Thursday, 05 September 2013
The Power of the Unconscious
I recently worked with a client of mine on a particular issue, that lead to other particular issues that lead to other issues… it often works that way.  After our second session I got an email of from her telling me she felt crazy, all this old stuff about her past, her family, her upbringing, that was not very positive, was coming flooding back to her.  She felt sad, scared, she was crying for “no reason”, she felt out of control and as she said it “crazy”.  As we sat together at our next session she talked about her youth, a time in her life when she was setting out on her own and how she felt scared, and sad, and cried a lot, despite terming herself as “not a crier”.  As we talked she came to realize that she was at a very similar point in her life now, and accordingly, felt a little sad, and a little scared, and a little like crying.
I shared with her some insight of the unconscious mind.  Our unconscious mind is our record keeper; it’s an elaborate filing system that runs 24/7/365 without any awareness on our part.  It filters and files every second of our existence and creates what we perceive and live as “reality” by its constant attempt to make our current world match what is already in the files.  Its habit, automatic, it’s the things we say we’re never going to do again, until the next time we find ourselves doing them.  As I affectionately call it, it’s the bus driver.  The power of the unconscious is what makes an event into a pattern and then repeats it forever, or until we purposefully go in and change the file.  Techniques like hypnosis, neurolinguistic programming, PSYCH K, guided meditation, EFT, etc. help us change the messages in the files to create different beliefs, which lead to different behaviors.  The unconscious mind doesn’t care if a pattern serves us well, or healthfully or not, it simply knows that a certain set of behaviors has kept us alive to this point, so it’s not about to take the risk of changing them.
Now after an introduction like that you may believe that the unconscious mind should be the enemy, for it very often represents the ego, or a fear state within us.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Our unconscious mind will always do what it believes will keep us safe and sound.  As I tell people, the basic goal of the unconscious is eyes forward and level.  Our unconscious mind has unlimited potential, it literally has the capacity to take in 10 (10) bits of information every second!!!!  Now that’s processing speed!  It is constantly filtering our environment for what we need to have conscious awareness of, and what is essentially, garbage.  The unconscious mind is a place of constant change as new thought and information can come in and change what is in existence, and it has a way of communication that very often we go without noticing.  It’s when we’re noticing in our lives, what’s there to notice, that we receive the messages from our unconscious. Dream time is the unconscious mind’s playground and I encourage you to pay attention to your dreams, both day, and night.
My client’s level of understanding of how her unconscious mind was using her past experience, to help her work through her current experience completely changed her perception of her current situation and she began to see this aspect of herself as exciting and creative, and from there, to see her entire current situation as exciting and creative. AWESOME!!!  Through the use of hypnosis and some other unconscious mind work she was able to recognize her unconscious mind’s ability to use her consciousness to work through her past and to see her current situation as similar, but her response to it became completely different.
She left the session feelings excited about what her unconscious s mind would show her next, and what realizations about herself and her life it would provide her with.  We can each use the power of our unconscious mind to create positive changes in our lives.  Guided meditations can be used to create a particular state within the unconscious and is very simply done.  We can do free writing exercises to elicit information as well as reframe the unconscious; hypnosis and PSYCH K create change all the way to our DNA instantaneously.  Spontaneous healing is a gift of the unconscious, our literal ability to change our minds. 
The next time you sit and meditate, or pray, or just pay attention to what’s around you, simply notice what you notice as your unconscious gives you the gifts of the stories it’s gathered.  Perhaps give it the awareness it deserves in how it helps you create your life.  The power to change is within you, always.