Your Unconscious Mind

The Unconscious Mind was something that ancient civilisations and cultures knew about  approximately 3000 years ago. In our modern times western psychology only got to and started to understand the Unconscious Mind arguably between 1900 and 1930. The characteristics of the Unconscious Mind are that of a 5 year old child, simplicity and innocence, wanting to please and needing clear instruction.

Both ancient civilisations and western psychology see Unconscious Mind in similar ways, ie: that it runs the body, breathing, heartbeat, digestion, releases hormones with no conscious effort on our part. Also that the Unconscious Mind remembers everything from phone numbers to repressing memories associated with painful emotions.

However, many branches of western psychology view the Unconscious Mind as an adversary or an uncivilised child that needs training and that it should be dominated in some way. In contrast in Time Line Therapy®, as with the thinking of ancient cultures, the wisdom of the Unconscious Mind is respected, we appreciate its contribution to the person’s well being and knowing that it plays a vital role.

The Prime Directives of the Unconscious Mind: 

There are a number of  Prime Directives of the Unconscious Mind which gives us the structure for the context of doing Time Line Therapy® with yourself or with other people. This model gives us a powerful framework for using Time Line Therapy® techniques. These Prime Directives are “hard wired” in the Unconscious Mind to provide us with or to do the following:

1. STORES OUR MEMORIES: The Penfield Study in 1957 demonstrated that our all of our life experience is recorded dependably and stored as memory. Scientists probed a woman’s brain with an electrode which caused her to remember everything that happened from a childhood birthday party. She recalled the minute detail of the event like the expressions on the faces of her friends and family, the feel of the dress she was wearing and even the aroma of her birthday cake. The conclusion that the neuro-physicists made was that everything that has happened to an individual is stored in the brain.

Carl Pribram in 1960, won the Nobel Prize for his theories of how memories are stored holographically throughout the body and not just in the brain. The Unconscious Mind is a store house for all of our memories and it is the unconscious mind that is responsible for the management of the storage of  as well as the access to these memories.

2.ORGANISES ALL OUR MEMORIES:The Unconscious Mind organises all of our memories. To organise memories it catergories and uses an index to point to the stored memories. The purpose of which allows us to access the memories. Your Time Line is one such index that the Unconscious Mind utilises.

3. THE DOMAIN OF THE EMOTIONS:The Unconscious Mind is the domain of our emotions. Our emotions are frequently  experience or felt consciously. However the Conscious Mind is not the domain of our emotions as they are the responsibility of the Unconscious Mind which generates and maintains them.

4.REPRESSES MEMORIES WITH UNRESOLVED NEGATIVE EMOTIONS:  The Unconscious Mind wants you to learn something so it puts the memory with negative emotion somewhere in the body so you can get on with life. The unresolved negative emotion can also cause some repression of the content of the memory as well as the intensity of the emotion. The repressed negative emotions can become trapped in the body and if this happens, in many cases can cause blockages to the flow of communication through the pathways of neural networks through the body.

5. PRESENTS REPRESSED MEMORIES TO RELEASE THE EMOTIONS: The Unconscious Mind presents the Conscious Mind with memories with unresolved negative emotion on it so it can gain resolution on it. So you can make it rational. So you get the learnings. You’ve heard the saying, “Everything happens for a reason”. When resolution is gained on a charged past event the emotion disappears. Time Line Therapy® is allows you to gain resolution in an organised process.

6. KEEP REPRESSED EMOTIONS REPRESSED FOR PROTECTION:  The Unconscious Mind also has the opportunity of keeping the memories repressed. In some cases this is what the Unconscious Mind performs as a short term function. In the long term, the Unconscious Mind will continue to repeat the of process of presenting  the memories so that they can be released, because negatives emotions, if they remain repressed, are damaging to the body. We’ll see this in the eighth Prime Directive of the Unconscious Mind.

7. YOUR UNCONSCIOUS MIND RUNS YOUR BODY: A vital function is for the Unconscious Mind to give the consciousness that is required to direct and run the body. So, regulate hormones, digestion, breathing, heart pumping etc etc.

8. TO PRESERVE THE BODY: This means, other things being equal, that if you walk along the street and were to step of the pavement in front of a car, your unconscious mind will jump you back out of the way to a place of safety and you will be safe. Many people notice that in times of extreme danger, their unconscious mind takes over and the conscious mind is not at all involved at that moment. They may even language it by saying something like, “I didn’t think about it….it’s as if I knew what I had to do and I just did it.”

