How does the unconscious mind go about connecting metaphors to real life, and how can we enhance control this process?

In a nutshell- “transderivational search”

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the NLP lingo transderivational search is the process by which the unconscious mind connects ongoing reality with our past experience.

So if I ask you to think of a dog, then you probably don’t think of some archetypal concept of dog. You’ll have an image of a particular dog. And once you have that image it will be easier to think of other examples that match “dog” and it will be easier to connect that with the smell of dog, the sound of dog, the feel of a dog’s coat and so on.

Similarly you will have had the experience of listening to someone tell you a story. Immediately you bring to mind similar experiences you have had or you have heard about.

This is an automatic and hardwired process that is a fundamental part of how the mind, in particular the pre-verbal, unconscious part of the mind works. We don’t yet have a formal understanding of this kind of associative logic but modern cognitive science has come along way to understanding the process through exploring the behaviour of simple “neural networks”

There are lots of ways of enhancing this associative process. Image streaming and free association are techniques you can use to build flexibility and speed in your own unconscious process. In fact many of the practises of magic such as Kabbalah (no I’m not talking about the modern Maddonna sponsored movement- don’t get me started on that!!) are about developing this associative faculty.

Other than this kind of training you can enhance and control this process by:

1) creating your own library of stories
2) Understanding the essential, underlying structure of those stories
3) having a set of pre frame stories that you can tell while giving your unconscious mind time to do its magic

Hope that helps.

Robin