MyongAhn Sunim: 0:14

Welcome back.

Dr. Ruben Lambert: 0:15

We're back again.

MyongAhn Sunim: 0:17

We are back again, guess who's back? Final episode. Can you explain in layman terms the difference between the subconscious and the conscious minds? Is there a way to train the subconscious mind? That's what's on the table today. I'm Myung An Sinim here with Dr Ruben Lambert. Welcome back those of you who are return listeners and welcome for the first time. If this is indeed your first time here, thank you for checking us out. Yes, you can read the description of who we are, what we do and what this podcast is all about.

Dr. Ruben Lambert: 0:54

Yes, Wait but take this journey with us, because you're going to learn a lot of new things. That's right.

MyongAhn Sunim: 1:01

Hopefully yes, or silly for entertainment purposes. So Fan Mail. This is our second episode of fan mail.

MyongAhn Sunim: 1:10

Now we have exciting it's, it's nice to see the audience participate in the things that we're saying here it is we really appreciate your feedback and your support, of course, yeah speaking of support, we have on the buzzsprout platform, which is where we host the podcast, an opportunity or a chance or don't miss a lifetime opportunity to uh support financially a couple bucks here and there. It helps to offset the cost of the platform, the processing, all of that Obviously not like we're going home with pocket money, but the idea is just to hopefully break even in terms of the production cost.

Dr. Ruben Lambert: 1:54

There's not enough there for our haircuts Weekly haircuts that we need for the podcast.

MyongAhn Sunim: 1:59

Yes, so this is the fan mail episode number two, our episode number. What are we? Seven, seven, lucky number seven. Yeah, so, second of the fan mail episodes, it's nice. It's nice because it sort of feels like interaction with the audience, with with the listeners. So, like I said, today's topic or the questions are can you explain in layman terms the difference between the subconscious and the conscious minds, and is there a way to train the subconscious mind? Now I think we have to tidy up a little bit the differences, since there are some, between sort of the Freudian, the Jungian, unconscious subconscious, whatever they call it, and the let's call it, the Zen divisions of self, if you will. Divisions of self, if you will, speaking of unconscious.

MyongAhn Sunim: 3:09

One of our listeners and a mutual friend of ours, rafael, had mentioned that he very much enjoys and looks forward to listening to the podcast, and what he noted is there is a beep and the beep is our countdown clock. We have a countdown clock that we've set for 45 minutes. Now if it runs down to 45 minutes, it starts beeping like an alarm clock would. So I usually pause it right before, and so you might hear a single beep and that's me stopping the alarm clock. Now, here's the question Speaking of the unconscious subconscious, and of course we have to bring in a little bit of here's the question Speaking of the unconscious subconscious, and of course we have to bring in a little bit of Pavlov into the conversation the beep and the salivation glands, right.

MyongAhn Sunim: 3:55

And so Raphael so interestingly pointed out. He said you know there's this beep and it's kind of like, oh no, I know the end is coming. You know they're going to go on for maybe another five or 10 minutes, but I know it's coming. So it's like I it wasn't sure how he feels about it it gives him like a warning signs, like okay, this is coming to an end and it's a little bit of you know, oh no, this is going to be over. So that's a sweet thing to say. Now, for those of you who are listening and have heard the podcast, it's interesting. I mean, now that I've dredged it up, everyone's going to notice the beep, and so the question is do we invest in a different type countdown clock or is it in fact a kind of thing? It's going to be a thing. Maybe, you know, for the podcast, if you hear the beep brace for the end, wipe your tears.

MyongAhn Sunim: 4:50

There will be another episode coming up, hopefully next Friday.

Dr. Ruben Lambert: 4:53

Yes, it's the end of a joyous, pleasurable time period, sort of like when you're a kid in a playground at school and then the teacher blows the whistle. You're like, oh, oh, shucks, it's over.

MyongAhn Sunim: 5:06

it is painful, but we have to learn to transition out of those moments, there there is a, there is a. See, here I am um off on a, off on a here we go but, that's sort of get off the exit.

Dr. Ruben Lambert: 5:19

We meander, we meander. Yeah, listen, there are u-turns that we can make, right so we can get back on track don't worry.

MyongAhn Sunim: 5:25

So, speaking of the timing and listening to that, uh, there are and I forget where this is, I want to say new guinea. Uh, children, school children are are trained, they're close to nature and so they're attuned. Maybe that's a better way. When a certain bird call is heard that's almost sort of what used to be like. Once the street lights turn on, you better be home, type of timing. Right, they use a specific bird call. When they hear the bird call, they're like uh-oh time to go home or you're going to get in trouble. They use a specific bird call to slow. When they hear the bird call, they're like, oh, time to go home, or, or you know, or you're going to get in trouble. So it's um, let's think of, let's think of the beeping as a bird call to say the end is.

MyongAhn Sunim: 6:14

I wonder if it's in my head.

Dr. Ruben Lambert: 6:15

I was like I wonder if it's a crow going cause I just line that crows actually have the intelligence of a five-year-old child that was super interesting and they were able to. They had this box and this, this stick there was food inside the box and they had to learn to create a hook and make tools and problem solving tools and things like that. And then the other thing too, that was very interesting is that they have a good memory, that they can actually hold a grudge. That's right.

