If you’ve been wondering, “How does the subconscious mind work?”, then it’s important to know that the subconscious is one of the least understood parts of the mind.

The way the subconscious mind works is through a relationship with the conscious mind and the superconscious mind. The subconscious mind acts as an intermediary and a messenger delivering requests from the conscious mind (free will & creativity) to the superconscious mind (infinite intelligence, divine energy, or source).

how- does the subconscious mind work - difference between conscious and subconscious — Difference Between Conscious, Subconscious, and Superconscious

Part science, part magic, part psychology, part spiritual, the subconscious mind is a vastly open realm that can be scary or empowering depending your point of view.

The true function of how the subconscious mind works is largely misunderstood by “mainstream science” and to them it is considered a mystery. However, there are many who do understand this such as spiritualists, energy healers, mystics, psychics, and many of the esoteric world.

The subconscious mind plays a crucial role in the Law of Attraction and in the manifestation process. Once you have a full understanding of the operation of the subconscious mind, you’ll be able to harness its power and finally learn how to manifest your dream life.

What Is The Subconscious Mind and How Does It Work?

The versatility and depth of the subconscious mind is quite profound and fascinating. It carries a few functions. First, it is a warehouse of info that you’ve amassed throughout your lifetime. Every time you learn a new skill, it is then stored in your subconscious. So learning a new language, driving a car, tying your shoes, or riding a bike, all of these skills are recorded into your subconscious.

Why does it act as a storehouse of information? Well, imagine having to learn and relearn those skills each time you needed to use them. It would be a giant waste of time to devote effort into retraining yourself. By saving this information to recall at a later moment also acts as a survival mechanism.

Humans that couldn’t learn fast enough would be at a disadvantage in the natural world. To give an analogy, think of the movie Memento. The main character, who had no short term memory, was forced to tattoo stories on his body so he could recall the previous day. What a pain! Aren’t we blessed to have the subconscious saving all this data!

Some might argue that the subconscious mind is simply another way of saying ‘long term memory’. Well, yes and no. Remember to make the distinction between ‘the brain’ and ‘the mind’. The brain is a physical organ that resides in the body. The mind is not physical, but amorphous and cannot be pointed to on a map of the body. The brain (physical) and the mind (mental) operate on two different planes.

For example, we know that long term memory is stored in a specific location in the brain. However, even if you were to remove a portion of your brain, the subconscious mind is still operating on a different plane of reality and working from the previous information that was stored in it, despite the physical removal. Whatever happens on the physical plane, doesn’t necessarily mean it affects the other planes (mental and spiritual). This explains why the symptoms of a phantom limb is that it still feels like it exists despite its absence in our physical reality.

Saving data is a good thing. It removes the obligation of having to reteach it to ourselves. However, the subconscious does not distinguish good data from bad data. Or rather it doesn’t distinguish between good beliefs (ones that benefit you) from negative beliefs (ones that aren’t so beneficial). An example of a positive belief is: “I’m loved, loving, and lovable.” This is a great belief to have when developing and maintaining relationships (romantic or otherwise). However, a negative belief like: “I don’t deserve” is a belief that works against you.

Next let’s explore the other main function of the subconscious. The unique power of the subconscious mind lies in its ability to be a humble servant to your thoughts. It delivers messages from the conscious to the superconscious. When you decide to save a belief (good or bad), it finds its way into the subconscious. Again, the subconscious doesn’t make any judgments about the information it receives. Once the subconscious receives “the message”, it does nothing but act upon it. It’s only job is to send the message to the superconscious, another unbiased delivery mechanism.

The superconscious is what allows us to have the world bend at our will. The superconscious is how the Law of Attraction (and all other spiritual laws) work. The superconscious is really the fuel (the engine) behind the Law of Attraction. It is the Universe. It is the Divine. And you can choose to create your own heaven or create your own hell. This is why many say there is no such thing as heaven and hell. They both exist right here right now. However, you choose which one you want to live in. Yes, you are that powerful. Your mind is that powerful. Your free will (your conscious mind) is what decides where you’ll spend the most time – heaven or hell.

