Thread: Subconscious talking to you

Maybe the best way to communicate with the unconscious part of ourselves is to not do so at all. Perhaps the unconscious is not sending us any messages at all, just a vast jumble of day residue and misfiled or as yet unfiled information. Perhaps the “messages” we get are a result of our instinctive conscious interpretation of this jumble of incoherent stuff, rather than the stuff itself. The messages would be pretty damn useless if that's the case, and possibly be real trouble if the "user" manages to interpret the chaos of his (or his patient’s) underworld badly.

So shouldn't we then just ignore our unconscious, let it rattle on as ever?

Nope.

It may be chaotic, but the unconscious part of us is still the largest part of us, especially in the information and spirituality departments. But maybe it would be best to simply learn to explore the unconscious as it is, rather than attempting to seek out and incorrectly define non-existent messages that rise randomly to its surface.

Exploration of this vast underworld could be the single most valuable thing a sentient being could do in life, simply because it might expose him to experiences, wisdom, and new levels of being that he otherwise would never know about. Perhaps such exploration might unite a being with his soul, and change everything, period. Perhaps this unity will finally enable easy access to other beings’ souls, and to the machinery of reality itself, which would allow access both to Shadowofwind’s muse and Labyrint’s personal reality engine. And of course much more that we are currently incapable of imagining might become available.

I tend to believe that nature has provided many "stops" to prevent even the most passive exploration of our unconscious, including perhaps our natural need to explain and interpret everything, especially the things we cannot (or need not) understand. So instead of exploring our unconscious, we choose to explain it in terms we can readily understand (i.e., interpreting dreams). That’s a pretty tough hurdle, considering the billions of years nature has had to set up behaviors and instincts that prevent its progeny from venturing into chaotic realms that might damage them, and it. I have a feeling though that very advanced, call it transcendental, lucid dreaming, might be a way around many of those stops.

I'm rambling now, so, for those "tl;dr" folks out there, let me paraphrase: the unconscious is an underworld of our own minds, which on active conscious study is in chaos and cannot be interpreted; it is sending no messages. Instead, it is a deep sea of memories, thoughts, knowledge, and history whose surface -- and only its surface -- is just ethereally reflecting our own existence back up at us. So, instead of attempting to find meaning in a confusing reflection, why not learn to dive into the mirror itself?

Originally Posted by Sageous

it is sending no messages. Instead, it is a deep sea of memories, thoughts, knowledge, and history whose surface -- and only its surface -- is just ethereally reflecting our own existence back up at us. So, instead of attempting to find meaning in a confusing reflection, why not learn to dive into the mirror itself?

I mostly agree with this, with a qualification. Generally speaking, my subconscious prefers not to think and interact through sequences of signs and symbols, it would be too limiting. However, there are also occasions where it does that, and does it very clearly and very well. So I think it would be arrogant and foolish not to look for meaning in those circumstances. Here's an example to illustrate, pardon if I mentioned this one previously. I was walking down the street at night in winter, and took my left glove off to more easily open a can of pop. (Normally I would use might right hand.) The pssst from opening it startled me, and my arm did a weird flick, causing my ring to sail off my finger, even though it was on fairly snug. It fell through a shallow grate, where I wasn't able to retrieve it until the next day. When I shared this anecdote with my partner, she confirmed that she had started a relationship with another man that evening. Consciously I had no idea that this was happening. Independent of the question of how my subconscious knew, clearly it did know, and it found a way to tell me. Would you consider that event to not be a message? Just a part of an incoherent jumble? I think that would be an insulting mindset for me to take. Like I said, messages of this type are only one facet of my relationship with my subconscious, and not the most important part. For me, learning to interact with my subconscious in a more intelligent way would probably be fairly similar to what you were saying. But the subconscious can do that explicit, message delivering kind of communicating also.

Originally Posted by shadowofwind

I mostly agree with this, with a qualification. Generally speaking, my subconscious prefers not to think and interact through sequences of signs and symbols, it would be too limiting. However, there are also occasions where it does that, and does it very clearly and very well. So I think it would be arrogant and foolish not to look for meaning in those circumstances. Here's an example to illustrate, pardon if I mentioned this one previously. I was walking down the street at night in winter, and took my left glove off to more easily open a can of pop. (Normally I would use might right hand.) The pssst from opening it startled me, and my arm did a weird flick, causing my ring to sail off my finger, even though it was on fairly snug. It fell through a shallow grate, where I wasn't able to retrieve it until the next day. When I shared this anecdote with my partner, she confirmed that she had started a relationship with another man that evening. Consciously I had no idea that this was happening. Independent of the question of how my subconscious knew, clearly it did know, and it found a way to tell me. Would you consider that event to not be a message? Just a part of an incoherent jumble? I think that would be an insulting mindset for me to take. Like I said, messages of this type are only one facet of my relationship with my subconscious, and not the most important part. For me, learning to interact with my subconscious in a more intelligent way would probably be fairly similar to what you were saying. But the subconscious can do that explicit, message delivering kind of communicating also.