MyongAhn Sunim: 6:38

So next time you see a crow, don't be careful, don't piss them off, don't throw things at it because they might attack you when you get out of the car one day. That's right, that was very interesting, so yeah, there's, there's something else, yeah, so beeping let's backtrack beeping sounds.

Dr. Ruben Lambert: 6:55

What should we associate the beeping with? Let's just do some. Let's do some conditioning right now, on the spot. Let's affect the unconscious of the whole public right now, when you hear this beep. Ladies and gentlemen, oh you'll smile. Coming to an end, oh you'll smile it'll come to an end, but I can't wait for next podcast.

MyongAhn Sunim: 7:13

Yes, beep podcast, beep podcast, every beep from here going forward every thing that you hear, you'll be thinking about the world and you just can't put it down.

MyongAhn Sunim: 7:25

That's right, when your alarm clock goes off in the morning, let that beep remind you, yes, one of the masters, if you will, in the Western tradition of the unconscious and dealing with the unconscious, obviously is Jung Jung. Yes, he had said that until you make your unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate. And it's a good sort of place, maybe, to jump off, because we have and and the audience, and you must forgive my ignorance of the western psychology. I, I know, just, you know, hold on a minute.

Dr. Ruben Lambert: 8:08

Let the record scratch here for a second, because I do want to give an anecdotal story really fast before you go down that route, because this is actually something that I learned.

MyongAhn Sunim: 8:16

This is going to take away my chance for humility. No, this is what I learned. This is what I learned.

Dr. Ruben Lambert: 8:19

Yes, this is what I learned in psychology was. The father of American psychology was called William James and famously he was giving a lecture at some university and a Buddhist monk walks in the room and what that lecture was known for and infamously written about was that at that moment he said you know what? I'm going to take a seat and you come up here and you give this lecture. So I think it is well known for those in the field of psychology that when it comes to the world of the mind, the Zen masters have been exploring this way before. Even modern psychology was even a thing. So go ahead, you can humble yourself now. But I just want to make that little note before you do that, for the whole audience to understand Right.

MyongAhn Sunim: 9:07

So we have the Freudian and the Jungian, obviously, the ideas of the subconscious, and so much has been written, and what I was making disclaimer about is these I don't know exactly the detailed divisions and subdivisions of consciousness and the psyche, the way it's presented to Western psychology, but I do feel that the Zen psychology has a little bit more detail, and so I think, before we dive into this topic well, it is part of the topic, frankly- Well, and Carl Jung actually was an avid researcher of Eastern philosophy.

Dr. Ruben Lambert: 9:55

I believe he wrote a book on the interpretation of Eastern philosophies from the psychological perspective. Right.

MyongAhn Sunim: 10:03

And so the thing worth kind of hinging on is this idea that he had viewed, from what I understand, viewed dream interpretation as the only way to kind of peek into the unconscious mind, and with the Freudian and Jungian principles seem almost that the unconscious or the subconscious, which one is the right way. Is it unconscious, subconscious? Do they have a preference? The iceberg?

Dr. Ruben Lambert: 10:31

When I'm really hungry and it's around lunchtime. I call it a subconscious, a subconscious Subconscious.

MyongAhn Sunim: 10:38

You consciously want to sub Subconsciously yes, yeah, but they seem to be these depository places, into which seems to me a big focus, and perhaps there's a parallel between Zen and that principle. All kind of dark things live, so they're repressed, the traumas, those things are kind of dark things live, so the repressed, the traumas, those things are kind of hidden over there, for self-preservation purposes perhaps. But there isn't a mention of joyous things being stacked over there, or at least not that I have seen. I think there's a big focus on the negative aspect of it and this kind of dark dungeon.

Dr. Ruben Lambert: 11:24

Yeah, I think, because a lot of freud's work was with defense mechanisms and so the unconscious was the repository for all the things that the uh conscious mind didn't have the capacity to hold and process and things of that nature. So yeah, there are real quick joke that some people say too. I've heard people talk about Freud and the unconscious and they're like oh. Freud's definition of the unconscious was that you're not aware of it. So if you're not aware of it, how the heck do you know it even exists?

MyongAhn Sunim: 11:57

Right.

Dr. Ruben Lambert: 11:57

Right, so that's just.

MyongAhn Sunim: 11:59

And I think this is why, perhaps in that story that you've mentioned, the way I tend to view western psychology versus zen psychology, if you will, is the western psychology shines the light at the person, but it's from the outside. There's a psychologist and they're they're shining light into the dark crevasses of the person, trying to find out what things to address, what things need addressing, traumas, etc. Etc. Patterns of behavior unbeknownst to the person, whereas in the Zen psychology we are trying to well, you know, fancily enlighten ourselves, but it's almost as if it were from within.

