Understanding Our Mind - Part 1

Our Subconscious Mind

God gave us two compartments in our mind: the conscious and the subconscious. We are aware of our conscious thoughts, but the information filed in our subconscious mind comes from a lifetime of thoughts and experiences. Even the briefest encounter in our past is recorded in our subconscious mind.

We react to life in ways, which are prejudiced by the stored memories in our subconscious mind. They even affect our body’s health and our soul’s well-being. The visual information and emotional impressions of our past affected us all of our life and continue to influence us today. This is often helpful.

For instance, if I cannot remember whether or not I turned off the stove before I went to work, I can pause and review my behavior, which is stored in my subconscious mind. I can actually visualize or replay my actions to see if I remembered to turn off the stove. The subconscious helps us in so many practical ways. However, unresolved conflicts from our past are also stored in the subconscious.

These memories will not lay dormant, but need resolution and closure. They attempt to gain our attention by inflicting us with physical or mental illnesses, nightmares, binging, sexual deviance, addictions and negative emotions. Paying attention to the thoughts from the subconscious, which filter into our conscious mind, help us to resolve these unsettled issues and restore our health and give us peace of mind ( www.theophostic.com ). 

Pleasant dreams also aid our subconscious mind to uncover the unresolved concerns in our soul. Our soul is attempting to dialogue with our conscious mind through our dreams. Dream interpretation sites online give us the meaning of the symbols in our dream, and God uses these to inform our conscious mind about these unresolved issues.

Prayer:

Father God, You created us as such complex creatures both physically and mentally. Thank You for giving us Your Spirit to bring healing to our body and soul. We are so glad that our Born Again spirit controls the carnal aspects of our body and soul by Your Spirit’s direction. We live a life of serenity and joy because of Your presence in our life. Remind us to pay attention to our dreams, negative emotions and times in which we over-react to situations in life, so that we can come to You to shine Your light on these hidden issues in our subconscious mind and bring healing to our body and soul.

Thought for the Day:

Life has inflicted our soul with injuries since conception, and the pain of these issues continue to control our thoughts, words and deed even now; only God’s Spirit can set us free from the wounds of our past.

The Tyranny of Fear

 

From my childhood forward, I have lived a life of fear. Over the years, God taught me that He is with us through whatever we are afraid of...high in an airplane and deep in the darkest woods, in the elevator and on the escalator, at the dentist or the surgery room, in the classroom and the jail room, in a fear-filled marriage or place of employment, etc. He is with us, just as He was with His faithful young Hebrew men in the fiery furnace (Daniel 3:24-25).

Good fear is instinctive fear, which God gave us to protect us from danger, and to keep us from suffering needlessly. This gives us a healthy fear of the negative elements of life, so we will walk cautiously through them. However, other fears are born in us through terrifying people and experiences. Satan lies to us in these negative situations, intending to cripple us for life. This fear often keeps us from stepping out in faith to live the life God intends for us.

Many fears are unreasonable and groundless. They victimize and debilitate us. Nightmares will often offer us a clue about the negative stress going on in our subconscious mind; and once we recognize and settle these issues, they will no longer bother us. When fear torments us, God’s perfect love swoops in and covers us with His feathers (1 John 4:18; Psalm 91:4). We fear no evil when our Great Shepherd keeps watch over us (Psalm 23:1-4). By proving His love and faithfulness to us, God supersizes our faith.

Over the years, God taught me to stop trying to control my life and to enter into His rest instead (Hebrews 4:10). His faithfulness and direction over every moment of my life help me to relinquish my fears. Living life one moment at a time helps me to prevent the fears from the past and the fear of the future from affecting my current moment. As the current moments of my life string together, God proves to me that He is with me, working out even the bad times for my good (Romans 8:28).

Prayer:

Father God, remind us that the perfect way to cast out fear is to praise You. You inhabit our praises, so we enter into Your presence with praise (Psalm 100:4). You deliver us from fear through praise (Psalm 22:3). You are always faithful and always living in us, walking with us through every trial and temptation we encounter. You always provide us with hope and a future (Jeremiah 29:11). No matter how frightening a storm appears, You will strengthen us and guard us from evil (2 Thessalonians 3:3), and for this we praise Your name forever.

Thought for the Day:

During the storms of life, God gives us the faith to go ahead and sing in the rain.

 

Spiritual Poison

We all know that there are plants and chemicals that can poison our body. We do everything in our power to avoid poisoning our self and our loved ones, even our pets. However, did you know that you could poison your spiritual life as well? Negative emotions are toxic to both our soul and spirit. They are red flags to alert us to some turmoil in our subconscious mind. We are ignoring the thoughts that feed these negative sentiments. Yet, our emotions pick up on them and try to force us to pay attention to and resolve them.

Some people with phlegmatic personalities are able to process incidents as they occur and forgive and forget. Yet, some with melancholy personalities hold a grudge and stay bitter for years. Then choleric people often stuff the incident and move right on without dealing with the emotional firestorm caused by these conflicts. The sanguine individual may philosophize and chalk the incident up as the other person’s problem. No matter what personality type we have, however, we all experience conflicts in our life that wound us deeply and need to be healed.

If we follow the trail from the negative emotion back into the past, we find not one, but many instances that built up over the years to bring us to the place where they are now surfacing in our daily interactions. Yet, we often continue to suppress them. Our dreams and nightmares also warn us of these unresolved conflicts, but we ignore them as well. I came to a place in my life where I could no longer tolerate the grouchiness, over-sensitivity, self-pity and hair-trigger anger that crept from my past into my day and spoiled life for me.

Thankfully, I learned to sit in a quiet place with my journal and to allow God to direct my soul as it empties itself of its burdens! If we stay quiet long enough to hear God’s Spirit, He will direct us from one incident to the next that caused the build up of these negative emotions. Write down in your journal everything that comes to your mind, even if it does not make sense. Alcoholics Anonymous calls this a searching moral inventory. God will shine His light on the memories where He wants you to go in order to achieve the resolution of these unsettled issues.

Prayer:

Father God, we thank You for willingly exposing the lies Satan convinced us of during the traumatic times in our life. We thank You for Your truth, which sets us free (John 8:32). Help us to freely forgive the offenders in our life, or to ask for forgiveness in the areas where we hurt someone else. In this way, You set us free from bondage to these negative emotions. Even if the offended party will not forgive us, we are free before You of all of our offenses.

Thought for the Day:

Following the path of these negative emotions to the root experience, which is causing them, is the only way to find spiritual, mental, emotional and ultimately physical health.

 

 

 

Thank you, Matt Milligan, for the use of your photo.
http://www.mattmilliganphotography.com/