Is there an unconscious mind ?

[Someone here]

I was meditating by watching my thoughts arise and fade while remaining as a witness to them which is the simplest meditation technique to me . It simply shows the gap between awareness and the mind or the thinking process. Thoughts which arise in my consciousness are not coming  from my own authoring ..they arise on their own and also the mind chatter itself is very clearly and sharply distinct from awareness in the sense that I can observe the mind blabbering from a distance without me needing to engage with  it.  I have made that line very clear.
A lot of times I reach a moment of complete silence of thoughts where there aren’t any thoughts at all present in my awareness but I still feel bad or restless in the back of my mind. I still feel tensed . My facial expression is disturbed and my body is tight instead of loose . I concluded it is because of years of conditioning and years of suffering and memories and the subconscious mind . But if all of what I mentioned now are not accessible directly in my awareness when I reach the zero thoughts phase in meditation..then where are they present ? The only answer that comes up to me is they are in the unconscious mind . But how can something exist and be unconscious? Either a thing is conscious or it doesn’t exist.  What am I not getting or getting wrong ?

[Mellowmarsh]

5 hours ago, Someone here said:

But how can something exist and be unconscious? Either a thing is conscious or it doesn’t exist.  What am I not getting or getting wrong ?

There’s nothing outside the text. . . linguistically, concepts are known, and that which is known, knows nothing.

[Jirh]

6 hours ago, Someone here said:

A lot of times I reach a moment of complete silence of thoughts where there aren’t any thoughts at all present in my awareness but I still feel bad or restless in the back of my mind. I still feel tensed . My facial expression is disturbed and my body is tight instead of loose . I concluded it is because of years of conditioning and years of suffering and memories and the subconscious mind . But if all of what I mentioned now are not accessible directly in my awareness when I reach the zero thoughts phase in meditation..then where are they present ? The only answer that comes up to me is they are in the unconscious mind . But how can something exist and be unconscious? Either a thing is conscious or it doesn’t exist.  What am I not getting or getting wrong ?

You might not be able to access them in your regular state of consciousness, because conditioning or trauma can be buried deep inside the body.

To access them, you might need to trigger them somehow. And there are several ways to do that (AI-generated):

1. Somatic practices – Yoga, breathwork, or body scanning can loosen stored tension, allowing buried sensations or memories to surface.

2. Expressive arts – Painting, dancing, or writing without a plan can bypass the logical mind and bring unconscious material into form.

3. Psychedelic-assisted therapy – Under controlled conditions, substances like psilocybin or MDMA can lower defensive barriers and reveal deep conditioning.

4. EMDR or brainspotting – These therapies use eye movements or fixed gaze to access trauma held in subcortical brain regions.

5. Intense physical exercise – Long-distance running, cold exposure, or high-intensity intervals can sometimes “shake loose” repressed emotions.

6. Holotropic breathwork – Rapid, rhythmic breathing can induce altered states where buried content arises spontaneously.

7. Dreamwork or active imagination – Engaging with dream images or dialoguing with inner figures can retrieve material not accessible while fully awake and defended.

[Lyubov]

I think the concept of the unconscious mind is largely misunderstood and steeped in needless mysticism. People always wanna play up what they don’t understand. There is the mind and your beliefs, and you can make your beliefs and story entirely conscious and entirely crystal clear as you start to trust that being honest with yourself is the safe and right thing to do. From a place of openness you can understand yourself. 

Edited 3 hours ago by Lyubov

[gettoefl]

The unconscious mind is, I want to be unhappy, separate and special. The work is undoing these mistakes. Dissolve self, dissolve others, dissolve problems. They all exist because you are creating them. Undo them. Any tension in the body is a clue that more work is needed. In fact, all upset, irritation, disappointment, annoyance, frustration are telling you that you are not seeing correctly.

Edited 1 hour ago by gettoefl