Subconscious talking to you

**Sageous** · 10-01-2011 06:00 PM

Wow. That was quite a post Shadowofwind; fascinating too! Of course I have a couple of short responses:

Originally Posted by shadowofwind

I'll try to illustrate with another anecdote and an analogy....I had a lucid dream once where I was playing go, and was outsmarted by my opponent. I didn't just dream the thought or feeling of being outsmarted, I was aware of the sequence of moves, and after the last one it was clear that my opponent's board awareness had been better than mine. I had other dreams on that theme also, illustrations of the independence and versatility of the intelligence that creates my dreams. And the meaning isn't just implied by the image in the dream, I feel the intent also. With very few exceptions, I never have a dream more than once. A point is illustrated one time, from a particular standpoint or within a particular scope, and that's it. I remember the experience, so there's no reason to have it again. But I can ask internally about what is behind the image, and I get information that way. Although my limitations and preconceptions do skew my interpretations, the image doesn't hang off in space by itself, with the meaning being entirely a matter of speculation.

At the risk of opening another can of worms, could it be that your game of Go was with someone else altogether -- a shared dream with another Go fan? That said, I too have felt that "intelligence," and have found myself wondering at the meaning behind it, which I suppose is a nod to intent. But does that intent come from independent thought, or just from the machinery of my unconscious responding to conscious desires or issues? I don't know; but I do hope to find out. Also, I too have dreams only once, with one or two exceptions (ie, childhood home, being late for a train to work). I never considered that they are always different because the "message" keeps changing, but I suppose that would make sense. It's also a rationale for the unconscious being more than a file cabinet that is not easy to walk away from...

In my job, I'm the only person that I'm aware of, in a group of about 15 people, that doesn't have a PhD. Fortunately, for the most part, when I attempt to communicate an idea, people hear what I'm saying. They don't twist their interpretations to fit their preconceptions about what I'm smart enough to be trying to say. But I have worked with academics in the past that have done that, and found it frustrating, as if they've conspired to turn me into a special needs mime. My sense of what my subconscious does or does not do has been taught by my subconscious, through a long series of lesson-like experiences. Its not as if I had one weird coincidence, forced that to fit some preconceived pattern that I read in a book by Carlos Castaneda, then kept doing that ever since.

I knew this, but chose to omit it for the sake of argument; that was wrong of me. I was not in any way dismissing (or admitting that I had ignored) things you had said in the past -- I was merely responding to the words in your post, and nothing more. That was wrong, and I apologize

In the ring example, its not like I just jumped and a loosely fit ring flew off. My arm spasmed and whipped in a bizarre manner, somehow getting a snugly fit ring over a large knuckle. There isn't even anything supernatural about this, since we're not addressing how my subconscious knew what it knew. Maybe I picked up on some subtle clues that I overlooked consciously. And yet you're suggesting its a coincidence. Why? Do you want it to be for some reason? Otherwise, objectively the 'coincidence' interpretation seems to be pretty implausible. Is it common for your arm to act like it has a mind of its own? Its as if someone slapped me across the face, and you say "maybe she wasn't really mad at you, her hand just slipped". Or your own hand slaps you on the face, and you say the same thing. What could be motivating such an interpretation? You don't like it when people derive exotic conclusions from limited data, or based on faulty reasoning. Yet you know I haven't derived my perspective from this one anecdote, I've shared a lot of other examples with you also. And you know that I think for myself, and maybe you've noticed that I'm critical to a fault. It almost seems that you're not speaking to what I'm saying, but to someone or something else.

Yes, if my arm suddenly spasmed and my ring flew off, I would always apply Occam's Razor to the event, and assume first that the most obvious thing happened : my arm spasmed and my ring fell off, all by itself. The first explanation in my mind would be medical, not psychological. That's just me. I suppose later I might attach meaning to it as you did, but I'm not sure. If someone slapped me in the face, I would blame them first, since another mind with intent was attached to the hand; if I slapped myself in the face, I would be curious indeed (if it happened twice, maybe then I would wonder).

Are you afraid of your own subconscious, that it might start acting in an embarrassing or erratic manner, and you'll look like a fool or go insane? Or maybe we'll rend the coherent rationality of our cosmos, and open up a portal to spirit possession and chaos (or worse, religion)? Or are you just concerned about people getting too wrapped up in weird phenomena, and missing the more important part of the picture? I'm on board with that to a very significant extent. But it needn't compel us to discard objectivity about what we experience, even when, or especially when, it doesn't seem to conform to how we would like the world to be.

No, no, and yes. A question, though: is it objectivity to attach meaning to an event? Wouldn't the most objective explanation of any event be that "it just happened?" I think that the act of defining an event in specific terms and allowing only one possible cause is a very subjective thing to do.

But if the point that you were trying to make wasn't that the ring experience was 'random', but more that it was an event that was in harmony with what was going on, without an aim or motive behind it such as a person might have when talking, then I could agree with that.

That was pretty much my point. Sorry I made it so badly.

