Buddhism

Most of our mental machinery operates out of our field of view. We have evolved special-purpose sensory interpretation circuits, selective filtering and prioritizing circuits, decision-making circuitry - all of it operating at a "hardware" level.

However, most of those automatic, unconscious mechanisms are primed or initialized by processes that are more accessible to our consciousness, either directly or indirectly. The outcome of logical thoughts, our emotions, our belief systems, our memories and learning - all that stuff serves to modulate the operation of our non-conscious cranial machinery. The "better" that input is, the more smoothly or effectively the system as a whole will operate.

In my view, the point of meditation is to improve the operation of my consciousness, so that the whole conscious/unconscious construct of the Self doesn't stumble quite as often, or as painfully.

On edit: The reason I look at it this way is that I'm a hard core materialist in my other life. Go figure.