Insight Talk: Relieve Subconscious Stress

This talk explores the link between the subconscious and conscious mind, and how we can understand the process of re-integration in order to experience less stress. A guided visualisation will also help to discover that we are also the producer and experiencer of beneficial qualities leading to joy and balanced wellbeing.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to this insight talk.

My name is Jonathan Adams.

You may know me here as Sonic Yogi.

In this talk we will explore some of the possible origins of stress and how to become more aware of this process and to consciously move towards peace and harmony.

Many years ago I had a very intense and jarring awakening.

In this awakening I came to see many of the fallacies of my own mind.

A fallacy is defined as a false idea.

A plausible or believable argument based on unsound reasoning.

A misinterpretation.

This awakening was both a mental adjustment as well as a physical transformation or recalibration.

It was from this experience that I realized that the mind and body are so intimately interconnected.

So if the mind experiences a transformation or a new realization the body is likely to shift.

And if the body experiences a transformation through diet,

Exercise,

Yoga,

The mind may also shift.

This is the basis for most of mind-body practice.

During this awakening I felt as if I was losing my mind but I also found my heart.

As I processed these mental changes I came to see that I was actually going sane.

I came to see that the consensus view that I had adopted was actually destructive and problematic.

So in this series I'd like to look at some insights.

With these insights we will challenge some of the assumptions of our mind.

I have found that it is in looking at some of our most basic assumptions about our perceptions where the real change can occur.

This is where real peace,

Real harmony can be grounded and experienced.

Insight basically means coming to an awareness of something that we were not previously aware of.

With each insight we will potentially free the mind from a cognitive dissonance,

A fallacy or an untruth that colors our perception and creates ongoing stress.

With each insight we will allow the nervous system to recalibrate.

Our thoughts are essentially vibrations and so this sort of exploration goes hand in hand with sound therapy and sound frequency.

Entrainment with sound frequency is a way to experience these states of harmony,

At least temporarily.

And so we can experience the vibrational target so to speak.

As we learn to work with our own minds we can come back to that space over and over.

In today's talk we will explore our innate sovereignty of our own nervous system.

One of the chief fallacies of the mind is that the solution to the mind's problem is outside of the mind.

And so we seek to change circumstances or people or situations.

However the truth is that the solution for the mind is within the mind.

So the insight here for consideration is two-fold or double-edged.

The first insight from my own experience,

And I believe this applies in the vast majority of cases,

Is that I am the producer and experiencer of stress.

I am the producer and experiencer of stress.

Physiologically speaking then,

Stress is generated within me.

My thoughts have the ability to produce a physiological reaction.

And then that reaction can manifest as stress in the body.

However the opposite is also true.

Physiologically speaking,

I am also both the producer and experiencer of joy and bliss and euphoria.

So that seems basic enough,

Right?

We create physical responses to mental states.

Of course none of us want to experience stress,

And yet every day most people do.

So then it seems that if someone is suffering from stress,

There's a key element missing that they're not aware of.

That element seems to be in the awareness of first,

Producing their own stress,

And second,

Also the conscious awareness of whether or not a given situation warrants a heightened stress response.

Obviously,

No person in their right mind would purposefully choose to create and experience stress.

So then it seems that if people are experiencing stress as they react to their thoughts,

Then they're not aware of being the producer and experiencer of that stress.

In this case there's a separation or lack of awareness between these two states,

The producer state and the experiencer state.

There's a separation between these two aspects of themselves,

The producer self and the experiencer self.

There's a split or veil between these two.

This becomes a duality that is always at conflict,

Which creates ongoing stress.

So then,

In that state of being,

There's a general lack of awareness between that producer aspect and experiencer aspect of themselves.

The result of that split or lack of awareness is that the person then experiences stress,

Anxiety,

Depression or suffering based on reacting unconsciously to their own thoughts.

This mind-body process happens inside of all of us,

And so the thoughts happen within us,

And also the reaction to the thought.

So there is a mental part and also a physical part.

So in my view,

The producer of the stress is the subconscious mind,

And the experiencer of the stress is the conscious mind.

