Understanding the Subconscious Mind

In this episode Amy covers aspects of the Subconscious Mind including, the influence on our thoughts, media consumption, and inherited experiences and beliefs. Amy shares her experiences with subconscious biases, and how to do the inner work to address them. Amy emphasizes the body is the best indicator of subconscious patterns of thoughts and feelings.

Transcipt

Introduction to the Subconscious mind

Our physical ancestors are parents, parents, parents, parents, parents. Their physical experience of life has in some ways been passed down to you. So there are some of the fears. Some of the weather the INESC is negative beliefs and positive beliefs. There are some beliefs in your body that have origination points, long before you were born. This season on the living out love podcast, we are focusing on you, who you are, what motivates you, what you're here to contribute, and how you can expand will be utilizing my leadership skills and spiritual connection. diving deep into the Enneagram and astrology. Listen every week to become intimately aware of yourself. Only then can heal and grow. Let's get to work loves Hello loves. Welcome. Welcome back. Living out love season three, episode three, we have I have a mammoth episode for you today. We're talking about the subconscious mind. What is it? Why does it matter? What is it made of? And this is going to be a two part episode meaning next week we're going to talk about what do we do about the subconscious mind. So today, we're just laying the foundation. What is the subconscious mind? What is it made of? Why does it matter? Let's dig in. And if you're watching on YouTube, you're gonna see me I'm gonna reference a lot of notes here because I want to make sure that we cover everything. So as you know, this season, I'm doing a deep dive into you as an individual to me as an individual. Who are you? What makes you tick? What motivates you? What are you solving for? And, you know, these questions, they seem very grandiose, they seem very vague, but understanding this can and will change your life. And many of those questions, the answer lies in the subconscious. Okay, so what is the subconscious subconscious is the part of our brain that we are not aware of. It influences our thoughts and our feelings and thus our actions. And, you know, if you do a web search for what is the subconscious mind, you're gonna find a lot of conflicting stuff out there. But what's generally agreed upon is that it's about 90, if not 95, or 99% of our consciousness, which means we're only aware of about 10% of what our brains are doing. Which begs the question, how powerful can our mindset and our affirmation work be? If at most, they're 10%, of what our brain is doing? And if our subconscious is not in alignment with what we're trying to do with our active consciousness, with our aware consciousness, excuse me, then how do we heal that? How do we heal the subconscious mind? And we'll dive into that question more next week. But I pose that question now to highlight the importance of the subconscious mind. If you are in a state of being where you are trying to manifest something, feel something, create something, build something, wouldn't it be great if you knew what the vast majority of your brain was solving for? Just a thought. Okay, so what I want to spend a lot of time talking about today is kind of the soup of the subconscious mind, meaning whatever it is that's in there that we're trying to get a hold of, where is it coming from? It's as if I'm trying to figure out okay, if the subconscious mind is a puzzle, we'll who's making the puzzle pieces? How can I get some clues into the puzzle?