At the risk of being arrogant and foolish, I could certainly consider that event to not be a message. So could you.

Why couldn't this event have been nothing more than an amazing coincidence? After all, your hand may have flung the ring, but at the moment it did, were you suddenly filled with dread that your partner was moving on? Shouldn't you have been? Did you make the connection before or after your partner told you what she did? If not, then was there really any communication going on? If your subconscious found a way to tell you something but you didn't listen, did it actually tell you? It is all you, after all. Why would it be insulting for you to believe that sometimes things just happen, things that have nothing to do with your mind -- conscious or unconscious -- at all? The world does keep spinning without us, and randomness does happen. Sometimes the surreal nature of those random events forces you -- perhaps in the name of your own sanity -- to believe that "your subconscious can do that explicit, message delivering kind of communicating." But is such a rationalization really the only possible conclusion, to the point where you would be insulted to think anything else?

As I mentioned somewhere above, people are amazingly good at attaching meaning to anything, and they tend to focus on attaching meaning to anything odd or coincidental. We are exposed to an enormous amount of stimuli every day, and, if we are looking for meaningful moments, we can all find something that happened to us yesterday that was surely a sign or a communication, "now that I think about it." If we really look. ... of course, I could be wrong!

Now, if I didn't piss you off too much with all that, hopefully you'll answer the one big question that your post raised for me: If your subconscious "prefers not to think and interact through sequences of signs and symbols," how does it prefer to interact? If you've already answered this above somewhere, sorry for asking again!

And, all that said, I really think we may be on the same page here; though we might be reading in different directions.

Originally Posted by Sageous

Why couldn't this event have been nothing more than an amazing coincidence? After all, your hand may have flung the ring, but at the moment it did, were you suddenly filled with dread that your partner was moving on? Shouldn't you have been? Did you make the connection before or after your partner told you what she did? If not, then was there really any communication going on? If your subconscious found a way to tell you something but you didn't listen, did it actually tell you? It is all you, after all. Why would it be insulting for you to believe that sometimes things just happen, things that have nothing to do with your mind -- conscious or unconscious -- at all?

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.

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. 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. 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.

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. 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.

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.

On the question of how my subconscious prefers to interact....That's not an easy question to answer, since the way my subconscious thinks and experiences the world is very different from how I do. Obviously, there is the everyday, every minute process of thoughts springing out of darkness, consciously coalescing into choices and results, and falling back into the darkness and seed the next cycle. Obviously that's quite a bit more fundamental than the occasional oracular event, since we wouldn't even be intelligent without it. Beyond that, I think its probably desirable for me to shift my vantage point or identity so that I'm interpreting experiences from a standpoint more akin to that of my subconscious, or at least to be able to do that more. In metaphysical circles there's a lot of derision about 'mere words', where all the important things are deep and ineffable. I don't share that view: words and concrete things seem to me to be as important as anything else. But its still seems that a person can build up a vast structure of word-ideas without much understanding to show for it. Look at almost any philosophy written by by academics in recent decades (centuries?) as an illustration of this. So I guess my subconscious would like to see me step back and experience simple things that it knows but which are nevertheless new or foreign to my way of thinking. Part of that process of course is to be temperate in the formation of judgments. Every thought I hold about how things definitely are inhibits my becoming aware of alternatives. And on the other hand, if I'm all pothead-like and hold only vague thoughts which I evaluate solely on how they feel, I won't develop in the way I want to either. So I try to have some fair and fluid sense of how much my various thoughts are true and how much they're conjecture, so that I've got something that can grow, but I don't harden it into a dogma and kill it. This was the lesson of one of my first transcendent experiences, which I probably mentioned earlier, and its naturally a recurring theme.

My subconscious is also like conscience or intuition that informs my thinking. For example, while I said "I don't share that view", I paid attention to how I felt when I said that, because my subconscious would object if I was misrepresenting my true view, or speaking against what it feels and knows to be true. And then a thought would form articulating that objection. Maybe I've eaten most of the obvious, low hanging fruit in this regard though. So what's left is largely what I don't hear, what I don't understand how to interpret. I do feel there's something there though, that I'm not hearing. This is part of why I said I "mostly" agree with what you said before, is it was a suggestion to relate to the subconscious in a different way, not trying to treat it as if its an invisible conscious intellect.