"There is no ideology stronger than what a child is convinced of as being real."

Our minds operate on two main levels, conscious and subconscious. Science has gone a long way in determining the ways the conscious mind works yet the subconscious remains shrouded in mystery.

It's there however, we're sure of that.

And it's active. It's responsible for a lot of things that our normal waking mind has neither the time nor space to address.

In fact, it's been shown that our subconscious can receive and process up to one hundred thousand bits of information AT A TIME. While this sounds impossible remember that unlike the conscious mind the subconscious doesn't need to 'consider' or try to make sense of things in the same way our conscious does.

If I were to walk up behind you and say, for instance, "Ice Cream Tastes Great".... at a volume level just below the threshold of your conscious perception, it would probably have little or no effect.

If, however, I were to say this to you at the same level over ten thousand times in a month it would register with the subconscious and soon, Ice Cream would seem like a pretty great idea, even if you were consciously committed to not eating it.

Why is this?

What is the subconscious doing with the information and why doesn't the information we get DIRECTLY (as adults) seem to influence us as much?

First, consider the nature of the conscious mind. This is easier to do since we all 'know' this mechanism pretty well.

The conscious mind is what the world around us trains to do the job of daily living.

Early experience plays a big role in what the conscious mind will allow as possible later. This is why they call those years the formative years.

But like any unique view it has boundaries. As the boundaries of the conscious mind are filled to capacity they settle into an actual structure that functions, however uniquely, as that person making responses to the world around them. The elements of this structure are formed randomly during the early years of life but can be traced far into adulthood.

While education is playing a role in explaining the details of the world around us like math, language, geography and science; our parents, peers and circumstances are shaping what will become a constant DIALOG in the conscious mind.

The power of the influence exerted by these 'others' and the environment on a child is so strong that philosophy and religion pale in comparison at any attempt to do the same job.

There is no ideology stronger than what a child is convinced of as being real.

Like a recording that plays the same information over and over in response to whatever new stimulus comes along, this gradually built dialog begins to work on its own - tossing back and forth as a mixture of hope and acceptance, desire and restraint, and other ideas which hit the invisible brick walls of self-limitation.

Not only does the conscious mind build a wall of protection for itself, it also erects guardhouses at the threshold of the subconscious.

We can still only guess at some of the reasons why this happens, or why ANY of this is put together as the 'programming' for this great resource we call our mind.

In spite of the border guards the conscious has patrolling the entry to the subconscious, it's still registering new pieces of information. Information is slipping through wherever the searchlight of focus ISN'T! In a way, this 'slipping in' of unnoticed information is a lot like refugees entering a country at its weakest point.

Over a period of time, these unnoticed bits of information can even help to correct the course of a reality the conscious has always held onto as real but which is no longer valid. This is why extreme change can take a whole lifetime, instead of the shorter time involved when the subconscious is approached directly and even, you could say, secretly.

Why this secret is really no secret at all!

We're always using the nearly unnoticed.

Slight variances in tone of speech or our body language is half of communication. Humans would be robotic without it.

Ninja's, leader's and actor's are all aware of the power of what is only absorbed on the periphery.

Under normal circumstances, the information that enters the mind without being noticed isn't acted upon because the frequency of the same information arriving isn't enough to 'take over'.

This is why I could come up behind you and whisper "Ice Cream is Great" or "I Love Ice Cream" one time and it may have no effect.

The subconscious is also recording the colors of cars passing by, counting how many times a bird call was heard and dozens of other things that are entering through the senses but not being focused upon.

But if all the billboards you don't focus on, and all the topics you don't really listen closely to and all of the other information was even 25% of the SAME MESSAGE, your subconscious would begin to assemble a 'reality' for the conscious mind that reflects this new information.

Thus, subliminal programming has a repetitive aspect. What makes it easy is not having to notice. That's how it works.

It's true that any model we can draw of the entire process is only the map, not the actual territory.

InnerGear is still exploring more of this new frontier and from here, it doesn't appear to have a horizon.