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    Thread: Subconscious meanings

    1. #1
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      Subconscious meanings

      This has been bothering me for years now, so I suppose I'll start a thread on it, to see if anyone else has similar experiences or explanations for the phenomenon.

      Often, when I wake up from a dream and think about it, I'll realize that it was a perfect metaphor for something going on in real life. The realization normally doesn't come right away, only after I've written it down. All of the dream elements fit together perfectly so that it almost perfectly mirrors a situation in real life, and often exaggerates it. I'm pretty sure that these dreams are normal.

      The thing is, during the dream, I tend to have almost no memory of waking life. The 'real' situation which supposedly my subconscious gets these scenarios from, I'm usually ignorant of while dreaming.

      So it's as though my subconscious is coming up with these perfect metaphors, so elegant and complicated that I'd have trouble coming up with anything similar while awake if I consciously tried to.

      But these metaphors are completely hidden from my conscious mind. So hidden, that when I wake up from a dream, it's like I've seen some movie with a screenplay written by a mind other than my own. And I have to consciously figure out what that person intended the metaphors to mean.

      This makes me think about the nature of the subconscious. The fact that it comes up with things that are, it's hard to explain, but just different from the type of thing my conscious mind would come up with, just not the type of things that would occur to me. How smart it really is, how much of its own thinking it really does. It honestly scares me a little, like there's a separate, independent mind in my brain that thinks for itself but which I have no knowledge of, and makes these little virtual reality games for me to play at night.

      Or is it more likely that these are just coincidences, not metaphors at all, and I'm finding metaphor where there really isn't any? Can anybody relate to any of this?
      Last edited by Dianeva; 05-17-2012 at 10:04 PM.

    2. #2
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      I can relate and I have also wondered about this phenomena for quite some while and have had the exact thoughts as you when it comes to the little secret brain inside your brain. It's very odd and interesting how the mind works but something that I've thought about is first of all how persistent our brain is when it comes to looking for patterns. Our brain automatically looks for patterns in everything we do, in everything we see, hear etc... one explanation could be just as you say that we make up this metaphors afterwards and make it fit. Because that could be one of the "side effects" our brain creates from being programmed with finding patterns and so on.

      Personally, I would be very disappoint if that's the case. It's a boring explanation and it would be much more awesome if there really is a little methphoric-creating-brain inside of us who communicates through dreams.
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      As I fall asleep I notice my thoughts going from mainly words to abstract pictures and scenes of my feelings and impressions. Except for the occasional DC chatter there are no words used, even so, 60% of the time that DC chatter will be in a non-existent language. I like it, it's all pure... Essence of Self.
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      I can definitely relate to this. I've been fascinated by this ever since I could remember. There are many common experiences and some studies that I've heard of that imply independent intelligent machinery apart from what you would call your conscious self. Dreams are a good example. One time I semi-awoke from a dream in the middle of the night to hear voices going on huge rants, though they didn't really make sense...lol.
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      To me the most logical explanation has always been the right brain/ left brain divide (explained here: Right Brain vs. Left Brain | Funderstanding ).

      The brain is quite literally divided in half right down the middle - in fact it's really 2 separate brains joined by a thick bundle of nerves called the Corpus Calossum, which allows them to communicate.



      The logical, linear, linguistic left brain to me sounds very much like the conscious mind while the right brain's characteristics pretty well describe the subconscious or unconscious mind. I'm not suggesting it's that simple and that the left brain shuts down when we're dreaming but the right brain stays online - but I suspect subconscious thinking is comprised mostly of what's called right-brain activity.

      In normal waking thought both parts communicate, but the left brain overwhelms and dominates most of the conversation for most of us. I liken it to the beam of a flashlight, with a bright focused central disc of light surrounded by a broad scattered nimbus of diffused light. Incidentally this correlates to the way vision itself works - a focused but small area where we see detail surrounded by the periferal vision - a much lager area where we can see movement or general shapes but no detail. Did you ever notice that when looking at the sky at night there are tiny almost invisible clusters of stars that you can only see in your periferal vision? To see them you literally have to look off to the side a little so your focused vision isn't aimed at them - the periferal vision can then detect them. The focused beam of a flashlight, and the focused central part of vision, correlate to right brain thinking - and the diffused undetailed holistic area of periferal vision and of flashlight scatter correlates to right brain thought.

