Levels Of Consciousness #2

                                             Levels Of Consciousness #2

 

                                    

                   “One thing: you have to walk, and create the way by your walking; you will not find a ready-made path. It is not so cheap, to reach to the ultimate realization of truth. You will have to create the path by walking yourself; the path is not ready-made, lying there and waiting for you. It is just like the sky: the birds fly, but they don't leave any footprints. You cannot follow them; there are no footprints left behind.”   Osho

Let's begin with the difference between states and stages of consciousness; a state is a passing experience such as infatuation, being moved by a movie, an orgasm, being high on a particular drug etc. These experiences are certainly valuable, but they in no way describe a level of consciousness. A stage is something one is substantiated in, such as riding a bike, achieving mastery with a musical instrument, learning a foreign language, etc. Although stages do have up and down states that may foreshadow the next level, they are like floors in a high rise building such as the 7^th or 9^th floor.

Consciousness is developing in the direction from dense to subtle realms, from physical, to emotional, to mental, to compassion, to spiritual power, spiritual seeing, and ultimate enlightening oneness. From unconscious, to subconscious, to conscious, to supra conscious. Our human experience is heading toward greater expansion, greater power, and maximum bliss magnification, sounds good doesn't it!

But evolution first goes through involution, which in the 12 steps is called; "reaching your bottom," this means becoming or experiencing what you are not, before you start to recover and be who you are. This is a movement from becoming to being, the trajectory is toward greater awakening, focus, and the ability to consciously direct power. We are moving toward greater and greater affirmation and inclusivity of life vs. isolation, fragmentation and the density of separation. This movement is from ego centric, to ethnocentric, to world centric, to cosmocentric. Most of the world is caught up in tribal, us/them, ethnocentric, gang war mentality, my family, my team, my country, my race, my political party, my flag, my sexual identity, etc., this is Biblical density, negativity, and ignorance and only creates more polarity.

A sign of evolving consciousness is the ability to take multiple perspectives and truly feel what it's like in that perspective, even if you strongly disagree. This is why I'm so excited about movies and T.V. these days, because there are the most incredible shows that really do quality work in giving us a felt experience of other realities, unfortunately I don't see a lot of carry over for people practicing taking other perspectives outside in the real world.

On a scientific level, we experience states of consciousness every night when we go through waking, falling asleep, dreaming (R.E.M), dreamless sleep (most restful), and waking up. In between this we will have circadian rhythms, moods, and many varied states of consciousness. It is possible for a person to have a predominate dreaming (Theta) brainwave pattern while they are awake, this substantiation would demonstrate one is at an advanced stage of conscious awareness. Masterful artists are able to dip into this state to derive profound inspiration, but they are not generally able to maintain it. We can track states of consciousness using technology such as an E.E.G. which will show us Beta, Alpha, Theta, and Delta brain wave patterns and synchronization of left and right hemispheres of the brain, each progressive state is considerably slower, more powerful, and yields higher expansion and pleasure. We can use an E.K.G. machine to see heart wave variability, that is to track how much each heart wave varies, which indicates deep levels of relaxation and wakefulness.

Our challenge is the same challenge one faces in meditation, which is being deeply relaxed and highly alert. Meditation is the fast track to evolving your consciousness, it is a practice of noticing what's happening in the present moment. It is not possible to really notice much of anything when you're texting and driving, multitasking, feeling stressed, pressured and driven, while the world moves at break neck speed.

Consciousness is slow and simple, it is highly focused on one thing in the moment, there is a feeling of lightness and buoyancy, humor, spontaneity, and compassion lead to skillful means.