Conscious Versus The Unconscious Mind – The Lowdown

We receive ten to the power of eleven bits of information every second into our minds (this much; 10,00000000000) but our minds can only process around one hundred and fifty thousand bits of information every second (150000).

To process this information, our mind needs to work fast, so it batches information by deleting what it deems unnecessary. Next it distorts the rest of information so that it fits into a belief system that you already have, and then it generalises the information so that you can make sense of it.

The filters that our mind uses to delete, distort and generalise information, have to grow, and develop which occurs during childhood, forming firmer belief systems as an adult. These ‘Belief Systems’ originate from our personal conditioning, via our parents, family, school, and so on. They can also develop from our social, and cultural experiences too.

Conscious and Unconscious

Before any information can reach our unconscious mind, it must first pass through our conscious, or logical mind, which is the voice of reason. As children, our conscious mind, just like everything else is not fully developed, which is why you can teach a child anything, and they will believe it to be true. It’s the information that we receive at this stage that will form our deepest unconscious belief systems.

The prime responsibilities of the conscious mind is to check information that we allow into our unconscious mind, it is also responsible for short term memory. If something does not seem to be logical, or comprehensible to your logical mind, it will reject it, or require further information, or research before it can fully accept it.

In contrast the unconscious mind, stores EVERYTHING it receives. It runs the body, preserves and protects it, and it stores emotions and optimises the bodies functions, it heals, restores, manages energy, manages memories, represses memories attached to extreme emotion, or trauma and re-presents such memories for resolution when you are strong enough to handle them.

However, the unconscious mind is not logical it’s messages often make no logical sense at all (dreaming is an example) and when it re-presents experiences that you are ready to resolve, you may not realise, and you won’t understand the connection. You may simply start to feel anxious, or angry, have flashbacks, dreams, or circumstances happen that cause you to take a look inwards. Because the unconscious mind runs optimally it will never present anything to you that you cannot handle, but it will be prompting you to makes these resolutions because it is protecting your body, and energy, and needs to place the energy used in repressing these events elsewhere.

The unconscious mind also serves you, it will do, or create whatever you want it to, so if you have any internal dialogue that is disempowering in any way such as ‘I am not good enough’, your unconscious mind will find and create experiences for you that confirm and supports that notion and it is highly efficient and very literal. It will also support your bad habits in the same way. But because it’s so effective at serving you, if you change your patterns, habits or thoughts, your mind responds immediately taking only a few weeks to develop a habit.

You can create more energy, for yourself, and prevent the presentation of repressed events by using personal reflection strategies to uncover some of these events before they are represented. If you do this, your unconscious mind will automatically send the excess energy to somewhere else inside your body creating optimal health and performance.

The Individualogist Team

The Individualogist Team is made up of archetype fanatics, individuation practitioners, and spirituality fans. Our humble group has banded together to deliver thought-provoking, life-changing, and growth-probing wisdom.