9. YOUR UNCONSCIOUS MIND IS A HIGHLY MORAL BEING:  Now that's based on what the individual has been taught and what they believe to be true. This is what the Unconscious Mind will enforce this as the person's moral code.

10. NEEDS AND RESPONDS TO CLEAR INSTRUCTIONS: Hence why it is essential to develop rapport between Unconscious and Conscious Mind so they work well together. 

11. CONTROLS AND MAINTAIN ALL PERCEPTIONS:  The Unconscious Mind is in charge of filtering the massive amount of data that comes in from the outside world, approximately 2,000,000 bits per second through our sensory input channels. Making it  making it manageable for understanding of the Conscious Mind by filtering it down to approximately 134 bits of information per second.

12. TO GENERATE, STORE, DISTRIBUTE AND TRANSMIT ENERGY: The Unconscious Mind manages the body and also the change of the energy within the body. The unconscious mind can be instructed to raise the level of the energy in the body for the purpose of healing and weight loss for example.

13. TO RESPOND TO INSTINCTS AND HABITS: Some instincts are “hard wired” and have them from birth – like the Fight or Flight response. Other habits we learn and install over time. It’s the job of the Unconscious Mind to not only generate these it is also responsible for maintaining both instincts and habits.

14. NEEDS REPETITION TO BUILD HABITS: When developing a habit, if we repeat the behaviour enough times (and that can be anything from 7 to 21 times) the Unconscious Mind will take it over. For the Unconscious Mind a fair amount of repetition will cultivate a habit.

15. TO CONTINUALLY SEEK MORE AND MORE: The Unconscious Mind is programmed to continually seek more and more. You buy a new car and after a short period, maybe even 2 or 3 weeks, that new car just seems like any old car. You perhaps then begin to wonder what car to get next.

16. OPERATES BEST WITH A MINIMUM OF PARTS: The Unconscious Mind’s optimum functioning occurs with the minimum of parts. The fewer the part, the better because more parts means that there is greater chance of inner conflict operating.  More parts means more possibility of inner conflict and because  each part can’t be expected to have the intention of the whole as its highest intention, the fewer parts the better. The optimum functioning occurs as a whole integrated unit.

17. IS SYMBOLIC: The Unconscious Mind is symbolic. Carl Jung was the first person to point this out to us. He said that the Unconscious Mind creates, uses and responds to symbols. In fact much of what the Unconscious Mind presents to us is symbolic. When interpreted the symbols have significant meaning to us.

18. WORKS ON THE PRINCIPLE OF LEAST EFFORT: The Unconscious Mind works on the principle of least effort. That is, it will do as little as it can get away with. This principle serves the Unconscious Mind in terms of energy conservation, but not however in terms of  healing various symptoms. For example, if you are asking the Unconscious Mind to clear up and resolve certain symptoms, you must ask the Unconscious Mind when it will start and when it will finish the process, or you may find six months later the process is still incomplete. When asked, “Why?” The Unconscious Mind may simply say, ” Oh…I haven’t started yet.”

19. TAKES EVERYTHING PERSONALLY: What we are referring to is the basis of ”Perception is Projection.” What you see in your reality is who you are The good news is, what you say like like about your friend, is you. And the bad news is, that what you say you dislike about your friend, is also you. . So it’s a really good idea to  think the best about everybody you meet in your world.  If you are a Coach or Therapist, a Teacher or a Manager for example, think the best about your clients  or students — view them as being magnificent AND that they can and will change using Time Line Therapy®, and guess what???? They will!  It was George Estabrooks (1943) and also Andre Weitzenhoffer (1957) who both said that what the therapist (or indeed coach, teacher, or manager) doesn't believe to be true will not be actualized by the client. So be careful because you can limit your clients or students with your own limiting beliefs. If you see your clients as magnificent they will be magnificent. Remember to believe in your own magnificence.

20. YOUR UNCONSCIOUS MIND CANNOT & DOES NOT PROCESS  NEGATIVES: So be very clear that when you are instructing your Unconscious Mind you are telling it what to do, instead of what not to do because it doesn’t know the difference. You see, you can’t think about what you don’t want to think about, without thinking about it!!!! Think about that!!?!

Summary:

Your Time Line is how your Unconscious Mind encodes and stores all of your memories.  This is how you know the difference between a past memory, and a future memory (or future projection.) Also, your Time Line is largely an unconscious process, for example remembering your home phone number, you are more or less aware of it from time to time. It’s stored by your Unconscious Mind.

Learn more about your Unconscious Mind at our exciting NLP Practitioner Training