it.
The subconscious mind does not think for itself; it only reacts to input it receives. It processes what is fed into it as “real” — one reason children have nightmares — and it will work to make “correct” any input it receives.
When you watch a movie, listen to a song, or play a computer or video game, your subconscious mind “believes” that what you are experiencing is reality.
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Think of your subconscious mind as a garden that you want to plant. You hold the key to planting the seeds into your subconscious that you want to grow — that you want to harvest into your life.
When you plant positive, harmonious, and encouraging seeds — or thoughts — you harvest a positive, harmonious and encouraging result. However, if you fill your mind with negativity, you will reap negativity.
Whatever you allow into your subconscious will be perceived as real. This is one explanation of why visualization during meditation works. (More on visualization in chapter 15.)
Note that when you are in a meditative state, your subconscious mind may bring forward ideas, solutions, images, etc.
For you creative people (artists, writers, musicians, etc.), it is a good idea to keep a pencil and paper close by for note-taking — either for meditation, or when you sleep. If you wait until you are fully awake, these thoughts will be gone. (Read more on this topic in chapter 17.)
Through meditation, you more easily tap into the unlimited power of your subconscious mind. Remember, you get to decide how you use this tool.
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Interesting Stuff You Just Might Like…
- The subconscious mind controls the autonomic body systems.
- It is important always be on guard; be aware of what you allow to get into your subconscious mind in the form of music, television, movies, video or computer games, etc.
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THINK TIME:
How can you use your subconscious to achieve goals,
change habits, solve problems, or send prayers?
PART ONE
THE MOMMY LECTURES
Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously
uses his intelligence.
– Albert Einstein, physicist