Navigating Life with Ease – What The Unconscious Means from a 3 Principles Perspective

Welcome. This podcast is a series of candid conversations exploring the human experience from a completely new perspective. In it, we will be diving deeply into the meaning of commonly used words and pointing you away from that old, stressful way of looking at life towards a new paradigm. This will help you find a sense of calm, cultivate meaningful relationships, and create harmony in every aspect of your life. Here is Navigating Life with Ease with Michaela Ellis and Claire Downer. Hello.

Hello, Claire.

We're gonna get this right at some point, aren't we? We're gonna.

It's like.

Yeah. Anyway.

Hello.

How are you? Hello.

I had fully intended to, like, as soon as we come on screen, I'm gonna jump on and say hello, and you still be good. So there you go.

So, yeah, do you have a little word for me to.

I have a big word. It's not a little word. It's a. Yeah. That just means that there's a lot of letters in it. It doesn't mean that it's any bigger or smaller than any other word. Depends on what you make meaning. What meaning you make of it, I guess. So the unconscious.

Oh, the unconscious. I mean, it's running the show, isn't it? It's the first thing that comes to mind. We think we're here running the show, don't we, and doing our things that we think we're choosing to do. But in the meantime, there's like this whole program just unconsciously running our lives, really. And I think this conversation that we have here kind of is about bringing some of what is unconscious into our awareness and. And relating to it differently, perhaps, than how we had. Because I think for me, the crux of that is. Is the, you know, how much of our motion, our emotions are almost dealt with unconsciously. Because when we were kids, we were told to squash them and not express them and don't say this, and don't, you know, little girls don't. Little girls don't, I don't know, shout, and little boys don't cry or whatever else nonsense we've learned. So I think our emotions unconsciously drive and drive the show a lot, because without us even knowing it, we're. We're trying to just feel better. Like, we just want to feel better. And while ever we don't realize that our drive to feel better is underpinned by this misunderstanding about our emotions that we talk about, that we think our emotions are coming from out there unconsciously, we don't go, oh, look, there's my emotions coming from the outside world. We don't do that. We just believe unconsciously that that is the case. Say for example, when we. I mean I was a. I was an emotional eater. It was a big part of my journey in life was being very, very emotional around food in the past. And I believed that unconsciously that if I felt bad eating something sugary or sweet or carby would make me feel better. Which of course wasn't really the case because then I felt terrible about myself and then went round in that cycle that just drove more of. More of that behavior. So I think where I like to look at this is from. Is. Is around self compassionate and compassion for others is. Is seeing. When we can see that we really are doing the best we can with whatever thinking looks true to us, conscious or unconscious in the moment, whatever we believe about our emotions and how that can be resolved, whatever thought comes across that we believe when we see that, when we see that we can just be sort of more, well, kinder to ourselves because we can. There's. There's a program running unconsciously. We're not choosing to be a certain way.

We.

The program is choosing. And as we become more aware we, we seem to have a window of making different choices. But that's just because things are just seen more, you know, that we can see what was unconscious becomes conscious and then we respond to it differently. So like for me, the, like being upset with other people's behavior, it's a big part of my life seeing that when I'm upset. Oh, it happened. It happened to me this morning. I received a message from someone who I feel has overstepped a boundary and has, yeah, broken a confidentiality actually as well. And she, she wants me to engage somebody in my family in some kind of business opportunity. And I had, I'd shared my context and my child's context on a call and she then shared that all that information with another person without asking my permission. But then she then messaged me again, say, oh, have you chatted to your son about what's. I was like. And I could feel this ner like this anger like going how, how, how. You know, you. You've broken my confidentiality. How dare you still think that I'm gonna do business with you or my child to. And I felt the, the anger going up like before. That would have been invisible to me. I would have just gone, what the heck? Angry reply, blah, blah, blah. Or just just, well just done something that was reactive. But I just went, oh, I can feel, ah, I'm really off about this. I'M peed off about this situation. I shouldn't be. I'm not in a fit state to reply. So I didn't reply, I just left it. So, so that things like that then just become a bit clearer as we become more conscious. But there is still so much always there from that's unconscious and that is the stuff that we learn as children about everything. About who we are, who everybody else is, how should people should behave, how we should behave, how life is supposed to be, what our emotions are, what we're supposed to do about them. Like just all of it, all this programming, all this un. You know, condition. Nobody's like, there's no school going on. There's no deliberate, there is deliberate teaching of things in school and other things, but there's a lot of this is just little children picking up these little bits of stuff from the adults around them. Stuff that's said to them or just observations of other adult, of adults behavior and all sorts of things. And it, it's just I, I've been exploring a little bit the stuff around young, young children and phones and stuff recently having read a really interesting it and you know, the, the, a lot of the stuff around, you know, attention deficit and things like that that you see that, you know that's developing in a lot of children because parents are not giving the children the attention they need. And you know, it's all of that, all those little things where, you know, your picture wasn't stuck on the fridge and your brother's was or you know, it's just all these little tiny things that have just become our belief system that is a lot of which is, is so kind of rumbling underneath the surface that we've no idea is there. So that was a lot of, a lot of stuff about the unconscious. Over to you, dear. What, what have you, what are you seeing around it?