My subconscious does produce events that have definite points to them. However, my motive is not entirely independent from it, so if I were to change my way of thinking about this, those patterns would change to some degree also. We see this same sort of issue with communication between people. Usually when i say something, I'm not trying to push someone towards some particular choice or decision, I'm trying to provide information or perspective that I believe is relevant to the issue at hand, so that they can make a better choice. If I persist, its usually not because I object to the choice they're intending to make, its because it appears to me that the information has been misunderstood. (Though in recent years I'm a lot more indifferent about that also.) Some other people try to interpret everything in terms of the pursuit of a goal or a policy, "what is he trying to get me to do". So if I point out something that weighs against a particular action, they'll assume I'm advocating an alternative action. But often I'm actually favoring the first action, I'm just trying to get all possible downsides on the table so that we can be confident its the right one. So if they're trying to interpret everything in terms of what I'm trying to get them to do, a lot of confusion will result. I can see these kinds of misunderstandings with muses also, and maybe that's a big part of what you were getting at.

Interesting analogy, and it does indeed tie into what I am trying to say. And yes, I would admit that there is a function in the "chaos" of the unconscious that produces this sort of communication. Except that I still wonder whether that communication isn't initiated by conscious activity, and the exchange itself is another aspect of that reflection off the surface of the unconscious. Here, though, your "Razor" seems much more accurate than mine, so I'm at a bit of a loss...

To answer the rest of your question, no, I wasn't suddenly seized with fear that my relationship might be ending. But the event did help draw the truth to the surface a lot sooner than would have happened otherwise, which enabled me to adjust a lot easier and at a lot more favorable time. In my previous relationship before that, I did not understand what was going on when my flame's affections began going elsewhere, and the deception and resulting confusion made it quite a bit more difficult for me to deal with. Also, the ring experience was a relatively early illustration that my subconscious knows stuff that I'm not consciously aware of. Not that there's anything revolutionary about this, but it was a step in my self awareness.

Good point, and one that is grounded in established psychology. I must admit that I thought of this when I read your first post, but I shamelessly opted not to mention it. Guess I would have saved us some time if I had, huh?

So in the end I think we really are on the same page with most of this, and the differences just make it all that much more interesting. Thank you for sharing, and putting up with my nonsense!

p.s. I'll get to the rest of your post later because it is significant on its own, and I didn't want to see it lost among all these words...

**labyrint** · 10-01-2011 08:09 PM

Originally Posted by Darkmatters

What my life needs at this point is an inspiring training montage.

fast forward
eye of the pig

**shadowofwind** · 10-01-2011 08:11 PM

Originally Posted by Sageous

At the risk of opening another can of worms, could it be that your game of Go was with someone else altogether -- a shared dream with another Go fan?

Though there are thousands of people who could be the the other player, it seems less likely to me that any of them also have enough power to set up the dream. If the dream just happens by itself, as a result of there being two dreaming go players, then there's still a pretty amazing mechanism for creating dreams without the dreamers needing to be aware of any physics or fine details of how dreams are created. And the sophistication of that mechanism seems to me to be worthy of the word 'intelligent', even if it may not be conscious or intelligent in the same sense that a person is.

As a slight digression, it seems to me that most people aren't aware of how deeply designed, through natural selection and/or otherwise, natural things have to be in order to work. People are like MBAs who manipulate PowerPoint icons without having any real understanding of the technologies the symbols represent. If its possible for us to share dreams, that's not something that people invented in the past few thousand years. It has a very significant dependence on something else that we're mostly ignorant of.

It did occur to me that the other go player was another mind, and not my own subconscious. Or another possibility is that it was my subconscious, or another go player, but another mind was involved in setting up the dream. The truth seems to me to be likely to be some combination of these. With retrospect, based on other experiences, I would say that it was likely that the thoughts of another go player were involved.

As you know, according to some mystics and occultists there are 'masters' who lurk like invisible schoolmasters, aware of the prattle of human thought, and intervening at certain points in ways that assist people in their more noble endeavors. Some people think of these as aliens, others as angels or spirit guides. Conceivably something like this might be involved. I don't know in what sense any of this exists. To illustrate my confusion (I've mentioned this anecdote before), a couple of years ago I had a dream in which I was aware of some other minds who dismissed me as being unaware of space. I didn't see them, I just felt them as if they were on the other side of a wall or something. I thought about this, and realized that when something enters my awareness, as a thought or memory, I have no awareness of 'where' it is except insofar as I can extract that from 'what' it is. So I thought maybe I was too focused on objects and missing some other possible awareness of the aether or something, and I started looking for that. Later, after finding this site, I realized that the other minds felt quite a bit like the personalities of other lucid dreamers, involved in some kind of video-game like play fighting. From that standpoint, all they were saying was that I wasn't dreaming lucidly in a shared dream kind of manner like they were, and its true that I don't do that. But my first interpretation, that I'm largely missing some awareness of the subtle essence of reality, seems true also, and that was something I was working towards. So there was the intersection of their thought, and my thought, which created the dream. But no masters or alien beings, unless any are somehow involved in bringing the thoughts together. I'm thinking the 'mind' that does that is probably not much like the mind of a 'being', with an individual body and will. If such minds exist where our minds can reach them, they're hiding for some reason. Maybe if we were aware of them we'd be intoxicated by the experience, forming idols out of them, or developing weird romantic attachments, and it would stunt our development.