The "Soup" of the Subconscious Mind

So we're going to talk about our physical DNA, like our inherited genetic DNA, our spiritual DNA, and we're going to talk about childhood beliefs, collective conditioning, and our individual consumption. So buckle up love this is gonna be quite the episode. So talking about inherited DNA. Some of the more famous research about inherited DNA was done on Holocaust survivors and their descendants. And what they found is there's a coding of the chromosomes that happens in periods of extreme stress that was found in Holocaust survivors. And that same coding in the chromosomes was also found in their descendants, even though they had not been exposed to the same sorts of extreme stress. Because they had this chromosomal coding, the descendants were more sensitive to stress than other people in their community. And that was true whether they were in a traumatic situation or not. Now, this study was criticized for being too small of a sample set. But it was an initial study that kicked off a lot of other studies. So there has been further research done on mice and other animals showing even stronger results about what can happen. And one of the studies done with mice showed a smell, that every time mice were exposed to the smell, there was this negative stimuli, and generations upon generations of mice later, they would still have a negative stress response to the smell, even though there had been multiple generations of not being exposed to the negative stimuli. So here's what that means. Our physical ancestors are parents, parents, parents, parents, parents, their physical experience of life has, in some ways been passed down to you. So there are some of the fears. Some of the weather the INESC is negative beliefs and positive beliefs. There are some beliefs in your body that have origination points, long before you were born. And so you can imagine that this is tricky, because we don't know what all were inherited. So let's say I can identify, you know, a certain generation a certain side of the family when they immigrated to the United States. Great. Can I identify where they were fleeing from what they were fleeing? Were they fleeing religious persecution? Were they fleeing some form of indulgence? In didn't? Wow, indentured servitude? Were they fleeing a plague of a medical emergency? Like, what was it that made them emigrate? When they got here, what community did they find? Did they experience starvation? At any point? Was there a competition for resources? Did they, Lee, wherever they were coming from come here, and then have a positive experience. So you can imagine in this one generation, with this one dramatic experience that there were a lot of beliefs created, there were a lot of genetic conditions created that were passed down, that I do not know about consciously in my mind. And that is just talking about one generation on one side of my family tree. So we all have these genetic markers passed down to us. And this field of science, these epi genetics, is this really new field of science? So the, you know, the other aspect of this that I'm less familiar with the research on, but there's research that says that we can turn on and off our DNA, depending on you know, what's happening in our life. But do we know what we're turning on and off? And do we know what's going to prompt us to do that. And this inherited genetic DNA, again, is in our subconscious mind, it's in the part of our mind that we don't have awareness of. So what is driving you that you inherited? So that's one form of inherited DNA, the actual physical genes of your physical ancestors. Now I want to talk about spiritual DNA. If there's been research on this, I haven't researched, researched it. So my thoughts around spiritual DNA, these this is coming from my own personal and observational experience. It's coming from the collective storytelling that I've heard over the years. But what I'm referring to is spiritual DNA. This is the DNA that we bring in as a soul. So this could be at past lifetimes, like what I've done experience in past lifetimes and what I'm bringing in from those experiences, this could also be as a soul group. So if there are indeed these groups of souls where we all, you know, get together and we we decide we're going to work on something, or we're going to come in and heal something. If our soul group has an intention for this incarnation, what is the intention? And what is the DNA that we brought forward in order to motivate us to get to that intention in order to tell us what are we solving for in this lifetime? Or what are we trying to heal in this lifetime. So spiritual DNA can be individual, it can be collective, perhaps. And it's also the vastly wild unknown. So well, I will share for my spiritual DNA is my soul brought in the belief that I am not safe, if others do not like me, and I am not safe as an individual, I need to very much blend in and be liked to survive. I have nothing in this lifetime, that would tell me that at all. That is something that my soul brought in. And that anytime I could make a case for that being true with my conscious awareness, my subconscious is going to grab on to that be like See, I told you so. And there, I have other things around money, like money is scary, money's impossible, money's tricky, it's going to lead to your family falling apart, it's going to lead to a health crisis, it's going to lead to just your general well being, it's going to be stolen from you. I have all sorts of stuff around money that, again, has no basis in this lifetime. And in a lot of ways, I have evidence that it doesn't have any basis in my ancestral experience. So where did that come from? And I can tell you through some past life regressions that I've done, where it comes from, I can tell you through personal observation, I can tell you for my astrology chart, that that stuff is there. It's there. And it's something I'm actively working on healing, but it's a sub conscious thing. So it's, it's more difficult to heal an unaware belief than it is to rewrite a conscious belief. So spiritual DNA, past life, soul groups, we don't even know, right, we don't know the full experience of the soul outside of the human body. So we don't know where all it's coming from and what all it's bringing. But we know that it's bringing something it is a contributor to our subconscious mind. And I want to I want to note here, that. And I think I said this earlier, but I just want to repeat that if you come in with something.

