Subliminal messages do not require hypnosis to affect individuals. Discipline can be obtained through self-induced suggestions.
- What are subliminals?
- How do Subliminals Work?
- How to “load” your subconscious mind
- Your subconscious mind and how it works
- How Our Subconscious Minds Control Us
- How was Subliminal Effectiveness Proven..?
- Legal issues and Subliminals
- HOW DOES SUBLIMINAL PROGRAMMING WORK?
- How Subliminals can Help You…
- How Subliminals are like Hypnosis
- How to write your own good subliminal messages
- Example of using your own subliminal messages
- How are Subliminals similar to BWE?
- Comment on this Article
What are subliminals?
Subliminals are an amazing technology for breaking negative habits and replacing them with new ones, easily and quickly. Subliminals allow you to choose the behaviors you’d like to change, identify the underlying attitudes which give rise to those behaviors, and replace those attitudes with ones that support the new habit you want to have.
How do Subliminals Work?
Traditional subliminal communications are simple messages placed at regular, short intervals of an audio/visual information signal which can directly affect the subconscious mind. Since they are too subtle or below the level of conscious awareness you cannot hear or understand them. Because you do not consciously hear the communications your conscious mind cannot reject the message. {Note: Subliminal suggestion does not represent the mind control potential of psychotronics such as the “psychological warfare” (e.g. How weather warfare technology is also used for psychological warfare) technology used in the Gulf War.}
Everyone has heard stories of how enterprising advertising executives have flashed phrases like “You are thirsty” or “Eat popcorn” on movie screens to increase refreshment sales during the golden years of cinema. Today, movie producers, with the help of psychologists, realize that the big screen itself with high-definition LED technology is more than adequate at burning impulse images into the audience retina.
In the golden years, some department stores used the subliminal audio message “I am honest, I will not steal” to reduce shoplifting. Store entertainment networks these days are far more subtle at increasing impulse buys while the corporate office passes whatever their losses to their customers and tax write offs.
There is always a great public outcry when these practices are discovered. Why? Why did the Civil Liberties Union and even the Congress of the United States condemn the practice (e.g. The People vs. Judas Priest)?
Subliminal messages are so effective that they scare people – when they know about them. When subliminal techniques were used in theaters, drink and popcorn sales soared – in stores, shoplifting was reduced dramatically. They worked so well they had to be condemned – but not turned off. Let me repeat that thought. Subliminal communications were condemned because they were too effective. They worked too well. The ability to influence peoples actions without their knowledge could not be allowed – on an official level. On the other hand, a unscrupulous people could utilize subliminal suggestions on inmates or soldiers to make them more anti-social and dangerous.
How to “load” your subconscious mind:
Until recently loading your subconscious with positive thought took effort – a lot of effort. The effort was required to overcome the blocking action of the conscious mind, which is filled with skepticism. There IS a way to overcome this problem. Subliminal message made from one’s own voice allows the message to overcome the blocking action of the conscious mind. Using this method you can saturate your subconscious with positive ideas. There is absolutely no requirement for special concentration.
Do the Madison Avenue researchers worry about if the people are in a meditative state before applying subliminal suggestion? No. They already know that most people are in a trance state. How? Most people, mainly adults, have closed minds which shut out certain facts – they are closed to certain parts of reality by way of their particular culture especially in civilized society where they are bombarded by popular media and peer group pressure. A closed mind needs to maintain its emotional securities, so it forms a barrier consisting of whatever positive or negative hallucinations are necessary to guard against certain parts of reality in order to protect those emotional securities. This state of mind is a personal “comfort zone;” it requires a trance state which, by its own creation, is subject to suggestion. Please reference Constructs of Belief: Emotional Securities.
All the politicizing, Madison Avenue psychologists have to do is feed that same trance state by reinforcing the emotional securities which created it through subliminal suggestion. Even if the subliminal suggestion is slightly skewed, as long as it feeds your emotional securities you couldn’t keep the thoughts from reaching your subconscious mind if you tried. As the messages are transmitted into your subconscious mind, amazing changes can take place, positively or negatively. In the positive, attaining your goals can be easier when communicating with your subconscious mind.
Your subconscious mind and how it works:
The subconscious mind is the part of your brain that provides information in it is stored all of life’s experiences. Everything you’ve seen or done or heard is stored for reference. Think of it as the memory bank of a modern computer. Just as a computer uses the information in its memory bank to solve problems, you use the information stored in your subconscious to solve yours.
A computer does not question the information placed in its memory. Neither does your subconscious question what is stored within it. Once information is in memory the subconscious tends to react to the information in terms of emotions rather than act upon it in terms of logic. Therefore, the subconscious is guided by culturally formed emotional securities which mainstream psychology determined as three separate components of a schism in the psyche: id, ego, and super-ego.
In fact, this schism only exists after a personality has been negatively impacted by culture, whereas, we are born with a pure soul-personality without such schisms. Please see the following graphic to provide you with an understanding on how this works.
Soul Personality Dissociation
The subconscious accepts and stores everything without discrimination. Impressionable young minds without benefit of moral or ethical “gate keepers” accept ideologies without question. Like the subconscious, young minds do not determine right from wrong or positive from negative; they just store everything experienced.