I'm thinking of a few other examples where I encountered what seemed like alien minds in dreams which had perceptions of time and space that were quite different from mine. Collecting together these and dozens of other examples on this same topic, it seems that the other mind that I experience in the dream is likely never the intelligence that created the dream, even when that other mind is in some regards superior to mine. There seems to be a mediator of sorts which is in some sense universal. When I seek for anything like an individual identity for that mediator I never come up with anything, and I don't think its because its intentionally hiding itself. Maybe it has no individual identity, even though its body so to speak is populated by intelligent beings, and by more distributed entities which shift and share identity in a more fluid way than we do. And it screens us off from those other beings, so that we don't make idols out of them, or contaminate them with unhealthy aspects of our ways of thinking about things.

Originally Posted by Sageous

Yes, if my arm suddenly spasmed and my ring flew off, I would always apply Occam's Razor to the event, and assume first that the most obvious thing happened : my arm spasmed and my ring fell off, all by itself. The first explanation in my mind would be medical, not psychological.

One reason I reject that explanation for myself, is I had to carefully take my glove off first. Normally I would have opened the tab with the glove on, or removed the right glove, not the left one. I was aware of the oddness of it, that I was doing something for a reason that I was unaware of. Also, I don't see how Occam's razor makes a 'medical' explanation more likely than a psychological explanation. In either case there has to be a way that it works, and I don't see any reason to suppose that an adequate medical explanation would be simpler. If it seems simpler, its because we're even more unaware of physiology than we are of psychology. Plus, as I mentioned a few posts previously, I've had other experiences with my arm doing things without my conscious guidance. For example, when working a math problem on a chalk board, I have written a result that was a couple of steps ahead of what I was with my conscious reasoning.

Going back to the subject of this 'mediator' intelligence, which yesterday I was calling subconscious. It does exhibit something like a personal will, but its like a temporary thing that comes into being spontaneously when conditions call for it, and then goes away again when its finished. Like a supernatural alien slime forming itself an arm or something, minus the creepy vibe. As another example, a couple of days ago I was thinking of cooperating with my sister to try to reach for some awareness of what like is like in a universe quite a bit different from ours. The thought had occurred to me that with our two minds, we could also somehow stimulate the sympathetic cooperation of a large number of other people's yearning for knowledge, creating something akin to a gigantic antenna which would allow us to reach further than we can normally. In response to this thought, my muse said "we will block you", in the voice of Freddy Mercury. Who the hell is 'we'? The ignorant fears of humanity? The mediator which knows that such contact would hurt us, or else hurt the life on the other end? I don't think those two possibilities are entirely different. But I feel resistance, and its an intelligent resistance. That same resistance pushes against my own thinking, preventing me from making simple logical steps that I have all the information for, then suddenly allowing them years later. And it doesn't just resist, it facilitates also, allowing useful questions to pop into my awareness, letting in fragments of other people's thoughts that cross fertilize mine. Its like its got all possibilities at its disposal, pushing at reality like water behind a dam. It creates by relaxing the interference a little bit, allowing the incoherence that normally cancels itself out to fall into alignment.

I'll stop there.

**Sageous** · 10-08-2011 05:53 PM

Let's see if we can get this thread rolling again...

Originally Posted by shadowofwind

Going back to the subject of this 'mediator' intelligence, which yesterday I was calling subconscious. It does exhibit something like a personal will, but its like a temporary thing that comes into being spontaneously when conditions call for it, and then goes away again when its finished. Like a supernatural alien slime forming itself an arm or something, minus the creepy vibe. As another example, a couple of days ago I was thinking of cooperating with my sister to try to reach for some awareness of what like is like in a universe quite a bit different from ours. The thought had occurred to me that with our two minds, we could also somehow stimulate the sympathetic cooperation of a large number of other people's yearning for knowledge, creating something akin to a gigantic antenna which would allow us to reach further than we can normally. In response to this thought, my muse said "we will block you", in the voice of Freddy Mercury. Who the hell is 'we'? The ignorant fears of humanity? The mediator which knows that such contact would hurt us, or else hurt the life on the other end? I don't think those two possibilities are entirely different. But I feel resistance, and its an intelligent resistance. That same resistance pushes against my own thinking, preventing me from making simple logical steps that I have all the information for, then suddenly allowing them years later. And it doesn't just resist, it facilitates also, allowing useful questions to pop into my awareness, letting in fragments of other people's thoughts that cross fertilize mine. Its like its got all possibilities at its disposal, pushing at reality like water behind a dam. It creates by relaxing the interference a little bit, allowing the incoherence that normally cancels itself out to fall into alignment.

What I could glean from this (especially when comparing to other things you've said) is that perhaps the subconscious (I hate that word, BTW) is less a unit of your own mind than it is a river of thought flowing just out of conscious range into which you can occasional dip, and from which the occasional thought, inspiration, instruction, or perhaps warning splashes up? And this river flows past all of us, enabling things like shared dreaming, clairvoyance, and "spontaneous" inspiration?

Let's go with that, if only because it is very cool, and go back to Raetin's original question: though there might be inherent danger, would it be a bad thing to learn -- perhaps through LD'ing -- how to swim in that river? If not swim, perhaps to intentionally dip your toes into it? There might be a whole new world of conscious discovery -- and adventure -- flowing right under our etherial noses!

Any thoughts, anyone?