Subconscious vs. Conscious Beliefs

So let's say I came in with the belief that money is impossible, and it will only ever lead to bad things. Well, it doesn't take much to have that belief reinforced because your subconscious mind as is like looking for it right? So if as a child, I see something that at all confirms that belief that money is tricky, or impossible or volatile, then that belief grows stronger within my subconscious mind. Now, if you were to ask me consciously, what are my beliefs around money, the money's great money helps our well being money is what put food on the table, like whatever, I would rattle off whatever I believe are my beliefs about money, from my conscious awareness from 10% of my brain. Meanwhile, my subconscious is telling whatever story it's telling. And I don't have awareness of it. I hope this is making sense to you all at home. Our subconscious mind is the part of our brain that we are not aware of. But it is the majority of our brain and thus it is 90% of the time, controlling our thoughts and our feelings and thus our behaviors, our experience of life. Okay, so adding to the soup of the subconscious, our childhood beliefs. Now, the research on this generally says that you're making up your belief system between zero and six or seven. So from the day you're born to age six, or age seven, that's when you're making up your subconscious beliefs. And I should amend that to say that there is some research that says this actually starts in utero. But so let's think about what's happening between zero and seven. There's a lot going on? What does love look like and feel like? For you as a child? What was your relationship to physical affection? What was your relationship to food to material goods to having your basic needs met? Is the world generally a safe place? Where are you loved? Are you worthy, our relationships modeled how a spirituality model do you have to compete for resources, where your basic needs met, consider the state of being as a child. And now consider that as a child, your guardians are your single source of well being your guardians are your source of food, your guardians or your sense of Source of physical affection, like a phrase. So your guardians, essentially wrote the script for your childhood brain of what life is. And if your guardians were a single source for you, then you could understand how, whatever experience you had, as a child, whatever relationship you had with your guardians, could pretty easily translate to your relationship to God to quote source, the universe, the one provider, and this explains how there's this kind of phenomenon that many of us are aware of where at some point, you, you go through this rewriting of the beliefs where you realize, oh, my parents were just human. You know, like, they were just doing the best they could they were just human. And we, we logically understand that with the 10%, of our conscious mind, but at some point, our subconscious has to reckon with it. Like, wait a minute, they're just human. What. And we have to rewrite those beliefs. And that's, if we're doing our work, if we're doing the work to expand our awareness, and to explore our subconscious, that's if we're doing the work. So your childhood beliefs, they carry over. And again, some of these childhood beliefs, you had some help in writing, because you probably brought in some inherited DNA, some spiritual DNA, and whatever happened in childhood just further solidified. Or maybe it didn't. In which case, maybe your subconscious kinda isn't sure. And it goes a little bit here and a little bit that like, Okay, I noticed I'm afraid of heights, but I'm not afraid of heights on a Ferris wheel, but I am afraid of heights on a mountain and cetera, like, Are there inconsistencies? And I'm going to talk more about this later. But what you're going to see as we continue this discussion on the subconscious mind is that the subconscious is not communicating directly it is demonstrating.

Childhood Beliefs and Collective Conditioning

And so if you are trying to identify what beliefs did you create in childhood, what you might jump to is, well, what was I told what was communicated to me. But that is not the way the subconscious mind learns. What was demonstrated and what was experienced, is what your subconscious mind is going to grab on to. So that's childhood beliefs. So we did inherited DNA, spiritual DNA childhood beliefs. Now I want to talk about collective conditioning. So we're energetic creatures. Emotions are energy, thoughts are energy, and we are affected by others, whether we like it or not. Because energy does not have a physical boundary. And this is a good time to mention if you don't currently have a daily energetic or meditation practice, perhaps start one. But you can take a look around at your community and community could be family, friends, city, state, country, there's various levels of community but take a look around at your community. And just have a gander. Like, does your community believe that the world is a safe loving place? Does it believe that the world is out to get you that there's not enough that everything's a competition? Does your community believe that you have to work hard for every penny that you make and then you better hold on to that? Like, take a look around and again, what is being demonstrated? Are people friendly? Are they generous? Are people vulnerable? Are they able to have controversial conversations? Are they pretty buttoned up?