So the key would seem to be in making the subconscious more conscious.

Doing so would help to unify this split in the awareness of self.

This would also relieve stress.

And so there's two aspects at play.

There's the teaching or intellectual aspect,

Which is to say that intellectually,

Anyone can understand these thoughts or ideas as they are explained and presented.

But there's also another aspect.

There's also the perceptual or experiential or energetic aspect,

Which is to say that's how these ideas and concepts interact and impact the physical being.

So in order to truly understand the teaching,

Quote unquote,

In my view,

There also has to be a perception shift or experiential shift.

In order for this perception shift to occur,

One must first access the subconscious mind from which these perceptions and resulting reactions arise nearly instantaneously.

In fact,

Many of our automatic responses are not conscious.

And why aren't they conscious?

Because these reactions are by necessity immediate and reflexive.

Many of these perceptions,

Reactions,

And sensations have become hardwired or programmed into the physiological system.

And much like learning a new language,

Real fluency is a process of the subconscious mind.

If you've learned a new language,

You know that in the beginning of that learning process,

It is all in the conscious mind.

And you're constantly having to think of things through very slowly and think about what does this word mean or what's the verb I need here and so on.

As you develop fluency with that language,

It becomes more programmed into the subconscious mind.

And those words and phrases and verbs become more and more fluent.

And so it's the same with recalibrating our minds towards harmony.

We have to become more and more fluent with this language of internal frequency.

As we develop fluency,

We become aware of the frequency and harmony that our thoughts are producing within our body.

And so the teachings are a way to prepare the conscious mind for the experience.

In other words,

The energetic shift within the physical body.

Ultimately,

I feel this shift is the experience of transcending the intellect,

Ego,

Left brain,

Or conscious mind.

This is also integrating the conscious and subconscious mind.

In order to unify the perceiver,

In other words,

The subconscious,

And the experiencer,

In other words,

The conscious mind,

My personal experience tells me that there has to be a perception shift.

This perception shift allows a person the ability to stay in the flow in real time.

My experience also tells me that the teachings are all contained in the energy of this flow or frequency.

The teachings are already within you.

This perception shift or flow enables the experiencing of the subconscious and conscious mind as a unified whole.

And so what is the perception shift?

And how does that occur?

In my opinion,

It's beyond the space of the conscious mind or intellect,

Which is always thinking,

Calculating,

Interpreting,

Judging,

And it's never in the now.

And instead,

Transcending that mind to pure awareness,

Which is always in the now,

Our senses and experiences then come in without that interpretation and critical mind,

Which is always being filtered through the lens of past experience.

I think all of our mind-body practices are moving towards this,

But I've experienced that in a few different areas in my personal experience.

Also meditation,

Yoga,

And other mind-body practices are key,

As well as diet.

Many of these practices are designed to release stress,

Promote neurogenesis and neuroplasticity,

And transform our mind and perspective from a perspective that causes stress and perpetuates stress to a new perspective that can lead one to understand how the mind and body can work together in harmony,

Which will ultimately release stress and lead to peace.

So what we want to do ideally is to be aware of the teachings of various spiritual philosophies.

I like to call these psychological reminders.

These reminders also help to change our perceptions and corresponding energetic responses so that we can flow in harmony and peace.

This can encourage our body to produce chemicals and hormones that will help us to be more relaxed and experience peace and well-being.

Dr.

Bruce Lipton said,

The moment you change your perception is the moment you begin to rewrite the chemistry in your body.

We've covered that we have the conscious mind,

Which is the experiencer of stress,

And the subconscious mind,

Which is where our perceptions originate and is where we might produce stress.

So in order to recalibrate those perceptions and begin to change them,

We must access the subconscious mind.

So I think the teachings help to guide this process of the perception shift.

And perhaps the simplest teaching,

Which embodies all of the teachings,

In my opinion,

Is to simply choose love and not fear in this moment now.

So coming through the awakening that I mentioned before was very jarring and difficult.

And during that process,

My mind was reeling with all of this information and overloaded with thoughts.

