Thinking Subconsciously

"It's like knowing something before you know it."

--Emma Boland

As I was reading something  this past week I was reminded of how we sometimes use the word subconsciously.  If you had made plans to go somewhere, for example, and you delayed getting ready, or your clothes weren't quite right, or you forgot to pick up something you promised to bring, people would say that subconsciously you did not want to go.  I happened to be sitting with my 12 year old granddaughter at the time, and I was curious whether she and her friends use the word or whether she had any idea what it meant.  "It's like knowing something before you know it", she said. What a perfect answer.  Epistemology, by the way, is the branch of philosophy that studies knowledge, belief, as well as the nature and limitations of knowledge. Our conscious thinking or "knowing" goes on in the conscious mind.  As we have mentioned, there is an interchange of information between the conscious and subconscious minds, but you literally don't "know" the information stored in your subconscious because you cannot recall it at will.   

We have also discussed that we can seed our subconscious with what we want to experience in our lives by visualizing and feeling in out hearts that it has already happened. Unfortunately, no one ever teaches us how to direct the power of our mind and subconscious mind.  Every minute of every day we instruct our mind and subconscious mind to create what we don't want rather than what we want. We do this with our thoughts, beliefs, attitudes, words and actions. If any of these are not lined up with what we want to achieve then our subconscious minds create the opposite of what we want.

Mental images and affirmations that something you desire is already part of your life plants the "idea" in your subconscious where it will simply follow your directions according to your thoughts, beliefs, actions and attitudes.  Here are examples of the kind of thinking that is so common yet throws up roadblocks between you and your goals or desires.

Never, ever say or think: "I can't afford that."

Never, ever say or think: "I feel awful."
Never, ever say or think: "He is such a [fill in the blank]" or "She is such a [fill in the blank]."
Never, ever say or think: "This is too hard." or "I will never be able to do this."
Never, ever say or think: "I am afraid to try that." or "I can't do that."
And my favorite, never, ever say or think: "I cannot remember."

Let's take just that last example and look at taking the expression "I am losing my memory." and turning it around in a manner that will create the opposite through a process called autosuggestion (The process by which a person induces self-acceptance of an opinion, belief, or plan of action.).  The following is a rather verbose example taken from The Power of Your Subconscious Mind by Dr. Joseph Murphy.  It is more elaborate and detailed than most examples I have seen or put into practice myself, but it suggests that with some thought a script can be prepared and used several times a day to focus your thinking.  To give you a feeling for how long you may expect to have to practice autosuggestion before seeing results, Dr. Murphy states that "At the end of three weeks, her memory was back to normal, and she was delighted."

"My memory from today on is improving in every department.  I shall always remember whatever I need to know at every moment of time and point of space.  The impressions received will be clearer and more definite.  I shall retain them automatically and with ease.  Whatever I wish to recall will immediately present itself in the correct form in my mind.  I am improving rapidly every day, and very soon my memory will be better than ever before."

You will recall that throughout this blog I have indicated that the exercise of positive thinking to bring about a change or solution requires turning around the present situation and stating it in a manner that would indicate that it has already come about or been solved.  That is exactly the way the above example is phrased.  It avoids using negative words such as don't and can't and places the precise thoughts of what you desire into your subconscious.

As a Man Thinketh So Is He

“As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.”
-- The Book of Proverbs

"Your habitual thinking and imagery mold, fashion, and create your destiny; for as a man thinketh in his subconscious mind, so is he."
-- Dr. Joseph Murphy Ph.D.

"I thinketh that I looketh awthome today!"

In 1902, James Allen produced a literary essay "As a Man Thinketh" based on a verse in the Bible from the Book of Proverbs. According to Wikipedia, in the Bible the passage is referring to another person, and in James Allen's work the passage is adopted to primarily refer to the reader himself. It is in the later context that the quote is used in this post at the end of which you will find a  5 minute YouTube video containing a recorded excerpt from the essay.

Dr. Murphy's quote above is taken from his book, "The Power of Your Subconscious Mind".
 
It would seem there is a lot of agreement that the heart and/or the mind  are directly responsible for the kind of person we each become (or perhaps "turn into" is a more appropriate way of putting it.)

