Beyond the mind: Unlocking transformation
How to access your subconscious to remember and embody your true, authentic self.
We live on a cul-de-sac in a small suburban town in New Jersey. Blizzards and monsoons aside, when the weather is decent, people from surrounding neighborhoods travel up and down our street on foot. They might be exercising, casually strolling along, or taking their pets/kids for a walk.
As a functioning human that lives among other humans, I’ve come to accept this behavior as typical and altogether uninteresting. People come and go. Sometimes I notice them, other times I don’t.
My two dogs, on the other hand, treat each person walking by as a completely novel experience to get all worked up about. As folks turn the corner onto our street, one of my pups, most often Oliver, will let out a soft growl. That triggers the other, Max, to go a decibel (or several) louder. Within seconds, they’re barking and howling as if the person is charging at our house with a machete.
Each and every time this happens, I’ll inevitably try to silence Ollie and Max. They’ll pause and look at me — ears back and eyes wide, acknowledging my frustration while staring back as if to say, “We see that you’re upset, human Dad. But we’re dogs and those people are strangers. It’s our duty and purpose to bark.”
I’ll wave my finger in the air while shushing them. Then just as I assume I’ve won this round and return to whatever I was doing before the ruckus, they resume their growling and barking. Ugh.
Dogs vs. humans
One question you could ask is, why do dogs continue barking?
My hypothesis: Because they know who they are.
The real question to ask is, why do we (grown-ass adults) continue yelling at barking dogs, day after day? Shouldn’t we know better?
My hypothesis: We barely know who we are, let alone who others are (two-legged or four).
There’s a beautiful and simple quote that captures this identity confusion so many of us face:
I’m not what you think I am.
I’m not what I think I am.
I am what I think YOU THINK I am.
— Charles Horton Cooley
For those of us that commune with this quote (i.e. 99% of the population), we cycle through life trying on different masks in an attempt to fit in. We discard and invent new versions of ourselves based on feedback from others and the outside world.
But because the world is made up of complex humans who are similarly questioning their identity and purpose, our external feedback loops betray us. The data, in fact, pulls us further away from center — each new persona created, increasingly less authentic to our core values.
We suffer and spiral while similarly perpetuating the loop for others around us. In other words, not only are we reliant on feedback from our environments, but we are the environment for others.
It’s a broken-leading-the-broken system. Inauthentic copies of ourselves taking inputs and providing outputs to equally inauthentic people around us.
Except, there’s a small (but growing, I think) percentage of people that know who their truest, highest selves are. People who do the work… Who, through rigorous practice, have trained their minds and bodies to see life’s challenges as opportunities. Who consciously create instead of unconsciously assuming the role of victim. Who spread light to help others remember who they really are and step out of their shadows.
But there’s a big, hidden gap to wrangle in order to rediscover our authentic selves.
The challenge of living authentically
Living a life that feels disingenuous to our true nature causes suffering because we inherently resist who we see ourselves pretending to be. That must mean that the goal is to rediscover our essence so that we can spend the rest of our days living in integrity.
Turns out, that’s hard work. Here’s why…
If you’ve been living out of integrity for 10, 20, or 50 years, your mind and body have become addicted to the associated thoughts, feelings, memories, and actions — the basis of what forms your beliefs. So, let’s say you’ve spent two decades embodying beliefs that you’re unworthy of being financially abundant. It’s going to take significant effort to break those beliefs.
If that weren’t challenging enough, you’ll also have little to no success changing those beliefs with your conscious mind. That’s because most of our beliefs are stored in our subconscious. And our subconscious is ruled by our body. That is to say, it’s not actually our mind that’s in charge of our reality, but our physical body.
Here’s how Dr. Joe Dispenza puts it:
And so we spend the majority of our days unaware of the subconscious beliefs that thrust us out of alignment with our authentic selves.
Disrupting our subconscious beliefs
At this point, I consider myself a self-help and spiritual growth junky. I’ve read countless books, worked with coaches and healers, experimented with psychedelics, and tried many… many techniques.
Of course, there’s no silver bullet. And what works for some won’t for others. But a common theme I’ve seen across practices that created healing change for me, are ones that get me beyond my conscious mind — a mind that is always on, incessantly active, and endlessly analyzing in high beta. It’s great for all of the hours I intentionally devote to thinking, working, and creating in flow. But it’s damn near worthless for effecting deep-rooted change within.
For example, years ago I tried a daily morning mantra routine. I’d stand in front of the mirror repeating phrases like, “I am enough. I am wealthy. I am powerful.” After a few months of failing to notice any shifts, I gave up. It felt like my conscious mind was trying to trick my subconscious into a lie it didn’t believe. I didn’t feel like I was enough, wealthy, or powerful.
I’m not saying mantras or practices like the Law of Attraction don’t work, they just didn’t work for me at that time. Maybe I quit too soon. Or maybe it’s because, as the science states, my conscious mind had little control over altering my body’s unhealthy hardwired programs.
