You are not alone. Someone else is inside of you. And they’re watching your every move.

Subconscious, unconscious, or non-conscious. Id or archetype. The giant chunk of iceberg adrift beneath the waterline. While attached to you (the you that is your conscious awareness), it is out-of-sight and largely out-of-reach. Lurking around down there. Not saying much. Not doing much other than gathering up all of your traumatic memories, worst fears, and impulsive desires to spring on you when you least expect it. Some roommate, right? You’re up there going to work every day, doing chores around the house, paying taxes, and facing the world. It’s down there… doing what?

What if it’s looking at you wondering how you got it so easy? Wondering why you get to have all of the fun.

”An enormous portion of cognitive activity is non-conscious. Figuratively speaking, it could be 99 percent; we probably will never know precisely how much is outside awareness.”

This was how Emanuel Donchin, a prominent researcher in cognitive psychology, put it. He is saying that you are only putting in only about 1 percent of the effort while your subconscious is really keeping the whole ship afloat. He is saying that there are countless activities being seamlessly orchestrated behind the scenes that each require mental coordination yet… you have no conscious say in them.

Workhorse
Let’s say you decide to go for a jog and then… go jogging. There are “big ticket” decisions that you consciously direct such as, dressing for the jog, stretching, choice of music, and finally… putting one foot in front of the other upon a determined course. Making these decisions is only the first step in a litany of underlying activities that actually bring them to life. You think, “That way! Jog!” Your subconscious thinks, “Neural impulses in the motor cortex and secondary motor cortices targeting the major and minor skeletal muscles of the legs, feet, arms, and core. Modification of heart rate and breath. Engage premotor cortex to convert sensory guidance into an actionable foot-placement objective for the motor cortex to execute. Blink every so often.” And all of this for only the first stride. Then, when the tire squeals to your left and your head rapidly pivots to view the possible threat? Right. That happens before you can consciously “decide” to turn and look. It’s your subconscious watching your back. Oh, and it’s time to start sweating.  You have to maintain a safe body temperature!

That was just the tip of the… ahem. That was just the beginning. Your subconscious is no slouch. It’s working day and night to keep things in order. Setting you up for success because, let’s face it, you are the boss. The executive. You shouldn’t have to worry about all of those small details. You have an important job to do making all of those “big ticket” decisions and fending off the outer world!

Smart
By now, the subconscious sounds like something akin to a computer’s processor. Some cold circuitry blindly executing on commands from an intelligent program or, in this case, conscious mind. But is it smart? This question has challenged the psychological community for more than 100 years. It has been most widely accepted that the subconscious does, in fact, act as a highly robust processing center for a variety of survival functions including fact retrieval, object recognition, and reenacting learned movements. These along with a host of other seemingly automated functions. Conversely, things like complex language processing and abstract mathematics have been believed to require the sophistication of conscious intelligence to process and perform. This notion, however, was challenged by Ran Hassin and a group of his colleagues in 2012.
In their study, Hassin and company applied a clever technique called Continuous Flash Suppression to deliver information into their participants’ minds without them becoming consciously aware of it. It’s a little Clockwork Orange-y, I know. Information was presented to one eye (such as a multi-step math equation) while the second eye was bombarded by a succession of brightly colored squares and, as a result, the participants had a lapse in conscious recognition of the information shown.  This lapse could last for up to several seconds.

As an example, the participants would be shown an equation like “9 – 3 – 4” in one eye with Continuous Flash Suppression. Then, while still in the “lapse” period (before consciously recognizing the equation), they would be clearly shown a target number (with no suppression). This target number would either be the correct answer to the equation (in this case, 2) or… an incorrect answer. Here is the kicker. The participants were significantly faster when reading the target number if it was the correct answer rather than the wrong answer. This shows that the equation was subconsciously solved before the participants were consciously aware of what they saw and certainly before they had a chance to consciously step through the math and solve it. They were already primed for the correct answer.

