Psychology | Self | Lifestyle | Mindfulness
My Unconscious Sings To Me
and I listen~
Our life is composed greatly from dreams, from the unconscious, and they must be brought into connection with action. They must be woven together. Anais Nin
Dreams are important for many reasons — including that they can help us compose our lives. We often are able to use our dreams to figure out what is going on in our unconscious — and then using that information to find the best ways, for each of us, to get our lives on OUR track.
But what do you do if you can’t remember your dreams? How can you reach into your unconscious for those messages?
We all dream, but many of us do not remember them after we wake up. Are there other ways we can learn what our unconsciousness has to tell us?
Yes. The “size” of our unconscious is not known and so it is safe to say that probably not all of it appears to us nightly. Dreams are not the only pathway that the unconscious uses to leave us messages.
Dreams, though, are THE popular topic because they are the path that most of us know and understand — and about which we seem to be the most curious.
But the unconscious uses many methods to make itself conscious. By learning about the other paths and paying attention to them — we can expand our knowledge of ourselves and our unconscious.
Some of these other ways are:
Daydreams
Self-talk
Free association
Meditation
Songs
Daydreams, self-talk, and free association are methods where we can choose to intentionally allow our unconscious to wander into our consciousness. And — as we are awake, we can track the thoughts, write them down, and contemplate where they are taking us and what they might mean.
Meditation is a path where we are usually asked to banish active thoughts. Yet some find that when they meditate they prefer to stay with what becomes conscious and follow those thoughts.
And songs…
Yes, your unconscious sings to you. It can take some figuring out how to use this path, but it is a fun way to learn what is going on at the unconscious level and bring it to consciousness.
Snippets of songs may come into your mind; tunes can appear with no words, or words can appear with no tunes. But you know all this material is from songs — songs you may not even know you still know!
In this day of the Internet, it is easy to find the lyrics and the melody. Then, like doing a puzzle or figuring out your dreams, you can sit with the information and follow this thread of your unconscious and weave it into your conscious life.
Delving into one’s unconscious can be fun — using whichever path works for you.
It could be beneficial to try several of the paths, as there is no one “correct” way to contemplate what your brain has in its storage.
What path[s] does your unconscious take?
I personally love all the ways my unconscious gives me information, but songs are among my favorites as I am awake and can listen to them even though they are not playing aloud.
When a song first appears, I don’t always pay attention to it as I love music, and songs seem always glued in my head — like earworms.
But there are days when I realize the same song keeps coming back — and repeats and repeats and repeats. Then I take note of it! [pun intended]
My recent song is this one:
No, I’m not in Wyoming, nor am I moving to Montana — but I am going to move — and it took this song running around my unconscious for a long while to make me realize that I am ready for the next move!
When I moved to where I am, I never intended to stay as long as did — but I came to like my neighbors and neighborhood until I no longer did. Times change, people move away, people move in, and this cycle repeats. As I was usually the one moving away, I never saw how neighborhoods changed because I was the neighbor moving on to a new neighborhood/city/state.
My unconscious was the first to figure this out, and my conscious awareness caught on after a while and mulled it over.
Yes, that conscious awareness said: It’s time to go!
I see now that the pandemic of 2020 helped create the idea my subconscious began singing to me — and my ability to listen and figure out what my unconscious was saying made it easier for me to think this all through on a conscious level!
I again want a big garden in my backyard. I want fruit trees in that space too! Container gardening is okay — but I now want to get back to plants in soil — not pots! I want to let my dog out to run without needing to put her on a leash and going to a safe running space.
Thank you brain for helping me figure all this out!
I love my brain and the way it thinks — and I’ve written about it a bit.