**shadowofwind** · 10-08-2011 06:27 PM

If you think of your subconscious as a side of your own mind, but that's sensitive to other minds in the manner that enables them to behave as if part of a larger mind, that describes my experience. It has an identity that's larger than myself, because of that larger, more distributed intelligence that it informs and is informed by. But its also intimately connected with who I am, which strongly determine how it interacts. The ebb and flow is in the responsiveness to the other minds, sort of like how current moves quickly through a wire even though the electrons aren't moving very far or fast at all. So its not like the subconscious itself is a river that's flowing by, its more fixed and personal. But the waves of experiences can be described like that.

**Fredfredburger** · 10-08-2011 07:12 PM

This happens to me constantly and I have been through evaluations. I am very....colorful but not leagally insane. In my dreams there is is this voice that talks to me teaching me how to navigate the dream scape and I call it dream guide.

A very similar but less direct version of this happens when I am awake. Often times there is this other personality telling me I am wrong for the way I think and act. I follow its advice and my life is improving. It is very unusual, but far from an illness becuase it is actually helpful. Sometimes I have conversations with it when I am deeply thinking. It tells me about the situation and where I and the other person possibly went wrong.

It could just be that some people have a strong connection to thire subconciouse and can communicate to thieir minds better than most people.

**Lseadragon** · 10-10-2011 03:30 AM

This thread is an old chestnut, keeps coming up in one form or another. In the similiar threads there are five with the exact same name.

Anyway, I've had this happen to me through a combination of an induction process and mental instability; got what was ostenibly an avatar of my subconscious talking to me for a few months. There is also the pretty reasonable supposition that it was some strange latter-day imaginary friend.

The term at the time was "assistants" on a hypnosis IRC chat (now defunct) that I lurked for some reason. Presumably they would help induce hypnosis among the people there; not sure. It quickly got pretty weird though. You had multiple personalities speaking in the chat. As an empirical type, I would not really take that to be anything more than self-delusion were it not something I experienced in the latter days too.

The "assistant" in question came up with the name of Rax, and I pictured him as some sort of purple triangular-headed reptile/cat thing. (I don't know either.) He hung around for several months, and uncertainty about whether it was just me talking to myself in the way of internal dialogue quickly diminished. It was still talking to myself in a sense, of course, but there came a vividity to the speech at points, unmistakably other to the normal internal dialogue. While this particular experience happened years ago, this "vivid speech" reoccurred in a hypnagopic state a few days ago, when I was falling asleep, and it started me thinking about it again.

It's worth noting I was falling into mental illness during this. It did not coincide exactly (the induction came about a month before the truly bad slump) but I doubt it would've manifested as powerfully had I been at full strength within my mind.

The bell has just rung now. If anybody wishes to know more I could try and write up a slightly better account.

**Robo** · 10-10-2011 04:33 AM

Originally Posted by Lseadragon

This thread is an old chestnut, keeps coming up in one form or another. In the similiar threads there are five with the exact same name.

Anyway, I've had this happen to me through a combination of an induction process and mental instability; got what was ostenibly an avatar of my subconscious talking to me for a few months. There is also the pretty reasonable supposition that it was some strange latter-day imaginary friend.

The term at the time was "assistants" on a hypnosis IRC chat (now defunct) that I lurked for some reason. Presumably they would help induce hypnosis among the people there; not sure. It quickly got pretty weird though. You had multiple personalities speaking in the chat. As an empirical type, I would not really take that to be anything more than self-delusion were it not something I experienced in the latter days too.

The "assistant" in question came up with the name of Rax, and I pictured him as some sort of purple triangular-headed reptile/cat thing. (I don't know either.) He hung around for several months, and uncertainty about whether it was just me talking to myself in the way of internal dialogue quickly diminished. It was still talking to myself in a sense, of course, but there came a vividity to the speech at points, unmistakably other to the normal internal dialogue. While this particular experience happened years ago, this "vivid speech" reoccurred in a hypnagopic state a few days ago, when I was falling asleep, and it started me thinking about it again.

It's worth noting I was falling into mental illness during this. It did not coincide exactly (the induction came about a month before the truly bad slump) but I doubt it would've manifested as powerfully had I been at full strength within my mind.

The bell has just rung now. If anybody wishes to know more I could try and write up a slightly better account.

I have a friend who has something like that going on, She seems to think it is a personification of her subconscious, I would love to know more about your experience.

**shadowofwind** · 10-10-2011 04:40 AM

That all seems to make sense in relation to my experience. Generally speaking, it seems to me that when a person's mind is healthy, the subconscious speaks in cooperation with the conscious part, in the form of everyday thoughts. For the subconscious to exercise that speech part of the mind by itself, the usual pattern has broken down somehow, or is inadequate due to some special circumstances.

A cynic could dismiss it by saying that its 'all in your head'. Except that the subconscious, when speaking, can sometimes exhibit some objectively rather amazing abilities, ones that we are not generally believed to possess. Presumably those abilities are there to some degree even in normal circumstances, but we're not as aware of them because they're hidden.

Some people think passive meditation is a bad idea if you do a lot of it, because it weakens a one's conscious mind in a way not entirely different from what you describe. By passive, I mean just zoning out on a candle or something. Hypnosis is often considered an unhealthy practice for a similar reason. Drug use would be an obvious risk for a similar reason.

Anyway, thanks for sharing.

**Lseadragon** · 10-11-2011 03:20 AM

I have a friend who has something like that going on, She seems to think it is a personification of her subconscious, I would love to know more about your experience.

