The Power of Choice: Conscious Awareness vs. Unconscious Perception

I like to think. One of my favorite things to think about is thinking.

Why do we think? How do we do it? Where does it happen? Where do thoughts come from? Can we ever be in control of all of our thoughts? How am I aware of my thinking? What is that, awareness? 

So many questions! As I’m busy conjuring up questions and exploring the answers, scientists are hard at work generating theories, testing for evidence, and drawing conclusions. 

Our scientific understanding of consciousness today is like the scientific understanding of electromagnetism in 1800. Where there was some phenomena that were there, but we had no idea what it was.

Theoretical physicist Leonard Mlodinow, on a conversation with neuroscientist Christof Koch

Consciousness remains shrouded in mystery to psychologists, neuroscientists, and physicists alike. But many are hard at work unraveling the mystery; like theoretical quantum physicist Dr. Amit Goswami.

Conscious Awareness

According to Goswami, the three major elements of conscious awareness are thought, feeling, and choice. Together, these make up a conscious and aware individual.

Thoughts and feelings are objects of consciousness

Quantum theory points to a great “field of consciousness”. Think of it like a large matrix that every conscious being is tapped into – kind of like the internet. 

Just like how you search the internet one page at a time, you are only consciously aware of certain things at a single time. And just like you still have access to the entire internet all the time even though you’re only viewing one page, you’re still connected to the larger “field of consciousness” all the time even though you’re only having this single experience. 

It’s in this field of consciousness where thoughts and feelings are created. Thoughts and feelings are the objects, the things, that we are aware of. They’re what our experience of life is made of!

A fun thing (tangent alert!) about the idea of a collective field of consciousness is that telepathy suddenly enters the realm of the possible. If thoughts and feelings arise as objects in the field of consciousness, I technically could have access to your thoughts, and you mine. Kind of spooky.

You and I are subjects of consciousness

We’re the ones having the experience. You and I are experiencers of our thoughts and feelings. We are the ones aware that we are having a conscious experience. 

Going to get nerdier for a second… Remember grammar in grade school? The subject of a sentence is the person, place, thing, or idea that is doing or being something. In this context, I, the subject, am the person experiencing my thoughts and feelings and making choices.

Goswami cautions here though not to get too caught up in the individual “I” in the you are separate from me sense. Remember we’re all connected through the larger field of consciousness. So when “I” make a decision, “you” are automatically in on it – because you’re a part of consciousness. 

To make sense of this, I like to relate it to the human body. So many individual cells are running around my body all the time, doing their cell thing, contributing to the larger organism (me!). My skin cells are busy doing skin cell stuff, my blood cells are busy doing blood cell stuff — which technically are independent functions. But those functions all serve the larger organism, whether the cells know it or not. You and I are like those cells. We all serve the larger whole of which we are a part – consciousness!

In its simple but profound way, quantum theory consistently points to a greater, interconnected whole outside the individual. Wrought with paradoxes like these that stand the test of experimentation.

Choice is up to you!

This is the big one.

One very intriguing conclusion that scientists have drawn is that conscious awareness is the only place where choice happens.

Choice here implies discerning, with the ability to pick one thing from the other at will; as opposed to a computer that’s bound to its programming.

That’s a big statement. It might sound obvious, but it’s really not, all things considered. Let’s dive into it.

Unconsciousness Perception

The idea of unconsciousness is a bit contradictory – so let’s talk about it!

Ok so there’s consciousness – the big matrix we’re all tapped into, plus the part of you that’s aware and “conscious”. But there’s also unconsciousness – times when you’re not aware. Like when you’re sleeping and not dreaming… or blacked out at a party.

But is this unconscious state still part of the greater consciousness? Scientists now answer “yes” to that question. It gets better. Experiments have demonstrated that the brain directs action from unconsciousness. 

Let’s look at one.

In 1974, psychologist Lawrence Weiskrantz coined the term “blindsight” after performing a series of experiments on a patient with a very unique condition. This patient had working eyes, but his brain was damaged in an area critical for vision and so he couldn’t see anything left of his nose. For all intents and purposes, he was half blind.

In a series of tests that have since been repeated and elaborated on in many other cases, his patient demonstrated some remarkable results. Despite having no idea how, his patient was able to demonstrate, with an accuracy of 80%, “vision” in his blind eye. 

He did this by correctly identifying where on a screen a circle appeared – despite admittingly not being able to see a thing. His “guess”, however, was correct 80% of the time. The experiment demonstrated that the patient’s eyes were both still taking in events, processing them in the unconscious mind, and directing action.

The condition of blindsight – along with many other experiments – have conclusively demonstrated what is called “unconscious perception”. 

Unconscious perception is when the brain takes in stimuli, processes it as thoughts and feelings, and directs action (or inaction), but the person isn’t aware of any of it. 

So weird.

I Am Aware, Therefore I Choose

Alright. So experiments have shown that thoughts and feelings are present in unconscious perception. 

What about choice, that third key element of conscious awareness?

