Josh e-mailed me the following question:
What techniques or thought trails did you follow to help put up that “translator” between yourself and your mind… because to hear you think it there are 3 entities we possess our minds, our bodies, and our subconscious. You found a way to put up a translator between the three. That is my largest desire with my mental development, as I’ve been attempting to accomplish for a couple years now, to no avail. Sure I interpret it, and get messages I can manipulate to make sense, but to hear you say it, you have conversation with yourself
Kind of jealous in that respect.
Thanks in advance for any insight and thoughts you can share.
I got interested in speaking to my subconscious after I read chapter 10 from Robert Peterson’s book, Out of Body Experiences: How to Have Them and What to Expect. Read the chapter if you haven’t. It recounts how Peterson came into contact with his “inner voice”, which is the same thing I use (I just call it my “subconscious”).
I started the same way Peterson did… just asking myself random questions, and listening for the answer. At first it doesn’t feel like anything special is going on. I can remember feeling frustrated with the supposed “answers” I was receiving. They weren’t clear, they were too short, too quick, and it felt like 90% of the time I wasn’t even getting a response. When I felt I had actually gotten a response, a lot of times it was incorrect. Very frustrating.
I kept at it. Asking myself questions, and listening. After about a month, things started to improve slightly. Slowly, over time, it began to personify. This took a while… perhaps 6 or 8 months.
The key, in my opinion, is to tell which thoughts are yours, and which thoughts are from your subconscious. This isn’t something that can be taught - it’s something you have to monitor the inside of your own head, and get a feel for it. Thoughts, ideas, pictures, emotions, associations, etc, are bouncing around in your head constantly. Before I communicated with my subconscious, I really wasn’t aware of how much shit goes through my head at any given moment. Now, I can see most thoughts and emotions pretty clearly. When something new arises, I am aware of it, and see it clearly for what it is.
That sort of mental identification is pretty tricky at first. If you are to look inside the mind of any normal person, there is so much shit going through it. Even “stupid” people have extremely fast minds, jumping from one topic to another, with a flood of memories, emotions, ideas, etc. We can take control of this process, and become aware of it.
One fun exercise is to just sit and think. Sit and think for 20 minutes, about whatever you want to think about. Switch topics whenever you want. Just float around and think, with no rules on what you can’t think about.
After the 20 minutes, go back and try to remember every topic you thought about. Every thought that went through your mind. Every memory that triggered a new line of thinking. For example, if I try this, I might remember thinking about a girl I’m interested in. But I’ll also remember thinking about how my cats spill water in the kitchen all the time. How did I jump from a girl to my cats spilling water? How did my mind make that jump? At first you might not be able to answer that question. But with practice, I can see that I was thinking about the girl, then I was thinking about my past girlfriend, then I thought about the time my past girlfriend cooked me a meal, then I thought about seeing my roommate cook a meal with his girlfriend, then I thought about the kitchen, then I thought about my cats spilling water on the kitchen floor. This sort of jumping around happens in an instant, and it can be very hard to get a hold of because it’s so quick.
Track it down. Notice when you recall a memory. Notice when you jump from one topic to another. You don’t have to stop yourself - just NOTICE it. Be aware of it.
When you ask yourself a question, your mind will start all these acrobatics. It will start pulling up a memory, playing a video, digesting an emotion, flickering an idea… all at once. I know I tell people to get their mind to shut up, but you can also try the opposite. Let your mind wander. But identify everything that’s happening in your mind, when it happens. Slow it down, and watch yourself.
Practice that. Over time, you’ll get a real sense for how your mind works.
Ask yourself a question, and listen for the answer. Watch your normal mind routine, and discard it. Look for information that doesn’t originate from your mind. An idea, or an emotion, or a feeling of truth will pop-up out of nowhere. Investigate it. Pull it in, and open it up. What do you feel? What do you see?
I know I stress that translation is important, but if you are aware of the thoughts in your own mind like I described earlier (being aware of when you access a memory, and how you jump from topic to topic, etc), then translation will come naturally. Once you hit that point, you’re already aware of what’s going on.
In this post, I tried to present the subconscious from a different angle. Hopefully this alternate perspective will help :-). Good luck, and feel free to post any follow-up questions in the comments.
May 31st, 2007 at 12:39 pm
very insightful, well.. you got me thinking differently
,
but when your speak to your sub-C does it have a different “feel” then when you think? like your talking to someone else?
May 31st, 2007 at 2:26 pm
Thanks Sean, I appreciate the thorough response. Hopefully by using this insight, I can obtain that much desired, easily deciphered layer… But I’m on with Dash, does it feel as if “talking” to someone else?
May 31st, 2007 at 10:38 pm
Great post PB.
I am trying to speak with my subc, but I am getting wrong answers.
Is this normal? Will I sooner or later get right answers if I keep on practicing?