And to simplify and to stay present and focused,

That simple phrase,

Choose love,

Not fear,

In this moment now,

Was one of the Rosetta stones that helped to guide me from moment to moment.

And so in that awakening,

There was also a rising of energy.

It's hard to explain in words,

Really,

But it was also a rising of awareness.

So as that energy and awareness arises,

The awareness of the sort of dissonance or the natural tendency of the mind to perceive incorrectly and create incorrectly also arises.

And so reminding myself to choose love and not fear in this moment now helped me to stay focused and in the stream of peace and in the flow of harmony.

And so that phrase reminds me of a few things.

First of all,

Is that I have a choice.

Simply knowing that I have a choice is power.

And second of all,

It reminds me that it's always now.

And so I have a choice.

It's always now.

And I can choose between love and fear.

And so when I choose love,

It allows my nervous system to stay in that peaceful,

Calm,

And harmonious place.

Fear is fundamentally rooted in the future and past.

And so as I stay present in the moment and the now,

I'm naturally allowing that love to arise and to eliminate the space where any fear would arise.

So when I say split the mind,

I mean these particular types of thoughts,

Which I'm going to mention,

Encourage subconsciously wanting to be somewhere else while simultaneously being here.

And this creates a split in our consciousness.

And so for example,

If I desire,

Say,

A sports car or whatever it may be,

Then I'm here,

But I'm imagining that I need that thing that's over there.

And so as I'm thinking about that thing that I need to help fulfill my sense of self,

I'm also simultaneously experiencing dissatisfaction.

And so within the seed of that desire is also the seed of dissatisfaction and even self-loathing.

And so that's a deep subconscious energy that may be there that I may not fully notice in the moment.

That illustrates to some degree the split between the conscious mind and the subconscious mind.

And so subconsciously,

When we split the mind,

I realized that sometimes that equates to the feeling that I may not fully love and accept myself,

In which case I needed that something else out there to complete me.

And as I worked through different layers,

I kept coming back to this truth that I had to love,

Forgive,

And accept myself in order to become fully embodied in the present moment and allow my mind to heal that split between the producer self and the experiencer self,

Between the conscious mind and the subconscious mind.

So some other qualities or tendencies of the mind to split are things like the need to protect identity.

In other words,

We may imagine who we are and then defend that image.

In addition,

Non-acceptance of a situation or not wanting to be in a situation.

And so we put ourselves into a sort of escape mode mentally.

Again,

We're splitting ourselves between not wanting to be here and wanting to be there.

So there's often a split between here and there.

However,

Fundamentally,

We're always here and it's always now.

And so that splitting of the mind is a quality of aversion or desire or greed,

Of unforgiveness and expectation and attachment.

And so all of these different qualities can be things that we subconsciously give power to and then they ultimately create stress.

So now I'm going to look at the opposite of this.

Conversely,

When I'm grateful and content with all that I have,

The mind is unified and whole because there's not a split there.

I'm fully here and present in the now and in full acceptance.

This is not to say that we should never affect change.

However,

Splitting the mind creates a state of craving for a future moment at the expense of avoiding the present moment.

This is not ultimately productive.

So when I seek change,

I realize it's also important to stay present with the moment.

Notice that these beneficial thought patterns from various moral teachings or spiritual traditions encourage presence,

Unity of mind and awareness of this now moment.

And so some of these qualities are things like honesty,

Authenticity,

Gratitude.

When we're grateful,

We're not here and then desiring to be somewhere else or wanting to avoid this moment.

When we're grateful,

We're fully here in this moment.

And so gratitude is like the doorway back to the present moment.

What are some other words or other qualities that encourage coming back to the present moment?

Things like humility,

Empathy,

Love,

Acceptance,

Curiosity,

Joy,

Forgiveness,

Feeling,

Nonresistance,

Patience,

Trust.

So notice that all of these words,

All of these qualities,

There's an energy behind them.

We know the words love,

Trust,

Gratitude,

But behind these words is an energy.

And as we become more and more in touch with that energy,

These cease to be just words,

But they become energies that we experience as we direct our own consciousness.

And what I found is that meditation is like an amplifier that amplifies our awareness of the energy that we produce.