MyongAhn Sunim: 12:45

So if the light, the origin of the light, is internal and it radiates out, it brightens and enlightens all of those dark crevasses as the light kind of you know, in a sense, metaphorically speaking, is passing out and and this is where the and this is where I'm going to say the biggest difference is within the Jungian and Freudian, short of the psychologist pointing to things and short of dream interpretation, there is no access to what we would call in Zen, which is the storehouse consciousness. Yes, so let's do a little bit of dissection from the Zen perspective in terms of consciousnesses.

Dr. Ruben Lambert: 13:37

Let me get my mental scapula out.

MyongAhn Sunim: 13:39

Yes, so we have. Let's go down the list of, and there's some detailed differences when we get into the nitty gritty, but for the sake of a curriculum and for the sake of dissection, for dissection, for the sake of understanding, even try and tease apart the self in a way that we do. It's not for fun, it's so that we could understand each working gear in a sense and see how the whole thing interacts with one thing, with another. So we have eye consciousness and the way that we consider this. We have the organ of the eye itself. We have the object seen. Of course there's play of light and you know the frequency of the light that bounces back the color is that color that is rejected by the thing which bounces it back, blah, blah, blah. But so we have the organ of the eye. There's the three things. We have the organ of the eye, we have that which is being seen or perceived, and then the intermediary is the conscious consciousness.

Dr. Ruben Lambert: 14:50

Those two may contact right.

MyongAhn Sunim: 14:52

So when the the eye consciousness now is just like a camera, yes and so so in this breakdown there's no thought associated with it just reflects the the lens right is like the eye.

Dr. Ruben Lambert: 15:08

The lens of a camera is like the eye.

MyongAhn Sunim: 15:09

The lens purely takes in light right, that's the organ that's the organ so the eye consciousness takes in information, but it doesn't. It does no processing of the information. Then we have the same thing with the ear consciousness. So we have one eye consciousness, two ear consciousness, three, nose consciousness, four, mouth consciousness, five, body consciousness, and now we're getting to the more ephemeral oisik. Number six is a mind consciousness, then.

MyongAhn Sunim: 15:43

So if we look at it this way, the good way perhaps to explain it is are are cameras, the way that you have your surveillance of your home, and there's a TV screen, and on that TV screen all of that information is being projected or pulled into. That's your oishik, that's your conscious mind. And then we have number seven Sitting behind the monitor is that flippant thing we call ego, and it makes judgments, it likes what it sees, or hears, or tastes, or it doesn't like it, or it feels neutral about it. So this is our basic breakdown, in a sense, of the machinery of data collection, information, this vacuous, multi-ortifice thing that we are. Now, all this data goes somewhere, and we're not going to get into the software versus hardware discussion, right, but I think there's a, there are good metaphors in today's day and age, because I think we understand now about the cloud right I think just about everyone knows about the cloud.

Dr. Ruben Lambert: 16:59

So adiashik I see it many times is viewed as a similar to the cloud so now we have seven consciousnesses, seventh being the ego.

MyongAhn Sunim: 17:08

This is the the one that needs, uh, controlling, that needs directing. It has a particular mode of behavior that governs it and when left uncontrolled, it gets us into trouble. Runs rampant yes.

Dr. Ruben Lambert: 17:29

When the cats are not around, the mice come out to play.

MyongAhn Sunim: 17:31

It's part of time, and so we have then what we broadly would call aryashik, which is this, yeah, usually translated as storehouse consciousness, the storehouse consciousness.

Dr. Ruben Lambert: 17:46

Big warehouse consciousness.

MyongAhn Sunim: 17:46

Yeah, usually translated as storehouse consciousness. The storehouse consciousness, yes, Big warehouse consciousness, and it is sort of the unconscious of the Western psychology Right, or the subconscious. Now, within the Zen tradition, as we go through the stages of spiritual development, that which is believed to be beyond accessible from the Western standpoint becomes in fact accessible from the Zen standpoint. So we can this is a rather advanced state in terms of spiritual development, but we can in fact touch, if you will, make contact, if you will, with that part that we could call the storehouse consciousness or the unconscious mind.

Dr. Ruben Lambert: 18:44

I think science, western science, acknowledges some aspect of what you're saying Almost.

Dr. Ruben Lambert: 18:51

I mean, this is Freud's metaphor for the unconscious, I'm just going to borrow it.

Dr. Ruben Lambert: 18:56

But Western science understands the tip of the iceberg, let's say, when it comes to the unconscious, they don't delve as deep as people who truly dedicate their lives to the path of Zen.

Dr. Ruben Lambert: 19:11

Because if you look at things such as hypnosis or the concept of repressed memories and I just read a scientific headline recently and scientists are saying that they understand now that everything that you experience through your five senses is never lost, it it is all stored they would say, maybe the hippocampus. I would tell kids you want to be hip on campus, you need to work out your hippocampus. When I give a college uh lecture, but yeah, so and and and. Then from the realm of hypnosis, the hypnotists understand that when you put someone, when you put the conscious mind to rest or to actually you distract it with a side activity, you can enter the realm of the unconscious. And many hypnotists have reported and documented that they've been able to retrieve past memories from their clients that they have not been able to access right, and then with great detail many times all right, and, and they, they even go as far.

