Mindfulness
Mindfulness vs Consciousness
In today’s world, we constantly face the need to organize our lives consciously. There are so many dangers lurking that we can only manage them if we take control of our lives. The importance of physical and mental health cannot be emphasized enough. Many of us suffer from problems we do not want to solve with medication, but rather with proper lifestyle, nutrition, and mental practices. But we don’t only have problems; we also have goals, which we want to achieve using correct mental methods.
Often, we come across suggestions that depression, anxiety, and other mental issues can be resolved through our subconscious mind. When acquiring new knowledge, especially language learning, it is recommended to use the subconscious mind.
This raises a small contradiction:
If we want to be conscious, isn’t that opposed to using the subconscious?
How does the subconscious mind actually work?
How can we control it, if at all?
What can it be used for, and what dangers might it hide?
Let’s look at an example:
Imagine a stage demonstration where a hypnotist calls someone onto the stage. The hypnotist discusses beforehand that they will hypnotize the person. The person either believes it or not, but cooperation is necessary, and they agree. Then the hypnotist swings a pendulum or uses another method to slightly reduce the person’s conscious state. This even shows on their eyes—they become somewhat dull.
The hypnotist then gives a hypnotic suggestion: “When I touch your face, take off your coat, and when I remove my hand, put your coat back on. When I say the word ‘stop,’ the command loses effect.” The person is awakened from the trance.
After that, the hypnotist talks with the person and touches their face as if scratching a beard. The person takes off their coat, which may amuse the audience. The person doesn’t understand what’s amusing, and when the hypnotist removes their hand from the face, the person puts the coat back on. When touched again, they take it off again. This repeats several times.
When asked why they took off the coat, the person gives a seemingly logical answer—”because I felt warm.” When asked why they put it back on, the person replies, “because I got cold.” The audience laughs, but the person doesn’t understand why.
Then the hypnotist says “stop” and explains the earlier command about touching the face triggering coat removal and putting it back on. The person remembers and laughs, saying they were not aware of doing so before. But now, even if the hypnotist touches their face, the person will no longer react this way because the command has become conscious and lost its effect.
This simple example shows how hypnosis and the subconscious mind work, although this is a very mild case. It should be noted that even the hypnotist may not fully understand how it works—just that it does.
What happened?
The person’s consciousness had to be lowered to allow the suggestion to enter the subconscious. For language learning, similar methods use monotonous sounds or visual stimuli to reduce consciousness and “pour” knowledge into the mind.
The term subconscious is very apt because the person acts on the command without conscious awareness of why. The command exists below the level of consciousness.
However, this raises questions:
What are the consequences of consciously allowing unconscious suggestions into our mind?
Can suggestions enter our subconscious mind unconsciously in other situations?
The fact is, no hypnotist is needed. As the example shows, consciousness can be lowered in other ways, such as accidents, pain, anesthesia during surgery—all of which reduce consciousness to some degree. If speech occurs nearby (intentional or not), suggestions can enter the subconscious and be executed without awareness or interpretation.
How many such commands have we accumulated that influence our behavior? Maybe none, but maybe hundreds.
I shared this example to explain why sometimes we do things we don’t want or don’t realize we’re doing, yet can’t stop—like compulsions, unexplained bad moods, anxiety, fears. These may be subconscious commands.
If we undergo such unconscious states voluntarily to achieve positive results, this is a method to do so. But the question is: is this good for us? Does anyone want to live without control over thoughts and actions? Do we want to know what commands we have? Do we want to keep, delete, or change them? Is it possible at all to delete such commands?
The stage example involved a very mild command that stopped working when it became conscious. But how can we become aware of other commands, where and when they were implanted? Many situations in life may have implanted such commands. Who identifies them so we can eliminate them?
This text is not to judge hypnosis or subconscious use as good or bad, but to illustrate that many people don’t understand how it works. Knowledge equips us to face the unknown and make conscious choices.
Everyone must decide if they want knowledge that is beyond their control, and if not, what to do about existing subconscious commands that are unknown, numerous, and hard to remove.