What is safe? What isn't? observe what is happening in your community. And some of it may be communicated directly. A lot of it's not going to be. And again, you can think about this from a variety of perspectives, your family, your close friends, if you're part of a job, a volunteer organization, a religious group, what's being demonstrated. And it's easy to find these things in your community when you don't agree. So when your community is demonstrating something that you don't agree with, you'll notice that and a common thing might be littering. Maybe you're in a community where Littering is very common or recycling is very common. And you're at odds with one of those things. Well, then, that's an easy way for you to notice, oh, my community is okay with littering. My community feels that somebody else is going to clean up after them or whatever it is. And then you can kind of start to pick up on that. So that's a good way to practice identifying what's happening collectively is to kind of notice, where are you at odds with what's happening. And that will demonstrate to you collectively what's happening. And this could be that you're in a community that is experiencing greater levels of poverty or stress than what you're currently experiencing? And how might you see that play out? How was that demonstrated? So that's our collective and again, collective means a lot of things, your family, your friends, your city, your state, your country, it could mean a lot of things where you work. What is being demonstrated to you? And how is that affecting the soup of your subconscious?

Individual Media Consumption

Okay, so the last form of input I want to talk about is your media consumption. And if you've listened to me for any length of time, you've heard me talk about this before, what are you consuming? What are you watching? If this is Netflix, and the news? Are you seeing love, prosperity, creativity, success, war, famine, trauma? What are you watching? What are you listening to? Is it balanced? Fearful? Is that optimistic? Is it certain? Is it questioning? What are you listening to? Again, what is being demonstrated? Not what's being communicated? What's being demonstrated? What is possible? Looking at all the shows, you watch all the podcasts, the books, everything that you consume, what's possible? What's easy, what's hard. How is your body feeling and response to whatever it is that you're consuming? What you're consuming is absolutely going into your subconscious mind. And some of what you're consuming is just what you see around you. If you're just quietly observing the conversations that are happening in your office and your home, that's consumption, who you're friends with really matters. You're consuming them, it's part of the collective consciousness. Okay, and remember that in terms of our free will, choices that we're making in this lifetime, what we consume, who who we surround ourselves with what we pay attention to, those can just reinforce or perhaps start to unravel and heal, whatever it is that we came in with. So while we have a lot of free will agency, that's not the only ingredient to the subconscious soup are energetic creatures. And energy has no boundaries. So the emotions, the thoughts of others are affecting us. To what the extent that they affect us is up to us and up to our energetic routine up to what we expose ourselves to but they are affecting us. Okay, so those those are some of the input sources of our subconscious mind. Our physical genetic DNA, spiritual DNA, what our soul came in with, we know through some recent epigenetic science that sometimes that DNA can be turned on and off. And we're very early into understanding how and why that happens. Then there's also our childhood beliefs. What did we learn our collective consumption, our individual media consumption, like all of this adds up to the soup of our subconscious.

Exploring Subconscious Biases

And so now I want to give you, I'm gonna give you a pretty hard hitting episode. We're all adults here. So we're going to have a tough conversation. But I just want to give you an example of the way our subconscious mind works. So I'm going to share my experience of racism. All right, take a deep breath, it's gonna be fine. And my conscious mind, I do not believe that I am superior to anyone else. And my conscious mind, I do not believe that children of a different skin tone than mine are less deserving, are less smart or less creative or less talented. And my conscious mind, I do not believe that people of color are more likely to be violent, or more likely to have mental health issues, from a genetic DNA perspective, that they're just born a certain way. And my conscious mind, I do believe that anything that I would learn as a negative bias or stereotype is pretty directly related to systemic issues that we have, that our systems our culture creates a lot of the byproducts that we quote, have evidence for. So the like, the example that, you know, the jails are primarily made up of people of color. Well, we, I consciously am aware that, okay, but people of color are prosecuted far more often are given harsher punishments, et cetera, et cetera. So I consciously know that even in places where we might have evidence for something, I'm aware that that evidence is not saying that people of color are worse are bad or wrong, or less human or anything like that. I consciously know that when there's a statistic of some sort, that that statistic was created by systemic racism. I'm consciously aware of that. But folks, that's the 10% of my brain that I'm aware of. So then there's the subconscious mind. And paying attention to my subconscious mind, you would notice some bias, you would see, perhaps, bias demonstrated? Do I behave different? If I'm on an elevator with a tall white man versus a tall person of color? Like, am I going to behave differently? Is my body going to feel differently? At some point in time, you are going to notice that I have bias. Now, how can that be? Nobody taught me that bias. Nobody ever told me. Nobody ever told me that people of color are less safe than white people. Nobody ever told me that. So why would that be in my body? Why would that be in my subconscious? There could be ancestral DNA. We know that DNA can be passed down at least seven generations. I don't know what was happening in my family seven generations ago. I don't know the relationship to people of color. I don't know. I can find family that didn't own slaves. Quote, own excuse my language. But there's a lot I don't know. Then there's the collective conditioning, what's happening in the world around me what's displayed on the news? What am I seeing day to day? So collectively? I think collectively, we don't understand how systemic racism is. And so what gets shown on the media and what gets discussed? Does it help my conscious belief of understanding that racism is systemic? So in addition to what I consciously believe, what I have consciously been taught what I have consciously reprogrammed, I have what was inherited ancestrally what I brought in as a soul that I'm unaware of, I have what's in the collective. I have what I've consumed in terms of media, what I've consumed in terms of who are my family and friends, where do I work, what's happening in my state.