      When we experience anything both parts of the mind are aware of it and process it in their own ways - they communicate, but I think the more focused and logical viewpoint of the left brain tends to take precedence in our conscious awareness. Just as we might first notice movement in the outer perimeter of the flashlight beam and then immediately turn the central brighter beam on it, or we might catch something periferally while driving and turn our heads to see it more clearly. The right brain is part of the early warning system - it notices broad basic patterns and calls them to attention, and then we focus conscious attention on them and decide what to do. Actually this is well known - I've recently read a couple of new-ish books about theories on the unconscious mind that explain this process in great detail. The more highly developed conscious mind that separates humans from other animals is a recent evolutionary development that allows us to deliberate about things in better detail rather than simply instantly apply fight or flight as wild animals do.

      So, I'm not sure if it's really neatly divided between the right and left lobes of the brain, but there are definitely 2 different minds at work (or rather 2 very different parts of a mind) and they do correspond with the characteristics listed for left brain and right brain. I suspect the divide might be more between the newer outermost layer of the brain - the cerebral cortex, which is responsible for the human achievements of logic and language; and the older inner portions of the brain which are still identical to those of animals from which we evolved (the central Lizard Brain surrounded by the Mammal Brain or Limbic System as it's called - the center of emotion).

      I'm not sure how well I'm explaining this - I'm throwing in a lot of things I had to read many books to learn about and that most people who haven't read specialist books about the evolutionary development of the brain in layers or about the unconscious mind would be familiar with, and I'm not really explaining the concepts in enough detail. But from what I've learned and how I interpret it, this is what I believe:

      As I said, both parts of the mind are aware of each thing we experience, but they interpret it and process it differently. What's known as the right brain or unconscious mind is quieter, diffuse and scattered and always looking for patterns and correlations, while the left brain or conscious mind is focused, thinking logically and linearly and it dominates our attention. So the right brain or unconscious mind is like a quiet kid in the back of the classroom who's always thinking or who might be muttering quietly all the time but nobody pays any attention to him because the left brain is loud and bright and focused and dominates the attention, stealing the spotlight as it were. But when we're dreaming the tables are turned - the quiet muttering kid who thinks holistically and sees in broad unfocused swathes and notices movement and shape rather than detail and who's main evolutionary sole has always been survival (and who I suspect lives mostly in the older mammal brain we share with all the mammals) is doing most of the talking. The loud hyperactive kid has fallen asleep or is busy playing Angry Birds and not talking for once, so we're finally able to hear what that quiet kid has been muttering about all along. The quiet kid has been talking all along, but most teachers never point to him (most people don't allocate any attention to what the unconscious mind is thinking when awake) - they always tend to point to the louder more logical/linguistic student. This has a lot to do with techniques of meditation, which is about quieting that conscious thought stream to become aware of the unconscious holistic stream.

      Some of you may remember a TED talks video I posted several times about a neuro-scientist who suffered a stroke, which effectively shut down her right hemisphere. She experienced a complete inability to talk or to reason at all, but was overwhelmed with a sense of utter peace and tranquility and harmony. I'm not sure that's entirely due to the right hemisphere being shut down, but it does seem to support these ideas I've been babbling on about.

      Ok, enough typing for me - I'm trying not to spend time posting here!!

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      Holy !@#$ darkmatters, thanks. I don't think I've read a post of yours in months and I do wish you would post more often.

      That explanation was incredible and I appreciate the time you took to write it, even if you think it might be time wasted. The hypothesis seems promising. Described in that way, while examining my own thought processes it does seem as though there must be some truth in it.

      I've always had this feeling that I know more than I'm consciously aware of, and have lately tried to become consciously aware of those things I know, and it's been working. Those things tend to be broader, like communicating with people socially or knowing what to do in some intense situation. If I try to really think about how to do these types of things, I'll usually fail, and your explanation seems perfect for this. Because the thinking is done mostly with the left brain, or whatever it is, but it's the right brain that knows how to do these things.

      So thanks, seriously, your response has made me think differently about my mind.

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      Lol yeah, I've been trying to resist the temptation to post here (though unable to resist reading every day.. ) in hopes that It will make me more productive on the film I'm making (supposed to be... ). Somehow it isn't working though.

