Beyond the Power of Your Subconscious Mind (4 page)

But, it is our conscious mind that is doing all this chattering and it is important to become aware that such chatter is also providing input and instruction to the subconscious. As we become more knowing, more consciously aware that our present thoughts determine our future, we may choose to more carefully monitor the quality of our thoughts and begin to eliminate or change those thoughts that no longer serve us well. The good news is that since we can only focus on one thought at a time, we
can
control our thoughts. As we introduce the concept of affirmations and affirmation techniques, your understanding and appreciation of the power of self talk will expand. Chapter 3 will elaborate more fully on the crucially important subject of “self talk.”

2

How Your Own Mind Works

You have a mind, and you should learn how to use it. There are two levels of your mind—the conscious or rational level, and the subconscious or irrational level. You think with your conscious mind, and whatever you habitually think sinks down into your subconscious mind, which creates according to the nature of your thoughts. Your subconscious mind is the seat of your emotions and is the creative mind. If you think good, good will follow; if you think evil, evil will follow. This is the way your mind works.

The main point to remember is once the subconscious mind accepts an idea, it begins to execute it. It is an interesting and subtle truth that the law of the subconscious mind works for good and bad ideas alike. This law, when applied in a negative way, is the cause of failure, frustration, and unhappiness. However, when your habitual thinking is harmonious and constructive, you experience perfect health, success, and prosperity.

Peace of mind and a healthy body are inevitable when you begin to think and feel in the right way. Whatever you claim mentally and feel as true, your subconscious mind will accept and bring forth into your experience. The only thing necessary for you to do is to get your subconscious mind to accept your idea, and the law of your own subconscious mind will bring forth the health, peace, or the position you desire. You give the command or decree, and your subconscious will faithfully reproduce the idea impressed upon it. The law of your mind is this: You will get a reaction or response from your subconscious mind according to the nature of the thought or idea you hold in your conscious mind.

Psychologists and psychiatrists point out that when thoughts are conveyed to your subconscious mind, impressions are made in the brain cells. As soon as your subconscious accepts any idea, it proceeds to put it into effect immediately. It works by association of ideas and uses every bit of knowledge that you have gathered in your lifetime to bring about its purpose. It draws on the infinite power, energy, and wisdom within you. It lines up all the laws of nature to get its way. Sometimes it seems to bring about an immediate solution to your difficulties, but at other times it may take days, weeks, or longer.

Conscious and subconscious terms differentiated

You must remember that these are not two minds. They are merely two spheres of activity within one mind. Your conscious mind is the reasoning mind. It is that phase of mind which chooses. For example, you choose your books, your home, and your partner in life. You make all your decisions with your conscious mind. On the other hand, without any conscious choice on your part, your heart is kept functioning automatically, and the process of digestion, circulation, and breathing are carried on by your subconscious mind through processes independent of your conscious control.

Your subconscious mind accepts what is impressed upon it or what you consciously believe. It does not reason things out like your conscious mind, and it does not argue with you controversially. Your subconscious mind is like the soil which accepts any kind of seed, good or bad. Your thoughts are active and might be likened unto seeds. Negative, destructive thoughts continue to work negatively in your subconscious mind, and in due time will come forth into outer experience which corresponds with them.

A Chinese proverb:

All of the flowers of all the tomorrows lie in the seeds of today

(as do the weeds)

Which do you water all day long?

Remember, your subconscious mind does not engage in proving whether your thoughts are good or bad, true or false, but it responds according to the nature of your thoughts or suggestions. For example, if you consciously assume something as true, even though it may be false, your subconscious mind will accept it as true and proceed to bring about results which must necessarily follow, because you consciously assumed it to be true.

The tremendous power of suggestion

You must realize by now that your conscious mind is the “watchman at the gate,” and its chief function is to protect your subconscious mind from false impressions. You are now aware of one of the basic laws of mind: Your subconscious mind is amenable to suggestion. As you know, your subconscious mind does not make comparisons, or contrasts, neither does it reason and think things out for itself. This latter function belongs to your conscious mind. It simply reacts to the impressions given to it by your conscious mind. It does not show a preference for one course of action over another.

The dictionary says that a suggestion is the act or instance of putting something into one’s mind, the mental process by which the thought or idea suggested is entertained, accepted, or put into effect.

Lee Pulos, Ph.D., ABPP, who wrote the Foreword to this book, is a practicing clinical psychologist and hypnotherapist in Vancouver, B.C., Canada. I have been in workshops with Lee where he will put a participant in a light trance and then start to prick his hand with a pin. He tells the subject that he is injecting a numbing substance into his hand. “Your hand is getting very numb,” he tells him repeatedly until the subject states he can’t feel anything on his hand. To test the “numbness,” Lee will give the participant a good pinch. “Can’t feel a thing.” Then the subject is invited to stick the pin clear through the skin on his hand with the further suggestions, “There will be no pain, no bleeding, and no infection.” The participant then sticks the pin (not sterilized) through his hand and per the power of the instructions given to the subconscious, he/she feels
no
pain, there is
no
bleeding (not even a drop) and
no
infection ensues. This is pretty amazing! I know because I have been that “subject.”

I have seen subjects under hypnosis be told that a piece of chalk is a lit cigarette. The hypnotist then touches the subject on the skin of his arm. The subject recoils as though he was actually touched with a lit cigarette. But, what happens next is even harder to believe. A red welt appears on the arm which becomes an actual “heat blister,” even though the only thing that touched the subject’s arm was the blunt end of a piece of chalk!