The Body is the indicator of Subconscious Patterns

And even when when I'm consuming is at odds with what I consciously believe. My subconscious has to wrestle with that. And I don't know, is my subconscious landing on the side of my conscious mind? Or is it landing on ancestral DNA? Is it landing on collective belief? I don't know. But I can tell you based on my body based on my somatic reactions to different DNA, that I'm not a perfect person, and that my subconscious mind has bought into stereotype. Now, here's the good news. I'm because I pay attention to my body, my somatics, I'm able to identify it. And because I'm aware that these are all subconscious things, I'm able to start to heal to the extent that we know how to answer some of this, especially regarding you know, racism, some of this is maintenance. I can all day long, I can tell you, I am not any more lovable and worthy than anybody else, I can tell you that with 100% certainty. But if I am daily, given whatever consumption I'm given, whether it's what I see when I walk out the door, what I'm hearing in the news, if I'm daily being sold, ideas and beliefs that would counter my narrative, then I daily have to work on my subconscious mind. And we're going to talk about this next week, like, what does that look like? How does this work, because the ultimate communicator as your body, what's being demonstrated and what your body is experiencing, that's communicating what your subconscious mind is doing. But your subconscious mind is a moving target. Somewhere along the way, you're going to be exposed to stuff and what you make that mean, you may not have awareness of. And so when I'm exposed to something, and I have that, hmm, that doesn't quite line up for me, then that's my clue. Oh, this is at odds with my conscious awareness. And so then I have to do extra labor to make sure that I am cementing the belief that I want cemented. So that was all very grandiose talk. So let me break it down. So let's say that I see a news report that's talking about violent crime among people of color. And I notice that my body starts to feel fear, even though I'm just sitting watching TV. It's just the news. It's not even happening in my state. Like, if I noticed that my body starts to feel fear and response to a news story about violent crime among people of color. Well, then, that's my clue that my subconscious is not believing. Okay, well, this is a systemic issue, and what's happening systemically there around violence around resources around access to greater opportunity, etc. So, my subconscious was at odds with my conscious mind based on what I was consuming. And I know that because when I heard the story, on the news, my body felt fear. So that's, that's the clue that your subconscious mind is doing something different. My conscious mind knows. Nobody is born more violent than anybody else. That's a train behavior. My conscious mind knows we're all good. We're all worthy. We all want our basic needs met, we all want love. That's, I have evidence for that too. But when something happens, and I feel my body react in a way counter to what my conscious mind would tell me, then that tells me I have worked to do that my subconscious. I have worked to maintain that to get it more in alignment with what my conscious mind believes. And again, we're going to talk more about what the work is and how to do it next week. But that's how this is playing out. Consciously, I've been trained, we're all one. We're all worthy. We're all lovable, where things have gone wrong, it's where we've been trained, etc. But when I pay attention to my body, I can find in congruence ease there. And now, racism is a pretty lofty topic. So if you if you shut down while I was talking about that, or if I got too grandiose, come back to me. Take some deep breaths. And let me give you some other examples consider, what is your relationship to anxiety? What about what's your relationship to fear to peace? How do you experience those things? And just choose one of them think about anxiety, fear or peace? And consider what are your conscious beliefs that would create those feelings for you? And then think, well, what do you demonstrate regarding those emotions? Because a lot of times what we consciously believe, is not what we demonstrate. And that's your clue that your subconscious mind has a whole other story going on? Where do you think your anxiety comes from? I think anxiety is inherently a subconscious issue. It's when your body and your mind are not in alignment. That that is anxiety, your body's telling you one thing your mind is telling you another and you can't get them to line up. That's a subconscious issue. So remember, as we think about the subconscious, when you want to learn what's going on, you can look for what's demonstrated what is being demonstrated. Another example of this is people say, Oh, she dates the same guy over and over and over again, right? And it's like that proverbial, she probably believes that she's worthy of love. She's worthy of a healthy relationship, that she's smart, that she's capable that she's an evolving human being, she probably has a lot of conscious beliefs that serve her. But then why would there be this pattern of quote, dating the same man over and over again? And it's because well, there's some other subconscious beliefs that are the greater majority of her brain that need to be healed worked on? And do we know Okay, did that stem from childhood did that stem from inherited DNA, ancestral DNA spiritual DNA, is that a collective consciousness issue? All of the above, we don't know what's in the soup of the subconscious. And sometimes we'll be able to identify how it got there. And sometimes we won't, sometimes you don't need to know the source in order to heal the belief. But look for what's demonstrated, look for your own behavior patterns, look for what's being demonstrated in the world around you. And those are going to start to give you clues. So what your subconscious mind believes the greatest communicator is your body. And that is true for the subconscious mind, it's true for your intuition, your body is the ultimate communicator. Okay. That is our vast introduction into the subconscious mind and why it matters. Why it matters, it is absolutely affecting your behavior more than you would like to think most likely. And it is absolutely deciding what you are solving for. In my case, I mentioned earlier in the episode that I came in with this belief that I'm not safe. And that in order to be safe, I need to blend in everybody else and I need to make sure that everybody likes me. That's my that's my way to attain safety. And so when I'm not doing the conscious work, to pay attention to my body, my subconscious mind is always going to solve for how do I get safe by making people like me? And I don't know about you but for me, I don't want that to be the decision that drives my decisions. I don't want that to be the motivating factor. How can I make sure people like me? Know I've, I want my motivating factor to be like, How can I live out love how can I step more fully into my soul's purpose like that's what I want to drive me. But until I can get my subconscious mind, truly understanding that I'm already save, it's going to be solving for making people like me. And so when I can catch my self doing that great Bravo Ah, but because it's subconscious, I am not always going to catch myself.

