The importance of Meditation
While meditation has many uses and benefits, the main goal in meditation is to clear unwanted “static” from the subconscious mind, which tends to spill over into the conscious mind and saps a person of their confidence and ability to relax their mind, both of which have trickle down implications. The explanation for all this will unfold in this article.
There are myriad ways of implementing a meditation strategy. Meditation isn’t a religious thing at all, although some religions do incorporate specific meditations. Meditation is also something that needs to be repeated regularly; freeing one’s mind of subconscious static isn’t a small feat and won’t happen overnight, yet at the same time, some of the benefits of meditation are instant. Other, more powerful benefits are seen when practiced over longer periods of time.
Why do we need to clear static from our subconscious and how did it get there? An important question. The human mind is a very complex thing; but for simplicity’s sake let’s consider the two main parts for now: The conscious mind and the subconscious mind. The main state of the conscious mind, sometimes referred to as the “ego”, is the judging and rationalizing part. It considers itself separate from yourself, and refers to you as “myself”, or “I”, or sometimes (funnily) as just “you”. It is the part that does your “thinking”; it might say (in your head of course) something like “I wonder what we should have for breakfast this morning? (referring to yourself as two (you and it))” or “You stupid idiot!” when you’ve done something stupid (sometimes speaking to you in the third person, which is also funny).
It plans your day, before it happens, and it is constantly creating imaginary scenarios that aren’t real or have not even happened yet, then it evaluates these imaginary scenarios and comes up with outcomes – as if reality was static and this type of planning were actually effective in a real-time, always changing environment. The conscious mind, in its beneficial state is to be a tool used for learning, not for commanding simple daily activities or for inner dialogue with yourself.
The subconscious is much simpler; it cannot judge or evaluate, it just does. It is the hard wiring of the brain and also allows, instinct, reflexes, intuition, love (real love – not the imagined type), and higher levels of reasoning to flow through. The subconscious is an incredibly powerful tool when performing optimally, it is the bane of life when it has been programmed badly, and can serve a person anywhere in between. Because it cannot judge or evaluate, it takes everything that gets inputted to it at face value, as though it were the truth. The main interface that programs the subconscious mind is the conscious mind – or the “ego”.
Careful attention, or not, to what one not only says, but even lightly thinks or believes has a huge impact on the overall state of the subconscious. Dare I make a Star Wars analogy? Jedi in training are always being reminded by their elders to “mind their thoughts”; Jedi have to be trained from small children – before the subconscious gets programmed with fear, etc. in order to be able to become the best their minds and bodies would allow. There is much sense to this lore; George Lucas obviously had some deeper understandings of things that supported the overall storylines.
A good way to explain the relationship between your conscious and your subconscious is with the example of learning a new sport or skill. First you use your conscious to analyze and evaluate what needs to be learned, it determines a method for that learning, and then consciously applies that method to you in the way of practice. After several iterations of intense practice (dreams play a part here too, but for brevity I won’t go into it here), the governance of the activity begins to move into the subconscious – what you are doing is programming your subconscious.
After your subconscious has been programmed, the new skill or sport requires much less thought – less conscious considerations to do the tasks, and eventually you may master it and could “do it blindfolded” or “know it like the back of your hand”; and eventually you may master it so well that while doing the activity – you can get into “The Zone” – the place where all your senses and reflexes are greatly heightened, because all the focus that might normally be on the distracting thoughts-no matter how small, is reverted to the subconscious, where there is no evaluation, there is no fear-no fear of failure – just doing. No thoughts arise in this state at all – this is “The Zone” that extreme athletes often refer to. This state can only arise when the conscious mind is completely silent.
The subconscious is thousands of times faster, more efficient, and more effective than the conscious could ever dream of; and the caveat is it silently influences your daily choices whether positive or negative – if you have a “comfort zone”, if you have any type of “routine”, then your subconscious has been programmed sufficiently via repetition to have an influence on your conscious – this is why it is often so easy to decide to move outside of your routine, but so hard to put into action – the programmed part of the subconscious is influencing your actions.
This is why people often end up in abusive relationships over and over and over – their subconscious has been programmed in such a way that even while they don’t want to be abused, like a “comfort zone”, it becomes difficult to break out of.
