So Many Minds! My Oh My, Which Mind Am I?

The mind is a complex phenomenon that influences every aspect of our lives. It is responsible for our thoughts, emotions, perceptions, and behaviors. To fully comprehend how the mind works, we must first explore the various parts of the mind that we will be referencing throughout this course.

The Mind—Human consciousness is made up of energy generated by the brain, but which exists and lives throughout every cell in our bodies. This energy radiates from within each of us; it extends outward from us and can travel through space and time.

The mind is composed of several different aspects, or parts:

The Unconscious Mind—Stores our core beliefs, feelings, default emotions, and bodily functions. This is considered the second largest part of the mind. Rarely, if ever, can it be altered.

The Subconscious Mind—Stores all past experiences since birth (and possibly before), as well as all stimuli input through any of the five physical senses. The subconscious never forgets. This is the likely the largest part of the mind.

The Conscious Mind—Our current thoughts are processed here. This is where we can create, invent, learn, dissect, and make choices—and most importantly, it is where our conscious decisions are made.

The Egoic Mind— (The Ego) The controlling narrator or our inner voice. It is a bridge of sorts that connects the subconscious/unconscious minds to the conscious mind. In most cases, the egoic mind brings together experiences with the emotions associated with them, and then advises the conscious mind based on those past experiences of what choices to make in the present. The egoic mind can only live in, and advise from, the past, because that is all it knows.

Awareness—The highest level of human consciousness. This is the part of our mind that is cognizant we are having a thought. Humans are one of the few living entities that are aware of the fact that they think. If one is aware of one’s thoughts, then one can choose to consciously change the way one thinks. This is the highest level of the mind. It has the power to choose to change.

The Universal Collective Consciousness—An entity where all human minds are thought to become one by merging energies as they pass through a Quantum Field. Not necessarily a direct part of the human consciousness, but one’s awareness has access to this structure and can send or receive information through this energetic field.

The Brain—The brain is a complex organ located in the human skull that controls the flow of information throughout the entire body, including but not limited to motor skills, vision, breathing, temperature, hunger, and every process that regulates the human body.

Let’s examine the Multiple Mind Chart.

The brain is responsible for manifesting the mind, but the mind ultimately controls the brain. Your subconscious mind can take in, decode, and remember eleven million bits of information in one second. Your conscious mind can handle only about forty to fifty bits per second. Your subconscious basically makes your conscious mind look dumb. But not so fast. The conscious mind is what separates us from the animal world. Our conscious minds are far more developed, and as such, able to solve problems, invent things, build things, and so on.

The mind-body connection refers to the intricate relationship between our mental and physical states. Also, we will later add our connection to the universe as one energetic entity. Traditionally, the mind has been considered separate from the body, and in many ways, this is true, however, they are directly influenced by each other. Studies have shown that our thoughts and emotions can have a direct impact on our physical health, and vice versa. For example, stress can manifest as physical symptoms like headaches or stomachaches.

We must separate the brain and mind. The brain creates the mind, but the mind controls the brain. The brain controls your body and there lies the connection. The operating middle unit is the organ we call the brain. So then if it is the mind that controls the brain and the brain controls the body, then is it safe to say the mind controls the body also? Here is where things may get confusing because the answer is most of the time. If "you" control your mind.

The key here is who are "you" and where can you find yourself so you may have total control of yourself and all the parts within? Let's look at this in a few different ways as if I didn't just confuse you enough.

If you stub your toe the pain goes to the brain in a millisecond. The brain says, "that hurts." The mind takes that from the brain and may say, "hey what's wrong with you? Didn't you see the rock in your way before walking over there? You always do something stupid like this."

Wow! Your mind is one tough cookie. It talks a lot of trash. Why would anyone talk trash to themselves? Well to understand that part of this process we had better start at the beginning first.

We all possess what could be described as a multifaceted mind, with various interconnected components. Let's begin by exploring the conscious and subconscious aspects. The subconscious operates on a vast scale, absorbing every detail from our surroundings and storing it for future reference. Nothing escapes its notice; every sensory input is captured and retained.

The Encyclopedia Britannica suggests that the subconscious mind can process, decipher, and store up to eleven million bits of information per second, while the conscious mind manages a mere forty to fifty bits. This staggering disparity might lead one to believe the subconscious vastly overshadows the conscious mind in capability. However, it's the conscious mind that distinguishes humans as superior to other life forms, enabling us to solve complex problems, innovate, and create. Let us look more closely.

Do not believe everything you think.

The foundation of your subconscious mind is largely established during the first seven years of life. From birth to about age seven, your mind absorbs everything in its environment, learning and storing vast amounts of information. This early programming shapes future decisions based on those formative experiences. During this critical period, your brain operates predominantly in a brainwave state known as “theta,” which is ideal for imagination and learning. In theta, your mind is highly receptive to information. This is why, during hypnosis, which may be meant to change a habit (like quitting smoking), the hypnotist aims to relax you into a theta state to communicate directly with your subconscious.

