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Unconscious Mind
It’s that part of the mind (in the right brain) that stores memories, emotions, dreams and automatic functions, organizes and processes experience and utilizes the faculty of imagination and visualization. It also takes care of processes that are beyond our normal conscious control such as: heartbeat, digestion, our health and the general running of the body. The number of activities our unconscious mind carries out for us ‘automatically’ is astounding and yet we are consciously mostly unaware of doing these tasks e.g. changing gear whilst driving a car, blocking out background noise, etc. In fact, our conscious mind would not be able to cope if it had to process all the activities done with the vast resources of the unconscious mind. The conscious mind is predominantly the decision maker and is happy to run on auto-pilot until it is called into action. It is a similar story when it comes to the storage of memory, emotion, dreams, etc. The unconscious mind records every detail of our experiences and once again our conscious mind often shows little awareness of all these details. It’s as if our conscious mind protects us from overloading and works ‘on a need to know basis’, so mainly information that may require a decision or analysis passes through our conscious awareness. The rest is just stored directly away in the vaults of our unconsciousness. This lack of communication between the unconscious and conscious is very necessary in every day life whilst the mind is engaged in activities that may require our critical faculties, otherwise we may be distracted from taking the right action or making the right decision. However when we are in the relaxed state of hypnosis we find that our unconscious is more able to communicate with our conscious and it is possible to become consciously aware of the information stored in our unconscious mind.
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