Doing the Inner Work to Heal Subconscious Patterns

So I hope this is making sense your subconscious mind from the data that we currently have in our current science It's 90 to 95% of your mind is subconscious we're unaware of what's happening the vast majority of the time and part of the subconscious would include the part of your mind that's making your your lungs breathe and your heart pump. Not all of it is going to be about your belief system but a great deal of it is a great deal of it is. So again, stay tuned. Next week we're going to be talking about how do we work with the subconscious mind how do we begin to heal and if you really want to learn more about this, I am hosting an in person workshop with my somatic coach Allison Reeves, Saturday April 13, one to 5pm here in Houston, Texas, it will be an in person workshop and we will be talking about the somatic subconscious experience I will be channeling for people to help them get a hold of what their subconscious mind is doing and where their thoughts came from. It's going to be a really interesting workshop. I'm really excited about it. If you would like to learn more, if you'd like to register, you can click the link it's in the show notes. Subconscious sanctuary, April 13, one to 5pm. Stay tuned next week for how to move forward, how to move forward with the subconscious How to Become aware of it, how to start to heal it. See you next week loves it. Thank you for listening to the living outlook podcast. This episode was helpful for you. There are three ways that you can share the love can send this episode to family, friends, neighbor, leave me a rating and review on your favorite podcast platform or comment and ask questions on YouTube. This season is meant to be interactive. Thanks again for your presence. I appreciate you being here. Talk to you next week loves.