It goes by diverse names: the shadow self, the unconscious, unseen motivators, drives, etc. – that deep inner part of us that we may only get intermittent glimpses of. Some of us seek it out, while others may never want to have anything to do with it. And there’s the great irony: try as we might to avoid going near it, it can drive and affect our waking mind and life constantly.
Okay, let’s call it our unconscious, the repository of our hopes, fears, drives, memories, experiences, likes and dislikes alike. Now here’s the interesting part: as much as we may feel that we know ourselves and as much as we may feel that we have a solid identity, the reality is that who we think we our – our conscious mind, identity, and awareness – is but a sliver of our true self. In fact, our conscious awareness is the merest tip of the iceberg. Our unconscious is the huge body of that iceberg lying submerged and unseen beneath the surface of the water.
As a matter of fact, our unconscious is so huge and affects our consciousness and lives so much that one psychologist, Dr. Timothy D. Wilson, has written a book about it entitled Strangers to Ourselves. In it, Dr. Wilson wrote that, “Most of the mental processes studied by cognitive and social psychologists turned out to occur out of view of the people who had them.” These mental processes “are inaccessible to consciousness but…influence judgments, feelings, or behavior.”
Why is it even important to know this? Because, if we want to be the best we can be and live the most fulfilling life possible, it’s necessary to explore and know all parts of ourselves. And, furthermore, there are both great riches and potential pitfalls within us, lying outside our normal view, and we can be driven by unconscious motivators or miss out on potential treasures. If we truly want to be in the driver’s seat of our lives, then acquainting ourselves with these negative motivators and removing their “sting” and potency is de rigueur. And, certainly, using potential bounty within us only adds to our ability to do and accomplish.
What’s the mechanism behind these less-than-positive motivators – our “stuff,” as we commonly refer to it? Think of them as our fears, prejudices, and dislikes. They’re formed by negative experiences that we’ve had over the years. The way our brain works is by association. To put it another way, our brain is associative. Any experience we have is composed of a myriad of stimuli – what we see, hear, smell, feel, the ambient temperature, what and who else are present during the experience, etc. Let’s say we’ve had a very negative or painful experience and at the peak of that trauma a cat screeched. Because our brain is associative, all the stimuli of that experience are laid down together and interconnected. As a result, over the subsequent years every time we hear a cat screech or even meow, we may freeze, panic, feel instantly fearful, or be enraged. I’m using a negative experience as an example, but the same is true of positive experiences, such as the one Marcel Proust wrote about in A La Recherche du temps perdu when the smell and taste of a madeleine cookie immersed in tea elicited feelings of love.
It’s obvious from this mechanism that our behavior can be shaped in a negative fashion by what we experienced in the past and patterns that formed and are still viable within us.
The same is true of old tapes that play in our heads from negative feedback from our past. For example, if we were consistently told that we were lazy or wouldn’t amount to anything while we were young, we will often have this “old tape” play in our mind when we try something new, thereby tripping us up and sabotaging us almost silently behind the scenes.
The part of our unconscious that contains these negative associations, old tapes, fears, etc. can be quite self-defeating, and when it’s active we’re definitely not in the driver’s seat of our lives. We are more acted upon and reactive than being the actor or being proactive. And yet these “demons” within us can be “exorcised” through several modalities available today – from EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) to Psych-K to TAT (Tapas Accupressure Technique) to PEAT , etc. There are so many healing and “clearing” modalities available through so many practitioners that we can usually avail ourselves of them fairly conveniently and begin to rid ourselves of this self-defeating “stuff.”
There is also great treasure and potentiality lying within our unconscious – from dreams to creativity and ideas to awarenesses and problem-solving. The problem, as with our “stuff,” is that it may be lying obscured from our view because it’s contained in our unconscious. And yet many people have begun to learn how to harvest the riches lying within them. So how do we do that?
The term “living consciously” began to be used more and more back in the 60s and is definitely applicable when it comes to our unconscious. We can learn to observe ourselves over time and begin to glimpse what some of our “stuff” may be, as well as what some of the bounty may be. And we can do that in various ways.
The simplest and most immediate method is simply to observe our actions and moods throughout the day and on a daily basis. As we do this over time, we may observe that certain situations or people elicit predictable emotional reactions from us, whether positive or negative. These observations can tell us a lot about ourselves and how we may be affected or driven by factors beyond our awareness.
“Going within” through meditation is a very productive way of becoming more consciously aware of what was previously unconscious. It’s really just a matter of slowing our brain waves down and shifting our attention from what is outside of us to what is inside (which is, by the way, a natural by-product of slowing our brain waves down). People who have learned to meditate or slow their brain waves down through other means are often surprised by what they begin to learn about themselves, as well as by the talents they discover had been lying dormant and latent within (especially intuitive gifts).
Learning to work with our dreams is another method of discovering what is within us and discovering its riches. Our unconscious works assiduously at solving problems facing us, giving us solutions and ideas, helping us learn, and bringing to our conscious attention potential dangers (even unknown health issues). Depriving oneself of necessary sleep is not just bad for our health. It’s also tantamount to shooting ourselves in the foot when it comes to reaping the rewards of our unconscious.
Here are some tips – just a partial list – for befriending Your Other Self, enlarging who you really are, removing self-defeating “stuff,” and being more proactively in control of your life:
• Learn to Live Consciously and Observe Yourself
• Identify Old “Stuff”
• Find Modalities and Practitioners to Clear Stuff as it Comes Up or You Become Aware of it
• Carve Out Time to Relax and De-stress
• Pay More Attention to What’s Right with Your Life than Wrong
• Cultivate an Attitude of Gratitude
• Learn to Meditate
• Allow Yourself to Daydream (Alpha is very beneficial)
• Get Enough Sleep
• Learn to Incubate Dreams for Problem-Solving, Ideas/Creativity, and What You Want to Learn
• Keep a Dream Journal
• Wake Up Slowly
• Pay Attention to What was Going Through Your Mind as You Wake Up
• Learn How to Interpret and Understand Your Dreams
• Cultivate Your Inner Voice, Intuition, and Inner Knowing
• Learn to Observe in an Objective Manner
• Begin to Bounce What You See and Hear Off of Your Own Intuitive Knowing (so that you become the authority for your own life)
• Learn to Separate Out Your “Stuff” – Fears, Desires, Mind Set, etc. – from True Knowing and Objectivity
Again this is just a partial list – and, at the same time, a good place to begin
Your Other Self is hugely important to you and a potentially great ally, IF you befriend it and know how to work with it. This is definitely an instance in which what (or Who) you don’t know can hurt you – and how Knowledge can indeed be Power!
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Befriending your Other Self -- Plumbing your Depths and Amplifying Self