MyongAhn Sunim: 20:20

They have the, uh, past life regression. Is that what it's called? Sure, something?

Dr. Ruben Lambert: 20:26

yeah, then that, that, that it all depends, right, because then there's hypnotist and hypnotherapies and then there are people do past life regression, which is kind of like the rebellious camp of the hypnotist right.

Dr. Ruben Lambert: 20:38

But yes, yeah, you know, how far back do you take it? You know hypnotist will be like, yeah, we can take you back to your childhood and we can go over some past traumas and things like that. And then the past life regression. People will be like, oh, we can go further back than that, we can figure out if you're a clear patch or not?

MyongAhn Sunim: 20:56

Right.

Dr. Ruben Lambert: 20:57

But science does acknowledge the fact that there is some kind of storage when it comes to memories, and oftentimes there are outside interferences that prevent us from accessing it. It's not that a person doesn't have the memory, it's that we don't know where what file we put it on there. We don't know how to retrieve it so.

MyongAhn Sunim: 21:19

So, from from the zen viewpoint, what the problem is is problem of the storehouse. Consciousness is quiet. It stores things quietly, right? The seven consciousnesses that we've discussed are very loud. They're very loud. They're by nature ravenous of information around us. So any visual, auditory, olfactory, whatever physical stimuli is just gobbled up and so much noise goes on that it drowns out. What we could say is the silent kind of whispering of our unconscious mind yelling at the top of its lungs.

Dr. Ruben Lambert: 22:15

Actually, yeah, it's like a baby crying at a metallica concert. There you go here. It's dry, it might be crying, but it is drowned out by all the guitars and drums and all that right and, and so we we are, we are training in a sense ourselves to quiet ourselves.

MyongAhn Sunim: 22:34

For that very reason, one of one of the the reasons why we do meditation and things of that nature is to try and quiet down. And we have a natural experience of this when you're falling asleep and the these loud consciousnesses become subdued and quieter, quieter, quieter. There's almost this kind of we we cross. You know, you walk past and you maybe glance at your unconscious mind as you're going into sleep. Uh, various experiences are, are, are reported at that sweet time of of of when that takes place. So how to, how to get down into the unconscious mind? Obviously, without training one cannot, and so one seeks out a psychologist, a psychotherapist. I read years ago a very interesting book by James Hillman. He's a Jungian psychologist and if I butchered the title, forgive me. We've had 100 years of psychotherapy and the world's getting worse, I think that's what it was.

MyongAhn Sunim: 23:56

It was an interesting read, but it was one of those kind of transformative views on world, on life.

MyongAhn Sunim: 24:11

You know, this was like I said, this was a long while ago, but it offers to us, when we cannot access our deeper selves, let's call it that we reach out to others who can, because we have such blind spots when we're talking, when we're doing these patterns of behavior, patterns of thinking that are.

MyongAhn Sunim: 24:40

You know, we're sitting here and through the floorboards, this is our conscious world, our conscious mind, and through the floorboards, this is our conscious world, our conscious mind, and through the floorboards of this floor on which the conscious mind sits, as if we were in Delphi, and the oracles of Delphi are down there with their fumes of the unconscious, inhaling it, you know, just wafting through the floorboards, and sometimes we catch a whiff of it, and this is how our traumas and triggers kind of creep up or sort of waft out of the basement of the unconscious mind, out of the basement of the unconscious mind, and they trigger a behavior that is completely not unknown to us. Right, and, and it's helpful to have somebody who points it out and says well, did you see how you did x, y and z and people usually say oh wow, I didn't even notice that because they're so caught up in their own story that's weaving in their mind.

Dr. Ruben Lambert: 25:41

Yeah, that's a good point. It's sort of like a pot with so many ingredients inside of it. If you let it sit there and settle, you only see the liquid, right. But when you stir the pot and you start to shake it, then the things, the sustenance that's there, comes to the surface.

Dr. Ruben Lambert: 25:56

And so many times people are acting out in a manner in which they're not aware as to what were the fumes or what was the fire, what was it that was the driving force behind their actions? And so some of these therapies are to make yourself aware of, well, what are the things that you're storing in the closet. And there's so many ways in which, again, zen can go very deep, but psychology tries to point out these things. And it's not as deep, but just on a very basic premise. For example, when there's some cognitive dissonance.

Dr. Ruben Lambert: 26:28

Right, where the things that you're saying doesn't match your body language, let's say, for example, where a person might be completely uncomfortable in a social situation, and then the body is signaling that to the world. Right, their arms are crossed or their facial expressions are very heavily mitigated. Right, they're not showing you all these wide range of eye movements and facial movements. And then you ask a kid or an adult, you're like hey, how do you feel? You feel comfortable. And they're like the conch. The mouth is saying yes, right, but then the body is saying there's that disconnect, right. So then this is where you have to merge those two worlds, the conscious and maybe the deeper level of conscious, to help that person line things up, line their, their thoughts with their emotions and their actions, and and remove that interference we are.

