Take a moment to observe your body. Is it talking to you with headaches or allergies? Do you experience chronic pain, acne, poor eyesight, infertility, or asthma? How about digestive challenges, high blood pressure, constipation, obesity, hormone imbalances, or chronic fatigue? Do you have debilitating physical symptoms or traumatic health concerns like cancer or diabetes?

Now take a moment to tune in to your personal life. How are your relationships? What are your responsibilities as a mom or dad, husband or wife, daughter or son, student, employee or employer? Do you feel stressed in any way? Are there stressful people and circumstances that come to mind? How’s the money situation? Does your heart feel heavy? Do you ever feel unworthy, fearful, stuck, lonely, vulnerable, resentful, unsafe, or other painful kinds of emotion? Have you been labeled with depression, ADD, bipolar disorder, or PTSD?

Welcome to the human race! Everyone experiences many of these things to a greater or lesser degree. But now here comes the truth question: Would you ever choose to have any symptom or disease in your body or relationships? Given the opportunity to create your life, a day, or even a moment in time, would you choose to feel angry, depressed, fearful, or overwhelmed?

Every human being alive has the same answer: “Hell no!” Who in his or her right mind would ever choose to experience cancer, allergies, headaches, abuse, anxiety, betrayal, unworthiness, or any other painful condition? The truth question really could be called the “ridiculous question.” However, we discover its incredible usefulness as soon as we ask the next logical question that comes to mind: If no one consciously chooses them and yet everybody experiences these things, why does this happen, and where do these painful, scary, and stressful circumstances come from?

The Subconscious Mind

If you aren’t acting from conscious choice, something is triggering a reactive pattern in your mind and body that’s causing you to express yourself with symptoms, stress, and disease. And the “something” driving these reactions is called the subconscious mind. What isn’t an action is a reaction. And all reactions stem from the subconscious mind.

The subconscious mind is an energy and information field of pure potential, conducting the symphony of function and formation of everything ranging from the health of our bodies and relationships, to the personalities and personae that show up as “us” in different situations. It’s a real behind-the-scenes coach, director, protector, and teacher, driving between 90 and 98 percent of what’s happening in life. That’s right. We’re only conscious of what we do and why we do it between 2 and 10 percent of the time!

The subconscious not only runs most of our lives on a moment-to-moment basis, but also conducts the function of the more than 50 trillion cells of our physical bodies. It’s also the most amazing storage locker ever conceived. All our life experiences are stored in subconscious memory files alongside survival patterns, environmental imprints, belief systems, and conditioned emotional expressions. And the truly amazing thing is that we haven’t got a clue that this mysterious and magical storage locker filled with memories and beliefs even exists until, like a submarine, it surfaces or shoots a torpedo!

Let’s take a look at a guy called Sam and use him as an example of how the subconscious actually works in our lives. Right now Sam is 22 years young. But back when he was 2, he was sitting on the floor one night playing, while his mother read a book. The summer evening was warm, and he was dressed in a long-sleeved, pale-blue top. The window was open, and the scent of honeysuckle filled the room. All of a sudden, a bat flew in the window. His mother grabbed Sam and ran out the door screaming. Unfortunately, Sam’s sleeve caught on the edge of the door strike, and his arm was almost jerked from its socket. Naturally, he started to scream and cry. At this point, his father ran to the rescue and killed the poor bat with a broom.

Fast-forward 20 years, and guess what? Sam has chronic shoulder pain. He works at a pest-control company and finds his job deeply rewarding. The only thing he doesn’t like are the long-sleeved shirts the company insists that employees wear during the winter. On this particular day, Sam is excited, because after flirting for months, he finally has a date with the secretary in the office. He picks her up after work, and they head off to dinner. But even though the evening goes well, for some strange reason he suddenly finds her company mildly irritating. The date doesn’t fulfill his expectations, and their romance never gets off the ground.

What has happened?

Unbeknownst to Sam, his date is wearing a new perfume that she bought especially for the evening, called Honeysuckle Nights. That and her pale-blue dress trigger the parts of Sam’s brain that subconsciously associate both the color and the scent with trauma. He doesn’t realize this, of course—not any more than he is aware that he works as an exterminator because he subconsciously wants control in situations where, as a two-year-old, he had none; or that he loves his job because he associates getting rid of pests with being a hero, as his father had been that night.

And we think we call all the shots in our lives? Hardly! With the score at Subconscious 90 to 98 percent versus Conscious 2 to 10 percent, we haven’t got a chance—not without some tools to help make the subconscious material understandable and meaningful when it does show up. And making subconscious emotional material known and available to us so that we can intentionally process it is what you’ll find in The Heart of the Matter.