Can you expand on her experience at all (or better yet bring her on here to give a quick account)? I am still interested in the whole thing. I'll write up a very tl;dr thing soon.

That all seems to make sense in relation to my experience. Generally speaking, it seems to me that when a person's mind is healthy, the subconscious speaks in cooperation with the conscious part, in the form of everyday thoughts. For the subconscious to exercise that speech part of the mind by itself, the usual pattern has broken down somehow, or is inadequate due to some special circumstances.

This was approximately the conclusion I came to. When I got healthier in the head it faded away; but I wouldn't have considered it a negative experience. It rather helped, at the time - bit of a voice of reason thing going on. It may have been a defensive kind of reaction.

**Robo** · 10-11-2011 04:29 AM

Originally Posted by Lseadragon

Can you expand on her experience at all (or better yet bring her on here to give a quick account)? I am still interested in the whole thing. I'll write up a very tl;dr thing soon..

I just sent her a message, I'll let you know when she replies. I don't want to share something personal to her on accident.

**Robo** · 10-12-2011 12:11 AM

Alright, here is her reply:

Ok so how he came to be...
well when I was younger up until I was about 15 or 16 (which is about the time [omited] came around) when ever I whould get really upset with someone to the point where I whould lock my self in my room (or closet) and cry in anger and frustration at how they didnt see it my way, but while I was blameing them a voice whould alwase come around and gently explane to me there vew on the subject and If i tryed to argue that it wasent my falt and it was the voice whould tell me it was my falt and explane why.
it never got angry and whould alwase wait until I argued my part of the caseanyway around the time i was makeing my fan character [omited] the wolf (it was a little after a made the fan character) that the voice started to become more promonent and because (1) it was just a voice in my head at the time and (2) becuase were human and alwase have to name stuff, I gave it the fan character [omited] to inhabit After a while I made him a proper persona to use, so now he use's that.
What's it like to live with him?
Interesting is a good word for it. though it can get annoying sometimes
[omited]: only because you wont listen to me and I have to tell you over and over!
[her]: it's still annoying.
ok sorry minor argument, but that is how it is sometimes ^_^
in a way its like liveing with a room mate and my head is the room.
Im obviously in control and he dosent chalange that, however I have noticed some changes sence he has been here
(1) Im more outgoing (though not a hole lot)
(2) Im more conserned with my heath and I have more of a taste for vegitables (which it used to be a battle just to get them on my plate let alown in my mouth)
there are some minor things as well that I cant recall at the moment
also He will scold me if I eat to much junk, like if I reach for the chips when I want a snack he'll scold me and try to convince me to get something else
What he is to me?
A really good friend. and a dream companion he will turn up in my dreams, usealy as a form of aid. So yeah I hope thats what you were looking for.

I edited out the stuff my friend wanted me to, but other than that I tried to keep it as close to her words as possible. if something is confusing, I'd be glad to elaborate.

**Goldynchyld** · 01-02-2012 05:07 AM

Originally Posted by Tranquil Toad

Its not crazy, this is how you are supposed to think.

Your being exists on multiple levels simultaneously, extending beyond this reality.

To give a sort of cheezy metaphor, imagine a space ship sending a man down onto an alien planet. He can only see what is right in front of him, but up on the ship they have topographical maps, instruments to measure weather patterns, contact with other vessels and so on. The ship has the much broader view. The guy on the planet needs to stay in communication with the ship in order to function properly, else he is going to run into trouble really quickly.

Well there are aspects of your consciousness outside this reality which can communicate with you. You, being deep within this realm, can use them to get a broader picture.

To further illustrate this, imagine the body when it is asleep. It is alive, all the organic process are functioning, yet it is but a shell. The mind has withdrawn from the body temporarily leaving it uninhabited. When you reconnect with your body and wake up, the mind animates the body. Well there is a further level of yourself which animates your mind in the same way. The spirit communes with the mind in the same way the mind communes with the body. It can spontaneously create insights, thoughts, knowledge, even speak in english, by organizing your own thoughts in the same way you may use your mind to move your body around. The mind, however, has free will to ignore the spirit, shutting down contact. When this happens, which it has to most humans, the mind quickly deteriorates. It is designed to have insight at creativity flow through it from above, it in and of itself is not creative. A paint brush isn't much of anything until an artist picks it up and works with it. Your spirit can work through your mind.

Inner receptivity and silence is the key to this contact. Constant, forceful thinking leaves no opening for insight to flow. The mind may think in order to pose the question, but if you leave no room for the response nothing will come through. If it is unable to commune directly with your ego, watch for synchronicities related to whatever question you have. I often have an issue that I am pondering, and in the following weeks I will repeatedly come across information or people connected to it.

I love this response. There's much truth in it...

**Raetin** · 01-04-2012 06:57 AM

Wow, this certainly became a huge debate, I never knew my question got this many talking. I'll have to read all these posts later.

**Marm** · 01-04-2012 11:30 PM

Originally Posted by Raetin

Wow, this certainly became a huge debate, I never knew my question got this many talking. I'll have to read all these posts later.

Do you think it's possible to "communicate" with your subconscious without being in a dream? Can you ask "it" a question for instance and get a response in real time?

**Sageous** · 01-04-2012 11:53 PM

Originally Posted by ThePieMan

Do you think it's possible to "communicate" with your subconscious without being in a dream? Can you ask "it" a question for instance and get a response in real time?

