Higher Consciousness: A Journey of Awakening
To understand higher consciousness we first need to understand what consciousness, and its opposite, unconsciousness are. Being unconscious in waking life is often understood as being on auto-pilot. When we’re on auto-pilot, we are literally functioning from what’s known as mental programming - old scripts wired into the hard drive of our neurobiology during the first 6 or 7 years of our lives. You might be surprised to know that scientific research says that 95% of our functioning is unconscious!
Metaphors for unconscious functioning include … mental programming, ego, lower mind, habitual reactions, acting out, feeling stuck, inner critic, inner conflict, defenses, etc.
Conscious functioning is the opposite - when we are conscious, rather than reacting habitually we hold enough awareness to see that there are choices to be had. In conscious moments we choose how to act rather than simply being in reaction to whatever is happening. Sounds great, right? … Living life from this empowered place! The question is, how do we stay in conscious awareness?
There’s a split between our conscious and unconscious mind.
The difficulty we experience is that there is a split between our conscious and unconscious mind. This means we often think we’re functioning out of a conscious space, while we’re actually speaking or acting out of very old habits, or mental programming. When we drop into auto-pilot, we lose perspective and become en-meshed once again with your thoughts as reality. How do we bridge this gap? Our body is the key!
“Our body is designed to hold consciousness … It's like an antenna for conscious awareness.”
Our body is designed to hold consciousness. It’s like an antenna for conscious awareness. We simply have to tune in to the body. Perhaps you’ve had the experience of being in meditation and suddenly noticed a nagging discomfort you hadn’t previously noticed? This is an experience of conscious awareness awakening from auto-pilot. In this case the auto-pilot practice was tuning out discomfort. You might say why would we want to be aware of discomfort? The answer is simple, the discomfort is a signal to alert the self that something is needed, the body is in need of care.
Levels of awakening to higher states of consciousness ...
That’s a basic level of awakening - to the level of the physical body. Next is the emotional body: emotions are also a felt sense in the body. Then the mental body, which we can observe through mindfulness practice as well as various types of meditation practice. Finally, through the practices of mindfulness and meditation, we become increasingly aware of the subtle energy body itself - which expands out to ever-increasing subtler layers. The subtlest layers of the energy body are perceived through our inner senses, also known as psychic senses or clairs (clairvoyance, clairaudience, etc).
As you develop attunement with the layers of your-self or your essence, something interesting happens. Abilities that may have at one time seemed far out, such as psychic abilities, come to be understood as very ordinary abilities that are actually universal.
Something we see in our practice at Sacred Healing Journey is that many people begin psychotherapy or meditation practice initially to help calm anxiety or quiet thoughts. And if they stay with the journey past their initial success, a journey of understanding one's mind often leads to a deepening in their understanding of self … leading to a spiritual journey. Another way of describing this journey is a journey of consciousness.
“Awakening is a journey of Consciousness.”
Much Love & Many Blessings
on your Journey!
Lynn & Cheryl