And so just like my amplifiers for my musical instruments,

They take a signal and they amplify it so that it's louder.

In many ways,

My meditation practice is also like that.

It amplifies the signal of my subconscious mind.

And with that amplification,

I begin to notice these energies more and more.

And I can simply begin to operate and make choices in a way where there's harmony and flow.

And so as my awareness increases,

I simply choose those patterns that are beneficial.

A simple example is that when we're small children,

We may not be aware that touching the stove is bad,

For example,

And that it's going to hurt.

But as soon as we feel that heat from the stove,

Our awareness quickly tells us that that's not what you want to touch.

And similarly,

As adults,

We can sort of lose the awareness within our own mind and body connection and simply begin to engage in thought patterns that are not beneficial.

So things like sound therapy,

Meditation,

Yoga,

All of these are allowing the body to relax and allowing the awareness to begin to arise again,

Which allows us to reconnect to the awareness of these energies in the subconscious.

And so these beneficial thought patterns that we mentioned point towards the energy of presence.

Also notice that these beneficial qualities that we mentioned,

Like love,

Trust,

Compassion,

All of these qualities are also byproducts of this presence of simply being in the now moment.

So just from being in the now moment,

These qualities naturally arise.

So these universally positive qualities flow from the energetic quality of being in the now.

And so that's part of what I mean when I say the teachings are already within you.

In neuroscience,

There's a saying that the neurons that fire together wire together,

Meaning that our brain creates well-worn habits and patterns.

It takes practice and consistency to change these.

Of course,

Meditation,

Which I sometimes call perceptual engineering,

Is the time-tested way of beginning to change these brain patterns.

In my experience,

I've found that meditation,

Yoga,

Sound therapy,

And other mind-body practices can begin to shift physiological energy,

Which also makes way for mental shifts.

This can also sometimes happen from the mental side,

Where a mental shift facilitates a physical release.

Our bodies are created for homeostasis as well,

Which means it's not designed to shift drastically.

Although rapid shifts occasionally occur,

Patience and consistency are also required as mind and body recalibrate both energetically and mentally.

So I hope this is resonating.

Now let's move on to a short exercise,

A sort of visualization.

So if you'd like,

Go ahead and close your eyes,

Or feel free to keep them open a little bit if you prefer.

We're going to do a short visualization.

So take a moment to focus on your breath.

Notice the air as it comes in and out of your nostrils.

Notice the rising and falling of your chest and abdomen.

Simply notice each breath.

In this case,

We're going to use our memory.

Imagine a time in your life when you were most content.

Maybe it was the day a child was born.

Maybe it was a great vacation,

Or just a random happy day that you remember taking a great walk,

Spending time in nature with your dog or whatever it was.

Simply allow your mind to move back and remember each detail of this moment.

Remember the sun.

Remember the air on your skin.

Remember the feeling of contentedness and joy and happiness.

As you go back to this time and remember each detail,

Notice this feeling of joy and contentedness,

Gratitude that you feel.

Take the next few moments just to remember these feelings and allow them to arise in your being.

Now,

As these feelings of contentment and joy from this memory have arisen,

Notice that as we were guided in this visualization,

That this feeling is also a choice that we produced.

Notice that we produced this feeling from the memory and are also experiencing this feeling.

And notice that each of these feelings are arising in the present moment.

Notice that the vast majority of the time,

Even when we're not fully conscious of this process,

The feeling that we might be producing is also a choice.

So we're both the producer and experiencer of either stress or bliss and joy and euphoria.

And so as we stay in the present moment,

Those qualities naturally begin to arise,

Qualities of love,

Of joy,

Compassion,

Trust,

Contentment,

Peace,

Harmony,

And gratitude.

So that concludes the visualization.

Gently begin to bring your awareness back outwards.

And so to recap,

The takeaway is that we are sovereign within our own nervous system.

Within our mind-body system,

In the vast majority of cases,

We are both the producer and experiencer.

And as we learn to stay more present and connected and centered,

Those positive and beneficial qualities and feelings naturally begin to arise.

