A Releasing Your Unlimited Creativity discussion topic

Copyright 2007 by K. Ferlic,   All Rights Reserved

Exploring the unconscious mind
Cautionary statement
A journey unto itself
The key to exploring the subconscious or unconscious mind
Getting started

This file follows the topic, "Exploring the nonconscious mind" Since this topic builds on the information contained in Exploring the nonconscious mind, consideration should be given to reading it first.

The most important thing we need to understand in the exploration of the unconscious mind is that it takes us into the realm of feeling and body wisdom and to a lesser degree, intuitive guidance. It goes beyond what our current mind knows. Since we are talking about unconscious mind, most probably we will have no memories available from our current life to explain what we access. But we will have feelings. There will be an awareness within the feeling that we can experience as a knowing. That is, we know we know something but we have no logical way to know what we do and we have no memories of this life to support what we know.

More often than not, our current mind does not have the minimum set of experience to properly characterize what is accessed in the unconscious mind. Any characterization mind gives is probably in error in some way. In this regard, exploring unconscious mind uses feelings and the awareness which lies in feeling to surface knowings which lies outside our current mind. Usually it is difficult for our current mind to understand what we access.

To explore the unconscious mind we need to be open to feeling and what we feel at each and every level of our being. Most will have to address why they shut down, or raised the threshold on, their ability to feel. Most will have to face the pain of the past and their associated fears in some way to one degree or another to have the depth and breadth of feeling to explore the unconscious mind. Nevertheless, we do not need to do anything special. We just need to be willing to face the pain and/or fears resulting from the past experiences when they arise as they arise in our exploration.

The approach to exploring the nonconscious mind is different than the psychological and therapeutic approach and the healing perspective used by most current medical and alternative practices different from the creativity perspective on healing. As such, an individual involved with any type and kind of psychological and therapeutic treatment and/or desire to explore healing with this approach should read the "Cautionary statement and disclaimer" found in the topic "Exploring our mind."

Exploring the unconscious mind is an intention and journey unto itself. Although some discussion is provided for exploring the unconscious mind is provided here and in related files, it is a journey unique to who and what we are and what we have come to believe about ourselves and our world. Exactly what it will look like and what we will find is unknown. The recommendation is to begin wherever and however we think it is appropriate to make the journey and then allow our the feeling of expansion be our guide as we move into the journey. That is, we can feel ourselves open as if we are blossoming into the truth of our own being.

With the perspective of a detached witness, exploring the conscious, subconscious and unconscious aspects of our mind is essentially the same thing and we can do it exactly the same way. We can look unbiased by our mind at the flow of energy which is giving rise to the situation we experience. It needs to be remembered, mind acts a lens or filter biasing what we experience. It is just that the lens has a conscious, subconscious and nonconscious portion. From the perspective of the detached witness, we step outside the lens or the filter to see reality for what it is and then look to see how the lens is biasing what we see. Whether something is in the conscious, subconscious or unconscious mind, it doesn’t matter. We have stepped outside the lens or the filter and all that is in the lens or the filter looks the same.

Without the perspective of the detached witness exploring the unconscious mind will be more difficult to explore than the subconscious mind for the type and kind of reasons discussed in the topic, "The Subconscious and Unconscious." The main difference between exploring the subconscious mind as compared to the unconscious mind is that we will have memories from our current life to described what we remember in the subconscious mind. Since the unconscious mind arises from our transcendental mind, we will not necessarily have the minimum set of experience from this life to explain what we find. Here we will have to learn to rely on feelings and internal compass, and understand that whatever interpretation our current mind provides us about something from the transcendental mind may be in error.

When we experience our unconscious mind, often there will be non localized feeling, feelings in particular body parts, feelings with images that don’t seem to fit our current life, or simply images that don’t fit in our current life. When such feelings and images arise, it is wise not to discard them. Rather, it is important to take note of them and look for two thing. One is to look to see if how relevant they are to the intention behind the our exploration of our mind. On this point, we can feel their appropriateness. The second thing is to look to see how "strong" what arises seems to be. The stronger the feeling and/or vividness of the image, the more energy that is associated with the memory an what needs to be freed for our creative endeavor.

The key to exploring the unconscious mind is discussed in the topic, "Exploring the nonconscious mind." In this discussion, it is stated, "The human physical experience allow us to manifest who and what we are directly into physical form. But, as a human being, who and what we are is split between our consciousness and our body and the world in which our body exists. That is, our inner world is reflected in the outer. The world of our consciousness is manifested as our body and its environment. By looking carefully at the world we experience, we can begin to see what we hold in our nonconscious mind."

The world we experience has two parts. One part is the more like the backdrop or environment of our experience. It is the part that exists without us. This part of the world is determined by the creator of Physical Creation and the human collective within Physical Creation. It contains the rules of Physical Creation which we accept in order to have a physical experience as a human being. This aspect of the Physical Creation we experience is in our unconscious mind.

It needs to be noted the generic aspects of our human body is part of the backdrop of our experience. Our body is a particular type and kind of vehicle. It is a vehicle for having a human physical experience. How we create the body or why we chose the particular body we have, lies in our unconscious mind. How we use that body in our life and many of the conditions giving rise to its health and well being is governed more by our subconscious mind and the choices we make in life.

The personal world we experience, many aspects of our body and our immediate environment, is what lies in our subconscious mind. That is, we can choose the particular environment in which we live by what we come to seek in life. We have the option of living where we wish in Physical Creation and over time, humans have chose to populate almost all aspects of the globe.

