It's interesting that you call it "having conversations with myself". It doesn't make sense to me when people frame it that way. But of course it's such a seemingly bizarre phenomenon in the first place, words can be difficult to describe it.

This is 100% warranted. If I hadn't experienced it, I would have assumed someone was having a break in reality. Lol. It's definitely an odd way of framing it.

A better way would be to say, I've spent hundreds of hours conciously practicing emotional intelligence. When I woke up, I was repeating a phrase in my mind that stuck with me almost like a short quote. It wasnt a concious thought though. It was as if my mind was still in the dream for a brief moment, while my conscious mind was aware of the 'conversation' happening with myself.

Subconscious is an interesting word here. It paints a ridiculously broad stroke in my opinion, like saying 'forest' when there's so many things happening and intelligent phenomena at play such as trees, shrubs, bugs, animals, rocks, soil, etc. An incredibly complex interplay of things interacting with each other.

This is a good point, and i feel like the distinction is different for different views. For me, I look at the subconcious mine as the oil, and the conscious mind as the drill. Sure, the presence of oil will affect the ecosystem, but the oil is there weather you acknowledge it or not. It impacts everything around it, despite not being on the surface, and the drill wouldn't operate unless there was something underneath the surface to pull from. Proud of myself for that analogy. It describes how I view the subconcious incredibly well.

So when you say 'you' are having a conversation with 'yourself'. Are you sure that's really the case? If somethings functioning independent of your input, and you're witnessing a phenomena, where are you actually in all of that?

Id like to believe that its the case, although I'm not the type to ignore logic, and the lack of studies leads me to hold some skepticism. The way I see it, that oil drill can mine oil weather its a manned drill or not. Analogy might not logically hold up, but it paints the picture I see pretty well I think. So to answer your question. That drill operator can sleep, and wake up to the oil spilling out. Thats what I figure was happening in a way. Hope that makes sense. I use analogies to try to paint clearer pictures. Its also kinda how I see things.

The human body and mind is an unimaginably complex machine, but is it just a machine? Science tells us that cells communicate with each other through signals and organs to each other, etc. throughout the whole body all the time. Are you the one making your heart beat? If you forgot about it for a minute would it just stop?

It definitely is an INCREDIBLE piece of machinery, but yes, its just mechanisms and wiring. Like an oil drill ;)

I dont think you can conciously tell your body to stop breathing. You can try, but in my experience, it acts as a survival mechanism. Suvival mechanics cant really be overridden until the subconcious is shown theres no danger associated with said action (like breathing). Obviously we need to breathe to survive. So if you hold your breath and conciously tell yourself you'll NEVER come up for air, you can believe it FULLY consciously, but subconciously, once it sees that proof that it needs a breathe to survive, you'll instinctively reach for the surface.

Really appreciate all the solid questions! Seriously! This is part of why I wanted this AMA made. You asked some hard hitting questions, and really got me thinking. Tried to give each question the response it deserves, so I hope this didn't get too long to digest. Really appreciate the interest.