Our practices help us begin to make this shift and return to peaceful,

Centered awareness more and more consistently.

If you have comments or questions,

Please leave them here or in the Sonic Yogi Meditation Circle.

Your feedback and answers will also bring insight and consideration to the table.

Together we will explore and discover.

Thank you.

Reviews

It was profoundly wonderful! When I realized I am creating my own stress I became so full of joy. Love not fear. Now I get it! Thank you so much, with deep gratitude and ❤️Bev

Helpful information delivered in a calming manner and understandable format. Thank you for your insight.

Excellent talk and exercise! I’ve always known about the mind body relationship, but you brought insight to why that happens and your insight and experience helped me make the connection to why it’s sometimes so hard to be in the present moment. Thank you!

Thank you. I've been listening to this every morning for days & every time I hear, listen, I feel, resonate, feel the fear of trying to push your voice away with other dialogue, images, memories. But that is the beauty of this experiment, for what arises is revealed as maya, so I can sense of what that is. To give clarity. I am enjoying this everytime I listen. I love that you added signing bowls & your voice together, great collaboration & really takes my wholeness within, with headphones! Love this 🙏👌

Thank you so very much for this extremely interesting and excellent insight talk.
Very clearly put and explained, bringing altogether the power of love, gratitude and the present moment, the amplification of vibrations, the split;
it makes a lot of sense and clarity all of a sudden for me, that’s precious and brilliant. Thank you !

WOW so much I need to hear and from a different perspective but the same truths I’ve been aware of and have struggled to regain balance in my life, I thank you for opening up what has felt like dark time in my life and given me a huge WAKE UP CALL. Deborah 🙏

Amazing insight 💫 just what I have come to realise, and put so beautifully into words and sound therapy that has resonated at my core. Thank you 🙏🧘‍♀️

Recently, I’ve been realizing that - I scare myself! I’m so used to being “on guard” that even though I am physically fine, I’m used to living in fear . . . so I recreate it.
I so easily slip into these scenario. I know they are due to a traumatic and abusive childhood. My life is basically good now. What’s the best way to release these stories?

WOW! Hearing this has brought a great realization. I have caused my mind to become "obese" . Now, my body has been experiencing the physical consequences of a prolonged exposure to unconscious stress. I know that only time and awareness will heal it.

Which sound therepy do you recommend to alleviate the mind and body from stress? I’ve been meditating more often again. 🙏🏼💜

Really clear and helpful. My subconscious parts create the emotions that my consciousness experiences. Awareness chooses love 🙏💖

The short meditation at the end brought the whole experience of the talk together and left me feeling happy and satisfied. Thank-you Yogi!

I’ve been aimlessly digging in search of my subconscious for many years and through numerous modalities. I know the path now. Thank you for speaking so intentionally and with such kindness. This talk is a true gift of inspiration. Thank you!

This is most amazing… because of the gentle delivery and yet the simplicity with which you explain the “split.” Every word, truly did resonate. Thank you 🙏🏼 ❤️

Thank you 💕
I choose love instead of fear in this moment right now.

Thank you. I experienced calmness, groundedness and peace during and after this talk.

So what do with my regrets and losses that are as present as my amity to travel to frequencies behind or within the concious and subconscious. They are so damn ever present as my joys and bliss? Thank you for this excellent meditation. I was almost convinced. I am starting IV Ketamine for treatment resistant depressiin next week. I must be patient. It's my last chance. Maybe my problem is thinking I must go back to the time before the trauma. I can't get there. So digging a tunnel looking for another hole where the rain can't get in. Namaste.

What a great introduction to the two aspects of perceiving and experiencing selves and the opportunities that exist to unite the two. I also enjoyed the introduction for rewiring in the mind to pleasant energies of gratitude, contentment and joy.

Thank you, that was a fantastic, talk to explain complicated topics involving spirituality and psychology in basic, simple terms in order to attain inner peace and congruence.

Brilliant and very ‘insightful’! Thanks so much Sonic, I love your music and very helpful talks and meditations 🙏💗

LOVE LOVE LOVE !!!!*** “Perception engineering” ***