Quote Originally Posted by shadowofwind View Post
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.