We learn about two-thirds of everything we will ever know by the time we three to five years old, much of it being part of that ninety percent unconscious [which also includes lesser recognized autonomous functions implicit in everything we do such as motor balance, visual depth perception, and auditory spacial location].

That remaining ten percent is divided roughly evenly between conscious and subconscious, with an intervening subliminal [not the subject of this discussion].

The conscious we generally understand, that part of our mind to which we have relatively immediate access.  It's the subconscious part of our mind and how a significant part of it plays out in our conscious activity to which we are oblivious; expressed most succinctly by a prison inmate in, "for the first time in my life I know why I did the things I did that got me in here".

With my personal experience to use picture language it is like there is only one bridge with a policeman between the conscious and the subconscious.

When things happen in our life that we don't want to deal with they don't disappear rather they get banished to the subconscious, and the policeman is given strict instructions "this is not to come out"; though whatever it is hurts and wants our attention.  Whenever it tries to cross that bridge to our conscious mind the policeman holds out his hand and says, "stop!", looks at his list of instructions and says, "no; strict instructions are you can't come out..."

But it hurts, and discovering that it can't come out for what it is masquerades as something else and tries to cross the bridge.  "Stop!  No instructions about you.  You can come out..." and is permitted to do its little dance before our consciousness knowing that if it ever starts to strip off the masquerade the policeman will instantly drag it back to the subconscious before we can ever recognize what it is.

"its little dance" is the best expression that I've come up with to describe the masquerade -- it has seemingly no connection to anything experienced.  We are quite mystified and quite deliberately as the policeman would otherwise instantly drag it back.

If we are to deal with it the easy fifty percent of the problem is finding out what it is which might take a few minutes to a few days even though it was banished so we might never see it again, and the difficult fifty percent is doing something about it which might take a lifetime.

The masquerade gives a few clues the policeman missed [for me the degree of pain or loss, but that took four days of intense self-examination].  After working with inmates in prison found a quicker way was to deceive the subconscious.....

if a person is asked two questions much of the costume is stripped off
i. "what's the worst thing that could ever happen to you?"
    [in this lifetime, without referencing something imaginary like being digested forever by some creature]
ii. "is it happening?"
the policeman is caught off guard, where fifty percent of the persons asked would start bawling looking at their hands as if they held whatever it was in their hands and look up saying "yes..."

a more exhaustive method is a backpack where the person
i. puts on an imaginary backpack;
ii. puts whatever it is into the backpack; and
iii. gives the backpack a weight before going on a fishing trip;
the fishing trip suggests different things that might be in the backpack periodically weighing the backpack until it is empty, with each drop in weight signifying part of the masquerades' costume has been removed
again the policeman is caught off guard.....

Instantly the masquarade stops [like a conversion experience] ...so simple.

Jesus said

"and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free"  [joh 8:32]

and

"...the witness of the Holy Spirit is to tell us the truth about ourselves; the truth about Jesus Christ; and the truth about who's in control of this world."  [joh 16:-8-11 {my paraphrase}]

If we could just tell ourselves the truth... or as the prison inmate put it, "for the first time in my life I know why I did the things I did that got me in here".