One example of a problem which was made clear to me by the movie I Am is that people who are in trouble have difficulty thinking and acting reasonably. They are therefore helpless to confront an emergency on their own.  Yet prayers often pour forth in times of trouble and in particular when illness or death lurk.  People also complain that they often get the opposite of what they pray for.  That, or they pray and pray and get no answer. 

Several authors, some of whom I have quoted in the blog, are of the opinion that it's not specifically what you believe in that brings answers to your prayers.  It is literally what you think and specifically what your subconscious thinks that brings the result, good or bad, right or wrong, on the mark or the complete opposite.  In short what they are saying is that the answer comes when your subconscious responds to an image or thought in your conscious mind.

Back to the movie for a minute... The main premise of I Am is that we are all somehow connected at a more fundamental level than previously thought. Experiments have shown that this is true not just for humans but probably for all animals as well. The conclusion was that what we do at the individual level really does affect the global environment. If this is all true it makes the premise of a conscious thought affecting our subconscious mind easier to believe or at least begin to understand. The concept of duality of the mind is nothing new, and the two parts have been given names such as: objective subjective, waking sleeping, voluntary involuntary, and of course concsious subconscious.  What is so fascinating is that we are talking about internal thought "seeding" the subconscious which reacts by causing a result to happen.  And that result may be outside your body.

Dr. Murphy has stated that the condition of your mind and body as well as circumstances is a direct result of what you think, feel and believe and that your habitual thinking and imagery create your destiny.  Certainly he was not restricting this to refer just to the destiny of your mind and body since he added the rather broad category of "circumstances".

All of us, Buddhist, Muslim, Hebrew and Christian alike, may get our prayers answered, but only because of belief and mental acceptance of that for which we pray.  In other words we have to develop a technique which is based on an understanding of what we are doing in prayer and why.

People who have difficulty praying or meditating about a problem often say their mind wanders back and forth on problems.  We can sometimes feel defeated even before we start a positive thinking exercise.  Are you one of those who is filled with fears and doubts?  When opportunities arise do you think about how you might fail instead of how you will succeed?  Are you afraid you will get laughed at?  To state the obvious, If you are afraid to move forward you will stay where you are.  And yet all of us possess the ability to release the power of our subconscious mind to attract happiness, good health, wealth and success into our lives.  It is the belief in our own mind's capability that brings the result we seek.  That is the same as saying that you have to believe in the way your mind works. 

Dr Murphy, whose quote appears at the top of the page,  expressed his descriptions of prayer by using analogies to scientific processes that are better understood.  The essence of his explanation is that prayers are answered by the universal principle of action/reaction.  The action is the thought you put in your conscious mind.  The reaction is the subconscious mind's response, and the response corresponds to the nature of your thought.

I Am

"Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that. "
- Martin Luther King

I Am, a film released in February of 2011 which documents the personal journey of it's creator, film maker Tom Shadyac, originally set out to pose two practical and provocative questions: what’s wrong with our world, and what can we do to make it better? Shadyac intended to investigate how he as an individual, and we as a race, could improve "the way we live and walk in the world." 

But the story behind the movie is heart warming as well as a wonderful lesson in positive thinking.





In 2007 Shadyac suffered an injury that changed his life forever. A bike accident left him with a condition whereby the symptoms of a serious concussion did not go away. All kinds of traditional and alternative treatments failed. He began thinking he was not going to live. Confronting his own mortality, he wondered what his last statement as a movie producer might be. He thought and thought, and finally determined that he was not going to die without pursuing an answer to the question "What is wrong with the world, and what can we do to change it?" Out of all his thought and research, the concept for I Am was born.

Those of us who are positive thinkers will not be surprised to learn that at the same time Shadyac became so focused and determined not to die before he accomplished his goal, his symptoms began to recede allowing him to travel and use his movie-making skills to explore the questions that now haunted him, and to communicate his findings in a humorous yet intellectual and emotional film. The irony is that Shadyac was not the typical purveyor of messages - he was the creator of entertaining, silly films that made money (most widely known are his films Ace Ventura, Pet Detective, The Nutty Professor, Liar Liar, and Bruce Almighty.) 