MyongAhn Sunim: 27:17

We are that sort of amalgamation of things. We're like this emulsion of all these different consciousnesses and it's difficult to pick out just where the information is pouring in from. Sometimes I talk about it in terms of streams pouring into one, and you can't tell which stream, what water Once it pours into one, and you can't tell which stream what water once it pours into one area. You can't tell this water's from the eye consciousness.

MyongAhn Sunim: 27:45

This water's from the nose consciousness, and even more so than this water, this stream of thought is from fantasizing about the future or from some repressed past things, et cetera, et cetera. Having said that, though, I do think and and this might be maybe controversial, I don't know I do think that there are certain things that ought not be tended to. It's like the sweater that you've been wearing right, and it's got this hanging string, and if a psychotherapist or a psychologist or somebody decides to tug on it, there is, I think, a possibility of pulling too much, too much too much and you unravel the whole thing, and there is a reason why this compartmentalization happens.

MyongAhn Sunim: 28:49

There's a reason why our mind works the way it works. Some things are not intended to be dredged up. Sometimes we need to face forward focus on the forward facing as opposed to the backwards.

MyongAhn Sunim: 29:08

Here and now we can begin to discern when these past patterns are kind of coming into this here and now and informing me. And if we're cautious we could say wait a minute, just because I'm having this thought that I should do such and such thing. You know, I could call to question the validity of that thought and decide whether is it in fact something that I want to do or is it in fact something that I've just been doing. And this is where that wakefulness business comes back.

Dr. Ruben Lambert: 29:49

We've talked about it before One of the prior episodes.

MyongAhn Sunim: 29:51

yeah, We've talked about it before. It is a significant element of it.

Dr. Ruben Lambert: 29:56

I think there's a wisdom to be held in those moments when you're working with somebody and there might be a big difference between a therapist who's more green and less experienced versus someone who's more cultured and more mature in their practice. Or, yeah, you might learn in school like bring everything from the unconscious out to the surface, and then you're just tugging on those strings and the person is not even ready to confront those fearful things or those traumatic memories, right, and so you might be doing more harm than good at that moment.

MyongAhn Sunim: 30:25

Is there such a thing as re-traumatization?

Dr. Ruben Lambert: 30:30

Anytime you're doing work with people that have PTSD post-traumatic stress disorder you always have to prep them and let them know that the lingo is basically you're probably going to feel worse before you feel better. Right, because if you're going to do some experiential therapy exposure, I'm sorry, exposure therapy which is basically confronting your fears, naturally if you have a fear association with, let's say, loud noises or snakes, and you're going to show them a snake right in the basic premises, you want to reverse the conditioning right, you want them to be exposed to that uh snake and have no harm come to them so they can break that. That chain, that link between snakes will harm me. Now there's going to be new information that's going to be engraved in the brain where it's like okay, for the fast 20 minutes I've stared at the snake and nothing has happened, so I can now move on to move on and feel as though, well, maybe it is safe to to be around the snake it's.

Dr. Ruben Lambert: 31:24

Maybe it's not every snake that I see is going to bite me and kill me. But throughout that process, yes, we have to inform people and let them know that it might be something that's gonna rev up your engine, get your heart rate going, restoration rate going, and then people that do this kind of work might have to have a longer session, because then at the end you have to kind of bring them back to baseline right, bring them back to balance right. So, yeah, you have to prep them. Yeah, you have to. That's the first thing.

MyongAhn Sunim: 31:52

And again, this is a you know, zen meditation techniques, breathing techniques, breathing techniques. Right, we have somatic therapies where you use your body to trigger, to circumvent, if you will, almost a nervous system response. And we do so much Zen work in terms of meditation and breathing exercise and things of that nature. When you consider the fundamental Buddhist teachings of the Four Noble Truths, life is filled with suffering. Suffering is from the time of birth to the time of death, and death is not an escape or we're reborn over and over again.

MyongAhn Sunim: 32:42

And it's caused by X, y and Z. It's pretty pessimistic. And when we look at this reality, we need meditation practice. The meditation practice is the coping mechanism for coping with realities of life. We are going to face the realities of life. We are going to face the truth of what life is, not our imagined fairy tale, and this isn't to say that there isn't joy and beauty in life. It appears pessimistic, but it's things that have been avoided and things we don't like to think about, you know. And so what we are living in is a constant state of perpetuating of our ignorance and deception and self deception and delusion, et cetera. So meditation practices are kind of it's the exposure. It's the exposure therapy of life.

Dr. Ruben Lambert: 33:34

There's your crisis.

MyongAhn Sunim: 33:35

There's your trauma.

Dr. Ruben Lambert: 33:36

Delving right into the heart of things.

MyongAhn Sunim: 33:38

Yes, things are going to happen, happen. Here is your coping mechanism, here's your coping technique do your breathing, you do your meditation, your things, and then, when life happens, use them and and frequently what what happens is people come to meditation and they sit down and they kind of misunderstand maybe that point needs to be pointed out is your meditation practice is not so much depending on the level, but not so much for your time on the cushion, but as more so for the time off the cushion, when life presents its hardships, when there's difficulties. That's when you cash in your meditation practice. 100 I have uh, I have a uh, I have a a poem.