Phew. Science. Am I right? If you made it through all of that, you may be thinking, “OK, I have Rainman in my head running the show.” Or, Dustin Hoffman since (spoiler) Rainman was actually Tom Cruise. Regardless, there seems to be an awful lot of doing things and fast math problem-solving going on in there but are we still talking about mindless computing? Or, is there also a personality that is separate from mine? Is it intellectually smart? Is it aware of itself? Is it aware of me? Are we even comfortable with this?

Resourceful
To solve the final portion of this riddle, we turn to our dreams. While different people have different beliefs about where our dreams come from and the purpose that they serve, most everyone will agree that, to some extent, they are generated by the subconscious mind. To frame that a bit differently, your conscious mind is effectively “down for the count” while you are in REM sleep and dreaming. While you typically represent one character or a point-of-view within the dream, it is certainly not your conscious awareness that is putting forth the pristine virtual reality experience that surrounds you. When you walk around a dream corner, it is not your conscious decisions that populate the vast details of the scene that unfolds nor the story line or characters. All of these are courtesy of your subconscious.

While a popular video game like Call of Duty may take up to 100 people two years and a budget of millions of dollars to create… your subconscious can churn out four or five episodes each night with vastly superior detail and five senses worth of information to consume. Free of charge, I might add. Perhaps it shouldn’t be that surprising for a mind capable of 99 tasks for every 1 accomplished by the conscious mind but impressive nonetheless.

For what purpose though?

Communicative
Let’s say that you do have this independent self-reflecting genius trapped inside of you and hustling around the clock. How would it go about communicating with you? Without a doubt, it has an immense amount of information that would be worth sharing and could benefit you but, during your waking hours, you are state of constant stimulus inundation through your five senses. It’s information overload! The best opportunity for your subconscious to break through at these times is with intruding thoughts or maybe physical sensations. The things we refer to as intuition, instinct, or “gut feeling.” Meditation is a strategy to cut back on some of the sensory chatter in order to become grounded and tune in. From the perspective of your subconscious, success with this kind of waking-life communication is probably patchy at best. This is why… you guessed it!

Dreams are an opportunity inside of every 24 hour cycle for your subconscious to get your undivided attention. Sensory intake is limited, your body is paralyzed, and the executive function of your brain is suspended. Do I have your attention now? Through the medium of dreams, your subconscious can communicate to you, a captive audience, in every way imaginable.

This is what happens each and every night. Messages are received from the subconscious. While it may not be the only benefit or operational outcome of dreaming, messages from the genius inside of you are coming through. Messages from an aspect of your being that is far more in tune with your physical and emotional health than you are consciously. Far more in tune with the nuances of your environment and the people around you. Valuable information is being captured and aggregated every moment of every day and in these moments of dreaming, insights and notices are delivered for your benefit and the benefit of your friends and loved ones. And, make no mistake, even when the dreams are forgotten, they still benefit you. The information presented becomes much nearer to the surface than it was before. It becomes more prone to an intuitive “bubble up” or random insight during the day and in your time of need.

Independently Intelligent
This behavior is far too creative and sophisticated to be a mindless automation of the brain. Yet, if you still are not convinced of the self-reflecting independent personality of your subconscious, consider the people who you encounter in your dreams.

While some dream characters may be more akin to the scenery itself, there are others that are engaging. If you have not noticed before, keep an eye out for the ones that will go out of their way to speak with you or interact with you. They can take on any number of personalities and will do what they must to capture your attention. They will guide your focus. They will draw out emotions or retrieve memories. They will even speak to you in plain words. None of them are a product of your conscious decision making. They, like their surroundings, are agents of the subconscious and, if you listen to them, you will find them quite intellectual and independently aware.  When you experience this, you are then forced to acknowledge that just because the alarm clock goes off and the lights come on, they do not cease to exist.

Now would be a good time to say hello if you haven’t already. Perhaps a mental “high-five” is in order. The two of you are “in this thing” together and together you are great.