Let's see if this makes any sense to others:
practice- practice is when you use your conscious mind in every aspect of playing. Making sure your fundamentals are the same everytime, really paying attention to where you hit the cb, and the reaction afterwards. Both with the cb and the ob. In other words, working very hard at playing the game. The biggest key being consistency. As much as possible, doing things the same way everytime. Ingraining a solid pre-shot routine. All this takes time. Much time on the table. You want these things ingrained and seared into your mind. Very, very few take the time to actually do this.
playing- this is where you have to let go of the conscious mind to a large extent. While standing, you look at the shot. You see the path you want the ob and the cb to go, and at what speed you want it to happen. You actually see it like it just happened. There is no doubt, no labeling as tough or easy. No fear of the outcome if you fail. You just observe.
You go into a state of mind where the rest of the world is of no consequence. Very similar to if you were playing by yourself, and misses didn't matter. You have to eliminate any consequences from your mind, you only have on your mind what you want to have happen, what will happen.
Your training in practice taught you that follow will give you app. a 30º angle off the ob with the cb. You know you need one diamond more angle after the rail. You know from practice that one tip of english = one diamond. This has become ingrained into your mind. Now, in play, you can look at the shot, instantly recognize the angles and what you need to do without having to work to figure them out. You free your mind to acutally SEE what is there. You learn to trust your knowledge and abilities. TOTALLY trust them.
Then, you just get down and let your subconscious shoot the shot. You see, you do. Only an iota of conscious thought is involved.
When you want to run, you don't turn it into hard work and try to figure out every action of running, you just trust your mind to know what to do. Same thing needs to happen in playing. You just trust your previous training to know what to do, and just let it happen.
Where this fails, is when you have not done a lot of practice time to learn how to do things correctly. A one year old baby is not going to go out and run an obstacle course. It takes that baby years of figuring out how to make it's legs work properly on command. Same with pool. It takes a lot of time of actually really paying attention to details to train the mind to work as it should. Freely, and unencumbered without your conscious constantly trying to run the show.
At times, we let pressure creep into our minds. We have to win, we have to make this shot, can't afford to lose, too many people watching me, ect. When that does happen, and you cannot clear your mind from that, your subconscious will not operate properly. It will actually sabotage what you do and make you fail. It does that because that is what you are feeding it. When you can't clear those thoughts, that is when you take your training and switch your approach to making the game hard work. You then consciously pay attention to some details to distract your subconscious from your thoughts of fear. Doing that, you free your subconscious to work properly again.
Downside to doing that is that most tend to start using their conscious mind in all aspects of the shot. From pre-shot routine through actual stroke and follow-through. Just like a checklist of things to do correctly. Very hard to play like that, and you will instantly notice that there is no "feel" to the game, and you will tire quickly.
Hope that made some sense to you.