With the subconscious influencing our actions beyond our conscious efforts, and the conscious thoughts and inputs constantly programming our subconscious, a feedback loop is created whenever we become engaged heavily in routine (even routines of thought patterns) That feedback loop is generally a downward spiral as it saps, creativity, adventure, enjoyment and everything else that goes with doing something “new”, but does make you more efficient at that routine, whether that routine is serving you optimally or not.
Ever notice how small children don’t seem to have that problem? Their subconscious takes a while to get these routines programmed. It begs a question about our globally structured life culture: rise from sleep, go to work, work 8 hours, come home, eat food, pay bills, watch tv, go to sleep, rinse and repeat, but I digress.
The subconscious can be programmed with almost anything. You know that jerk from work? The guy who is just intolerable and a jerk to everyone and you swear will never change? You know the one; he spent years of his life thinking jerk thoughts and hearing jerk statements from others, and now he’s a jerk; or more accurately, he has been made into a jerk.
Maybe as a child he was told by his parents what a little “jerk” or a “prick” he was, whenever he did something mischievous. Maybe after that he started thinking to himself that he actually was a jerk, “You are such a jerk! Why’d you do that!” perhaps he began to say to himself. Then in school that programming and feedback loop continues, as he acts out inappropriately to others, and gets told what an ass he is all the time. Well, by the time he’s a full grown adult, “Jerk” has been fully programmed, and the subconscious silently influences his actions – and he, and others, have no clue that this is not really him, this is how his subconscious has been programmed.
We are all programmed in this method, the main variable is “what have you been programmed with?” Is it then any mystery that children of abusive parents more often than not grow up to be abusive to their children? The subconscious of the child being abused takes everything as truth, it has no judgements, and becomes programmed with “this is how children are treated”. When that child grows and has children of their own, even though they may have vowed to never treat their children like they were treated, often end up in the same situation as their parents, and they don’t understand the mechanics of how this could possibly occur, since it is not their wish or desire at all to be abusive.
It is fear, negativity, doubt, poor rationalizations, and contradictions that we tend to program into our subconscious throughout our lives, mostly from our own conscious thoughts -- often disguised as “practicality”, that in turn cause us to act with fear, negativity, doubt, poor rationalizations, and contradictions, within our own actions and words, which in turn reinforces the programming.
This feedback loop, is the main part that I call the “static.” The subconscious can be programmed to cause your conscious to continuously feed itself back random thoughts, or negative thoughts, often contradictory, on a constant basis, to the point where it becomes seemingly out of your control. Just stop thinking for 3 minutes. Try it. Not one thought at all … I bet it is not possible. You have far less control over your conscious mind than you like to believe. This is the static feedback loop in action. This affects everyone to varying degrees and is a part of the “human condition”. In extreme cases we label it as various mental diseases, such as schizophrenia, but it really is all the same phenomenon.
Meditations and affirmations are excellent and simple tools that work together to help break up this static and begin reprogramming the subconscious so that it works for you as opposed to against you. Science has shown us that when a person is in relaxed meditation, the brain shifts into what is called an alpha brainwave state. This is a learning state – it allows the subconscious to be more controllably and clearly programmed – it has been dubbed “The gateway to the subconscious mind”. When a person is engaged in some learning activity while alpha brainwaves are being promoted in the brain, the long term retention of that learning is multitudes greater than attempted learning while in Beta state (currently the normal waking state in humans). Beta state is most common state of the conscious mind and is used for logic and critical reasoning, but often result in stress and anxiety; this would explain why stress and anxiety are an epidemic in our society, despite all the comforts of a modern society. It is this state specifically that is often referred to as the “ego”; but the mind has 5 variable brainwaves states in which it can function. Interestingly, dolphin’s brains are almost always in an alpha brainwave state, except those who have been held in captivity for a time, their brains slowly shift toward almost entirely beta state where they become stressed, depressed and more prone to illness, just like humans. More info on brainwave states here:
http://www.finerminds.com/mind-power/brain-waves/
In a nutshell, people need to have the ability to have complete control over the programming of their own subconscious, or else their environment, or the stress from maintaining a consistent beta brainwave state will do it for them. And by environment, I mean that anything you are exposed to programs your subconscious. Marketing is a multi-trillion dollar a year industry, because of how well it works. The pioneers of advanced modern marketing understand all this process very well. In addition to marketing, think of Hollywood, religions, tv, internet – all these are vying for the chance to program your subconscious – this is what it is all about. Don’t you think it should be you who has full control of the power of your own subconscious?