Shadyac met with a variety of thinkers from the worlds of science, philosophy, academia, and faith. Among those he interviewed were such luminaries as David Suzuki, Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Lynne McTaggart, Ray Anderson, John Francis, Coleman Barks, and Marc Ian Barasch. He discovered that, contrary to conventional thinking, cooperation and not competition may be nature’s most fundamental operating principle which suggests that the basis of Nature is cooperation and democracy. The movie shows that consensus decision-making is the norm amongst many species, from insects and birds to deer and primates. The film also demonstrates that humans actually function better and remain healthier when expressing positive emotions such as love, care, compassion, and gratitude, versus their negative counterparts, anxiety, frustration, anger and fear.

The movie was recommended to me, but the impact that the whole story had on me was completely unexpected. The story behind the movie reveals that even without intentionally devoting a moment's effort to healing himself, Shadyac was so consumed with thoughts of the better good that his symptoms began to disappear. Here was a man who thought he was dying and essentially thought to himself, "Not yet, buster. You need to fix the world first!" Such determination is essential to successful positive thinking which is why I am sharing this marvelous example on the blog.  In this case Shadyac did not begin with the intent of fixing himself by thinking positively.  Far from it. He ignored his own symptoms (stopped thinking about them) and focused on a far bigger positive goal.

In the western world the heart has been inextricably linked to our emotions, the mind, the soul, and our very being since antiquity. Both the ancient Egyptians and Greeks considered the heart -- not the brain -- to be the source of our thought, feeling, and will.  The movie demonstrates that the heart contains an intelligence and shows that it actually passes information to the brain in the form of electrical impulses contained between those associated with the normal heartbeats. We tend to label love, care, gratitude and compassion as positive because of the way in which they affect our bodies. This effect can actually be seen on a person's EKG monitor when they are hugged by a person they love. No surprise then that the heart is the symbol of love. But on the other hand, if our heart is sending a stressful message pattern, it actually inhibits our brain and we can't think as clearly. Hence we tend to do something stupid out of anger when we are feeling stressed. As we have discussed, words you say to another human have an effect.  But wait until you see the effect of a simple hug has on two hearts.

I think the movie is fascinating and has a basis in sound science and reasoning - definitely a feel-good experience. I found it available on www.vudu.com. Please see the movie trailer below.

Religious or Spiritual?

"There is a difference between wishing for a thing and being ready to receive it.  No one is ready for a thing until he believes he can acquire it.  The state of mind must be BELIEF, not mere hope or wish."

-- Napoleon Hill

Are you having difficulty wrapping your head around how to actually implement the concepts of positive thinking in your daily life?  Let's review the previous topics we have discussed so far about how to approach positive thinking.

1. We know that it begins with a positive attitude; one that says, "Can do."
2. We know that "putting our mind to it" requires confidence or faith that you "can do".
3. We know that it takes a certain determination, a "burning desire" to achieve what you want.
4. We know that posture not only affects our attitude, but indirectly our own confidence level.
5. We also know that the way we speak and think about things has a direct impact on our relationships, our health and many other things.  The way we speak reflects our attitude and hence our ability to think with a positive frame of mind.
6. We have mentioned the mind's connection to the subconscious and in turn the mysterious connection of the subconscious mind to a higher power.

In theory, thinking positively is easy.  In practice, obtaining the desired result seems difficult.  So what's the trouble?  Why doesn't it seem to work?   

Here is what usually happens.  A person will say, "Yeah, those are clever quotes and poems and stuff, but it takes too much effort."  Here are obvious reasons for failure: "It's too much like praying, and I am not really very religious." Or, "I just haven't got the time for all that". 

More often a person will have a favorable reaction to the concepts of positive thinking and have the greatest intentions.  They may actually give it a try but get a little lost in their thoughts or begin thinking about something else.  Some actually start, but in the back of their mind is that lingering doubt or the lack of confidence needed to kick start that old subconscious. 