Yeah, I really could say ditto. I could. Because that's what it is is it's like everything that we're not aware of that's still a part of our experience kind of thing. So yeah, I love that. And I'm going to introduce another way of looking at this unconscious and I'd love to chat about it because.

I.

Heard Dominic Scafiti, right talking saying that there's no such thing as the unconscious. And it's like, okay, I'm one that I don't know what I don't know, but I know that there's a lot. So it's like what, what does this mean? It's like what is he talking about. And I didn't really think about it, but a number of days later I woke up and it's like, oh, I get it. Because all there is is mind, consciousness, and thought, that all there is is consciousness. And with that, how I see, it's like, okay, all right, I agree. Because we say that in the three principles, that's all that there is. That's the root, the principles, the foundations, and pardon me. And we can't possibly know with our little minds everything that's in our consciousness. And all of those things that we don't know are there. And we call it unconscious, or some people call it subconscious. And I. I know someone else who talks about, you know, the superconscious and the unconscious and the subconscious, and. And it's like, ugh, that's just like, really confusing things. And it's so much more simpler than that, that there are things that we know about, we're aware of, we're conscious of, and there are things that are still a part of us. Like all of these things that we've picked up along the way that we don't know of, we're not aware of, but they're there. So this might be like, what do they say, six in one half dozen in the other? That it's kind of the same thing. It's just all of the words that we put to things to make it seem. Well, even saying that the word is bigger or not bigger, it's. It's not. But when we talk about the unconscious or limiting beliefs or those kind. Because really, that's what we're talking about. We're talking about the things that we believe in. Oh, well, that's not true. Because we might know what we believe in, and it's holding us back, and we might not know what we're believing in. Like all of those things that we picked up along the way when we were little kids, when we were even as adults, things that happened to us, events that were impactful and they've left like a scar or a mark. We've been marked. And it's affecting us in a way that we can't see until we do or unless we care to go and see, or in. Or not even having to go look and see, but just recognizing that, oh, there's something stopping me or causing this. And all I need to know is that it's made of thought. And thought is like a cloud, a poof, and there's nothing I need to do about it because do I want it or not want it? Do I want to do what? And I'm learning from you some things I'm getting out of my comfort zone in hearing you talk about comfort zone in on Insight Timer. And it's like, yeah, it's, it's. There feels like there's a barrier, but really it's not. It's all made up in our mind. And whether we're aware of what we're making up in our mind that's stopping us or whether we're not, we don't have to do anything about it. We can just recognize that and move on, move forward. Or I'm, I'm one who, I have a very busy mind and it helps it to like, give it something to do. So I'll do. Pardon. Pardon me. I'll do Emotional Freedom Technique. Or I'll just like explore it, just sit with it. It's like, what the heck is this? And just not do anything. Just like you did where you felt this anger rise and you didn't act out about it, you didn't act from it. You actually, you knew enough to. I'm. No, I can see this anger and I'm not going to do anything now. In that case, you maybe knew what it was about, what was causing it. Sometimes we do, sometimes we don't. But we do always have a choice. Yeah. Of not just recognize. Okay, let's just let this flow through. Knowing that the state we're in is not a good place to respond from. We make it a sense of what it is that's causing it or not. I, I, I, I aspire. Not that. Let me change that. I was gonna say I aspire to, like it's something better or not. I think it would make my life easier. Let me put it that way. In that sense, it may be better to always just recognize, oh, it's thought and like, step aside and then carry on. But sometimes it doesn't always work like that. You know, it's like churn and churn and turn and then you know, kind of staying in within this, knowing that, okay, I can't see it, but I know that that's what it is. And I'm just going to stick with it. I'm going to keep pushing against this barrier and just see, it's like, okay, do I see it differently yet? Can I, can I make a move? Am I going to allow myself to make a move despite it? This unconscious energy that's like, you know, it's like little hooks that are stuck in me and pulling me back. Yeah. Anyways, with all of that is like, I agree, I agree with what it is. And I also thought it was interesting to, to look at that perspective. Like, hey, wait a minute. If all we are is mind consciousness and thought, if all there is is that, how can there be unconscious or subconscious thoughts? And really, let's take the, the, the, the heaviness or the thickness or the importance of these unseen, limiting beliefs and just know that it's just thought that we haven't yet seen. That's it. It's nothing more than that.

