Hints from Your Subconscious Mind
You may consciously think: "I want to eat clean, nutrient dense, healthful foods!" But your subconscious mind may send you endless dreams of eating massive coconut cream pies.
(Or is that just me?)
The Language of the Subconscious
The tricky thing about the subconscious is that it's kind of passive aggressive. It may want to tell you something, but it rarely just spits it out. It gets real sneaky about it.
It has lots of ways of hinting at what it wants us to understand. Like it'll use small things in our lives to telegraph clues.
Mine has two main message-delivery mechanisms: dreams, and songs.
Analyze This, Sigmund
Freud talked a lot about dreams. He found all sorts of meaning in them. Unfortunately, my dreams are no help at all. I remember them vividly and in excruciating detail, but they are absolutely nonsensical. Other than the occasional dessert dream, mine have no rhyme or reason.
My dreams are so long, and so detailed, and so strange, that I a) often wonder how I can possibly feel rested in the morning after such busy nights, and b) wouldn't begin to know how to dissect what the hell they might mean.
Freud would have had to schedule two hour long sessions for me to tell him about all the things that happened in only the previous night. (Don't believe me?: Ask Michael.) I'm pretty sure I would have sent Freud running out of the room screaming.
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It feels to me like my dreams are some sort of nerdy off-hours pass time for my slacker subconscious. (Kind of like Dungeons and Dragons, or World of Warcraft for the mind.)
At the end of a hard day of working for me, thinking the stupid stuff I want it to think about, my subconscious punches it's time card and says:
It goes home and holes up in it's little brain-cave. (Like a man-cave; dark and a little smelly. It's decorated with oil-paintings-on-velvet, sports memorabilia, and ashtrays filled with half-smoked cigars... All the stuff the conscious mind won't allow in the public areas.)
Here my subconscious sprawls in it's torn and stained sweatpants, scratching and burping, and generally letting it's freak flag fly.
The stuff that seeps into my conscious mind the next morning is just a foggy hangover of the crap-tainment my subconscious wanted to watch the night before. Just snippets of images and sounds far too random to provide any sort of insight.
Soul-full Songs
It still operates in a sort of brain-teaser-puzzles format, but I can sometimes figure them out. It's usually easiest when it sends it's messages in song.
Plagiarism Warning System
Only yesterday my subconscious cleverly told me I was stealing someone else's ideas and passing them off as my own.In the morning I worked on a post about creating background noise for my writing sessions and 'came up with' the phrase 'sound of sunshine'. I congratulated myself on the nice turn of phrase that I brilliantly invented.
Later in the day I was running errands and I kept hearing the same song over and over in my head.
I finally started to notice and had this conversation with my subconscious:
Me: "What is that song?"
Subconscious Song-Stylist: Oh, glad you (finally) noticed. Let me sing it for you again:
"I wake up in the morning at six o'clock
They say there may be rain but the sun is hot
I wish I had some time just to kill today
And I wish I had it down for every bill I've got to pay.*"
Me (interrupting): That's nice . But why do you keep singing that over and over?"\
Subconscious Song-Stylist Diva: "Uh hummm...I wasn't finished yet. Do you want to hear
what I have to say or not?
Me: Oh sorry. Yes. I do want to hear.
Subconscious: Okay then...
"Here I am
Just waiting for this storm to pass me by
And that's the sound,..." (Subconscious pauses dramatically)
"of sunshine coming down!*"
Me: OOOOHHHHH! That's not my phrase. I stole it! I had no idea.
Subconscious: Duh.
Me: Wow. I need to update that post. I could have sworn...
Subconscious (sarcastically): You're welcome.
Me: Oh...sorry. Thank you.
(Subconscious looks at the clock wondering how many hours until it can clock out again.)
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So, credit where credit is due:
* This song is "The Sound of Sunshine" by Michael Franti and Spearhead. (Thank you, Michael and Spearhead, for the great song! I apologize for temporarily stealing your work.)
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This all reminded me of another instance of my brain speaking to me through song, but this post is too long already. Maybe I'll talk about that tomorrow.
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