I think the missing variable in your analyses is ‘energy’ or chi or prana whatever other “woo woo” name of choice. But it’s a deep dive and beyond the scope of this post. If and when you ever take that dive, I think you would find the answers you are looking for.

Maybe I’ll write about it at some point. The only reason I haven’t yet is because our vernacular is ill suited to describe it well, older languages like Sanskrit are, other cultures have already gone through this process about the nature of energy over many decades. We westerners haven’t yet. It’s not easy writing unless you are willing to go “woo woo,” in which case, you are speaking to people that already understand it. It’s kind of moot at that point.

I will say, though, that we, all of us, understand it instinctively on an emotional level, whether we name it or not. When we say things like these:

You could feel the tension in the room after his faux-pas.

Her story made me feel the color red without ever using the word ‘red’.

The atmosphere of excitement quickly deflated when he arrived to the party.

You are talking about experiences of energies, specific ones too. Think of the ‘holiday spirit’, or the feeling at a game or concert when everyone is in sync.

When a skilled orator moves an audience, that’s energy.

The warmth of Thanksgiving (for some). Fall is in the air, the feeling you have in September during “back to school” or summer nights at the beach. These are all emotional and evoke emotional responses, but there are other types of energy. The problem is that we westerners demand that the ‘truth’ be linear, measurable, formulaic. It simply isn’t, life is far messier than that. That’s hard for some people to accept, some questions have no tidy answers.

When you see how energy works, the rest of it all falls into place and makes sense. The center finally holds.

My answer to your questions, simply my opinions, are…

What is the bridge here between the subconscious and consciousness? Is it something so simple as repetition? Denial? Mindfulness? Faith?

The bridge is perception. Repetition and faith open the doors, they are vehicles to perception, they are not the thing itself.

The conundrum is, if we cannot “believe” hard enough to make something real, then how is it we can believe enough to make something real?

You cannot believe hard enough to make some things real, but you can believe hard enough to make other things real. Because what is ‘real’ is often a projection, or a perception. It gets messy is when it involves other people, outside forces, or physical reality (like biology). A broken bone is not perception, but pain, for example, is. Stress triggers physical responses, sometimes illness even, this is a documented fact. The mind-body connection is a real thing, though we are barely getting started in understanding how it works. When other people are involved, their perception influences your reality (racism is a good example, even if race is a construct). We tend to think of ourselves as separate from one another but we are not.

I tried to make sense here but I feel I fell short. It’s not an easy thing to explain, it’s easier to demonstrate. Better yet, be open to it and try meditation or something. See it for yourself, do anything that requires you to get out of your head and into something beyond the intellect.

Basically, the mind is tricky but what you experience counts for something, even if you cannot define it as “real.”