Love and the Subconscious

Love is universal.We all want to feel loved, right?  But what does love feel like?

Feelings are physical sensations in our body described with words such as hot, cold, tight, loose, soft, hard, tingling, stinging, pulsing, etc. Besides “good” (which is a conceptual label or judgment we place on a feeling), what does love feel like in the body? People generally describe love as feeling soft, tingly, warm or open. So why don’t we feel this way all the time? Seriously. Who doesn’t want to feel soft, tingly and warm all day, every day?

You may not believe this, but the feeling is always there, it’s just blocked from our awareness at times. What blocks it? For starters, our unconscious and subconscious mind… the very thing that helps keep us alive. The subconscious (sub = below; conscious = awareness) is something of which we are not ordinarily aware but of which we can become aware if we pay attention. The unconscious (un = without; conscious = awareness) is also part of the ANS, but unlike the subconscious, the unconscious is something of which we cannot become aware irrespective of attention. To keep it simple for the purpose of this article, I’ll refer to the single term of the subconscious to encompass either scenario.

Physically, the subconscious functions through the autonomic nervous system (ANS) which works without our consciousness/awareness.

The ANS does things like keep our heart beating, lungs breathing, stomach digesting, kidneys filtering, etc. Without these things working independent of our awareness, we wouldn’t be able to function in life; we’d be too busy focusing on our essential bodily functions. The ANS also plays a role in functions that are not critical for life, such as walking, running, playing tennis and playing piano. When we perform an action, neurological pathways are created that instruct the body to engage certain muscles in certain timing with the release of certain chemicals. When we practice the action repeatedly, the neurological pathways are embeded in our nervous system, and the action becomes “natural” or “second nature”, and we perform the action without any conscious effort. We essentially create a software program in our nervous system that enables the action to take place automatically. Thanks to these software programs, we can be super-efficient; we can walk or drive a car and talk at the same time. It’s a brilliant design!

There’s a but...

The subconscious doesn’t serve us well when the neurological pathways correspond to actions that aren’t highly functional or healthy. For example, we want to eat healthy, yet we continue to reach for a bag of chips over and over again. Or, we want to be calm and loving, yet we continually blow up at our kids or partner. We consciously don’t want to do these things, yet we repeatedly do them. Why? Subconscious programming. The enter key was pressed and the software program (eat chips or scream), started running.

Our subconscious software programs are unknowingly created through environmental influences. TV commercial = subconscious programming. Consider the brands QTip (cotton swab) and Kleenex (facial tissue); many refer to the brand name instead of the item.  Information that is repeated over and over is embedded in our nervous system. And when that information is coupled with emotion (e.g. anger, fear, love), the embedding happens sooner and runs deeper. To add to the mix, we also have unconscious programming comprised of our natural instincts, which are not a creation of our environment (e.g. fear of survival).

Most of our subconscious programs were developed early in life, often before the age of six, when we were sponges and had no filters developed to censor the information bombarding our minds and bodies. Our parents were great and did the best they could; but let’s face it, they weren’t Jesus or Buddha (and neither were their parents, and so on and so on). For most of us, when we were “good” we were rewarded and praised and maybe hugged and kissed. When we were “bad” we were punished and told we were “bad” and maybe we suffered consequences. Not every parent raised their children this way, but it was common, at least for the baby boomers.

The point is—we create beliefs about ourselves and our world based on early life experiences. So, when early childhood influencers (parents, siblings, teachers, etc.) told us we were bad or stupid or that our opinion didn’t matter because we were just a kid, we absorbed it. And when we heard things over and over, or perhaps a single thing that evoked a strong emotion in us, like grief, those thoughts, events and associated information were engrained in our subconscious mind and formed beliefs, which we fully believed about ourselves and the world. Several such beliefs combined to form our personality—a personal reality—who we believed we were in relation to our world, based on a subjective belief system adopted from our environment: I’m shy or I’m not strong enough or I’m not good enough.

How does all this relate to the feeling of Love? It’s those subconscious beliefs, the negative, non-functional ones, that block the flow of love. Beliefs like, I’m not lovable, I’m not pretty, I’m stupid, I don’t matter, etc. And, unless raised by highly evolved parents, we all have at least one such belief preventing us from feeling the constancy of love in our lives.

There is hope! We were equipped with an override feature—our breath—that stops our software programs from running. The breath is the one subconscious function which we can easily regulate consciously, and when we do so, it can override the subconscious and stop the cascade of physiological sequences when a software program is initiated.

Invest some time and go within. Sit quietly. Sit alone. Just be. Breathe deeply into your belly and keep your attention on the breath. Observe where your mind goes. Get to know your thoughts. When you notice them, just notice them. Then bring your attention back to the breath. Slow, steady and deep. Commit to just 5 minutes a day!

As you do this, you’ll develop an ability to become aware of your thoughts, words and actions throughout the day. When you’re in a situation and you’re about to lose it, close your mouth and remove yourself from the event, if possible. At that moment, do a body scan. Don’t ask why—ask where. Notice where in your body you feel any discomfort. Maybe it’s tightness in the chest. Maybe it’s a knot in the stomach. Acknowledge it. Feel it. Contract the muscles around the area and massage it with your hands. Let it be known that you are aware of it. Then breathe. Deeply and assertively. This will help to diffuse the energy associated with the activation—essentially, it helps to create a new software program. One that produces thoughts, words and deeds which are aligned with your loving and wholesome desires.

This won’t magically allow you to feel soft, tingly and warm all day, every day; but it will help bring awareness and perhaps more ease and harmony to your life.

For more information, see the blog at www.christineg.ca