      I was really fired up on accomplishment and productivity after writing a freaking NOVEL during the last 3 months of 2011... something I've never done before and didn't suspect I had the ability to do - so I entered 2012 beliving it heralded a new wave of accomplishment for me - I thought somehow I could apply the same attitude and technique to making my film and carry over the productivity... but it aint happenin'! I guess the reason I was able to write so much was due to the specific situation - a lot of motivation provided by the fun nature of it - the idea that the people I was writing about were reading my entries every day... unfortunately there's no such 'fun factor' involved in sitting in a dark basement and moving little puppets around a millimeter at a time and clicking a camera shutter over and over again...

      And you tend to start threads that are very intellectually intriguing to me... I couldn't resist this one.

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      That be the one!

    10. #10
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      Interesting video, but a bit too spiritual.

    11. #11
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      Quote Originally Posted by Dianeva View Post
      But these metaphors are completely hidden from my conscious mind. So hidden, that when I wake up from a dream, it's like I've seen some movie with a screenplay written by a mind other than my own. And I have to consciously figure out what that person intended the metaphors to mean.
      Whenever I recall my dreams, almost every time, there have been events where my non-lucid state of mind is completely different than me in waking life.

      In waking life, I'm usually a bit reserved, quiet, often paranoid. I feel weak sometimes, insecure, no direction at all in my life.

      But when I recall my non-lucid endeavors, I see murder, confidence, stoicism, and other traits that I think I could never be able to take responsibility for if I ever manage to attain lucidity frequently.

      I've seen seen some friends of mine on DV who dream about me, and some may have different views on who I am, probably based on my mentality towards dreaming, or just happening to see what their minds think about me in general, I do see a common trend in that.

      Sometimes I wonder if it's my higher self, but I don't want to go that far, but I've noticed that even though I think I have no direction in waking life, some people see that in my non-lucid state, that even though they can't find my objectives, they can sense this augmented behavior of confidence.

      And I do feel like the dreams I recall are just a different mind than my own, because whenever I do attain lucidity, it's the only way I know I am me, that it's not some other part of my subconscious that's doing all the dirty work for me, and it irritates me a lot because I feel that when I recall my non-lucid dreams, it's either a repressed ideal figure I want to be, or it could be my subconscious trying to hint myself in the near future.

      Because of this confusion between my tendencies and behaviors in non-lucid dreams, it leads me to think if I'm really seeing myself in the future, because honestly, right now, I don't see myself like that at all.

      One DV member who saw me in a dream once said that they could gaze into my soul and find that I was free from deceit, but that's almost too hard for me to agree with, because in my non-lucid state, there's so much stress than I have in waking life that it makes me paranoid about the potential of me matching what I do in my dreams.

      Sometimes I think my subconscious is very cruel to me, it doesn't like giving me things that easily, which makes me want to give up at times and just shift back to the practical mentalities of lucid dreaming.

      Anyway, this most likely didn't help at all, but the fact that you said yours is like a movie written by someone else other than you is something I can definitely relate to. It honestly has led me to more questions on who I am in general, and if other people see me in my dreams in a different way than I am on the forums or in waking life, maybe I'm just the repressed part in waking life while the sporadic and confident part of me does whatever it wants, and it could care less if I'm trying to find it.

      EDIT: Sorry for the double post there, had some internet problems for a moment.
      Last edited by Linkzelda; 05-21-2012 at 06:36 AM.

    12. #12
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      Quote Originally Posted by Dianeva View Post
      Interesting video, but a bit too spiritual.
      Well, I guess anybody who experienced that would get a bit spiritual about it. She gave it a somewhat spiritual spin (not all that much really) - but that's not the part of the video I was referring to really - more the fact that the brain is most definitely split into 2 separate halves (which many people don't believe) and the way her experiences support the different types of thinking associated with each.

      As close as she got to spirituality really though was just saying we're beings of energy - and I think that's just the way it must feel if your left hemisphere goes offline and you're suddenly unable to detect where your body ends and the 'rest of the world' begins. It would literally feel like you've been freed from the confines of your body and expand to fill the universe. She got a bit rapturous describing it (who wouldn't?) but she never ascribed it to anything spiritual really. Just blissful.

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