If we look at how our personal world changes as we live our life, we can being to see aspects of our nonconscious mind. The basic framework for the human experience lies in our unconscious mind. The actual life we live overlays the basic framework and is a result of our subconscious mind. If our subconscious mind begins to move too far off from the life we incarnated to live as determined by the transcendental aspects of our unconscious mind we can expect to experience something that will cause us to move back into alignment or at least move toward alignment.

Exploring the unconscious takes us into a realm where we are seemingly blind as compared to our normal way of experiencing a creation. Mind will be of little value and we need to rely on feeling. Analogously it is to enter a world totally dark. To prepare ourselves and open ourselves to such a journey, it is appropriate to create a ritual demonstrating we are willing to move into this dark world and explore the unknown of our own being. For example, one could go an explore a cave symbolic of going down into the underworld that lies beneath our conscious mind. Or, simply going down into a dark basement feeling our way through the basement. Then at some appropriate time, light a candle to represent the enlightenment we find to light our way through the remainder of our journey.

Because our mind is of such limited use in exploring our nonconscious mind, the most important thing we need to do is to with the material that arises in feelings and body sensations is to pull the sting and asked, "Form where does this feeling arise and what does it mean?"

The approach to exploring the nonconscious mind should be to start two parallel efforts and allow them to grow or move into each other. One effort is to develop the ability to become a detached witness. To do this, we must learn to have the awareness of our mind stand apart from our mind. That is, we detach ourselves from our memories, thoughts, and the like to just observe and witness them. That is, we do not see them as our thought, our memories or our experiences. We are only observing and witnessing what is happening to body we are using to view and experience Physical Creation. We need to become mindful and aware of all that we think and feel but rather than think, "I feel a pain in my arm" think, "This body has a pain in its arm or I observer there is a pain in the arm." It is to take no personal ownership of what occurs. Just witness and observe it. With practice this will become second nature to us.

Second effort is to some technique that we think or feel is appropriate and start working it. Then in being mindful and aware of what arises, allow our intuitive guidance, body wisdom or the knowings which arise to guide the effort. Some techniques which have been found useful are as follows.

In using any of the techniques provided here, we need to become mindful and aware of what we feel before mind steps in and tries to interpret what we feel. We need to begin to work with the understanding that whatever mind provides relative to the unconscious will be inaccurate. We need to know what we feel will be correct but it is the characterization that is incorrect. The more we can discern the types and kinds of feelings we have, we will being to see how and where our mind is incapable of characterizing what we feel. These insights provide invaluable information about the limitation of our mind and where we may need to move to gain the minimum set of experience to properly characterize anything we feel.

Guided meditations: Guided meditations can be use to surface nonconscious aspects of our being and transcendental memories that give rise to the issues we face on any topic. A guided meditation can get mind to characterize the best it can the answer we seek and it will go to whatever aspect of our being that best addresses the answer. We need to become very clear and precise on what we ask in a guided meditation and should iterate the process to ensure we have asked the correct questions or asked the questions in the correct way. We need to remember, our current mind will have difficulty give an accurate answer. Rather than believe any one answer, it is best to use three different questions on the same topic to triangulate or bracket the answer. That is, the three answers form a triangle with the correct answer in the middle.

Metatheater: Metatheater can also be use to surface the nonconscious aspects of our mind. In fact, anything which will cause us to spontaneous respond such as a ritual, games, play and the like, can be used to surface nonconscious feelings, memories and behavioral patterns. However, we need to become mindful and aware of what arises and not become lost in the imagery or feelings. To create an experience which causes an angry response to arise does not we need to act on that anger. Rather, when it surfaces in exploring the nonconscious, we need to pull the string to see what is giving rise to that anger. What gives rise to that anger will either probably be very rich in feelings and memories of our current life or it will open the door to aspects of our unconscious mind. Relative to anger, we may just feel a deep seated anger and not know from where it comes. However, if we ask, "what do I need to do to understand this anger that I feel?" we will get insights as to what we need to do to understand the origins of the anger. Often we find ourselves stumbling into the human collective for example, the pain feminine archetype, and experience all of the anger, pain, and frustration, control issues and the like that lies in the human collective. If we do stumble into the human collect, we then need to ask, "What do I need to do to free my creative spirit from being bound by the collective." Again, we will get insights as to what we need to do.

In doing the metatheater and the like, we must work with the material that comes up in feelings and body sensations. We need to pull the string in asked, "Form where does this feeling arise and what does it mean?" We cannot deny or suppress what we feel. If we do, we only put our creative spirit deeper into the cage of our own making and allow fear to override our life.

Nocturnal Dream: Becoming aware of the nocturnal dreams we have as we journey through our exploration provides tremendous insight into the unconscious mind. We need to become aware of any body sensation and feelings that accompany the dream as we remember it in the morning. Often we will be left with just a feeling with no mental pictures or images. Similarly, we can use our nocturnal dreams by placing a question in our mind at bed time and allowing our nonconscious mind to give us the answer in a dream or feeling. This is actually a very powerful way to peal the layers of the unconscious as we peal the layers of an onion.

Flashes of insight: As we work our unconscious, we can expect that often when least expected, there will be a flash of insight about a given topic or issue. Often they come like a flash of lightening. We need to be mindful and aware of what flashes when it flasher. Otherwise we miss the insight. In this regard, a key to exploring the unconscious mind is to become very mindful and aware of our thoughts and our feelings and catching the ones which give information on the topic we desire to access.

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