Dr. Ruben Lambert: 34:30

If, if, um, if the audience, uh, would, would the audience I'm gonna speak on behalf of the audience and say go for it okay, so it it speaks to the thing.

MyongAhn Sunim: 34:41

I've written this uh again very long time ago, but it's uh, it speaks to the topic, and so I I was reminded my favorite one was the beast of time.

Dr. Ruben Lambert: 34:53

It's that one time. No, this is called reanimation. Another day then yes, reanimation.

MyongAhn Sunim: 34:59

I have kicked in the padlocked gates of the caracums of my psyche. I have exhumed the deeply dug graves of my personal angels and demons. None that were found were dead, just waiting. Now my demons and angels dance on the graves in the ecstatic orgy of life, and it's sort of.

Dr. Ruben Lambert: 35:27

That's nice.

MyongAhn Sunim: 35:28

It's sort of. I like that ending it sort of does the Jungian thing right, and Freud has that same thing. It's the idea of that which is not addressed. Knoweth not the passage of time, kind of situation. Yes, there are absolutely things that.

Dr. Ruben Lambert: 35:50

Unresolved grief does not know the passage of time.

MyongAhn Sunim: 35:56

And this really is true, and this really is true. And if the triggers happen, and if that perfect storm happens, it's almost magical how a thing could come up from the basement of that mind. And so, on the account of that, let's speak a little bit to the question is there a way to train the subconscious mind and we won't be discussing Manchurian candidates and the subconscious and the subliminal trigger words and things, which is a you know, interestingly enough, my aunt, post-second World War, got a dog.

MyongAhn Sunim: 36:49

I've never met the dog, but I was told the stories of it. A beautiful German shepherd, but it was trained by Nazis and it was specifically trained to attack children. Horrid as it may be and it was it had a trigger word right and and it's. It is kind of information deposited into the unconscious mind and then you have the key that unlocks and makes this it. It's, it's. It's the same mechanism that a trigger which dredges up from the basement of the mind the traumatizing experience right so it's the same mechanism.

MyongAhn Sunim: 37:35

So we know that this principle of training the subconscious, if you will and we're going to get into that in a bit is and has been exploited.

Dr. Ruben Lambert: 37:47

Sure.

MyongAhn Sunim: 37:48

But we always seem to view it in these kind of means of military applications and espionage and things of that nature, applications and, you know, espionage and things of that nature. But we forget that. If in fact that is a thing, why can't we do the same thing for the good? Why does it have to be so kind of dark and shady and, you know, negative in nature, if we can? And so the way we cannot directly train the unconscious mind, that's so let's get that out of the way. The way that it's done is we've, we've, we've broken down the consciousnesses down to the seventh consciousness. This is stuff that is accessible to us. This is the conscious, aware state. Well, awareness is an optional element of it, but this is the consciousness, and the consciousness is that which makes impact against our conscious minds, namely that which we like or that which we dislike, and the gradient of that is that which we love or that which we hate. But, simply put, that which we like makes impact against our senses. We note it.

MyongAhn Sunim: 39:11

We notice it. We make a mental note, to varying degrees, that which we hate or dislike same thing it impacts against us. That which is sort of meh, as the kids would call it, it makes no impact is not stored in the basement Because it has not made, it didn't qualify in a sense. And so what we get in terms of this step-by-step process is our conscious mind interacting with the world makes. Now, this is gonna complicate things a little bit, but the way that we make decisions about what we like and dislike is informed by our karma, right. So it is informed by our prior stuff in the basement to a large degree. But that which we like or dislike, that which we interact, that which we note and take note of and ingest into our conscious mind ingest into our conscious mind gets then deposited into what we call hamjangsik, which is now subdivision of that which we would call, from the Western standpoint, the unconscious. So now we're getting into layers of the unconscious A room inside of a building.

Dr. Ruben Lambert: 40:35

Right.

MyongAhn Sunim: 40:40

So it's a kind of lasagna cake type of thing situation, right, if you wanna think of it in those terms, and I don't know that there is a parallel in Western psychology to this element. I think we have the conscious and then there's unconscious, and it's this duality and the interaction of those two, but, from the Zen perspective, the things that make their way into the Hamjangsik. Hamjangsik then deposits further, deeper into Muishik, right? So these terms are not of any really you know, importance, because they're still sometimes they go by different names. So, but the point is that there are layers and we have. So the way to train your subconscious, as the listener kind of said. Is there a way to train the subconscious mind? The answer is not directly. So how then do we in fact train the subconscious mind, if you will? Well, the things that we do, like I said, are deposited into this first sublayer.

Dr. Ruben Lambert: 41:55

The way that we really drive it down deep into the, the subconscious mind, is by repetition I can see now, if, if the action or the skill in which you want to get deeper into your basement, let's say or to into your own conscious, like a nail, then I'd say repetition is the what Hammering of that nail getting it deeper and deeper and deeper in there.