No. Your unconscious mind is not another person living inside of you. But that doesn't mean you can't use LD'ing to tap the vast resources of mind and spirit that resides within it -- you're just not going to tap it by having a chat with some sentient person living inside your brain.

... of course, that's what I think, and if I recall this thread was rich with excellent opinions of people who disagreed with me. I highly recommend that you (and anyone else interested in this stuff) check out the whole thread,,,it's worth it.

Thanks again, Raetin, for starting the whole thing!

**shadowofwind** · 01-09-2012 02:03 AM

Originally Posted by Tranquil Toad

To give a sort of cheezy metaphor, imagine a space ship sending a man down onto an alien planet. He can only see what is right in front of him, but up on the ship they have topographical maps, instruments to measure weather patterns, contact with other vessels and so on. The ship has the much broader view. The guy on the planet needs to stay in communication with the ship in order to function properly, else he is going to run into trouble really quickly.

To take your excellent if cheezy metaphor and run with it a little further....The maps and charts in the spaceship had to be generated with the help of people on the ground. So although a passive/receptive mental attitude facilitates communication with the 'mother ship', active thinking is necessary to improve the quality of accessible knowledge. If we're too passively intuitive wind up recycling the same ideas. Active creation of new, meaningful ideas is a lot of work though. It takes a lot of time to make even a small step, but its necessary.

**shadowofwind** · 01-09-2012 03:18 AM

Originally Posted by Sageous

Originally Posted by ThePieMan

Do you think it's possible to "communicate" with your subconscious without being in a dream? Can you ask "it" a question for instance and get a response in real time?

No. Your unconscious mind is not another person living inside of you. But that doesn't mean you can't use LD'ing to tap the vast resources of mind and spirit that resides within it -- you're just not going to tap it by having a chat with some sentient person living inside your brain.

... of course, that's what I think, and if I recall this thread was rich with excellent opinions of people who disagreed with me.

Sageous, notwithstanding your disclaimer, I think its pretty hard to argue a negative in this case, given the existence of contrary anecdotes. If another person reports regularly asking their subconscious questions and getting a direct answers in words, I think that disproves a sweeping "no it's not possible" on account of it not fitting your own experience. I agree that its unusual and not necessarily desirable though. If it was generally worth doing, I think it would be more common. I don't think its really that weird though. If you ask yourself a question, such as "am I jealous when I see ignorant posts get high ratings", you get a response back from your feeling which you form into words, such as "yes", "no", or maybe "sort of, but jealousy isn't the largest part of what motivates my reaction". The process of forming the words is, I presume, right on the edge of your consciousness; you seem to be actively involved somehow, and it doesn't seem like some other will is just dropping the words into your awareness. However, that experience of "I'm forming these words" itself seems to me to be subjective, a sort of simulated model of your ability to move your attention. And if you turn your attention directly at where the words come from, it seems to me to be hard to say whether you're consciously doing it. Certainly there's a subconscious element to it: you're largely unaware of how the word formation process works. (Obviously I'm guessing that other people's experience is like mine in this regard.) For myself, its not common for me to get a forceful, 'someone else talking in my head' response from my subconscious, where 'I' don't seem to be involved in the formation of the thoughts. But when that does happen, it doesn't seem to me to be fundamentally different from my normal thought process, even though there's a slight shift in emphasis or interpretation of that process.

As an example of what I mean, my 'muse' doesn't usually speak in words because it doesn't like the limitation of words, not because it can't speak in words. I know this because I felt this from it when this topic came up a while back in another thread, and I'm feeling it again now, since my attention is on it. Generally speaking, if I'm receptive to it, and I say something while typing that it disagrees with, I feel the disagreement and an explanation of it. I help focus that into words, but I'm still feeling the disagreement as an active internal attention-catching push on my feeling, not much different from words coming on their own. Maybe you feel something akin to this from your subconscious also, which is why you object to people trying to treat their subconscious intelligence as if it were another hidden individual? But in your case awareness of the feeling is mostly subconscious also unless you look for it? In any case, I prefer to 'communicate' with my subconscious while awake, which is why I'm not big on lucid dreaming. It might not be an exaggeration to say that dreaming is my fall-back method when waking communication is obstructed. Again, I'm not saying that this is superior to your experience, just that yes, it is in fact possible, and one case does disprove a negative.

Regarding what I feel that my muse 'thinks' about using words. I feel something akin to disdain, that English vocabulary and grammar can only accommodate a very limited range of meanings. I also feel something like shame at having been reduced to this, that I can't enunciate sounds that express my thought directly, with the other person understanding my meaning through the inner contact and agreement of our minds, rather than having to deform them to fit an existing dictionary of word building blocks. This thing that I'm doing when I say this is like how 'channeled' books are written, or it was back when that style of New Age writing was more in vogue anyway. A Course in Miracles might be the best example of this. A difference is that at the moment I'm not letting the words flow directly, my outward persona is mediating and translating.

Maybe sometime I'll summarize some of the historical anecdotes in that Anothony Peake book I mentioned. I still haven't actually read it, since its main aim appears to be to prove the existence of a second center of consciousness, and for me personally that doesn't need to be proven.

