Well, that was quite a tangent! I leave this thread alone for a few hours...
Anyway, it was interesting none-the-less. Here's my thoughts on sub-conscious vs. unconscious. I don't think I disagree with you Flow - its probably mostly a semantics issue.
I don't see us as having two minds, one that is conscious and one that is subconscious. And I don't think you can influence that "sub"conscious part of your mind with "sub"liminal messages or anything like that (as Dali's article seemed to be addressing).
Here's what I do think, and what I was referring to in my original post about indifference: There are things that go on in me (call them what you want - behavior patterns, fixed action patterns, social programming, etc), that I am not totally conscious of until after they happen.
Some of these patterns are very simple - ie if you watch someone get kicked hard in the nuts, you will have a visceral wincing reaction to it, and only after your reaction can you think about it and decide whether you are going to laugh, continue wincing, get angry, try to go help the guy etc.
I think there are similar types of patterns that are much much more subtle and complex. A classic example would be someone who is obese because they binge, because they have negative emotions, and at some point along the way, they learned that eating somehow helps them deal with their negative emotions. They may be actually picking up the spoon and digging into the gallon of ice cream "consciously," but the behavior pattern that led them to do that over and over again is operating on a less-than-conscious level. Even if they go see a therapist who tells them that they are bingeing because they use it to treat their negative emotions, the conscious awareness of their behavior pattern doesn't usually stop that pattern and those motivations. Only hard work to address the basic underlying negative emotions will allow them to also stop bingeing.
So, from my original post in this thread:
To me this seems like it can't just be a purely conscious process, but instead has to be part of a process that incorporates both conscious and sub-conscious minds. For me it has been pretty easy to get the conscious understanding of all this stuff, but the hard part is the subconscious part, since you can't force that.
What I meant is that I need to dig into my unconscious behavior patterns, contemplate why they are there, what purpose they serve, and then accept them for what they are. I can't force those patterns - they happen on their own, and I have to observe them and analyze them before I can accept them.
Just like an obese person might dig deep to really find out why they have negative emotions that they choose to address by bingeing. As they go through this process, they find the underlying causes, and then work on them, and they might binge less and less until one day they binge for the last time and they have replaced that pattern with a more effective one.
In your first post in response to my original post you said:
You will allow whatever comes up to be there and have access to a bigger perspective and go about your life without wallowing in apathy.
That seems like a great perspective on indifference 2.0, and it also seems to describe the process that I was referring to:
Realize what my patterns are that aren't serving me the way I want them to.
Allow them to be there and see what they are accomplishing for me. (Stop fighting my inner demons so that we get on the same side.)
Get a bigger perspective and go about my life without wallowing in the same patterns over and over again.
You put it nicely again in this quote:
The more you get used to allowing everything to be there as it is, even the stuff you have been repressing deep down because it's way too painful, the more "indifferent" you get to looking at that programming and realizing you might not like all of it (but increasing understanding that it doesn't mean you are broken and in fact was installed for a positive reason) you will see all of it.
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