Home > Topic > The conscious mind
1 " It is important not to suppress your feelings altogether when you are depressed. It is equally important to avoid terrible arguments or expressions of outrage. You should steer clear of emotionally damaging behavior. People forgive, but it is best not to stir things up to the point at which forgiveness is required. When you are depressed, you need the love of other people, and yet depression fosters actions that destroy that love. Depressed people often stick pins into their own life rafts. The conscious mind can intervene. One is not helpless. "
― Andrew Solomon , The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression
2 " Trivers, pursuing his theory of the emotions to its logical conclusion, notes that in a world of walking lie detectors the best strategy is to believe your own lies. You can’t leak your hidden intentions if you don’t think they are your intentions. According to his theory of self-deception, the conscious mind sometimes hides the truth from itself the better to hide it from others. But the truth is useful, so it should be registered somewhere in the mind, walled off from the parts that interact with other people. "
― Steven Pinker , How the Mind Works
3 " When using the Law of Attraction to manifest one’s more desired reality, it is not simply enough to shift one’s conscious thoughts – for it is actually our beliefs that ‘attract’ the reality. Our thoughts are of our Conscious Mind, while our beliefs rest within our Subconscious Mind. The Conscious Mind acts as the objective observer and receiver of information, while the Subconscious Mind acts as storage and the subjective projector of reality. Projector meaning that the Subconscious Mind projects out, or creates, the perceived reality we see by 1) attracting the vibrational matching experiences in alignment with our beliefs, and 2) coloring the film (information) received through the Conscious Mind in accordance with our belief systems (perception). How we see reality is strongly hued by the beliefs imbedded within us.Thus: shift a belief – shift reality.For example: We are treated exactly the way we expect to be treated by the world and its people.Call to Action: Adopt beliefs that are empowering, heart-connecting, and full of gratitude and peace. "
― Alaric Hutchinson , Living Peace: Essential Teachings for Enriching Life
4 " Often one spends weeks trying to write a poem out of the conscious mind that never comes to anything - these are sort of 'ideal' poems that one feels ought to be written, but don't because (I fancy) they lack the vital spark of self-interest. A 'real' poem is a pleasure to write. "
― Philip Larkin , Philip Larkin: Letters to Monica
5 " The most powerful affirmation doesn’t come from the conscious mind but from your Soul, an affirmation in which you are not trying to convince yourself of something you don’t believe, but rather you are becoming aware of the truth and the reality of what you truly are. "
― Dragos Bratasanu
6 " Every man is subconsciously promiscuous, but it is the conscious mind that keeps those primordial urges in check. A healthy brain creates a healthy mind, which keeps your relationship strong, safe and healthy. "
7 " Feelings and emotions as well as thoughts and opinions are evanescent; they change over time because they reflect our transient being. Feelings and emotions are judgments that spring from the hidden source of the unconscious mind, and only take on power whenever the conscious mind acknowledges them, and then chooses to convey an idea in some format that shares the rhythm of a person’s own being with another person. Unuttered thoughts and inexpressible feelings experience a short half-life. Without proper nourishment, voiceless thoughts wither and indefinable feelings wane. Lucid thoughts and inexpressible feelings form imperceptible currents that propel us along in our inimitable journey exploring the tributaries of the stream of life. "
8 " Thoughts are the imagination of the conscious mind and dreams are the imagination of the subconscious mind. "
9 " The conscious mind and the unconscious mind jointly govern human beings’ desires, thoughts, and behavior, which unified totally in a singular human body houses what we term the self. The conscious mind frequently assist facilitate the agenda of the unconscious mind. Incompatible cravings of the conscious and unconscious mind generate tension and emotional turmoil, which can manifest itself in erratic behavior that produces self-doubt and self-questioning. One of the main conundrums of human beings is that the unconscious mind, which guides important aspects of human behavior and motivation, is virtually unknowable. The power of conscious thought – the ability to rationalize – misleads us into thinking we are primary logical entities, when we live most of our lives by unconsciously scanning external stimuli and reacting to events in real time without conscious reflection. "
― , Dead Toad Scrolls
10 " As a consequence of natural analgesic actions or as a result of the administration of drugs that interfere with body signaling (painkillers, anesthetics), the brain receives a distorted view of what the body state really is at the moment. We know that in situations of fear in which the brain chooses the running option rather than freezing, the brain stem disengages the part of the pain-transmission circuitry, a bit like pulling the plug. The periqueductal gray, which controls these responses, can also command the secretion of natural opioids and achieve precisely what taking an analgesic would achieve -- elimination of pain signals.In the strict sense, we are dealing here with a hallucination of the body because what the brain registers in its maps and the conscious mind feels do not correspond to the reality that might be perceived. Whenever we ingest molecules the have the power to modify the transmission or mapping of body signals, we play on this mechanism. Alcohol does it; so do analgesics and anesthetics, as well as countless drugs of abuse. It is patently clear that, other than out of curiousity, humans are drawn to such molecules because of their desire to generate feelings of well-being, feelings in which pain signals are obliterated and pleasure signals induced. "
― António R. Damásio
