What Lies Beneath Our Consciousness?

Below our conscious mind is a stream of subconscious, emotional activity. Arise thoughts and drives that are embedded in our personalities and consciousness from time long past, and it is here that we can discover why we feel good, why we feel bad, or why we feel indifferent.

As this emotional subconscious bubbles up to the surface, we become ensnared in its power to pull us in certain directions. We might be extraordinarily attracted to something or someone for no apparent reason, and can no more disregard the attraction than we can go against our very nature. Our subconscious is what we are.

If we are not what we want to be; for example if we are greedy or hateful and want to change, then we must make that change at the subconscious level. Doing it on the surface would only be pretending that we are something that we are not, and we cannot sustain that kind of deception for long. Even when we are good enough actors to pull off pretending that we are someone other than who we really are, it is only a matter of time before the old underlying consciousness raises its ugly head.

And this is where it gets dicey . . . trying to change our patterns and rooted believes. Since how we behave and act is a result of our habit patterns, changing it is not easy. Changing our karma means going against what we perceive is the natural road for us; our comfort zone. If we are comfortable just looking out for ourselves and disregarding the needs of others, then to change that attitude is almost impossible. We will probably remain self-centered our entire lifetime.

The reason we do not change our ways is because our mind justifies what we are, whatever that may be. Even a criminal believes that he or she is right in their actions against a society that they may believe is unjust in some way toward them. Whatever we do, the mind will follow that action with thoughts, or precede that action with thoughts that support and justify our karmic patterns . . . a circular trap that is difficult to find one's way out of, because we never believe in our heart that we should find our way out. As far as the mind is concerned, we are doing the right thing at all times, even if it is the wrong thing.