As I said, each person has their own unique array of both cognitive and sub-cognitive abilities and we develop preferences for which of these systems we prefer to activate most. The preferred systems grow stronger and even broader, winds up having more generalized links to the rest of the system. Those systems we are disinclined to activate usually don’t vanish, but they do diminish, becoming like a little outbuilding in the grand system that is the brain. Like an outhouse you won’t choose to talk about it, you may even decide it “smells bad”, but it will remain an integral part of your mind anyway.

Now between the two general domains of psychic function, cognitive and sub-cognitive, which do you think would be dominant, have the strongest influence on you or contain your strongest abilities?

Cognitive? That is the general assumption, but it’s actually the sub-cognitive. Ultimately, you will repeatedly activate those systems you have the most preference for, and you will express preference for those things that offer some semblance of personal integrity, those things you identify with the most. How often when asked why someone did something do they respond, “It’s just the way I am”?

Often. It’s good for illustrative purposes, that “it’s just the way I am” response is a universal rule. Even as strange as my own brain may be, things like my differences being what motivates the neurodiversity movement, that rule of “it’s just the way I am” still applies. Our minds are like water. They seek the lowest common level and that being the sub-cognitive. Now we don’t consciously navigate this nor do we usually draw from the strengths we have at this level. I guess because we are never really taught much about it, but in some special cases one of those aptitudes emerges anyhow. The individual has no choice sort of like acquired savant syndrome, but there is no head injury involved. It’s maybe genetic if you subscribed to that as a causal agent.

One of these sub-cognitive talents is what makes some people self identify as an empath and there is some scientific evidence to refute much of the assumptions they make about the localization of functions in the brain though the scientific community conveniently ignores all this stuff. One example is a woman who had her entire amygdala removed, the part of the brain that supposedly is responsible for all the primary functions of our emotional awareness. While she did loose the ability to intellectualize well about emotions, her innate empathic reactions were greatly amplified even to the point of activating on only subtle cues.

I always think it’s a bit wonky when they say, “This area is devoted to speech recognition.”

Well, an empath is a person who is sensitive to primal life functions often developing a talent for interacting with one or more examples of these things, but not always. They tend to be people who display a knack for getting along with animals or nurturing plants despite all odds. My wife may be a borderline empath. She is very sensitive. Now generally this sub-cognitive faculty is very poorly understood or developed, even in people for who it is strong.

Does the ability come from a mirroring response inside the person, or is there an external energetic connection? Probably both? Both. The processes we call emotions and consider to be self contained experiences, are not at all self contained. They are elemental and pervasive all throughout the living world, and perhaps even in the elements of the world we don’t now consider living. These energy processes shaped our bodies and brains to begin with though as we are familiar with, it is actually an overlay on this bedrock of living information.

There is some, for lack of a better term, precognitive ability in the talent of an empath as they can feel a generalized shift in the collective environmental energy. They can read the attitude, if you will, or disposition of their environment as if it were a huge organism and from that intuit the long term trends of behaviour and thus events that would transpire there. Sort of like the observation many people make that aspects of character tend to remain consistent. Even if that’s not literally true it’s often true enough to be practical.

An empath also has the potential to exercise their awareness of and thus link to emotional energy in a causal way. While they lack the ability to alter the fundamental character of individual organisms, they can learn to generate and channel emotional energy along connecting lines, creating a sort of resonance that leads to a system wide mood swing, and potentially increasing the likelihood of a desired outcome actually being enacted.

They also have the potential to be powerful healers. The bodies biological processes aren’t mechanical. They aren’t blind to experience as has been proven and made abundantly clear in science even now though they aren’t yet publicly acknowledging it in the mainstream. The bodies processes, its shifts in behaviour and awareness, are emotional. All of your supposed psychological emotions originate in the same way as bladder pressure and hunger do. It’s not that they lack meaning. It’s that people undervalue and underestimate the consciousness of the body itself.

So those are the basic applications. More nuanced uses could be found I’m certain. Creative minds seem to be able to re-purpose anything.

Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.

Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~