You can look into this concept here in 4 parts.
Part 1: Just how does the conscious, subconscious, and unconscious work? And what's the difference between them?
In this article, we’ll have a look at how the three minds – conscious, subconscious, and unconscious – work combined to form your reality … and, therefore, the way to use that knowledge to vary your habits and make a happier, more peaceful, and assured you.
A walk through the human mind
The concept of the three levels of the mind is nothing new. Sigmund Freud, the famous Austrian psychologist, was probably the first to popularize him in the dominant society as we know him today. Even though his theories have subsequently been widely discussed in psychology circles because they are tough to prove scientifically, Freud created a useful model of the mind, which he separated into 3 levels or sections: the conscious mind or the ego, the preconscious, and the unconscious mind.
The best way I even have found, for instance, the concept of the three minds is by employing a triangle. If you imagine yourself at the tip of the triangle is your conscious mind. It takes up only a small portion of space on top, a bit like an iceberg where only a fraction is shown above the water. It probably represents around 10% of your brain capacity.
Beneath this is a slightly larger section that Freud called the preconscious or the subconscious. It is much larger than the conscious mind and represents about 50-60% of your brain's capabilities.
It fills the entire width of the triangle base and fills the other 30-40% of the triangle. It is vast and deep and largely inaccessible to conscious thought, a touch just like the ocean's dark depths.
How they work together
Your conscious mind is what most people associate with who you are because that's where most people live day by day. But it is by no means where all the action takes place.
Your conscious mind may be a bit just like the captain of a ship standing on the bridge giving orders. Actually, the crew in the engine room below deck (the subconscious and the deepest unconscious) carry out the orders. The captain may be in charge of the ship and give the orders, but the crew really guides the ship, all according to the training they have been given over the years to do better.
The conscious mind communicates through speech, images, writing, physical movement, and thought with the outer world and inner being.
On the other hand, the subconscious mind is in charge of our recent memories and is in constant contact with the resources of the unconscious mind.
The unconscious is the storehouse of all memories and experiences, both repressed by trauma and people who have been consciously forgotten and are no longer important to us. It is from these memories and experiences that our behaviors, habits, and beliefs are formed.
The conscious mind will continuously interact with the unconscious through our subconscious and gives us the meaning of all our interactions with the planet, as filtered through its habits and beliefs. It communicates through dreams, feelings, sensations, imagination, and emotions.
Mind in action
The following analogy may help to clarify further the concept of how the three minds work.
If you only imagine that your mind is a computer...Your conscious mind is best represented by the keyboard and the monitor. The data is entered on the keyboard, and the results are displayed on the monitor screen. This is how your conscious mind works: information is taken in through some external (or internal) stimulus from your environment, and the results are instantly thrown into your consciousness.
Your subconscious is just like the RAM in your computer. For those who don't know, RAM is the place on a computer where programs and data that are currently in use are stored so that the computer's processor can quickly access them. It is much faster than other sorts of memory, like the hard disc or CD-ROM.
Your subconscious works the same way. All recent memories are stored there for quick recall when needed, such as your phone number or the name of a person you just met. It also contains your current programs that you run every day, such as your current recurring thoughts, behavior patterns, habits, and feelings.
Your unconscious is like your computer's hard drive. It is the long-term storage place for all of your memories and programs that have been installed since birth.
Your unconscious (and ultimately your subconscious mind) then utilize these programs to make sense of all the data it receives from the earth and keep it safe and ensure its survival. The logic of these two minds is that if it worked in the past and you survived, it will help you overcome similar situations by the same means, no matter how wrong, painful, and useless the results may be for you personally.
The journey begins
As mentioned, these sections and their functions have been hotly debated over the years by many other psychologists, philosophers, and scientists because it is tough to demonstrate that they exist empirically. Despite all of this, I still consider it a great analogy to use, and at the end of the day, if it works for you and makes sense, then that's all that matters.
Now let's take a deeper journey into each and see what functions they play and how they can be used to create change in ourselves; read part 2.
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