The Jesuits have a saying: “Give me a child for the first seven years, and I will show you the man he will one day be.” Before the age of seven, the child is just repeating the things he or she has heard. They have not yet formed an opinion on much of anything. That capacity is still emerging. Much of what they say is just being repeated like a recording. So, if you get mad at your seven-year-old for saying a bad word, chances are their subconscious mind recorded it from you in the first place.

After the seventh or eighth birthday, the brain transitions to other brainwave states, spending less time in theta. The rapid, natural learning process slows down significantly by the onset of puberty. As adults, we rarely enter theta states unless through induced methods like meditation, hypnosis, or sleep.

Let’s examine the brainwaves in the attached chart below.

Notice the delta state at the bottom of the chart, typically associated with deep sleep and rapid eye movement. To wake up, you must pass through theta. Conversely, you must also enter theta when falling asleep, transitioning from a higher state. Ideally, if we had a choice (which we do but let's not get ahead of ourselves) we would probably choose to spend our days in alpha, associated with relaxed alertness, but we often move into beta for problem-solving and into gamma during intense situations such as requiring fight or flight responses, characterized by surging adrenaline. It's important to note that not all gamma is negative. The thrill of a rollercoaster for example may take you there.

Beta has a broad range, from low to high, encompassing many sub-stages, while gamma states are more complex and very expansive as well. For now, remember theta, as it plays a crucial role during childhood, absorbing vast amounts of information and internalizing it as fact, especially when emotions are involved. We are going to utilize theta when we meditate.

The other important fact here is that by age 7 (when theta ends) you have formed an opinion on most things. The foundation of what will trigger an emotion has matured. You still carry these beliefs, unless you consciously have changed them. Here lies the problem. You are, to some degree, basing much of your decision-making processes in the present day, using your 7-year-old mind, and its belief system. Your ego or your identity of self, is fully formed around 7-years-old.

Now Let’s return to the The Multiple Minds Chart.

We can delve a little bit deeper into the subconscious and break it up into two parts: the unconscious and the subconscious. The subconscious is made up of memories and experiences while your unconscious is composed of your feelings and emotions. When an experience occurs that is brought on by, or met with, a strong emotion, it becomes solidified as factual in your perception. A part of what you believe to be truth. Everyone’s personal perception is their own truth. You’ve probably heard the saying: “There are two sides to every story, and then there is the truth.” Two people can have the same experience and each walk away from it with a different perception and recollection.

To the young boy who walks over to a hot stove and puts his hand on it for the first time, his experience is the feeling of pain. The intensity of that feeling creates an association and solidifies his perception about this thing called “stove”: stoves cause pain.

Another boy comes along and touches the stove, but it isn’t turned on, so no pain is caused. Boy number two says to boy number one, “Stoves don’t cause pain. You’re just stupid.” Here we see the same scenario with two completely different perceptions of reality.

Boy number one then says, “No, you’re the one who is stupid. Your mom doesn’t cook; she makes reservations.”

The boy who got burned (who may have a career in comedy) will remain afraid of stoves until he learns consciously that a stove can be used safely without pain and suffering. Please note that this must be done consciously, to override his subconscious perception of reality. That perception will never be deleted. The subconscious does not delete. You can write a new program over the old one, but you can never completely get rid of what was there before.

Imagine the subconscious as the expansive storage of a computer's hard drive, with the conscious mind acting as its RAM, or Random Access Memory. This analogy illustrates how the subconscious and conscious parts of the mind function similarly to the components of a personal computer. The hard drive (subconscious) holds an immense amount of data, while the RAM (conscious mind) actively processes and utilizes smaller parts of that data. Consequently, to modify our ingrained mental patterns, it's imperative that we engage our conscious mind, instructing it to assimilate new behaviors and responses, thereby directing our subconscious towards our desired actions and reactions.

If we uncritically accept as truth the concepts and teachings imparted to us during our childhood years, then the thoughts we hold are not genuinely ours. Instead, they represent the beliefs and ideas of others, imprinted upon us without our consent. At birth, our minds are blank slates or unprogrammed hard drives. Foundational programming—shaped significantly by our immediate surroundings and the individuals within it—occurs during these initial years. This programming is influenced not only by direct human interactions but also by media sources such as television and movies. In our youth, our ability to discern reality from fiction is underdeveloped; consequently, we subconsciously internalize everything we perceive in our environment as absolute truth.

It's fascinating to consider that our understanding of the human mind might have inspired the development of personal computers. The subconscious and unconscious parts of the mind, which together account for over 80 percent of our cognitive capabilities, embody both our most intellectually potent regions and, paradoxically, our most notably underestimated areas in terms of their potential for manifestation.

There's debate over whether the subconscious has limits to its capacity. Einstein posited that it could reach a saturation point, necessitating the discarding of old information to make room for new. Regardless, like a computer's hard drive, our subconscious has the ability to overwrite old data with new experiences, suggesting that while past traumas may never be fully erased, they can be mitigated with positive reinforcement. This is part of the retraining and reprogramming exercises we will do later on.

