I think I have an underdeveloped subconscious. I find no matter what I try to get myself to believe, my consciousness and logic kicks it back into submission. What should I do?

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You have to work at it, bit by bit, until the conscious, logical part of your brain can harmonize with the subconscious, feeling part. Took me years, but it was worth every penny.

You didn’t mention exactly what sort of things you were trying to get yourself to believe. You can consider both “easy” things, like say, if you work harder you’ll be more successful, or “hard” things, like God or spirits or other deities. The process is the same regardless. Start small and repeat, getting bigger every time.

When I was first learning how to be spiritual, I started by getting out in my community and looking for like minded people. When I found the group I gelled most with, I joined them and sought to learn. What I was to do was “the motions.”

We were on the same page about my lack of belief and the need to work on it. I did regular sessions where my teacher guided me through meditating, and I’d go home and repeat them. I participated in group and private rituals.

By the time I’d left the group, it didn’t feel like I was any closer to believing-believing, but I had an extremely solid foundation to build on. I knew what a trance state feels like, and other things, like the crucial importance of aesthetic concerns, would hit me later when I was ready.

Eventually I’d read and meditated enough that it finally started clicking for me. I obtained my spiritual awakening, which is the next big step, and then determined the meaning of enlightenment, which is the step after that. Each of them took years.

Unless you’re even more spiritually gifted than I am, and I’ve only met two people like that in my whole life, this stuff doesn’t come without putting a lot of work in.

Gifts come with their own challenges though. Getting from awakened to enlightened is fiendishly difficult, and until you can push through, you get perpetually stuck in a hell that we call the Dark Night Yogi. Awakening torments you.

Drugs are seductive, but again, without the work, will only ever offer an illusion of growth. With the work, they can function as a very sharp tool.