When your conscious mind has a decision to make it bases it on the information stored in your subconscious. Unfortunately, not all the material stored there is in your best interest. You have been exposed to the negative influences of other people, newspapers, television, etc. Of course, the most dramatic influence was your family in whatever environment which raised you. Your decisions are limited by the information stored in your subconscious.
How Our Subconscious Minds Control Us
Allow me to clarify this subject of information in the subconscious: The subconscious stores the information on how we automatically react to certain stimulation. We have the natural reactions of fear in the face of danger or “shrink away” from negative stimulation. We naturally embrace people or things which make us feel good or “grow” towards positive stimulation.
Our culture beginning with our families demonstrate how to react to different things and ideas in even more emotionally complex ways. These reactions become trained, engrained, and stored in our subconscious minds over the years. If a person’s way of thinking has been shaped to conform to living a certain way of life, then emotional securities about the way reality works must form by consequence.
If a person is brought up to react negatively to a certain stimulation, then that person has stored that information on how to react in his subconscious. For example: A person reacts to a new concept with a negative attitude or stereotypes certain ideas negatively according to his culture. If negative thoughts have been stored, then you will reach negative decisions and form negative habits. If, on the other hand, your subconscious is loaded with positive thoughts you will make positive decisions and form positive habits. It’s as simple as that.
Scientific studies have proven that if the subconscious mind is intentionally programmed with positive thoughts, that soon the conscious mind will begin to act with the information and positive results will be obtained
How was Subliminal Effectiveness Proven Scientifically?
During the past 50 years, thousands of universities and research institutions have studied the phenomenon of subliminal messages. Subliminal messages have been tested in eight areas of human behavior: dreams, memory, value norm anchor points, conscious perception, verbal behavior, Emotions, drives and perceptual defenses. There is, at present, no serious question that human behavior can be influenced by subliminal messages.
Dr. Norman Dixon, a psychologist at University College in London, England summarizes extensive research on subliminal learning in his scholarly work, “Preconscious Processing.” He cites 748 references with over 80% of the studies on the effects of subliminal communication showing positive results.
Dixon provides a model for understanding the flow of information and its entry to consciousness. According to his model, five factors govern whether a stimulus surfaces at a conscious level: direction of attention, signal strength, external noise level, internal noise levels, and signal importance (meaning).
Legal issues and Subliminals
On a side note: The wrongful death action brought against Judas Priest and CBS in Reno led to a judicial interpretation regarding subliminal communication and First Amendment Rights.
First Amendment Rights have often been at issue when the jurisprudence process becomes involved with subliminal stimuli. Current trends, however, tend to exclude subliminal communication from protection under our freedom of speech rights. The Honorable Jerry Carr Whitehead, District Judge in the State of Nevada, eloquently argues that indeed subliminal communication violates first amendment liberties when covertly or surreptitiously employed.
Whatever ultimate interpretations or direction of the controversy, one thing is quite certain, “subliminals,” used here as a noun referring to the general nature of their type of communication, are here to stay. {Please note that weak minds have a weak constitution, therefore, weak minds tend to give into temptation such as that offered by negative subliminal suggestion.}
HOW DOES SUBLIMINAL PROGRAMMING WORK?
The conscious and the subconscious mind making up the human brain have often been compared to a computer. The conscious mind acts as a communication center it controls all voluntary actions of the body, makes decisions, reason, calculates; it usually represents the left hemisphere of the brain or logic. In tandem with the right brain it can also think of new ideas, register pain, fear, happiness, etc. In order to react automatically the conscious mind has to pull information from the subconscious mind.
The subconscious mind is where everything we experience is stored. The subconscious mind retains everything. It doesn’t screen information. It doesn’t determine right from wrong, positive, from negative; it just stores everything experienced. For example have you ever heard a song on the radio that you hadn’t heard for many years and start to sing along with it?
Did you ever try to remember something and say, “it’s right on the tip of my tongue?” Sometimes you remember right away and sometimes it will come to you later. Most often, you do remember. This is because your subconscious mind and the latter’s storage bank scanners are constantly working and looking for the answer.
Beyond storing information for reacting automatically, the subconscious mind also stores the information about the sensations which accompanied the information. If you notice, that “tip of the tongue” information usually comes to you when you experience that certain aroma, flavor, sound, texture, visual sensation or even an adjoining memory that matches the stored information.
The human mind can give out answers based upon information it has been programmed with just as a computer does; it reacts based upon information stored. Our habits depend on our subconscious programming. We are all a product of our mind patterns.
Often associated with advertising, subliminal messaging is inherently found in almost every form of communication. The following retro Coca Cola poster serves as a good example. (Do you remember when Britney Spears did Coca Cola Commercials? I bet not as much as her bald-headed tirade.) It has been suggested The people at Coke want you to associate youth, vibrancy and attractiveness with the use of their product. These qualities are visually implied in their advertisements. Lately, they have aimed their advertising at pairings with well known, usually delicious fast foods: If your mouth waters at this food, then your mouth waters at the Coke next to your favorite food – like Pavlov’s Dogs!