“Whether you think you can,
or you think you can’t–you’re right.”
Henry Ford

What is the Subconscious Mind?

The subconscious mind is a hidden part of your brain which is always “on” and working at all times, even when you’re sleeping. It stores thoughts, feelings, and memories you aren’t aware of. It works quietly in the background, influencing your actions and emotions.

Consider it similar to a warehouse or big library where your experiences and beliefs are kept. Sometimes, it affects your choices without you even realizing it. For example, if you’re scared of dogs because of a past negative incident, with a dog, your subconscious may make you feel anxious around them. It’s a powerful force that shapes your behavior, dreams, and instincts. Understanding it can help you make better decisions and change your personal negative patterns.

How Do The Conscious And Subconscious Mind Work Together?

The conscious mind is your free will or creativity. It’s what allows you to make conscious decisions and express yourself. Any creative act (singing, dancing, drawing, constructing, inventing, learning, etc.) are all started in the conscious mind. Once you’ve stopped consciously participating in the act, then that’s when the subconscious mind kicks in. So the subconscious mind acts as an ‘autopilot’ setting. The subconscious mind turns on when the conscious mind turns off. This sounds fairly innocuous because we innocently think that we are active and participating in our decision-making all the time. We think that everything we do happens in the conscious mind. We’ll we’re wrong.

Very few people are aware of how often we ‘default’ and fallback into using our subconscious. 95% of our day is dictated and governed by our subconscious mind. Here are a few scenarios of how often the subconscious mind takes over.

Examples of When Our Subconscious Takes Over:

When Your Subconscious is Driving…

If you commute in a car fairly often, then you can recall having experienced the following: You hop into the driver’s seat with a destination in mind. You start the car and begin on your journey. You turn on the radio. Or maybe you ‘zone out’ into your own thoughts – thinking about errands or plotting out the rest of the day. The next thing you know, you’ve arrive at your destination. Typically, the drive takes 15 – 20 mins. But it felt like 5 mins because you don’t recall the middle portion of the journey. You remember getting into your car. And you remember pulling into your destination. You cannot recall much of what happened in between. The reason is because your conscious mind took a backseat (zoned out) and your subconscious mind then took over. Hopefully, you’re a good driver (and developed good driving habits) because your driving style is a habit that the subconscious has locked in.

When You Eat a Bag Full…

So you’re ready to binge watch a much anticipated TV show, or a long awaited movie. You plop down in your favorite chair. Next to you is a bag of your preferred TV-watching snack. As you get wrapped in the story line, you pop open the bag and begin eating. Then after time you’re fully engrossed in your show, you reach down for another handful and a whiff of nothing. There’s nothing left. What happened to the full bag you began with? You don’t remember all those scoops into the bag. But somehow the bag is now empty. This is when the subconscious took over. The conscious took a back seat and ‘checked out’ while you watching the story unfold in front of your eyes. But again, you don’t remember what happened in between. This is when your subconscious took over the eating portion of your binge-watching experience.

Do you see how easy it is for the conscious mind to turn off and the subconcious mind can slip in and take over?

What Does The Conscious Mind Do?

The conscious mind is responsible for your day-to-day novel and innovative thinking. New ideas, new thoughts, creative endeavors, learning brand new skills, the conscious mind is responsible for figuring out new ways of navigating the world. If you’re an artist, you’re using your conscious mind to express yourself through your art. If you’re an inventor or an innovator, you’re using the conscious mind to solve problems and approach the world in new and interesting ways. (However, you can also use the subconscious mind to help you in solving problems as well. See paragraph below called: How To Get Your Subconscious Mind To Work For You)

How To Make Conscious And Subconscious Mind Work Together

The conscious mind is mainly in charge and can be considered the ‘captain of the ship’. However, if you’d like to the conscious to get access to the subconscious and deliver an order (or a request), then there are certain specific ways to get the subconscious to be more receptive to the requests of the conscious. You’ll need to speak the language of the subconscious.

