There is no such thing as a "subconscious" mind.

[GordonJ]

.Fran Renner.

I've told the story of our meeting, and her mentorship during my high school days, and I would say, it was mostly about the subconscious mind.

So, I have a strong bias, a personal belief about it, that I only want in the conversation as an acknowledgement. It is what I BELIEVE.

And all practical and useful applications in the attempt to make it work for me, are strictly anecdotal.

Here is the best, in my opinion, definition of it:

The subconscious is the part of our minds that makes decisions without our needing to actively think about them. It's different from the conscious mind, which encompasses the thoughts we know we are having at any given moment.

It makes decisions. Without our conscious awareness of those.

Now we know about automatic body functions, and all that, we don't have to think about how to hold a pencil once we've learned how.

What happened over the years, from the days of Freud and Jung, was an expansion of, and a need for knowing/controlling all of the hidden functions of the mind...like the spider phobia.

Where the bulk of the HOW TO landed was on the side of how to influence the subconscious or how to ACCESS it, being all unawares and all.

So, first we have to be aware of it. Then acknowledge its mystery, secrets and perhaps library of memories, both personal and collective...

And then learn how to benefit from the influence or awareness.

In therapy, it is more like digging for coal, and one has to sift through a lot of sludge and slurry to get to the useable part. And that is not only why therapy takes so long, but is also so lucrative for the THERAPIST.

Then, there is the INSTANT crowd, ala Tony Robbins, who claim to be able to break phobias in one session, as he has repeatedly demonstrated in his seminars.

So, the trained therapist may need years to break the phobia, because they dig down into the mineshaft of lost memories, especially the traumatic, and emerge with the coal they can then burn.

In self hypnosis, there are at least two camps. One is a trance must be entered into, the other, no trance necessary.

For the record, I fall into the latter, I don't think one has to be in a measured trance state in order to place suggestions (the tool for extracting the coal{to mine that metaphor to a firery extinction})

And when I started working with SWITCHWORDS, circa 1973, I had already had nearly a decade of trying to suggest to my subconscious mind it should be my ally, not a foe.

MORE, don't want to lose what I've written.

So back in 1966, with my portable 17 pound cassette tape recorder, I listened to COUNT TEN tapes, with a voice that first got me into a relaxed state of mind, by focusing on the the countdown, voice, etc.

Then planting the suggestions. And then coming out of that state of mind, not really knowing at the time, if a trance state had been entered...and some believe THETA wave state, at 4 to 7.5Hz (and this has to do with Personal Psychic Enegy too, as per our discussion on crystals and RF, etc.) is THE trance state.

Although, my purposeful and useful studies, outside in the real world, not in a lab or controlled environment...have shown me there isn't an absolute truth about trances, states of mind, suggestion and all.

Be it a Milton Erickson light touch on the hand to a Glenn Osborn big red nose, it is relatively easy to distract the conscious mind, and get the RAS on stand down, and create an instant state of mind, with the same effects PRACTICALLY, as if one were in a trance.

See?

Which brings us to SWITCHWORDS. Mangan posited that the best way to get to that cooperative state of mind, with the conscious and subconscious minds working together, could be accomplished with a throwing of a switch...

much like turning on a light...

And that by using single words or combinations, one could effectively get the subconscious to perform just as if it were in a deep trance state or one that had been entered for years.

It takes training, and understanding, which is why all the most readily available infor is pablamatic BS, spoon feeding the babes of the world, while taking their money from them...

by offering up SWITCHWORDS as either a magickal or mystical phenomenon or as a way to instant wealth, fame and glory.

They are POWERful, only if you know their purpose, and believe if the conscious and subconscious minds, working in-synch is more powerful than just will and conscious decision making alone,

THEN, there is an amazingly wonder power in using them and taking the time to train yourself how.

But it is NOT the way 98% of the work on the subject says, that is just selling hope to soap buyer, they thinking their bar has the gold nugget in it.

NOPE. It don't. It is a lump of lignite coal, ready to burn another hole in their pocketbook.

Gordon

Originally Posted by Dien Rice

Hi Gordon,

Wow, a lot to process here!

I don't know a lot about Switchwords, but they do sound fascinating!

On the subconscious mind...

I DO believe in the subconscious mind...

When I ask myself why, the answer came back... phobias...

I think people have phobias that are often irrational...

So why do they have them? Something in the subconscious mind...

They may not know WHY they have the phobia... They just know that they do...

I suspect that, in many cases, it may be based on negative childhood experiences, that they may have since forgotton...

I know someone terrified of spiders. I mean really terrified.

But... a spider is so small. You can squash it with a boot.

She theorizes that she probably got it from her Mom... Her Mom would apparently panic when she saw a spider. And she thinks she learned, from that, that spiders are something to be afraid of...

It lodged in her subconscious mind, and now it's a hard reaction to remove...

I don't know - I ain't no shrink. Just some shared thoughts...

Best wishes,

Dien

P.S. I know you studied hypnosis... Doesn't that address the subconscious mind?