Which I guess makes it unconscious. Right?

I know.

Like, it's, I think, for me, like the, the more we can stay out of the mind, the better, you know, the more I, like, I didn't need to know what my thinking was about that message from that woman. I just knew. I just. All I needed to know that my body was saying no and therefore not to reply. And, and I, I don't know what the thinking was. It was still actually, in fact, in actual fact, the thinking was still unconscious. I don't know what it was that I was thinking, but my body said to me, don't reply because there was all this anger. This, it's like a volcano for me is anger up the middle of my body. There was this how dare you kind of thing. Maybe that was the thinking bite. I find that the mind will. That's often what happens is we experience a feeling and then the mind wants to explain that and then that's the thinking that becomes conscious. And, and often it's wrong because it's that quote, that David Bound quote that I love, which is thought, create, creates reality, and then says, I didn't do that. And my little extension to that is and then tries to fix it. So our emotions come from our thoughts. So then we feel emotionally out of, out of sorts. We feel dysregulated, whatever. And then the mind says, oh, I know how to fix that. Well, yeah, but you made the mess in the first place go away. You, you can't fix it. I say it's a bit like, you know, when your kids are little and, and you do painting with them and you just think, I really need a wee. And you, like, leave your toddler and go, right, just stay there, just put the pair on the paper. You go at the loo, you come back and your kitchen's been redec decorated. You wouldn't then give the toddler the job of cleaning up. You'd strap into the high chair and say, do not move, and then clean the wall. And later on you would Teach them, you give them a little patch. Maybe you clean up this bit or you clean up that, your own high chair tray or something. You'd give them a bit of cleaning up. You wouldn't give them the whole kitchen wall to clean up because they would just make it worse. And that's what, that's that metaphor of we feel emotionally out of sorts and then we reference to the mind or the thoughts. We reference. Right, thoughts. How do we sort out this mess? Well, no, because the thoughts create the mess in the first place and they don't know the answer. The mind does not. You know, our little mind does not know the answer to these things at all ever. And so I, I find more and more like you're saying you do that, you know, the eft and stuff. But for me, often just telling, guiding people to look within to observe the emotion as that energy sort of shifts around the body and does this little dance and doesn't feel very pleasant, but is. It feels a lot better when we just observe it rather than going, oh, that's supposed to feel like this, this is, it's wrong. It's not, it's not okay. But yeah, the less we are consciously or unconsciously in our thinking, the better really, I think the more present. Once we sit with emotion, I find there's just this, this, this presence that comes about because the mind is always time traveling and the body doesn't. Unless you're actually Doctor who, you know, we, it stays here. And so when we be with our emotions, we, we almost ramming ourselves into the present moment. Oh yeah, there's, there's the stuff happening in the body, in my body down here. Yeah, that, that's. And then I find like, you'll get then one really clear thought that becomes conscious. That's. Oh yeah, this is, this is what I'm gonna do now. And it's really. There's no, it doesn't need to explain itself. Like the thoughts are always trying to explain themselves and go around in circles, whereas in that moment there's just this. Yeah, this is, this is what to do. It's real clarity there. But yeah, so we've definitely got some thoughts that are conscious and some thoughts are unconscious, but most of them are just bloody rubbish anyway. So let's just ignore them all in the majority, especially when they're noisy and repetitive and arguing and trying to convince and trying to make us decide one way or the other. We start to note, I think there's something about really starting to notice how, just how you feel in your body. That. That is a guaranteed way to know what your state of mind is and whether your thinking is useful or not. Yeah. But we've been discouraged from spending time in our bodies. We've not deliberately, but we've become sort of, oh, let's stay away from our emotions for all sorts of reasons. We could do an entire extra episode on. On all the reasons why we. We not very good at feeling anymore.

Yeah. Yeah. Really. No matter how you get to the point of quiet or presence or dropping the thought or what. However you want to describe whatever's happening, what's really happening is the path has been cleared, the mind or the dust is kind of settled, and what's happening is your. Your wisdom. You finally have an opportunity to hear it.

Yeah.

And it feels different. It's something that you want to respond with or to or from. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's good. Good. Thank you. Good. Good one. Good one.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Thank you.

Thank you, Claire. Yeah.

See you next time.

You have a great weight.

Lots of love.

Ciao.

Bye. Hey.

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