As Albert Einstein put it:
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”
But here’s the cool thing about that quote I had overlooked the first 100 times I heard it: If we can create unhealthy beliefs that manifest a problematic reality, we can also replace them with healthy beliefs and resulting realities filled with love, joy, and peace.
But how? How do we access our subconscious and create real, healing change?
My go-to is what Dr. Joe Dispenza refers to as mental rehearsal in the form of science-backed and deliberate meditation. Done consistently, I’m living proof that it will unlock incredible shifts and produce hard-to-believe outcomes.
Below, I’ve shared some of my favorite resources from Dr. Joe. For today, let me give you a high-level overview of my daily (always evolving) practice.
My daily practice
Each morning, I get up before anyone else in the house. That’s 4:50 AM during the school year and 5:50 AM during the summers.
For ten minutes, I stretch and work out my core; i.e. abs, obliques, and lower back. I find targeting the core helpful for moving stuck energy out and up into my heart and head. It also activates my body, making it easier to access during meditation. Because remember, our body manages our subconscious.
With pen and paper, I write down any ideas or to-dos that will otherwise fester during meditation, making it harder to slow down and disconnect from my conscious mind.
I turn on my white noise, insert my noise-canceling airpods, fire up some ambient meditation music (linked below), and close my eyes.
For the first 15-30 minutes, I think about one or two unhealthy beliefs that I want to let go of. Building on the previous example above, one belief might be a feeling of unworthiness toward making money.
I call up my subconscious thoughts, feelings, and memories of what I have historically looked like when I’m embodying beliefs of unworthiness: How was I speaking, thinking, and acting? These are the subconscious characteristics that I’ll look out for throughout today — the subconscious programs I want to change and therefore need to remain aware of.
Then I spend the next 30-45 minutes rehearsing thoughts and feelings that my highest self will exhibit when people, events, and environments trigger me to feel unworthy. I consider what greatness will look like — a version of myself that thinks, feels, and acts completely deserving of financial abundance.
In the closing minutes, I ask two final things of the universe/God/Spirit:
One, to help me on this path… or back on when I slip.
Two, to send me a sign, synchronicity, or coincidence that I created a change in my reality. This is the feedback loop we want and need — not from others around us, but from a higher source. It gives us evidence that the magic is real. In turn, we commit further to prioritizing this practice and sticking with it. We shift our perspective from something we have to do to something we’re inspired to do.
Magic?
Speaking of magic, when I’m deep in my practice, I’ve experienced many phenomena that my younger, 3D self would struggle to believe or make sense of. I’ve seen patterns of lights (with my eyes closed and facemask on), along with people and places that felt like past lives. I’ve made contact with beings that don’t live on this plane. I’ve traveled through space and time. And just recently I felt as if my entire being (body and spirit) grew 5x bigger — like I filled the room.
I’ve also experienced every emotion. I’ve sobbed, painful and happy tears. I’ve felt full-body waves of euphoria. I’ve even caught myself talking with… someone… while in between wake (alpha) and sleep states (theta/delta).
Yep, I know this sounds bananas. I get it. Still, these have been my experiences. Not always. Some days I can’t get out of my head. Some days it’s just quiet and peaceful. And then other days, I have to seriously consider if someone slipped into my meditation space and dropped psychedelics in my water.
Wrapping up my daily practice
Finally, at night, I sit in bed and journal. I ask myself:
How did I do today?
Where did I (inevitably) go unconscious?
What would love have done differently in that situation?
How will I improve tomorrow?
What I can promise you is that, if you’re willing to do the work — whether this routine or something similar that works for you — with firm intention, you will undergo some form of healing change that brings you back in alignment with your authentic self. What that looks like will depend on you, your human experience so far, and what you’re calling in.
Buddhist monk, Pema Chödrön, portrays the journey to our highest selves as:
“As we let go of our repetitive stories and fixed ideas about ourselves--particularly deep-seated feelings of ‘I'm not okay’--the armor starts to fall apart, and we open into the spaciousness of our true nature, into who we really are beyond the transitory thoughts and emotions. We see that our armor is made up of nothing more than habits and fears, and we begin to feel that we can let those go.”
As always, I hope my light, my heart, and my story today reached you and your shadows. Similarly, if you ever need help or someone to listen, I’m here for you and I’m there with you. ❤️
Additional resources
Get familiar with Dr. Joe Dispenza’s work with this brilliant interview by Steven Bartlett
My favorite meditation by Dr. Joe
My next favorite meditation by Dr. Joe (he does weird stuff with his voice for very scientific reasons, you’ll get over it)
Meditation music to help you reach theta
By the way, my dogs just startled the everliving SHIT out of me by barking at… nothing. Correct, sometimes they bark just to bark. Or maybe they see dead people. Either way, I went unconscious and yelled at them. More mental rehearsal required… for me, not the dogs.
A loved the part, about walking with the dogs.
Every time this happens with me, i think about how much dogs are kinder than humans, always connected to the present all around.
I will try the morning meditation.
Thenks for sharing!