Review: The Power of the Subconscious Mind (Joseph Murphy)

Over Christmas, I was chatting to Vero’s dad about reading everyone’s favourite books.  He passed me his favourite book ‘The Power of the Subsconscious Mind’ by Joseph Murphy and he mentioned that it helped him out immensely in life.  I was intrigued but a littly wary considering I assumed the book was going to chat about how one should think positively and positive things shall happen.  I consider myself to be an upbeat kind of guy so I thought this may not be needed for my life.

The book starts out talking about the power of your subconscious mind and ties it into Christian scriptures demonstrating that Christianity is based on showing us that we ourselves have the power to change things in our life, whether it be a physical ailment, a run of bad financial troubles, or problems with others.  I will admit that I cringed at the fact that this seemed to be more of a religious book at first but it drifted off throughout the book.

I will be honest with you, I used to go to church quite often back in the day.  But then I came to Ottawa and went to a church (which was held in a gynasium) and I swore it was like something out of Sister Act.  This turned me off completely and I haven’t gone to church regularly in the past ten years.  This doesn’t mean I think anything less of the Anglican religion, I just haven’t given it a chance in Ottawa since then.

While reading this, I realized that I was put aback by the religious tones in the book but then I questioned my own religious beliefs while reading it and realized that I shouldn’t be put aback and that if I believe in Christianity, there’s nothing wrong with reading about it.  Passing by that hurdle (let’s be honest here, it was only in the first two chapters that I really encountered this), I was thoroughly engaged in this book.

Perhaps it’s at this time that I also should mention that I had to speed through this book because Vero’s Dad was coming into town and Vero said that I had read the book (which I hadn’t!) so I figured I would need to know a little bit about the subject matter before seeing him at dinner the next week!  In the end, he never even brought the subject up!  I felt like I crammed for a test and the Professor didn’t show up!

The novel talks about how your subconscious mind can give you anything you want.  Let’s talk about healing elements.  If you believe that you are a strong, healthy person, and you keep telling yourself this fact, your subconscious will pick up on the phrase you keep uttering and mentally start to change our body to become more healthy.  A concrete example is of an older woman who had a really bad memory.  She said to herself each day (if not many times a day) “I have a strong memory.  Every day it will grow stronger and stronger.”  and after awhile (let’s say six weeks…I don’t have the book in front of me), she did have a better memory.

A more extreme example (which…even I find hard to believe) is that of a man whose daughter was ill.  He kept telling himself “I would give my left arm if my daughter would be cured from her ailment.”  Sure enough, he gets into a car accident, loses his arm but mysteriously, his daughter is cured.

You can see how faith/belief systems come into play throughout this book, as well as a touch of mystic power.  People may cry out “It was a miracle!” when the daughter was cured.  Even the father may think “My thoughts came true.”  As you can see, I’m sure anyone may have a hard time believing this story, but the key to unlocking the power of the subconscious mind is the power of belief.

The novel continues on the path of how you can’t wish for something, you must believe it to be so.  Let’s take the example of the woman with the bad memory…she had to imagine herself as having a good memory and not to wish for it.  She needed to visualize the end state and believe that this is the person she would become.  They also talk about how this can cure others as well, as in if you think of a healthy, happy friend/family member, then it will be so.  I am giving it a try in visualizing my Dad not having any back pain.  Dad, let me know if in about six weeks you feel great!

The mechanics of accessing the subconscious mind is an interesting one…they say one of the best times to do so is before you drift off to sleep.  If you tell or visualize something to yourself before drifting off to sleep, it will enter your subconscious.  They even bring up an example of someone’s father passing away and they couldn’t find the will.  This person imagined the will in their mind and the next day, they had a vision of a random bank they had never been to in town.  Sure enough, there was a safety deposit box there.

I think the real key to the power of the subconscious mind is to actually believe in this stuff.  If you’ve read some of the above examples and said “Hogwash” then chances are, you will never be able to unlock this unlimited potential of the mind.  But if you have an open mind to things, perhaps you can somehow transform yourself or others around you.

This is definitely a hard subject to talk about around certain people.  I take Mike as a prime example as I was talking about the power of the subconscious mind the other day and you can see him holding back some scepticism.  Heck, maybe even I am still a bit of a sceptic but I should get that out of my system to begin the path of true belief.

Random Note: Turns out that this may in fact be similar to a book called ‘The Secret’ which (in my circle of friends) was quite popular amongst the ladies.  I’m pretty sure the book dealt with aspects of imagining the best person in the world to come knocking on your door, and it will happen.  Ladies, I must tell you that The Secret must be lying to you, as I am a taken man.

Thanks to Vero’s Dad for lending me this book.  It was quite the interesting read even though there were a lot of concepts I had already been aware of (Think Positively!).  I enjoyed the aspects of describing how to access your subconscious mind.  I believe that meditation may have something to do with this same principle but it just wasn’t called that in this book.