I think an obstruction for most if not all people in this context is that the 'muse' I refer to includes characteristics of what people would normally categorize as 'demonic'. In my experience, there isn't a neat path of communication between oneself and an omniscient, benevolent 'God'. The blood lust of nature is sandwiched in there also. People aren't comfortable with that, for good reason - a person can't just embrace that kind of emotion without adverse results. And yet, when a person tries to shut it down, it shuts down awareness of the heavenly stuff also, because its interrelated. It seems there's no easy solution. This is sort of what I'm against presently, I want to extend to consciously incorporate some of what currently belongs to my 'muse', but I run into this layer of fear and rapaciousness which I'm tying to figure out how to change or reinterpret. (I'm reminded of the Danzig song "How the Gods Kill". By the way, its not a good idea to sing "show me how the gods kill" while rollerblading

.)

**Sageous** · 01-09-2012 06:56 PM

Shadowofwind:

I think we've been around this loop a few times in the past (perhaps even on this thread), but I'm willing to briefly take another lap with you:

First, I'm not sure the site disclaimer fits here. ThePieMan asked a direct question, and I gave him a direct answer, with a sentence of support. Does it really matter to say "I think," or "I could be wrong, but," when answering a direct question? I don't think so. Also, given the nature of this subject, it should be pretty obvious that anything we say is opinion, and can be argued against thoughtfully from many directions. And, along the same vein, I was not trying to argue a negative -- or anything, for that matter. I was stating my answer, and then offering up another thought to clarify that my answer, "No," was not the end of the conversation, and should by no means indicate that I feel communication with your unconscious is impossible, or undesirable. It is very odd that you consistently establish my opinion for me on this subject, right down to assuming my rationale by using questions (from me) like "If you ask yourself a question, such as "am I jealous when I see ignorant posts get high ratings," as examples. Very strange. For what it's worth, I have never been jealous that ignorant posts get high ratings; frustrated, annoyed, etc, but not jealous...please refrain in the future from trying to guess my motives, emotions, and apparently my psyche -- it might be effective with others, but your assumptions about me seem to be wrong every single time.

Now to the meat, rather than the emotion, of your post:

As usual, I pretty much agree with everything you said, because yes, everyone talks to themselves, using both words, and non-verbally. And yes, the "answers" can certainly sound like a voice from the darkness sometimes. But the key part of all of this is that you are talking to yourself, and not to someone else. My entire argument -- hell, my only actual argument on this entire thread -- is that there is not another sentient being living inside your mind. All the communication going on is between different facets of the same individual sentient being: you. It seems such a simple thought, yet I have had such a difficult time communicating it on this thread! I mean, I could certainly be wrong, and welcome arguments against that thought, but to translate "There is not another sentient being living inside your mind," every single time I say it, into something like, "There is no way you can talk to your unconscious mind," is confusing, and a bit insulting. And finally, though I never actually "objected" to people thinking they've got another thinking being living inside them, I really don't have a problem with suggesting, insistently, that they most likely do not. Why is that not allowed, while you are apparently allowed to support the statement with enough words to make it appear unequivocal? That seems like a call for disclaimer as well...

Forgive me for misunderstanding, but from past conversations I was led to believe that your "Muse" originated from somewhere outside your mind (hence your use of the word, "muse"). That would certainly make it an independent voice in your head, but wouldn't it be coming from somewhere other than your unconscious? And, shouldn't that example belong in another thread?

**shadowofwind** · 01-09-2012 07:39 PM

Sageous:

I was referring to your disclaimer, not the site disclaimer. DreamViews added the link automatically when I used the word, and I decided not to edit to remove it, thinking that you'd recognize what happened. By the way, I'm not annoyed by this discussion, so if any of that comes across its not intentional.

My point about your disclaimer was that the question at hand is not subject to a symmetric difference of opinion. When someone asks 'Do you think it's possible to "communicate" with your subconscious without being in a dream? Can you ask "it" a question for instance and get a response in real time?' and your answer is "No", and someone else who you regard as sincere says "Yes, I do that frequently", then the 'No' is untenable. The question wasn't "Is there another sentient being living in my mind", that's not what was asked. Your response implied that the one statement implies the other, but it does not necessarily. Interpretation of the 'communication with subconscious' experience is a separate issue. By definition, if you're having a conversation with another part of your mind that is outside of your conscious awareness except for the words in the conversation, then from your standpoint its literally your "subconscious" that you're talking to, even if you're crazy.

No, my 'muse' is not strictly from outside of my mind, there is significant overlap with my own subconscious. I've made the point that its not strictly contained within 'my' mind, or else there's no accounting for some of its apparent capabilities, unless I'm some kind of demigod incarnated, which I am not. But its not an either-or kind of thing. The muse is not a 'being' with a discrete identity, even though its nature includes of some of those characteristics also. Its intelligence is distributed, individual but also shared across many individuals. And its not shared in a Jungian 'hard wired' sense, the sharing is interactive.