MyongAhn Sunim: 42:24

Yeah, so that is the way that we drive it deeper into the unconscious mind, via repetition. This is the way to train the unconscious mind. We drain it into the point of what we then call habit, the habitual behaviors, et cetera, et cetera. Those can be trained by repetition. And so now we have this interaction of conscious mind making the conscious effort and the conscious decision to want to somehow train ourselves, alter maybe our perspective, whatever may be. What do you do? You then have to create for yourself a what perhaps a psychologist would call a therapeutic goal or therapeutic. Uh yeah, what do you call that?

Dr. Ruben Lambert: 43:14

again description oh yes, description.

MyongAhn Sunim: 43:17

You know, and, and so you, if you want to train your subconscious, as the question is, this is what you do. You make a plan and that plan you love the podcast.

Dr. Ruben Lambert: 43:31

sorry, just practicing my hypnotherapy skills Very good.

MyongAhn Sunim: 43:36

So you make a plan and you have to. You know, we know these certain things In Zen, we have these numbers. You know when you pray, or whatever. Three, seven, right, 21. And psychology talks about 21 days needed to start a habit, right to start a habit.

Dr. Ruben Lambert: 43:54

To then solidify it, 90 to solidify or 100, you could say so this is how we train our unconscious mind.

MyongAhn Sunim: 44:01

if you will, you make a conscious decision about it. There's no training the unconscious mind directly. It's unconscious right, Right.

Dr. Ruben Lambert: 44:10

The doorway is your conscious mind.

MyongAhn Sunim: 44:11

You start with your conscious mind, you make the decision. You make for yourself a plan, a schedule of whatever it is that you're trying to and this is true with anything we think of only like exercise and eating, but no psychological patterns of behavior. If you want to detox from your severe addiction to phone or gaming or whatever it may be, you make a plan. You stick to that plan as if it was the holy word of God, and it is because you created it.

MyongAhn Sunim: 44:44

You're the God of this, and we've talked about this in prior episode, the need for, when we talked about self-love, I believe I had mentioned respecting oneself. You respect yourself in a way that, if we think of our teachers, or our you know the disciple-master relationship, or our schools or our parents, you respect them and so you adhere to their directions out of respect hopefully it's not out of fear. Right, respect and fear are different. Frankly, they're confused. But so you, you, you honor that. You respect their, their, their willingness and and their direction to improve your life, whatever, whatever. And it's in the same way when you make yourself a plan and you make yourself a goal, you respect it the way you would respect it from whatever highest authority in your life that you can imagine. There be.

Dr. Ruben Lambert: 45:45

That's why we say the schedule becomes your master or your teacher. Yes, right, yeah.

MyongAhn Sunim: 45:51

And so you do that, you implement it and it seeps, the way that you kind of water plants, you water the soil. This is the conscious mind. The water seeps down into the soil but then gets uptake by the root system and then it pumps up into the crown, into the rest of the tree or the plant or whatever it is, and so then it becomes kind of it comes out in a sense, and this is the pattern of transforming our unconscious mind. Same thing you consciously water it, you let for that water to seep in, get absorbed by the roots of the unconscious mind, and then that comes up as it does. This osmosis, kind of pumping of the water from the root system up into the crown, is what happens to us on a day-to-day basis.

MyongAhn Sunim: 46:52

Anyway. This is how we are informed by the unconscious mind. Yes, unbeknownst to us, but we are, it governs us. How we are informed by the unconscious mind, yes, unbeknownst to us, but we are, it governs us, but we are. And then, as jung said, you know, you, you, you call it fate, you call it whatever, but it's, it's, uh, whether there's self-justification that takes place or just complete ignorance of why and we see this all the time with children, but we see this with adults. Oh, you shouldn't do that, I know I shouldn't do that. Why did you do it? I don't know, they don't know why I did it, but I don't know why. And when we understand the dynamics, when we understand these principles, it's helpful because now we can know oh, did you do it? Yes, why I wasn't aware of it. And that absence of awareness allowed for these things that dredged up, maybe to inform my actions, to sort of almost an invasion of my intention.

Dr. Ruben Lambert: 48:04

Yes, and then that prevents you Then this links back to a prior podcast from being able to create headspace because you didn't catch it. Because you didn't catch it, so you cannot cleave the connection, the old tether that bound you to a reaction that was fueled by past experiences. Now you can't see it and cleave it and then formulate a different direction or a different pathway to go in.

MyongAhn Sunim: 48:32

Yeah, we call that kojong kwanyeom. Kojong kwanyeom, this kind of stuckness in a paradigm and a perspective and a way of thinking. And again, we could do this as a self-exercise, be cautious in selecting from the library of past experiences as an informant of what the action right now is going to be. And again, we have to understand the dynamic and the principle of it is the principle of it is necessary. If I was bitten by that snake that you mentioned, then I have grounds to be cautious about the snake, right. But then there's also in one of the sutras, the story of a coiled rope, that a person in the darkness stumbles upon a coiled rope and thinks it's snake. And when we have traumas and when we have things we are quick to call a snake everything that appears like a snake that appears to be as a snake.

Dr. Ruben Lambert: 49:46

Resembles a snake, and so we have to have some way for us and we respond to it in the same manner each time that you would to a snake. So there's absolutely no freedom for that individual who's suffering this kind of traumatic trigger response. It is a phantom and trauma haunts in that way.