11 " When the contents of the collective unconscious become activated, they have an unsettling effect on the conscious mind of everyone. When this psychic dynamic is not consciously metabolized, not just within an individual but collectively, the mental state of the people as a whole might well be compared to a psychosis. "
12 " Devaluation of the Earth, hostility towards the Earth, fear of the Earth: these are all from the psychological point of view the expression of a weak patriarchal consciousness that knows no other way to help itself than to withdraw violently from the fascinating and overwhelming domain of the Earthly. For we know that the archetypal projection of the Masculine experiences, not without justice, the Earth as the unconscious-making, instinct-entangling, and therefore dangerous Feminine. At the same time the projection of the masculine anima is mingled with the living image of the Earth archetype in the unconscious of man; and the more one-sidedly masculine man's conscious mind is the more primitive, unreliable, and therefore dangerous his anima will be. However, the Earth archetype, in compensation to the divinity of the archetype of Heaven and the Father, that determined the consciousness of medieval man, is fused together with the archaic image of the Mother Goddess.Yet in its struggle against this Mother Goddess, the conscious mind, in its historical development, has had great difficulty in asserting itself so as to reach its – patriarchal - independence. The insecurity of this conscious mind-and we have profound experience of how insecure the position of the conscious mind still is in modern man-is always bound up with fear of the unconscious, and no well-meaning theory " against fear" will be able to rid the world of this deeply rooted anxiety, which at different times has been projected on different objects. Whether this anxiety expresses itself in a religious form as the medieval fear of demons or witches, or politically as the modern fear of war with the State beyond the Iron Curtain, in every case we are dealing with a projection, though at the same time the anxiety is justified. In reality, our small ego-consciousness is justifiably afraid of the superior power of the collective forces, both without and within.In the history of the development of the conscious mind, for reasons which we cannot pursue here, the archetype of the Masculine Heaven is connected positively with the conscious mind, and the collective powers that threaten and devour the conscious mind both from without and within, are regarded as Feminine. A negative evaluation of the Earth archetype is therefore necessary and inevitable for a masculine, patriarchal conscious mind that is still weak. But this validity only applies in relation to a specific type of conscious mind; it alters as the integration of the human personality advances, and the conscious mind is strengthened and extended. A one-sided conscious mind, such as prevailed in the medieval patriarchal order, is certainly radical, even fanatical, but in a psychological sense it is by no means strong. As a result of the one-sidedness of the conscious mind, the human personality becomes involved in an equally one-sided opposition to its own unconscious, so that actually a split occurs. Even if, for example, the Masculine principle identifies itself with the world of Heaven, and projects the evil world of Earth outwards on the alien Feminine principle, both worlds are still parts of the personality, and the repressing masculine spiritual world of Heaven and of the values of the conscious mind is continually undermined and threatened by the repressed but constantly attacking opposite side. That is why the religious fanaticism of the representatives of the patriarchal World of Heaven reached its climax in the Inquisition and the witch trials, at the very moment when the influence of the archetype of Heaven, which had ruled the Middle Ages and the previous period, began to wane, and the opposite image of the Feminine Earth archetype began to emerge. "
13 " The principal advantage of narrative writing is that it assists us place our life experiences in a storytelling template. The act of strict examination forces us to select and organize our past. Narration provides an explanatory framework. Human beings often claim to understand events when they manage to formulate a coherent story or narrative explaining what factors caused a specific incident to occur. Stories assist the human mind to remember and make decisions based on informative stories. Narrative writing also prompts periods of intense reflection that leads to more writing that is ruminative. Contemplative actions call for us to track the conscious mind at work rendering an accounting of our weaknesses and our strengths, folly and wisdom. "
14 " By means of personal experimentation and observation, we can discover certain simple and universal truths. The mind moves the body, and the body follows the mind. Logically then, negative thought patterns harm not only the mind but also the body. What we actually do builds up to affect the subconscious mind and in turn affects the conscious mind and all reactions. "
― , Japanese Yoga: The Way of Dynamic Meditation
15 " The fact is, that what de Sade was trying to bring to the surface of the conscious mind was precisely the thing that revolted that mind . . . From the very first he set before the consciousness things which it could not tolerate. "
― Georges Bataille
16 " Addiction, self-sabotage, procrastination, laziness, rage, chronic fatigue, and depression are all ways that we withhold our full participation in the program of life we are offered. When the conscious mind cannot find a reason to say no, the unconscious says no in its own way. "
― Charles Eisenstein , The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible
17 " It is an emotional and an enchanted place. If the study of the conscious mind highlights the importance of reason and analysis, study of the unconscious mind highlights the importance of passions and perception. "
― David Brooks , The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement
18 " When the conscious mind expands to embrace deeper levels of thinking, the thought wave becomes more powerful and results in added energy and intelligence. "
19 " Hypnosis is about shutting down the conscious mind and re-igniting the unconscious and the imagination, so while I give instructions to them under hypnosis, the contestants might interpret those instructions in all kinds of ways. "