**Sageous** · 01-09-2012 09:53 PM

Shadowofwind:

Understood on the disclaimer thing...I had thought the exact opposite -- that you had made the link. It makes more sense now. Now the rest:

Why is "No," an untenable answer to this question, while "Yes" is okay, simply because someone might say, "Because I said so?" (note that mine was the first response, so there was no "Yes, I do that frequently" in the formula -- was I required to assume this?), I'm not sure I understand the distinction. Shouldn't "Yes" be just as untenable? Also, since this thread is entitled "Your subconscious talking to you," it seemed okay to answer "No" where I did because I feel that your subconscious is not "Talking to you" when you are talking to yourself, or consciously wondering something and an answer "Appears," or however else you want to phrase the activity. I was following the general theme of this thread, in which there is a clear assumption of an unconscious intelligence that can speak to us in an independent manner; I think this assumption is wrong, and including my opinion in my answer didn't seem untoward -- even if ThePieMan threw quotations around the word it. So yes, "interpretation of 'communication with subconscious' experience" is indeed a separate issue, and well worth discussion. Unfortunately in my opinion we were about to set off on another discussion about asking some critter within us questions and getting answers that apparently don't come come from our own minds, and I reactively inserted my opinion. So yes, I suppose I did think that the one statement implied the other. My bad.

**shadowofwind** · 01-10-2012 01:43 AM

Originally Posted by Sageous

Why is "No," an untenable answer to this question, while "Yes" is okay, simply because someone might say, "Because I said so?" (note that mine was the first response, so there was no "Yes, I do that frequently" in the formula -- was I required to assume this?), I'm not sure I understand the distinction. Shouldn't "Yes" be just as untenable?

If someone had asked, "is it possible for a person to touch their elbows behind their back", then responding "no" is reasonable while that's your understanding of human anatomy. But after someone else has said "yes I can do that", then to stand by your "no" is to say that your categorical belief about other people's bodies trumps the other person's actual experience. In effect, you're saying that you know what other people experience and they do not, dismissing any data points that don't fit your model. My 'Yes' response, in contrast, does not contradict your personal experience or anyone else's, it just says that this particular experiences is possible, as demonstrated by an actual set of examples. And you knew about this, since we've been discussing this for a year now. You noted the disagreement in your 'no' message, and furthermore you know that my statements are based on my direct experience. But perhaps I hadn't emphasized clearly enough that my 'muse' is also me, since it was the 'not me' aspects of its knowledge and reach that I found more interesting.

If you find my "critter" distasteful, that's understandable. I said that I agreed that it wasn't necessarily the best dynamic. But it doesn't make those dynamics unreal just by saying that its all 'really me'. If it is "me", its subconscious, and tells me things in words that I was not consciously aware of, which is what was asked about.

**Sageous** · 01-10-2012 05:45 AM

Okay, Shadowofwind, I give up. Uncle. You win. Everything I said was wrong. Anecdotal "evidence" is allowed to be asserted as truth, just because somebody said -- perhaps even believed -- it happened to them. Whatever phenomenon a person experiences is exactly what he thinks it is, period. Clever semantics trump obvious, philosophically and scientifically time-honored descriptions of consciousness, the unconscious, self, and identity (BTW, I really do think that unconscious sentience should have a higher bar for proof than touching elbows behind one's back). And, of course, yes, we all are controlled by our subconscious mind, which can talk back to us on its own, whether we are awake or asleep. Finally, I am wrong for addressing a single question as I saw fit without first considering everything I've ever said to all other people. This is not fun anymore, and no one will glean anything useful through this haze of ugly words we've created. I give up. Take it all; enjoy your victory. I'm tired.

I'm sorry we cannot agree on this, even though I have visibly agreed with --and valued-- almost everything you've said here. I'm sorry you are adamantly unwilling to understand what I am saying, and I'm sorry that I am a trying enough of a person that you think the six months you've known me felt like a year. I am truly sorry that the revival of this very interesting thread, this new opportunity we had to again try to address tapping the power of our unconscious minds, has been completely blown because instead of just disagreeing you needed to get personal with the author of one individual post. I am sorry that something I said somewhere along the line has compelled you to take this tack. And finally, I am sorry if you've failed or chosen not to see any of this...truly sorry.

For what it's worth, and if you're still with me, I find no "critter" distasteful. It is curious that you keep attaching adjectives like "distasteful" to your confident descriptions of my pretty much never expressed feelings about this stuff. I find none of this distasteful; I am simply trying to tell -- and learn -- the truth based on reality, and not based on stuff that I am sure is true because I think it happened to me.

Best of Dreams,

Sageous

**Liquidaque** · 01-11-2012 05:42 PM

Originally Posted by Dark_Merlin

This is essentially how dissociative personality disorder works, the person has various aspects of their subconscious split into different personalities or 'people' within their thoughts.

It is possible though, to train yourself to be able to accept answers from your subconscious. I know of people who are able to have full conversations within their head to themselves and work things out. I started doing this to a basic level - when meditating I can pose a thought to myself and catch the instant response which comes back. You learn to think without thinking - just simply allowing the ideas and responses to come to you straight from your subconscious. It's very intriguing and I actually got a PM asking me how I do this today!

I have the same EXACT thing happen to me... When meditating (even if it's only a partial meditation, like just stopping to think deeply for a moment) I get this voice... it's my voice, but I don't control what it says... It tells me the wisest stuff you could imagine... I wouldn't be where I am today if not for this voice. Though, it isn't necessarily a voice... it's more like a transfer of information that my voice immediately translates... it's hard to explain... all I know is it isn't me... or at least, not the conscious me.

**twan4chaos** · 01-11-2012 06:18 PM

ya i understand were your coming from i do the same but on an almost everyday basis, but it started with me because of how i feel towards other people and how i think they feel about certain things.