- I just remember one time in 7th grade, my teacher was giving away this stupid toy. I wanted to prove to my friend that I could guess the number that she was thinking of. I think I made believe that a road was in my head going to hers, than the answer “drove” into my head (I think thats how I did it). I wrote down my answer than showed it to here. It was the exact answer. I think it was 47 (???). It was right on it! I know that your not impressed (lol) but I sure as hell was with myself.
Well thanks if you respond to my question.
Ty,
- hotfoot982
May 31st, 2007 at 10:54 pm
Sometimes it does feel as though I’m talking directly to someone else, although that is somewhat rare. When I first started off, it felt like I was talking to myself. Then, because of practice, it began to form it’s own feeling and personality. At that point, I could distinctly tell when it was me, and when it was my subconscious. It felt like my own internal voice, except from a different source. Like someone had a speaker in my mind. After a long period of that, it started to feel more of a part of me. Right now, it has it’s own separate feel, but sometimes our thoughts overlap, and switch places. It’s weird. Mostly I can tell “who is who” though. I don’t distinguish as much between “who is who” now because I really don’t care that much. It’s a natural part of my thinking process, so it almost feels like it’s me. But if I press the issue, and really focus, then I can tell which parts are me, and which parts aren’t.
Hopefully that answered more questions than it raised :-P.
Also, good job hotfoot :-). It’s always awesome to do stuff like that, especially when other people are watching :-).
~Sean
May 31st, 2007 at 11:48 pm
hotfoot:
Yea I’ve had experiences like that ^_^, like someone was really doubting me, and I told them to pick a number from one to ten, the answer just popped into my mind. I got it right 3 times out of 4.
Sean:
So, you can tell “who is who”, but you say when you first started off it felt like you were talking to yourself. Now, I’m just first starting off, myself, and it’s starting to feel like a separate person. What I’m concerned about is whether that “person”, the subc, is all in my head (I can create characters and such in my head, as in comics and such… And they all have their own personality), or whether it’s actually my subc. Reading over that again looks confusing. I mean I have a hard time convincing myself that the “voice” isn’t really ME. (Probably healthy though). It just seems too similar to me, and when I analyze the results of the experiments in my head, it just seems so much like when I go through what one of my “characters” (see up) would do. I think I’ve tried all I can find, but I’ll go searching the old tubes to see if I can’t find some other way to figure out if it’s really me. Maybe I just need to practice stopping the “ripples” some more.
- Derg
June 1st, 2007 at 12:32 am
I’ve gotten a total of eleven messages from my subconscious (I’m actually keeping track, lol). Personally, I know it’s my sub-c, when some seemingly random words pop into my head, and *then* I realize that they mean something. With my normal thought process, I understand the concept long before I put it into words. When it’s the other way around, it more resembles talking to another person. And yet it doesn’t feel like a seperate entity. Maybe it’s so tempting to think of it as seperate because people aren’t used to hearing themselves talking without already knowing what they were going to say…or something like that. Anyhow, I tend to think of my sub-c as the part of me that’s connected to the rest of the universe.
There was only one time that I got a response from my sub-c when I was sort of expecting it. And that time it was several days after I initially asked the question, then I sort of remembered it in passing and got the answer. The times when I’ve gotten a reply to a question, I had asked that question out loud. In most cases, however, my sub-c will just throw a cryptic or humorous message at me when I happen to be in the right state of mind. Things like “It’s a long road to infinity” and “truth is based on misconceptions”. It (I?) sure knows how to get my attention
June 1st, 2007 at 2:15 am
Quieting my mind can be difficult, so I think I’ll try this method.
Sort of reminds me of something. I once read that if you have positive thoughts, you can tell by your emotions (which should be positive too). However I felt like I always had positive thoughts but always felt apathetic or depressed. Then, I started focusing on my thoughts more and realized that all the positive thoughts I have are the ones I’m aware of, but if I focus more, there’s about a million negative thoughts in the background that’s constantly flowing in my head throughout the day. It was strange because I’d never really noticed them before, since they became such an ingrained part of me. But yeah, I’ve been happier since I became aware of that.
Well, this was sort of random but I thought it was related.
June 1st, 2007 at 10:19 am
I bet my only problem is that I haven’t practiced enough yet…
I need to see if I can’t do that.
June 1st, 2007 at 1:03 pm
Sean, I recall you saying that the subconscious is useful for school.
If so, I would mainly like it for memorization, can the subconscious memorize things well?
(such as 60 definitions word for word? :))
June 1st, 2007 at 5:25 pm
somefatguy:
Lol. I think I remember Sean saying something like he took a highlighter, than let his sub-c highlight the answer. I wish I could do that, and hope I will learn ;).
