Are you a prisoner of your unconscious mind?: Param and Elliot Srikantia – cleveland.com

Guest columnist Param Srikantia is a professor in the Baldwin Wallace University School of Business and Elliot Srikantia is an art director in New York City. If you want to subscribe to Param’s free YouTube channel, you may email him at psrikant@bw.edu. You can watch his TEDX talk at https://www.ted.com/talks/param_srikantia_why_life_sucks

A tragic failure of our educational system is that it remains focused on knowledge and skills acquired by the conscious mind, while ignoring the powerful but invisible role of our unconscious mind.

The inward journey of discovering the hidden power of our unconscious motives may be the most important step in achieving a breakthrough in our effectiveness and in our well-being.

Although our unconscious mind significantly determines the outcomes we produce, it remains the undiscussed “elephant in the room” in schools, universities and workplaces.

Why is such a rich source of insight relegated to the self-help industry, while formal education often provides little to no awareness of unconscious forces?

Western culture supports the idea that conscious, rational choice and personal determination are at the root of excellence. This worldview promotes the idea of free will — rewarding or punishing people for the choices they make.

To acknowledge that our lives may also be at the mercy of hidden forces beyond conscious control is scary.

The Indian mystic Osho, who left behind thousands of books synthesizing Western and Eastern spirituality and psychology, developed several meditative techniques that delve inward into the deep layers of consciousness.

Similarly, Eastern meditation and Western psychology promote self-awareness to save us from self-inflicted misery and planetary decline.

Our ability to pursue happiness is profoundly affected by unconscious patterns. If we impart basic skills in self-understanding through school curriculum, our children will grow up a lot happier.

Here are some examples of unconscious patterns in everyday life. A college graduate accepts their first job. How well they perform may have little to do with their capability. Instead, it may be determined by their self-image formed in early childhood, by the judgments they internalized in their family.

Or, let us say you end up hating your boss. You may not realize that the dynamics between you and your boss eerily parallel the challenges you faced in relating to your parent.

A young couple gets married. Who would imagine that their marriage will be shaped by deeply buried memories of how their parents related to each other? Often, divorces are the result of emotional baggage left over from childhood.

Similarly, unconscious motives from childhood can also shape whether we vote Democrat or Republican. Suppressed anger from childhood abuse can make us more hawkish and more prone to supporting war. Being bullied in school may leave us vengeful and in favor of capital punishment.

And it is so with our attitudes toward wearing masks, vaccination, global warming, structural racism, critical race theory, capitalism, social safety nets and welfare … the list is endless.

In this decade of anger, we need to look beyond the surface-level ideologies that divide us. Beliefs that we aggressively defend as adults are often the product of childhood insecurities and coping mechanisms that have unconsciously shaped our outlook.

Our unconscious mind can trigger a host of emotions that result in a fog of anger, fear and anxiety, preventing us from seeing clearly.

Purely intellectual debates on the incendiary issues of race, environment, social safety nets or foreign policy are pointless unless we recognize the unconscious emotional roots that fuel our beliefs.

The solution is not only more knowledge, but also wisdom and insight into ourselves, which can help restore the rivers of love and compassion that are running dry.

Readers are invited to submit Opinion page essays on topics of regional or general interest. Send your 500-word essay for consideration to Ann Norman at anorman@cleveland.com. Essays must include a brief bio and headshot of the writer. Essays rebutting today’s topics are also welcome.

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