How Our Mind Works

The sooner you will get to the understanding of how your mind works, the better you will be able to take advantage of it for yourself. Therefore, I will begin by explaining the basics of how our mind works, as explained by Dr. Murphy.

Basically, our mind is actually two minds; or, in other words, our mind works in two parallel dimensions; the conscious and subconscious. Our conscious mind controls what we see, feel and do from choice, from decision. Our subconscious mind is what works under the surface to keep things going. It has a higher processing capacity and capability than that of the conscious mind. For illustration, count how many things you can think about simultaneously. When I say, simultaneously, I literally mean in the same instance. Back to my question. I'm sure all of you haven't been able to think of more than one thing at a time. You just can't. that's not how your conscious mind works. Deal with it.

However, our subconscious mind can. Just consider this: are you consciously choosing to take a breath here and there, in smooth rhythm? Are you consciously pumping blood to your veins and to your different organs, and making sure that the blood cells get to every last cell of your body? Are you consciously deciding to keep sleeping at night, no matter what, and if so, how are you even sleeping?! I think I can stop here. I'm sure you are intelligent beings. The point I'm trying to stress is, that our subconscious mind, in contrary to our conscious mind, can actually do many different actions simultaneously and quickly.

Let me present another illustration to how our mind works, through both the conscious and the subconscious. Picture a steam ship. The Titanic (R.I.P), for example, where there is the bridge on top, and the engine floor at the bottom level, where there are, at the very least, tens of workers, doing all kinds of tasks to make sure the engines are still running, and in the right capacity. Therefore, if the bridge orders to slow down, the workers down bellow do whatever needs to be done in order to get the engines to slow down. But let's not get lost in trying to figure out how steam ships work, and getting side-tracked from our subject.

This leads me to my next point, the understanding of the essence of the relationship between our conscious and subconscious mind. It is essentially the same relationship between the bridge of the Titanic and the engine floor. the conscious mind is the captain, the one to give orders. whereas, the subconscious mind is the one to execute, beneath the surface. For example, when you go on a run, you don't consciously tell your limbs to move this way or another at every step, and you don't tell your heart and lungs to breath and pump blood this way or another. They are all essentially doing these actions automatically, by the continuous execution of our faithful servant, our subconscious mind. The subconscious mind obeys the conscious mind, that's the basic premise.

This is simply the way our mind works. Now you are ready to enter the next step of understanding the basics of controlling the subconscious. This I will discuss in the next issue.