Soul n Peace

Therefore, we have to reduce and control our desires. But this may create vacuum. And hence, it is better to desire for the Grace of God, or for the ability to discriminate and have dispassion. In short, to tackle the subconscious mind, one should start filling the mind with practice of meditation and yoga, discrimination and renunciation, selfless work and devotion.

A common analogy when discussing the subconscious is that if the brain is the computer, the subconscious mind is the program that is running. If you were to weigh the brain of someone with a low IQ and compare it to the weight of that of Albert Einstein, there would be no difference to speak of. The really clever, high achievers of this world do not take an unusually large hat size! They are the same as the rest of us!

The subconscious, as opposed to our conscious mind, controls our life much more than we would care to admit. Our conscious mind knows we have destructive habits like smoking or over eating, but is powerless to over-ride them because habits are controlled by the subconscious. You may agree that house spiders are harmless, but your subconscious still makes you terrified of them. You just can't help it, you are at the mercy of your subconscious. Imagine that as a small child you got poor marks for sight-reading in a music exam. Imagine how disappointed you might have felt. Your subconscious might have quickly developed the totally irrational belief that you are a lousy sight-reader, and because that is such a deep belief in the subconscious you are sentenced for life!

So who says what programs we run in our subconscious? Do we accept regular 'free updates'? Do we actually know what software we are running anyhow? Keep thinking in these terms and you can turn your whole life around permanently and for the better by downloading positive software. What we believe about ourselves is housed in our subconscious and it is possible to easily erase self-destructive programs. Five seconds before the end of a 'take' in the studio do you find your self saying "Don't let me be the one that screws this up for everyone" and then promptly hit the wrong note? As there is no disk drive sticking out of our foreheads we have to use other methods at our disposal to enter the new programs.

We learn in many ways. When we are interested and absorbed in a subject we learn very fast. When we have to learn boring empirical formulae for some chemistry test the information refuses to stick in our minds. Our state of mind controls our learning. When we were very young we were either encouraged or discouraged to learn by our parents and other adults. Sadly research shows that for every 'yes' a child hears there are twenty or more 'no's. Is it any wonder we lose the skill of learning how to learn?