The conscious, unconscious and the subconscious mind

To start with let me explain what made me write this post. I dream a lot. Sometimes I dream almost everyday and more than one dream in a single night! And these days I guess it is the dream season for me. I started thinking about why do we dream and do they mean anything?

My exploration on dreams lead me to Sigmund Freud's research, different states of sleep, and the various states of mind - the conscious, unconscious, and the subconscious mind. While I am still performing my analysis on these topics, I saw a movie today which dealt with schizophrenia. What are the odds?

I just realized that I deleted a chain email which said I will confront bad luck if I do not forward it to a 1000 people. All these incidents sounded a little scary as the movie was, so I thought let me finish writing this, delete the document from my hard disk and forget about these terms forever :)

Starting with the conscious mind, it is definitely not our true self. We consciously try not to hurt people or do something wrong even though in some situations we have a strong urge to do so. Sometimes or may be in many cases we do not express our true feelings to others either because we are scared of the consequences or are aware of the realistic world.

The term subconscious as it sounds is not a complete opposite of conscious. What ever we do in our subconscious state is what we would like to do. But this word is misused as they say that the person may not be guilty as he/she may have done something in their subconscious state.

We all have our own fantasies, insecurities, and lot of other stuff going on in our minds which we do not express always. But at times we open up, we loose patience leading a hypocritical life, may be just for a moment and I guess those are our subconscious deeds.

Coming to the unconscious mind, this is the complicated state of all. This is something which we are not aware of about ourselves. It is cultivated by our surroundings and our brought up.

My perception - sometimes when we strongly believe on doing something and all the facts and people around us support that decision, somewhere something in you says not to do it, an inner voice may be. That is the unconscious mind talking. The voice is a good one in certain people and not so good in others. One should see Ram Gopal Varma’s movies to get a better picture of the scary unconscious minds ;-)

This is my theory of the different states of mind. I have to relate this to my dreams and do a content analysis. Stay tuned for the report!

The view from my kitchen window

My kitchen window has a beautiful view. For a while now I have looked outside several times but hardly paid attention to the beauty of the scene lying ahead. My three year old started school this September. I struggle every morning preparing breakfast, packing lunch, getting him ready, and sending him to school all in 45 minutes time. I don’t have enough time to relish my morning coffee.

One morning, the last week of September I guess, I woke up thinking that it is another morning with the same routine. I wanted some fresh air and opened up the window. It was 8.00am. One look out of my window changed everything. The golden hue of the Sun peeking over the tree in my front yard on the wall next to the window was so beautiful. It was a calm and pleasant morning. A lush green lawn with the serenity of a landscape, the freshness in the air and the cold breeze awakened my spirits.

I lived in this house for almost two years now. But it felt like a new revelation to me. I made it a point to open the window first thing I entered the kitchen everyday. I never liked cooking and cleaning dishes. But now I don’t mind so much as I have some thing great to look at while doing so. The scene changes everyday with the changing seasons. Some times it is bright and sunny; some times it is foggy or cloudy.

Some changes are very gradual and yet other things happen in just a few days. With the approach of fall, I started looking every morning for the changing colors of leaves. The slow rustle of the fallen leaves with a cold breeze is marvelous. The morning’s delight, birds perching, squirrels going up and down the tree, it is a sheer joy to see.

As I see the leaves fall it felt so nice, a few yellow leaves here and there on the green lawn. But with in a couple of days the lawn gets filled with leaves, it looks so crowded. I thought that my mood swings the same way! Some time the days are just so pleasant and happy. But things around me, the happenings in my life, start bothering me and my mind becomes crowded like my lawn. But then my gardener came and cleaned up the rubble. Now I have a clean lawn again.

The lesson learnt is no matter how bad our minds get clogged with lots of things there will be some thing or some one like my gardener who will help clean it up and make it all nice and beautiful again. All said and done life is beautiful. We need to stop and look at it to enjoy its beauty!

Love at first sight

Do you believe in “Love at first sight”? Well, people who know me may say that how will I know? I had an arranged marriage and fell in love after I got engaged! I have not seen any of my friends who had “Love at first sight” either. But I do have friends who were in love at first and then got married. Some of them had loved some one and married a different person for various reasons.

Now, I can understand the feeling where you see some one, get attracted, make friendship, know them for a while and then decide to spend your life with them. But, love at first sight? I mean the meaning of love is different from what you feel by interacting or just seeing a person the very first time. My opinion is that crush or infatuation is often mistaken for love at first sight.

Come to think of it, people who claim to have had love at first sight are couples whose love succeeded. If it did not they would say it was just a crush and move on. But the truth is that the feeling when you see a person for the first time is a mere physical attraction, infatuation or some thing like that which blossoms into love as the relationship grows.

Love at first sight is like looking at an outfit in a store and feeling that it would look great on you. But it may actually look stunning on the mannequin and may not fit you. Assuming I fell in love with this dress and now that does not fit me, or may be it does not look as stunning on me as it looked on that skinny and tall Barbie doll mannequin. Now what? I get a little disappointed and take it out and leave it. I think it is the same with people too. We may think it is love at first sight but they might not be a perfect match.

My next question is if I had love at first sight should I do what ever it takes to have that person? Sounds reasonable, one should try to make their dreams come true. But what if the other person does not like me? Should I go the extent to shake his/her life to achieve my love? How does it work? I have seen several movies where the guy who is said to fall in love with a girl makes several attempts, gets beaten if necessary for the girl. OK, now the sympathy factor kicks in and the girl falls for this guy.

But you are what you are. Even if you change your attitude a little bit or to a great extent to get the girl or the guy, you get back to your self after some time. Then what? Incompatibility leads to misunderstandings, frustrations etc. So, I guess before diving into all this love mania one should practically think if the other person will suit him/her to have a peaceful life. Life goes on. It does not stop because you did not get the one you liked. You will eventually get some one to be with. Remember Yash Chopra’s movie “Dil Tho Pagal Hai” – Some one some where is made for you!