Interestingly, the Coke Poster gives you no instructions such as “Enjoy Coke!” or “Take home a six pack today!” The poster doesn’t need to; if you associate being desirable with their product you’ll buy Coke without being asked. These messages are said to be “subliminal” – a silent, implied form of communication. Think about those feel-good tunes and happy, young faces that accompany those car commercials – no word about mileage, warranty or other stats – just another hip, slick MTV oriented, sugar coated reason to part with the sense of logic that goes with your hard earned money – as long as you feel “good” about it.
How Subliminals can Help You with Your Personal Development
Many scientific studies have proven that if the subconscious mind is intentionally programmed with positive thoughts and ideas, then the conscious mind will act with the information it has received and positive results can be easily obtained.
The conscious mind can reject an idea. The subconscious mind, on the other hand, can and will accept information which is not audible/visible to the conscious mind.
Subliminal messages enter the brain in such a way that only the subconscious mind sees, hears, and understands; they are peripheral enough, so the conscious mind is not aware and will not block them. This way subliminal messages can potentially remove negative thoughts, behaviors and habits and to communicate positive suggestions directly to the subconscious.
The primary reason subliminal messages are so influential is because they bypass the critical filtering aspects of the conscious mind. They go directly to the regulating files we keep to direct our behavior, potentially, to replace negative emotional securities with positive ones.
- By enlivening and activating healthy wishes and drives already present in one’s unconscious.
- By imparting new and useful information into one’s unconscious mind.
- By increasing one’s unconscious selective attention while potentiating awareness.
Using subliminal programming, we are able to remove negative thoughts/ideas behaviors and habits and communicate positive new suggestions directly into the subconscious mind.
How Subliminals are like Hypnosis
Subliminals cannot cause behavior contrary to a person’s subconscious motives, drives and values. A subliminal message cannot force anyone go do anything they wouldn’t want to do. For instance, you can’t feed subliminals to people and expect them to exercise regularly, return to alcoholism, or go naked at the beach unless those “hidden” intentions were there already. For the same reason, a person cannot be “hypnotized” to yell “fire” in a crowd unless the subconscious drive to do this was already there.
Subliminal messages only reinforce and trigger these subconscious motives, drives and values. Through positive reinforcement, subliminals make hidden desires for self improvement more influential on conscious behavior. The mind pattern shifts towards positive thought.
How to write your own good subliminal messages
There are several factors which affect whether subliminal messages will be effective:
- The message should be in the first person (using I or me).
- The message should be in the present tense.
- The message should be positive and must not be the reverse of a negative.
- You should write the message as if you are talking to yourself.
Your subconscious mind works in the present only so the messages should be in the present tense. You should prompt your mind about things you do want to think about and you should be careful not to remind it of things you do not want to think about. For example, if you write I do not want to smoke then the image which your mind uses is based on the word smoke and you are constantly reminded of this image which is not productive.
Example of using your own subliminal messages:
Good: You should use the first person (I am happy), current tense (I am happy), positive affirmations (I am happy).
(This positive affirmation would have a direct impact on the image which your mind will conjure up when you read the message).
Bad: You should be careful not to use negative affirmations (e.g. I am not sad) because these remind you of negative thoughts. (This negative affirmation would create an unhelpful image in your mind when you read the message).
Be happy and use positive affirmations. You should experiment for yourself and it is best to personalize the messages to yourself and your own situation.
How are Subliminals similar to Brain Wave Entrainment?
Synchronized brain waves have long been associated with meditative and hypnogogic states. Audio with embedded binaural beats has the ability to induce and improve such states of consciousness. The reason for this is physiological. Each ear is “hardwired” (so to speak) to both hemispheres of the brain (Rosenzweig, 1961).
Each hemisphere has its own olivary nucleus (sound-processing center) which receives signals from each ear. In keeping with this physiological structure, when a binaural beat is perceived there are actually two standing waves of equal amplitude and frequency present, one in each hemisphere
So, there are two separate standing waves entraining portions of each hemisphere to the same frequency. The binaural beats appear to contribute to the hemispheric synchronization evidenced in meditative and hypnogogic states of consciousness. Brain function is also enhanced through the increase of cross-collosal communication between the left and right hemispheres of the brain.
According to psychoneurophysiology texts, any external stimuli consisting of regular beat frequencies induces a corresponding physiological entrainment down to creating a resonant post synaptic potential response between neurons (i.e. cortical evoked response). Beat frequencies are usually auditory and / or visual, but can also be tactile; this includes electromagnetic (EM) stimulation among other forms of bioresonant energy. For this reason, our brain wave patterns are regularly synchronized to geophysically induced standing EM waves. (See Schumann Resonances: Geophysical Resonances for more info.)
Subliminals on the other hand need not match brain wave frequencies, but can occur at regular intervals wherein subconscious thought patterns tend to synchronize with the repetitive messages (in spite of believing we can ignore them). For example, television program directors have been advised by psychologists to broadcast the same commercials at regular intervals for the same reason. For this reason, software programs for personal development usually combine both BWE and subliminal technologies for maximum effect.