“If you are not taking responsibility for your state of consciousness [mind], you are not taking responsibility for life.” — Eckhart Tolle
It was the year 2010. It was exam time.
I was sitting in my college’s AC library. The atmosphere was intense and so was my focus.
“2 more chapters to go”, I said to myself.
“Hey, Raghu is very good at this subject”, a thought popped up.
“Yesterday he was roaming with Gopal?”, another thought.
“Gopal is the worst person I ever met, he bullied me multiple times.”
“I have to do something about him, else he will keep harassing me.”
“What he thinks of himself, who the hell is he.”
“I will show him, he is nothing in front of me.”
“I have to make a plan to take revenge.”
My body started burning. Suddenly I realized, I was sitting in an AC room and was studying intensely few minutes ago.
“Don’t go through life, grow through life.” — Eric Butterworth
We all have such experiences, we sit with a thought but end up doing something else.
Students sit to study, employees sit to work but we end up either spending our times gossiping or watching Youtube Shorts or Instagram Reels.
We hardly realize the difference between a focused and a lazy (relaxed) life. And thus, we end up living a lethargic life and fail to grow.
Technically we say focused mind means conscious mind, and loose mind is subconscious mind.
Let’s discuss these subconscious (loose) and conscious (focused) lives in more details!
What do we mean by Subconscious life ?
If at the end of your day, you end up saying :
- “Today i did not do what i wanted to do” or
- “I wasted a lot of time here and there”
- “Yaar (brother) i was not at all productive”
This is a fair chance that you had a subconscious day, by these i hope you have great idea what subconscious life is.
This means you have a loose control on your mind, or put it reverse your mind have strong control on you!
You are not taking decisions of your life, your mind is taking for you.
So little technically, Subconscious life means that we are not actively taking control of our decisions, our mind takes our decisions for ourselves and thus we end up feeling low or end up with low productivity.
And more technically,
Subconscious life is driven by our subconscious mind, which is the storehouse of past memories, experiences, desires, and our habitual patterns of thinking and responding to situations
In the above story, the thought came from the subconscious mind. The thoughts then took over the control and I was just a spectator of the horror movie it was presenting.
And that’s the difference.
What do we mean by Conscious life ?
On other hand, if we monitor our mind, regularly, what thoughts he is giving to me, do i need to act on this or not, then we can unblock the path for productive life.
We can become conscious of our actions! That is conscious life .
The conscious mind helps you to guide your thoughts and if the conscious mind is not conscious, the subconscious mind will take charge.
“The Conscious mind responds, but the subconscious mind reacts.”
The difference between to respond and to react is that a response is guided, but a reaction is not. To be successful, one should learn to respond as situations are dynamic and need different handling.
So, be conscious and activate your conscious mind. Watch your thoughts and uplift them.
What's Next :
More on this in the next parts to come, till then keep on monitoring your mind, see how it acts.
Good Reads
- If you want to know how to increase Sattva Guna in your life checkout these 4 tips for increasing Sattva Guna.
- And we have a wonderful article explaining why we should wake up early and how we can wake up early, check here Tips for waking up early in the Morning.
Disclaimer : This article is written, reviewed and revised by GitaQuest Volunteers, and contains life experiences to make them more relavant and relatable, if you have any concern write to us at [email protected] .