When Does Subconscious Mind Work?

The subconscious mind is always at work. However, the subconscious mind is second in command after the conscious mind. The conscious mind is normally in charge. But, anytime the conscious mind has gone offline (or taken a backseat), when you ‘zone out’, this is when the subconscious takes over. The time when the subconscious is most active is when you’re sleeping. The best time to influence and try to reach the subconscious is when you’ve entered a hypnagogic state. This is the phase of drowsiness you reach right before falling asleep. Many lucid dreams practitioners use the hypnagogic state of consciousness to induce lucid dreaming and the beginnings of astral projection or OBEs. Neville Goddard, a noted master of using the Law of Attraction, stakes his reputation on the use of this ‘sleepy state’ to pull desired goals into reality as it proved to be a very effective technique for him. You can read more about this method in his books:

Book Title: Neville Goddard: The Complete Reader
by Neville Goddard

Book Title: The Law and the Promise
by Neville Goddard

How To Reach Your Subconscious Mind While Awake

The subconscious mind is always at the ready. So there is never a time where the subconscious is ‘turned off’. That being said, the subconscious mind can be reached at any time, while awake or asleep. However, if you’re specifically searching for how to reach your subconscious mind while awake, you have available to you a few different options:

Hypnosis
Repetition (This is how most of us learn a new skill.)
Superlearning (new epigenetic method – Bruce Lipton)
Traumatic event (Example: An unpredictable or unexpected change – accident or injury)

You can learn more about the above in Dr. Bruce Lipton’s book, The Biology of Belief, which you can find an affiliate link to below:

Book Title: The Biology of Belief: Unleashing the Power of Consciousness, Matter & Miracles
by Bruce H. Lipton, PhD.

The best time to work with the subconscious mind is around sleeping hours – right before bed and right after you awake. Entering or leaving the hypnagogic state of consciousness, is the best time to reach/influence your subconscious mind. This is also the best time to meditate or the best time to leave a request with the subconscious mind.

Napoleon Hill, writer of Think and Grow Rich, often stated to work with the subconscious twice a day, by reading your list right before bed and right after waking. So you see, this is a well-documented and noted time to contact and work directly with the subconscious mind.

How To Get Your Subconscious Mind To Work For You

Also, when you have a dilemma that you cannot resolve in your conscious (awake) state, the best time to ask for help in resolving the problem is before bed. Make the request to your subconscious mind (or think about the issue and the dilemma) as you drift off to sleep and you’ll find you wake up the next morning (sometimes in the middle of the night, especially if the request/dilemma is emotionally driven and particularly urgent) with the answer. Many notable inventors, scholars, philosophers, and economists relied upon this technique to resolve many issues. Napoleon Hill, Nikola Tesla, Graham Bell, Edison, Benjamin Franklin, etc. This one method of putting the power of your subconscious mind to work.

Learn how to put your subconscious mind to work by using the Law of Attraction. If you’re ever asked, “What does it mean to manifest your dreams?”, then this is perfect time for you to take advantage of our 7-Day Law of Attraction Challenge. Sign-up below! A great primer to learn how to manifest for beginners and advanced alike!

What Is the Unconscious Mind?

Often people confuse the concept of the conscious mind, subconscious mind, and the state of being unconscious. The conscious mind is active when we’re most directly interacting with the world in creative pursuits or when utilizing free will. The subconscious mind is active all the time, but it only activates when the conscious mind is ‘off duty’. A state of unconsciousness is when the conscious mind is unceremoniously kicked out of duty, when the conscious mind without permission is removed from being in charge. For example, using a general anesthetic during surgery is a way of becoming unconscious. ‘Blacking out’ during a fight or perhaps to end a night of hard drinking is a form of becoming unconscious. Generally, unconscious is when the conscious mind is forced out without consent. So there is no real ‘unconscious mind’. It is simply a state of being unconscious, which is not ‘a mind’. And, of course, when a person is unconscious, with the conscious mind out of the way, the subconscious mind is free to roam.