Dr. Ruben Lambert: 50:01

It's horrible it literally transforms a memory into a phantom that plagues you and pursues you and grants you no peace. It can be something that seeps up to the surface on a day-to-day basis, whether you're at work, driving to work or interacting with a loved one, or going to sleep at night yeah, and it robs, and it robs.

MyongAhn Sunim: 50:21

It's a past that robs you of, I want to say the future, but it you know if we're going to go, zen, pure zen on this. The past no longer exists, the future doesn't exist yet, right? So what it does rob you of is the present moment. The past has the capacity to rob you of the here and now, and so then we don't allow ourselves, or we we're incapable of experiencing a joy on the account of a phantom, of a, of a uh, I mean, that could be a beautiful necklace or pearl necklace or what have you that co coiled rope. But if you're haunted by the ghouls and the ghosts and of your snake experience, then you're going to see it as a snake and react to it as a snake, and it will steal your present and, of course, it will also prevent you from forward movement. So if you imagine that I'm going to go and there's going to be snakes, for more movement.

MyongAhn Sunim: 51:17

So if you imagine that I'm going to go and there's going to be snakes, you made an assumption of it and it robs you of that also.

Dr. Ruben Lambert: 51:23

So sometimes I give this example when a person experiences their past memories as a trauma, basically they're breathing life into that memory and making it as though it is an actual, real experience in the here and now. There's actually no difference. A person who, let's say, was part of 9-11 in New York City and they experienced the Twin Towers collapsing and they made an association between high-rise towers and death. The next time that they see a high-rise tower, they will re-experience that past memory and their heart rate will go up, their respiration rate will go up. They will re-experience that past memory and their heart rate will go up. Their respiration rate will go up, they'll start to sweat, they'll go into a panic and a fear, as if they were truly living. Actually, in their mind, there's no difference at that very moment between what they lived and what they're living at that very moment.

Dr. Ruben Lambert: 52:13

And so what oftentimes will work is to go back into those past memories and transform them so that you can distance yourself from them and understand that memories are not facts. Memories are not active at this present moment, and I like to tell people if you can transform them into a museum because, as we've said and I've heard, heard you say this the past is the museum of your life. So think about a museum. If you visit the museum of natural history, you can see dinosaurs and woolly mammoths and snakes and any animal that is fearful.

Dr. Ruben Lambert: 52:45

You can go back, you can touch it, you can examine it. They're not going to get you until you're able to transform that traumatic experience into just a past memory that is no longer alive at this present moment. It is very difficult and even dangerous for a person with trauma to go back there, because they relive it yeah yeah and then.

MyongAhn Sunim: 53:10

So that's, that's our summarize, maybe our our episode today. Yes, you can deposit things into your subconscious or your unconscious mind. You do so through conscious effort and sustained effort and practice and in that way you can change that. This is the See, there's the element in in zen psychology. You cannot erase your karma of the past, but what you can do is you could cover it up with new. And this is where the emphasis on that sort of beginner's mind or clear your mind or all those cliche terms are pointing to is the fact that we are here right now and in the here, right now, we have the opportunity to rewrite as we're going forward, but you're not rewriting the past, but you're not rewriting the past.

MyongAhn Sunim: 54:15

You're writing into the present moment, which then gets deposited into your past. Right, as opposed to sort of this rowing like the rowboat idea. Right, you're looking backwards, you're rowing to propel yourself forwards, but you can't see where you're going, kind of thing. Get a kayak, turn it around. You could look forward, you know, and not necessarily, because forward is the momentum of life, this is the stream flows forward and, of course, there's a balance.

MyongAhn Sunim: 54:50

There's so much more that we could talk about, so many nuanced elements of this topic that I hope our audience understands that we could only get so much done even though the beep already has gone. Yeah, so thank you, those of you who are listening, thank you those of you who are suggesting these topics. It in fact makes our life easier In a sense. We don't have to come up with a topic and and again it. There's a sense of interaction almost I don't know who this particular listener is, that that presented this question. We thank you for it. We hope that we were able to shed some light on it.

MyongAhn Sunim: 55:41

Sometimes our perspectives are going to vary differently, not necessarily that Dr Lambert is a Dr Lambert, but is also a Musang Sinim, and so sometimes I push him to present a psychological perspective as the doctor. From that point of view, obviously his understanding, his training is in these two worlds. But we kind of play a Shakespearean thing up here to a certain degree. He speaks from the psychological element and I speak from the Zen, but there's overlaps and I speak from the Zen, but there's overlaps. The point being is there's always so much more that we could talk about these topics. We thank you for all of them. Until then, take care of yourselves and each other.

Dr. Ruben Lambert: 56:31

Thank you, please subscribe and like and if you like what you hear, make sure you pass it on to somebody else so that they can enjoy our wonderful podcast also. And you can follow me for more positive information on psychology wellness and stress management. You can follow me on instagram at wisdom spring wellness or you can find me on youtube at wisdom spring wellness also. Thank you very much.