But that would be cool if the subc could memorize things, quickly too…
- hotfoot982
June 1st, 2007 at 7:42 pm
somefatguy:
I don’t know about blunt memorization, but in my experience, if I teach myself a little trick to remember something, I can have my subconscious memorize the *process.*
example: I parked in spot #1082, and 8+2=10, which I remember because the sum of all the digits comes down to 2. I tell my sub-C to remind me to use the “sum process,” as I call it, later in the day.
I don’t know if this works with everyone, and I’m particularly math-logic oriented, but it’s worth trying. Also, I grew up in Florida’s theme parks, so maybe this is just a natural part of my sub-C.
June 2nd, 2007 at 2:52 am
6 - 8 months before you felt you could personify a person from you sub-c?? Wow, it took me about a week to be in full sync with my sub-c. I mostly ask it to remember things which, by the way, works great. A few times I would say “sub-c remember this paper is due at x/x/x”. It would then tell me either very early or just before the due date so that I have enough time to work on it.
June 2nd, 2007 at 1:37 pm
Hello Sean,
Good to see your new website. This one suits you much better now in my opinion.
Very good explanation and very essential it is to witness the mind when it is active.
If I may be so free to give my opinion to Somefatguy: in my experience the subconscious is allknowing. It memorizes everything as well and is not bound by time. As Sean said, it is a matter of listening. The subconscious doesn’t need to be refined. It is our conscious mental field that needs the fine-tuning.
When you are doing a test for example, just intend to remember what you learned and then let it go… it comes back to you immediately, most of the times. It won’t help you if you try very hard to remember, it will only narrow the tunnel through which the subconscious sends out its knowledge to you. All you need is the intention to receive the answer or memory, and then immediately let it flow. It will flow back, you will ‘remember’ the answer to your question suddenly. Just listen carefully without forcing anything. The tunnel of information becomes much wider if you are relaxed.
I don’t know what Sean’s experience is with making tests and remembering, but this is how remembering works for me. Making tests correctly without consciously remembering the answer? Just say you want to fill in the right answer, and start filling in the answer. Don’t think about what would be the right answer according to your cubsconscious, because it doesn’t matter which answer you decide to give or choose, it will be the right one, if that was your intention and if the tunnel was solid-wide. After doing this some times, you will get a clear feeling of what is the right answer. So then the doubt will start to dissolve and trust in your ability to listen will grow. In my experience you will even start to know things suddenly that you cannot possibly know through the normal means of cause and effect. You just know.
Sorry if it is inappropriate to answer your question SFG, as it was aimed at Sean.
Nice blog/website Sean, keep the good info coming,
Bentinho
June 2nd, 2007 at 10:12 pm
After reading Bentinho’s comment, something hit me. My old physics teacher in high school always said “go with your first response, otherwise you will get it wrong.” now at the time, he was a cookey Physics teacher who just said weird things. With a little hindsight and thinking, i came to realize, this was an allusion to the suboncious, as Bentinho said “it comes back to you immediately…” I tested this theory by pulling out an old physics exam from high school (a solid one years worth of dust) and low and behold when i took it and saw the result, it was a 98% that was one question wrong. Just another two bits to process I thought I should share.
June 4th, 2007 at 10:39 am
Thank you for all of your answers everyone.
h4ckluserr: Ahh, the old “first answer.” That really annoys me sometimes. By the fact that I don’t listen to it. I would need an answer to something and I just feel the answer immediately, but then, my mind says otherwise. It tells me that it is another answer. And the mind’s answer is wrong, while the subconscious answer is right.
I guess I just trust the thing that is always with me, thought. Perhaps if one would break down the thought process, one would trust his/her subconscious?
(Well, today is final exams for me, I guess it’s time to give it a test run.
)
June 24th, 2007 at 6:27 pm
I find that when I wake up, I hear very random things, a voice that seem to talk about what I just dreamed about. I just walk to the bathroom listening to it like a radio station. Oh, and the voice is very loud in the morning. At night, I hear the voice again. This time, it’s more like answers to random questions I ask in my head about the day. I wish I wrote down what it said one night because it wasn’t my own thought at all. It was a beautiful answer about friendship and how it’s best to be different from everyone else. I forgot it and I regret not writing it down.
Sometimes I write lyrics at night before I sleep. I find this very helpful. The better lines are the one I give least thought about. The ones that turn out icky are the ones that I count syllables and timing and think about too much. I think this may enhanced my inner voice a lot, but I don’t want to say something cheesy like “it comes from the inner soul”. No, I think it’s the subconcious. Now, I could say random things in my head in a day and it seems to argue back or say something. It’s so hard to tell whether it’s my own thoughts or my inner voice. It never sounds like what I’d ever think of. I never tell anyone this because I’m still not sure myself what this all means. I’ve a weird reputation with my family alreay.
I wonder, could the subconcious be more effective after waking up and the time before sleep comes?