As to being hard, believe me when I tell you that once you have experienced your first success at obtaining a result you wished for or the solution to a problem you were struggling with just came to you out of nowhere, you will grin and think, "That was easy."  Any effort you expend at all has the potential for producing great results.

The quotes and poems come from years, even centuries, of people from all different backgrounds who have had such success attracting good things into their lives that they take the time to write about it in a way that we will remember.  We all can use reminders of peoples' positive beliefs and successes at a time when we are having trouble focusing our own thoughts or even struggling with our own beliefs.

Time is often an issue, but it's also true that when something is important to us we can usually find the time if the motivation is strong enough.  It's not impossible to be alone with your thoughts as you are winding down for the night, but there is a tendency to fall asleep.  You could bypass one of those TV shows or stop working long enough to devote 15 minutes to help yourself.  

Number 6 ranks high in the list of things holding people back from applying positive thinking to fulfilling a need.  There is a very fine line between positive thinking, meditation, and prayer.  I have read several books on the subject of self-help and have noticed that the older ones tend to be centered around God, faith and prayer where more modern ones seem to make reference to a "higher power" and avoid mentioning "God".  This may be because younger writers fear they will lose their readership if they mention God specifically.  And the mention of God ignores a huge population of people who are not believers in God but who are non-the-less very spiritual and/or believe in or worship another deity. 

Here is what thesaurus.com has as synonyms for God.

• Part of Speech: noun
• Definition: Supernatural being worshipped by people
• Synonyms: Absolute Being, All Knowing, All Powerful, Allah, Almighty, Creator, Divine Being, Father, God , Holy Spirit, Infinite Spirit, Jah, Jehovah, King of Kings, Lord, Maker, Yahweh, daemon, deity, demigod, demon, divinity, holiness, idol, master, numen, omnipotent, power, prime mover, providence, soul, spirit, totem, tutelary, universal life force, world spirit

I hope you find an inoffensive reference in the list. Just know that by referring to a higher power I am talking about an always-present and limitless power outside ourselves that is a complete mystery to most of us.  Since it is not actually your mind that moves the mountain, there certainly is an external power that is responsible.  It turns out that understanding the nature of that power is not important to obtaining results. What IS essential is having the belief that you can.

Puppy Love

Puppies are nature's remedy for feeling unloved, plus numerous other ailments of life.

--Richard Allan Palm

I am a little late posting this because my planned topic took a little twist yesterday with a trip to the vets.

I had wanted to review some of the approaches to actually thinking positively; or to put it another way: attempt to provide an answer to what exactly one does to think positively. One of the things I had mentioned was that to my way of thinking there is a very fine line between positive thinking, meditation, and prayer. Some may say they are one and the same thing, but one distinction is that prayer usually refers to speaking to some one or some thing outside oneself.  To me the word prayer does not necessarily imply worship but does suggest a belief in the existence of an external "higher power" or "infinite intelligence".

Bear with me while I explain the events that took my thinking in this other direction.  My wife and I own two rescue dogs which came into our lives two years ago this coming June.  They were part of an abandoned litter found under a house porch.  Our daughter and we agreed to take the entire litter of five and the love that these dogs have brought to our families has been nothing short of remarkable. The love of their human guardians is expected or at least hoped for as part of pet ownership, but the love and affection they demonstrate toward each other is truly astounding.

Denny, the male of the sister/brother pair that came to us, was discovered to have a serious heart murmur during his first visit to a veterinarian.  (Murmur refers to an abnormal sound as the heart beats usually heard only with the aid of a stethoscope.)  I can hear the typical whooshing sound with my ear to his chest.  His murmur was rated a 6 out of 6 on "loudness" level.  He was not expected to live.  Denny and I spend a few minutes almost every day with him looking into my eyes and me, with hands on each side of his chest, telling him that his heart is beating too hard and asking him to relax and slow things down a little.  This does me a lot of good, and I will leave it at that. 

I decided to change vets this spring for a number of reasons unrelated to Denny's murmur.  The new vet rated Denny's murmur a 5 out of 6 which is a subjective rating, of course, except for one factor in this case.  A rating of 6 indicates that the murmur can be heard "outside the chest" meaning it is audible in a perfectly quiet room without a stethoscope. Denny's murmur is not that loud.

