It is well-known now that your mind has two parts, the conscious mind, and the subconscious mind. The subconscious mind is our real brain and it is estimated that it processes anywhere between 11 to 40 million bits of data per second. That is an enormous number. Imagine standing in times square looking at a billboard. While you think you’re ONLY looking at the billboard, your subconscious mind is absorbing millions of bits of information per second from the environment. It could be the hundreds of neon-lit signs, the sound of cars and people, the smell of food, and so on. All these bits of information bypass our conscious mind which is still looking at the billboard and is stored in the subconscious.
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The subconscious mind is habitual and plays back whatever it learns. It is not a creative center, but rather a center that relies on habits. Yet, it is very powerful and fast. Only a small part of the brain in the front gives rise to consciousness. Your conscious mind is creative, gives rise to the imagination, is the seed of your spirit, and defines who you are as a person. It gives rise to your hopes, dreams, wishes, and desires. But this conscious part of the brain can only process 40 to 50 bits of data per second. The subconscious mind processes 250,000 to a million times more bits of information than your conscious mind.
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While the subconscious mind has little creativity, it is where your habits and patterns come from. It is no different from a computer and learns to control your body and respond to your experiences. Each time you have an experience or learn something new or complicated, your subconscious mind remembers it as a program similar to a computer. Since it lacks the free will and creativity of the conscious mind, the subconscious mind can do thousands of tasks at a time without you realizing it.
It is only now that neuroscience has begun to recognize the importance of your subconscious mind in shaping your life and your reality. While the law of attraction works, how you think and feel is governed by the subconscious mind and this shapes the reality you experience.
A research paper published by Auburn University said that “According to cognitive neuroscientists, we are conscious of only about 5 percent of our cognitive activity, so most of our decisions, actions, emotions, and behavior depends on the 95 percent of brain activity that goes beyond our conscious awareness.” In a similar paper published in the journal “Behavioral and Brain Sciences”, Professor Ezequiel Morsella of San Francisco State University talks about the “Passive Frame Theory” which states that nearly all of your brain’s activity is conducted at the subconscious level.
Most people spend only 1% of their day in the conscious mind. You drive the same route and you accomplish the daily tasks that you’ve always done and this routine has become repetitive to such an extent that you remember it as a program, a habit that no longer requires a conscious mind. You do things on autopilot through your subconscious mind. So, you create from your conscious mind only 1% of the time in your life and 99% of your life comes from the programming of your subconscious mind.
So, maybe someone told you in your childhood that you do not deserve anything good and it gets engrained in your subconscious mind. You then spend 95% of your life playing out this subconscious program inadvertently and you will subconsciously sabotage your own life to make sure that you do not deserve something. This is how fragile the human mind is. What it sees, hears, and learns, it stores in the subconscious and it plays out the programs and habits based on what data has been stored. The job of your subconscious mind is to create your reality out of your program. So, if your programming has been negative then for 95% of the day you will create that negative experience in your life without even realizing it.
The conscious mind and subconscious always go together. The conscious mind controls anything that it focuses on. The subconscious mind controls whatever the conscious doesn’t control with focus. If you are not present in this moment right now, your conscious mind would not be able to control it. And if your conscious mind is not in control of this moment, then everything you do during your daily routine is run from the program written in the subconscious mind.
Most people don’t realize that their programming is playing out because their conscious mind is not paying enough attention to see what is happening. As a result, most people are not running the subconscious program they want, but rather they are running the subconscious program that they have picked up from their conditioning from the environment since childhood. So, when something doesn’t work out, people blame everything including the Universe. But it was not the Universe, but your own programming that shaped your reality through your thoughts, feelings, and the law of attraction.
Most people are stuck in the perpetual cycle of trying to change their lives through positive thinking. They are like a hamster on a wheel. They keep thinking positively, but it has little effect. Do you know why? It is because your conscious mind does the imagination, visualization, and positive thinking. The mind that works about 1% of the day at 40 bits a second does the positive thinking. Make no mistake, positive thinking works. There’s no doubt about that. But it is difficult to consciously think positively when your subconscious programming is the opposite. It will take enormous willpower to override your conditioning and then manifest consciously. In addition, the conscious mind is limited in its processing speed. The subconscious, on the other hand, is faster and it works like a recorder. It records your experiences and replays them to create future experiences.
No matter what has been programmed into your mind through your experiences, it can always be changed. Just like you can change the recording being played in a player, you can replace your old programs with new ones in your subconscious mind. Your life does not reflect what you want, but it reflects the programs you have written in the subconscious mind.
There are several ways to change your subconscious patterns though. One way is to just be conscious all the time. This way, you wouldn’t play out your subconscious patterns. But it is impossible to be conscious at all times because the human brain was not designed this way. Most of the time, it works on autopilot. So, another approach to changing your subconscious mind is through clinical hypnotherapy. This is effective because clinical hypnotherapy takes you to a theta state of the brainwave when you are relaxed. Accessing the theta brainwave state creates a state of learning for the subconscious mind because this is the same brainwave that children have. This is why most of the subconscious patterns are picked up during childhood when you’re in a theta state of mind. To reprogram your subconscious, you just have to go back to that state of mind from your childhood.
There are several emerging modalities in energy healing, psychology, and the law of attraction that could also help you with rewiring your subconscious mind. Energy Psychology is one that also helps with this. Versions of energy psychology such as holographic repatterning, body talk, EMDR, EFT, and Psych K have proven to be effective.
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In the end, what is truly important is to set an intention. The intention to reprogram your subconscious patterns is vital to not just changing your thought patterns but to change the reality you experience. There have been many before you who have done it and there will be many who will continue to bend the reality to match their desires. There is no reason why you cannot change your life and the reality you’re creating.