Your associative memories exist in the subconscious mind. They are
formed over time when the repeated exposure to an external condition
produces an automatic internal response in the body, which then elicits an
automatic behavior. As one or two of the senses respond to the same cue,
the body reacts without much of the conscious mind’s involvement. It turns
on by a thought or a memory alone.
By the same token, we live by numerous similar associative memories in
our lives, triggered by so many known identifications derived from our
environment. For instance, if you see someone you know well, chances are
that you are going to respond in automatic ways without ever consciously
knowing it. Seeing that individual will create an associated memory from
some past experience that is connected to some emotion, which then
triggers an automatic behavior. The chemistry of your body changes the
moment you “think” about him or her in the past memory. A program runs
from the repeated conditioning that you memorized about that person into
your subconscious mind. And just like Pavlov’s dogs, in moments you are
physiologically responding unconsciously. Your body takes over and begins
to run you subconsciously, based on some past memory.
Your body is now predominantly in control. You’re out of the driver’s
seat consciously because your subconscious body-mind is now controlling
you. What are the cues that cause this to occur so quickly with you? They
can be anything or everything in your external world. Their source is your
relationship to your known environment; it is your life, which is connected
to all of the people and things you experienced at different times and places.
This is why it is so difficult to stay conscious in the process of change.
You see a person, hear a song, visit a place, remember an experience, and
your body begins to immediately “turn on” from a past memory. And your
associated thought about how to identify with someone or something
activates a cascade of reactions below the conscious mind that then returns
you back to the same personality self. You think, act, and feel in
predictable, automatic, memorized ways. You subconsciously reidentify
with your past known environment, which then returns you to your known
self living in the past.
When Pavlov continued to ring the bell without the reward of food being
present, in time the dogs’ automatic response lessened because they no
longer maintained the same association. We could say that the dogs’
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