Many of you have heard of, observed, or even participated in “fire walks” where, through the repetition of strong suggestions to the participants, the skin on their feet will be “protected” as they walk over red-hot coals. I have seen this ritual performed many times including native Fijians standing on molten white-hot rocks for several seconds with no feeling of the heat or any burning sensation.

As a point of disclaimer, I have also seen where, occasionally, a participant will actually experience a burn on their feet. But, in every such instance they confessed they had “great doubt” that they would be safe from being burned.

Imagine unleashing that same power to more easily help us to achieve our goals and the things we truly want in our lives. Imagine being able to turn off the switch of that little voice that likes to constantly remind us of our doubts and fears. Imagine that same power used to proactively manage our health and physical well-being. That’s where we are headed as we move forward with this work.

The subconscious cannot reason like your
conscious mind

Your subconscious mind cannot argue controversially. Hence, if you give it wrong suggestions, it will accept them as true and will proceed to bring them to pass as conditions, experiences, and events. All things that have happened to you are based on thoughts impressed on your subconscious mind through belief. If you have conveyed erroneous concepts to your subconscious mind, the sure method of overcoming them is by the repetition of constructive, harmonious thoughts frequently repeated which your subconscious mind accepts, thus forming new and healthy habits of thought and life, for your subconscious mind is the seat of habit.

The constructive and destructive power
of suggestion

Some illustrations and comments on heterosuggestion: Heterosuggestion means suggestions from another person. In all ages the power of suggestion has played a part in the life and thought of man in every period of time and in each country of the earth. In many parts of the world it is the controlling power in religion.

Suggestion may be used to discipline and control ourselves, but it can also be used to take control and command over others who do not know the laws of mind. In its constructive form it is wonderful and magnificent. In its negative aspects it is one of the most destructive of all the response patterns of the mind, resulting in patterns of misery, failure, suffering, sickness, and disaster.

Unless, as an adult, you use constructive autosuggestion, which is a reconditioning therapy, the impressions made on you in the past can cause behavior patterns that cause failure in your personal and social life. Autosuggestion is a means releasing you from the mass of negative verbal conditioning that might otherwise distort your life pattern, making the development of good habits difficult.

Another word for autosuggestion is
Affirmation
. We define affirmation as:

“A statement of fact or belief, positive or negative, that tends to lead you toward the end result you expect.”

Two things are important here:

1. The “statement of fact or belief” may be completely true or completely erroneous (but believed to be true). As written by Dr. Murphy just above:

Your subconscious mind cannot argue controversially. Hence if you give it wrong suggestions, it will accept them as true and will proceed to bring them to pass as conditions, experiences, and events. All things that have happened to you are based on thoughts impressed on your subconscious mind through belief.”

Any statement that follows the words “I am
__________
” is an affirmation. “I am lousy at
(
you can fill in the blank)
”
is an instruction to the subconscious to bring that statement into reality. Likewise, the statement (i.e., affirmation), “I am really good at
__________
” causes the subconscious to bring that belief into reality.

As Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D., writes in
Spontaneous Evolution
:
*

Our minds actively co-create the world we experience. Consequently, by changing our beliefs, we have an opportunity to affect world change .

The fact that the mind of the observer influences the outcome of experiments is one of the most profound insights introduced by quantum mechanics. This new physics acknowledges that we are not merely passive observers of our world but, rather we are active participants in its unfolding.
. . .
Quantum physics has absolutely verified that information processed by our minds influences the shape of the world in which we live.

This is very profound! When Dr. Murphy wrote his book in 1963, a reader had to make the choice of whether he/she believed what Dr. Murphy taught. Although Dr. Murphy
knew
what he taught was true, he couldn’t prove it through scientific analysis. Therefore, the disbelievers took on the role of “victims” and stayed stuck in their same old B.S. (Belief Systems). Those who embraced and practiced the principles taught by Dr. Murphy were labeled “optimists” or just plain “lucky.”

Today, students of this material can eliminate the need to believe or disbelieve as any inquiring mind can find the scientific evidence to validate its veracity.

Thank you, Dr. Bruce Lipton.

2.
The law of expectations.
Seldom does an individual exceed his/her expectations. Remember, an affirmation is “a statement of fact or belief, positive or negative, that tends to lead you toward the end result you
expect
.” It doesn’t read, “The end result that you
want
.” We don’t get what we want, we get what we expect. High-performance people develop high expectations which they hold firmly in their minds as though this picture (or goal) is already achieved.

You see and feel what you expect to see and feel. The world as you know it is a picture of your expectations. The world as the race of man knows it is the materialization en masse of your individual expectations.

The Nature of Personal Reality,*
* by Jane Roberts

If you want to enhance your performance or alter your behavior in any area of your life, you must simultaneously embrace the mental picture of that accomplishment and hold it tight to you as an imagined end result.

Don’t let lower expectations become the lid on the box that holds you down and sabotages your efforts to achieve new goals.

You can counteract negative suggestions

Pick up the newspaper any day, and you can read dozens of items that could sow the seeds of futility, fear, worry, anxiety, and impending doom. If accepted by you, these thoughts of fear could cause you to lose the will for life. Knowing that you can reject all these negative suggestions by giving your subconscious mind constructive autosuggestions, you counteract all these destructive ideas.

Check regularly on the negative suggestions that people make to you. You do not have to be influenced by destructive heterosuggestion.