What is The Unconscious Mind?
The Search for The Inner Self

What is the unconscious mind? How does it think? And what is the connection with the inner self? This article takes a look at the nature of the subconscious mind and how to communicate to your true inner self with Greene's Release.

A Brief History

The subconscious mind is a concept created more than 200 years ago, by a man named Carl Gustav Carus. He theorized that beyond our conscious existence, humans also have a latent unconscious mind.

Later, Sigmund Freud said that this subconscious mind is a fairly dark place, that stores traumatic and repressed memories. While we may be unaware of them, these experiences can strongly influence our daily lives. The only time they are freely expressed are during psychotic episodes - and dreams.

But Freud's protege, Carl Jung, took this theory even further, blurring the rules that Sigmund Freud had set for the unconscious mind and forming a whole new structure of the human mind. Jung said that the unconscious mind is full of transcendent truths - and that we can grow by bringing these truths into conscious awareness. He said the best way to achieve this is through dream interpretation.

Modern Theories of The Subconscious Mind

There are a whole range of interesting theories on this. The idea I like most is described by Janet Greene of Greene's Release in The Five Stages of Life. It explains how the subconscious mind builds up inaccurate perceptions of the world through early experiential learning. Here it is, in a very small nutshell:

Stage 1 - We enter life with complete freedom to be ourselves. Our inner self (or spiritual essence) shines through to the physical world. We eat when we feel hungry. We sleep when we feel tired. We laugh when we feel happy. The only thing influencing our behavior is gut feeling. We live in the now.

Stage 2 - As children, we learn the rules of life from direct experience. There are good and bad experiences, but even the bad ones - traumatic events, abuse, poor self esteem - are stored as "life rules" in the unconscious mind. It is like a layer of a child's perspective, and becomes the guiding rules for life. These rules are all stored in the subconscious mind.

Stage 3 - As we grow, we apply these life rules to our entire waking experience. If our childhood taught us to have low expectations, they we go on to enter low paid jobs and disappointing relationships. If we never learned to love ourselves, we may self sabotage and never learn to love another. The inaccurate life rules of the unconscious mind filter negativity into our whole lives. Some people get stuck in this stage of life forever, trapped in their own personal nightmare.

Stage 4 - Others will feel there is more to life and seek the truth. That's when we realize that many of our life rules set as children are completely out of whack - and we need to reset them. The only way to do this is by emptying the emotional storage bin and consciously setting new life rules. That's what the Greene's Release technique does, and its unlike any other I've heard of. (You'll know of Hypnotic Regression, NLP, and The Sedona Method... they have nothing on this!)

Stage 5 - The final stage of life begins when you have released all the unconscious emotional blocks that were holding you back from living a truly happy life. You are able to instinctively feel once again, and wake up smiling from the inside out. You will always act in your best interests and seek fulfilling relationships. You will not experience anxiety or anger or guilt about anything. Best of all, your experience is not filtered by a negative unconscious mind; instead you communicate directly with your wise and intuitive inner self.

A New Perception

So while Carl Gustav Carus and Sigmund Freud laid the basic principles of the unconscious mind, they cast a very dark shadow over the inner self. I don't believe that deep down we're all riddled with repressed urges as Freud said. Instead, it's the pure, vibrant inner self that is bursting to get out - but we've caged it up as a result of carrying our childhood perceptions through to adulthood. In fact, many modern thinkers believe Carl Jung had it right with his theory of transcendent truths - wisdom emanating, unfiltered, from the inner self. That is the ultimate goal of living according to Greene's Release, too.

That is how we can access the inner self, by breaking down the misconceptions in the subconscious mind. This is something you can do, consciously, over time - I recommend the Greene's Release Heal Your Self workbook if you are interested. Its also something to explore in your lucid dreams, as the oneironaut Robert Waggoner explains in this article, 10 Things to Ask Your Lucid Dream Self.

Related articles

What is Consciousness?

What Is Reality?

Dream Interpretation

The Meaning Behind Dreams

Why Do We Dream?

The Law of Attraction

How To Do Guided Meditation

The Unconscious Mind

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