Yesterday Denny's sister, Abby, went for her checkup and the new doctor discovered that she now has a murmur.  I heard it myself with the stethoscope.  It is much less severe than Denny's, but a real downer nonetheless.  Let me mention that this condition is not painful to the animal, and if anything happens at all, they usually just collapse while running across the yard.

To the next step -

I found myself wondering if animals think.  Clearly they have the ability to reason as the following behavior I witnessed recently indicates.  Another dog and its owner were walking along the road in the front of the house (west-facing) going in a southerly direction.  Our pups were blocked by a fence and just stood and barked until the intruding pair got out of site at which point they glanced at each other and simultaneously turned on their heels, ran to the rear of the house around the back where the other dog came into sight again, and they resumed their barking.  This certainly demonstrates an ability to predict and communicate to each other.  This example is probably more instinct than thinking, but how do animals think anyway?  Certainly not in words.

To the final step -

I wondered if it is possible to have positive thoughts for animals the way one might have positive thoughts for other humans.  That is when I realized that what I was really thinking about was prayer.  It put things in a brand new perspective for me.  We frequently pray for friends and family members in times of adversity.  Perhaps by putting it in the context of having positive thoughts about your own issues but substituting the other person's name everywhere you would have thought "I" would be a good approach.  Just reverse the way you have been thinking about it.

"[insert name] is getting healthier every minute.  He/she loves life and is so happy to be a part of his/her family.  He/she has wonderful friends who care about him/her and they are using their combined power of positive thinking to bring continued happiness and good health to [name].  Thank you so much."

See how this works for you, and I will be back next week.

Making the Life You Want to Live

“Fear less, hope more; Eat less, chew more; Whine less, breathe more; Talk less, say more; Love more, and all good things will be yours.”

-- Swedish Proverb

The Holstee Manifesto
I came across this in an email from Brain Pickings Weekly and thought it was worth sharing on the blog.  At the Holstee site they say that between twitter, tumblr and the whole wide blogosphere, the Holstee Manifesto Poster pictured below has been viewed over 50,000,000 times. 

Here is a link with a little background on how Holstee got started.  It definitely is a lesson in positive thinking manifesting in a "can do" attitude.

Happy Easter

Earth’s saddest day and gladdest day were just three days apart

-- Susan Coolidge

This particular post coincides with the Easter holiday during which Christians celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ.  Christians believe, according to Biblical scripture, that Jesus was raised from the dead three days after being crucified.  The crucifixion itself is always commemorated on Good Friday, 3 days before Easter Sunday. 

In my view, whether or not you believe that Jesus paid the penalty for the sins of mankind so that all who believe in Him might have eternal life, you have to agree that Jesus stands as one of the consummate positive thinkers.  I am not referring to someone who always looks on the bright side.  If you have been following this blog you know that positive thinking refers to actively using one's mind to achieve what one strongly desires.

The Bible shows us by example that words play a very large part in our life. Thinking as well as speaking positively can bring about healing, prosperity, joy and love. Words can bless a person or they can curse a person. Words can heal or make you sick. The essence of this concept is that how you speak about yourself and others has a direct bearing on what the mind creates as a reality. Words that ridicule, torment, harass and tear down a person will only create resentment, desire for revenge and more ugliness in return - never a good result. Thoughts that are always fearful and bitter can never remove fear and worry.

Norman Vincent Peale (1898-1993) was a champion of positive thinking and wrote several self-improvement books.  He applied Christianity to everyday problems and said, "through prayer you ... make use of the great factor within yourself, the deep subconscious mind ... [which Jesus called] the kingdom of God within you ... Positive thinking is just another term for faith." Peale also wrote, "Your unconscious mind ... [has a] power that turns wishes into realities when the wishes are strong enough."   

In his book Think and Grow Rich Napoleon Hill wrote: "Through some strange and powerful principle of 'mental chemistry' which she has never divulged, Nature wraps up the impulse of strong desire, that something, which recognizes no such word as impossible, and accepts no such reality as failure."