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We've been talking about the subconscious mind and the super-conscious mind and how utterly powerful they are. But what about the good ole conscious mind? What is it good for? Absolutely everything!
With all the talk about how powerful and limitless the subconscious and super-conscious are, the absolute miracle of the universe, the conscious mind is kind of lost in the shuffle as an also ran.
Well, that just ain't true because consciousness runs this universe.
To explain the relationship of the conscious mind to the subconscious, I often relate, to my clients, the analogy of the captain to the crew. The Captain is the one who says, “We're going there! Make it see-oh!” The crew carries out the orders. If the crew get control of the ship or orders are telephoned in due to the Captain being asleep at the wheel...or just not being interested or feeling capable enough to be the Captain, the destination may be to destruction.
Or choice number two, the lessor of two evils, is no Captain at all, and just letting the ship drift until it runs into something, like a friendly harbor or a sandy beach....or a rocky shore or pirates...whatever life brings...
So, you see, the Captain, being at the wheel, setting goals, destinations, defining the mission, is pretty important.
The Conscious mind is, above all, conscious. Aware...of itself...the environment around us...in detail...the universe...time passage...goals, wishes, desires, bucket lists, it's open to new things, it thinks, it thinks abstractly...
A dog, f'rinstance, that is only equipped with very limited consciousness can bury a bone thinking it'll come back and grab it later, and then loses it. Or it can conceive of houses rather than a house...in other words, my pack lives in this and we're going for a walk to see our brother pack in another house. But a dog can't conceive of how that house got there, or discern furnishings, other than “this smells like ours, and that smells like not-ours.....”
The conscious mind starts things, it has volition...it can choose what to accept and what to reject...the Inner Mind believes everything without judgment. The waking mind thinks in terms of past and future; it can plan ahead...the Hidden Mind lives in the eternal now.
The downside is that the conscious mind has only a twenty second memory, it can only think of one thing at a time...probably juggle about three...if it were music, it could only play arpeggios and not chords...it's only aware of a few things coming in through a sense at a time...
In other words, if your sitting in a chair in your living room, you are only aware of what you tune in to, like the sound of your air conditioner, whether you feel too warm or too cool, the smell of Jill cooking garlic in olive oil in the kitchen, that indefinite mumbling of talk in the background, the light coming in the front window....only one thing at a time, usually. You only think about 5% of your waking day...the rest of the time, the Crew is running habitual routine sub-programs.
On the other hand, the Inner Mind remembers all the way back to when you heard Mom humming while she washed dishes...while you were still in the womb. It is aware of about twenty million things coming in from all your senses simultaneously, and it pretty much runs everything automatically and hates any kind of change in the routine.
That's what we know about it. Well, not everything, because I'm just a hypnotist and only suggest things which is like giving an opinion for a living.
Consciousness is unique in the universe...actual thinking...not just sensing something, or having a hunch. But figuring it out....I mean, what is it? Where did it come from? It created nuclear weapons, killer viruses, and poison gas, pollution, garbage, war,...yech...so where is the survival advantage? Hmmm?
Consciousness also created indoor toilets, air conditioning so we could live in places normally too hot to live in and heated homes for those places too cold to live in. Roads, automobiles and flying machines to get us anywhere on the planet in 24 hours, theoretically.
Supply chains, and manufacturing, plumbing so we don't have to spend most of our day slaving just for bare basics like food and water, and shelter...we can just go out and buy it through our credit and money system.
To see a child that is born with only the subconscious mind just vacuuming up information and language skill in the first 5 or 6 years and then develop a conscious, calculating, creative mind with a personality...and become what we call “a person” which is a being that is conscious...which is a being that is “Human”...
It is such a gift, consciousness is, such an unfathomable miracle...
To be or not to be...now, that's consciousness....