Enter psychologist Anthony Marcel. In a series of experiments using words with more than one meaning – like “palm”, which has a tree or hand meaning – Marcel was able to demonstrate that when he put words together like “tree — palm” that might influence the subject to picking a certain meaning, this did indeed help subjects identify associated test words more quickly. But only in conscious instances. 

What this means is that choice is a key element of conscious experience, but not unconscious perception.

In unconscious perception, your brain is taking in and processing data without any real opinions or choices in how it is done or interpreted. It’s all random selection.

Let’s bring it back to quantum theory.

Remember the wave probabilities of our photons and electrons? Essentially, without anything conscious looking at them, photons and electrons exist in probability states. Meaning they’re nowhere and everywhere at the same time (gotta love the paradoxes!). For more details, check out these posts – My Quantum Mechanics So What and Five Flaws of Classical Physics. 

Quantum theory and these psychology experiments suggest that the unconscious mind is in an ambiguous, pre-choice state. Just like a computer that blindly processes data. A pre-choice state where, in the absence of strong conditioned biases, all actions are equally available. 

The collapse of the probability wave into reality is either a chance probability for the unconscious mind or a deliberate choice for the conscious mind. 

To say this in (a little) plainer English… whatever action you end up taking in a certain situation is either done by random if made unconsciously, like a computer, or by deliberate choice if made in conscious awareness.

One really interesting thing the scientists noticed is that the only thing that swayed the randomness was strong conditioned biases. For example, test subjects from California might have pre-programmed biases towards palm = tree and this showed up in their test results.

What Does This Mean for Me?

Follow all that? I think I lost myself in there a few times… Let’s bring this all back to reality. Why do we care and how can we apply this to our everyday lives? 

1. Understanding unconscious belief systems is really important.

If only 5% of our thoughts are conscious, this means that 95% of our thoughts and their corresponding feelings and actions come from unconscious, pre-programmed thought-belief systems. This implies that up to 95% of what goes on in our heads happens without our awareness or conscious choosing. That’s crazy!

Experiments have shown that the unconscious mind is always perceiving – taking in stimuli, processing it as thoughts and feelings, and directing action – whether we are aware or not. 

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. In one blindsight experiment, a completely “blind” man was able to safely navigate a room full of furniture, insisting he walked a straight line. Thanks here can be given to our built-in survival instincts. Thank you, unconscious perception! A+.

But what about other, less pleasant biases? Biases, perhaps, from a patriarchal white European-founded society. Biases we don’t even know we have, adopted from a society that’s constantly feeding us stimuli, but that determine thousands of our everyday actions.

It’s important to get in there and clean up our belief systems. How do we do it? By shining the light of conscious awareness on them and using our power of choice. 

Once you look at an old belief and decide it isn’t serving you, you have the power to change it.

One of my absolute favorite and most underrated tools for doing this is observation. Observe yourself. Start to take notice of what you’re doing. Ask yourself why you’re doing it. Get curious and be kind. You’re just an explorer exploring your own mind. 

2. Free choice and deliberate creation happen at the conscious level.

We now know that scientists are coming to realize that choice is a unique element of conscious experience. I actually really like that. Makes me feel in control of my own life. 

This means that the self-aware “I” is the one calling all the shots. I have the choice. Everything else is an artifact of my programming. 

Let’s take a minute to acknowledge and accept who we are right now – before trying to change anything.

My brain is the way it is. It’s programmed the way it’s programmed in this moment right now. There’s nothing I can do to change who I am right now – because it’s already happened.

I’m hard-coded with DNA built into my genes from generations and generations of ancestors. It’s what makes me human. I’m soft-coded with information from society and culture and the people around me. It’s what makes me this human right now.

I have shoulds and shouldn’ts built into my brain. I have fears that come up and natural instincts to love and laugh and live life with others. These are all part of the beauty of who I am in this body, with this mind. And about 95% of it happens unconsciously.

But I am also a creator. And what I do have is the ability to change who I am moving forward. In each moment, I define who I am in the next.

With each thought, I paint my reality. With each action, I chart my course. These are all choices.

It’s like the unconscious 95% run in the background, supporting the conscious 5% meant for expanding and creating something new. 

Let’s own that 5%. 

Let’s use the conscious 5% of our thoughts to choose action from excitement, inspiration, and kindness. Let’s, through these thoughts, deliberately choose who we want to be and what we want our lives to look like. 

3. Awareness isn’t everything – consciousness extends into realms we aren’t aware of. 

There is so much we don’t know yet about consciousness. So much yet to be explored and discovered. 

Look how far we’ve come with electromagnetism since 1800; from observing lightning to charging smart devices on wireless charging pads. Imagine where we’ll be in another 100 or 200 years in our understanding and application of consciousness. 

Maybe “wireless” will have a whole new meaning because we’ll have mastered communication through thought. Maybe we’ll have the tools to look into the unconscious mind and see what’s really going on in there. Imagine what it would be like to understand 95% more of our minds; and to know how to harness 100% of it.

There’s so much promise in the answers of tomorrow.

There’s so much potential in the questions of today.