The initial seven years of life are crucial in programming the subconscious mind. During this period, the brain is highly receptive, absorbing and storing vast amounts of information that will later influence decisions and beliefs. This stage of heightened learning correlates with the brain's theta state, optimal for absorbing new knowledge. Recognizing the subconscious's power in these formative years can be key to understanding our deeper selves and initiating conscious change where needed.

Let's consider a scenario where a father repeatedly tells his six-year-old, "You don't deserve this or that. You will never amount to anything." The child will absorb and record this as a fact. As an adult later in life, they will begin to act in a way that ensures they are living by the program they were given, completely subconsciously. Such children will likely sabotage themselves to keep the program running correctly. This can be averted or corrected, but it must be done consciously. You must consciously reprogram your subconscious to change the outcome, to create a new program and discard the one instilled by Dad, Mom, or any other authoritative figure who contributed to the old programming. They may have meant well in their teachings, but they may have been flawed themselves by their own upbringing, and since early in life this is the only information, you have to work with, you are now flawed.

How does this potentially unwanted or detrimental information manage to sneak its way from the subconscious to control your actions and reactions? The answer lies in a weak link that connects the subconscious to the outside world: the egoic mind, or "ego" for short. I call it the "weak link" because it seems to cause significantly more harm than good. Of course, there are times when the information from our ego or subconscious is healthy, positive, and beneficial. After all it is there to protect us. However, it shouldn't paralyze us with fear either. It should not give us self-limiting beliefs and unwanted emotional reactivity.

The ego is the narrator or voice inside all our heads, which speaks to us and advises us on what to do, or not to do at any given moment. That voice can only run on the information supplied by the subconscious mind.

Since the subconscious mind is made up of your past experiences, your ego lives in your past. The direction that the ego gives you comes from your past. What happens when you repeat your past? You get the same results you got yesterday. And by Einstein's definition, insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

It is important to note that it is also the ego that says, "look both ways before you cross the street." That is sound advice. It was sound advice yesterday and will also be today. It may also tell you not to jump off a cliff because you can't fly. Once again, sound advice. However, it is also the ego that says, "That person isn't calling you back because you said this or that." Or perhaps, "you can't get that job because you aren't good enough." Both of those assumptions will likely be incorrect. They usually are when it comes to us thinking about self-limitations, or what another person is thinking about us. A wise man once said to me, "What you think of me, is none of my business." That's beautiful. No one else's thoughts should ever control your actions. Do not give up control of what you want or what you want to do, because you actually "care" about what someone else will think.

There seems to be no shortage of negativity that comes through the ego time and again.

According to Joseph Campbell, the ego sits as a small speck in the conscious mind but can be activated and influenced primarily by the subconscious part of the mind. Think of the ego as the CPU in your computer, distributing the information it receives from all parts of the computer's memory and ultimately telling the computer what to do with that information and when to do it. This computer needs some reprogramming and quickly I might add.

Eckhart Tolle speaks quite candidly about his own experience before becoming enlightened when he felt suicidal. For me, the most memorable part of his story was the point at which he said, “I hate myself. I want to kill myself.” In that moment Tolle wondered whether the fact that there was a “he” wanting to kill “himself” meant that there were actually two people or entities within his mind. He began to think, if so, then which one was he really? Which one had the ability to enforce change? Which one was the master of his destiny, and furthermore, where did this other one come from? That was the very beginning of his revelation. In order for “him” to hate “himself,” there must have been a separate entity within deciding to think this way. This was the beginning of the realization that his ego (egoic mind) had control of his mind and therefore his life. But he also would go on to discover his "awareness" which is the real him. The awareness is connected to the collective consciousness, the creator, God, the universe, or any other term you wish to use. We are one with Them. It is there you find the real you. You are not your ego!

Your awareness is the highest level of consciousness, and this is because if you are aware that you are having a thought or emotion that you do not want you can change it. You can't change it if you are unaware that you have this ability. Most people live their entire lives listening to their ego and assume that their ego is themselves. Just think about that. You have the ability to use your awareness to get answers from "above" metaphorically speaking, why would you ever go back to using your flawed subconscious mind for answers?

The concept of the collective consciousness comes from the work of the famous psychiatrist Dr Carl Jung who was a student and devoted disciple of Dr Sigmund Freud. To many of those who study and practice metaphysics, Jung's theories are universal law.

So, where then does your "awareness" lie in my analogy of the mind and its comparison to the computer? It is the person reprogramming it of course. Your awareness is the real you and I guarantee when you finally meet for the first time, you are really going to like yourself. Lastly, the "collective consciousness" is the internet. When you take your computer out of the box for the first time it is limited to the people who programmed it and those programs that are installed on it. However, connect that same computer to the internet and this computer is now connected to everyone else's computers and a world of limitless programs and possibilities.