Higher Consciousness - What Is It? Can You Attain It?

The importance of attaining higher consciousness is regularly mentioned in connection with spiritual awakening and growth, but there's been very little consensus about what it actually is. As Seneca pointed out, "If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable." We can look to spiritual sages for understanding, but there's another source that can clarify their words. Although quantum physicists weren't originally researching consciousness, they uncovered information that's offering fresh and surprising insights into consciousness.

Consciousness is generally defined as the ability to be aware of our own existence. Or, we can think of it as a tool used to create an inner reality that makes sense to us. Clearly, without consciousness we would have no sense of our own existence, and no ability to understand our place within the whole. When we think in terms of "lower" and "higher" levels of consciousness, it implies an awareness of existence on more than one plane. This thought echoes the concept of a "higher" and "lower" self.

What does science tell us about consciousness? A group of scientists known as material realists believe only matter exists. They claim that consciousness is a product of evolution and is simply a brain function that's another form of matter. If material realists were correct, that would mean consciousness would exist only in creatures that are highest on the evolutionary ladder. In that case, consciousness higher than what humans already possess could not exist. Although material realists have diligently tried to discover how matter produced consciousness, all their attempts have failed.

On the other hand, quantum research has demonstrated that consciousness permeates even the most elemental particles in the universe. This fact indicates that consciousness was present at the beginning of the universe and has always been an integral part of everything in existence. This discovery also informs us that consciousness can, and does, exist apart from matter and outside of time/space.

Scientists now understand that consciousness is a field we exist within, rather than something we possess. Instead of producing consciousness, the brain acts as a receiver that picks up and processes consciousness that exists outside it. Although matter takes up only 1/3 of the universe, we usually think of the space that surrounds it as "empty." However, this "zero point field" is actually packed with energy and acts as an enormous storehouse of consciousness and memory.

Spiritual sages have long considered this matrix of consciousness and energy to be a Divine Ground, the One Mind of God that's shared by all of existence. As physicists delve deeper into the quantum realm, many of them are beginning to agree. This means that the Divine Mind literally permeates everything in existence, and this is where the concept of higher consciousness comes in. Although everything that exists is conscious, it would be ridiculous to claim that everything is equally aware. We can think of consciousness as a light that's either on or off, but intelligence and awareness as a rheostat that can be dialed up or down. So how do we ratchet up our awareness and attain higher consciousness?

As strange as it seems, research demonstrates that the quantum foundation of the universe is real, while the material universe is a virtual reality. Spiritual sages have explained for centuries that our world is an illusion, and they've been proven correct. They tell us that we've turned our back on the oneness of All That Is to experience separation and specialness. To do this, we had to alter our level of awareness so that we could project an illusion of separate identities and private thoughts. The brain assists us in carrying out this charade by imposing its logic and veiling our connection with the Divine Mind.

It's as if we had been living in a beautiful sunlit mansion but shut ourselves into a tiny, windowless basement room and stayed there so long, we forgot the mansion existed. Our forgetfulness couldn't negate the mansion's existence, but it certainly changed our level of awareness. When spiritual masters speak about "higher consciousness," they're reminding us that we can wake up from our illusion and reconnect with the One Mind.

How do we regain our connection with the One Mind? In the Gospel of Thomas Jesus said, "Where the beginning is, the end will be." In other words, we reconnect by letting go of thoughts that promote separation and specialness and replace them with the desire for oneness. As we let go of our belief preconceived notions, we open ourselves to willingly hear what the Divine Mind wants to tell us. This change of thinking brings us out of the basement and back into the sunlight of higher consciousness. None of us have ever left the field of the One Mind, now we only need to become aware of it.

Copyright c Lee and Steven Hager

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From Lee and Steven Hager, the authors of The Beginning of Fearlessness: Quantum Prodigal Son, a spiritual quest and scientific adventure based on Jesus' parable of the prodigal son, quantum physics and the gnostic gospels.

You Can Attain a Higher Level of Consciousness If You Want

Have you ever wondered if there is more to life than what you are experiencing? If you are like most people, you live in a state of consciousness below that which is attainable. There are different levels of consciousness and most people live in the lower levels their entire lives never knowing that it is possible to go higher. Experiential research that I and my cohorts have done over the years shows, without a doubt, that there are five levels of consciousness. See if you agree with me as we go through the five levels.

Waking Sleep

This is the lowest level of consciousness, and surprisingly, this is where most people spend most of their time while they are awake. Waking sleep is when the body is doing one thing and the mind is thinking of something else. An example would be walking down a flight of stairs while thinking about having a conversation with someone you were talking to an hour ago. Another example would be driving a car while thinking about what you are going to do when you get to your destination. The scary part is, when you get to your destination you don't remember many of the places you passed while driving. Probably we can all relate to our own experiences of waking sleep. You can even be in waking sleep while reading a book or reading this article. You are reading but your mind is thinking about something else. This kind of waking sleep is called "mindless reading."

Waking sleep can be dangerous because the mind is not "in tune" with what the body is doing. Thousands of automobile wrecks occur every year due to waking sleep. Falling down stairs, falling off ladders, walking off scaffolding, sawing off fingers are some more examples of what can happen during waking sleep. I had a good friend in high school who was plowing a field next to the one I was plowing. The farmer we were working for told him to go down the road and start plowing the next field when he got through. When he finished plowing the field he drove down the road and forgot to take the plow up out of the ground and plowed up a bridge. I could hear the rumbling of the wooden planks over the sound of my tractor's engine. He later confided in me and told me that he was thinking about his girlfriend.

Absorption

This is the second stage of consciousness, but it isn't much better than waking sleep. When in absorption you are not aware of yourself because you are completely engrossed in some kind of activity or situation. Watching a move, in which you are totally engrossed, is a good example. You become so "caught up" in the movie that you feel as though you are with the actors and experiencing what they are supposedly experiencing. You are totally unaware of your surroundings. Your heart is beating fast, your palms are sweaty, you are not even aware of the person sitting next to you, the edges of the screen or the theater itself. You are totally absorbed in the movie.

Absorption can occur while in deep thought, reading a book, staring into a fire, listening to music. This might seem like waking sleep but it isn't. In absorption, the mind is completely immersed in the object and there is no sense of what the body is doing or what's going on around you. In waking sleep there is still some sense of what your body is doing and vaguely what's happening around you.

The effects of absorption can be recognized best after you have experienced it. Coming out of absorption can be interesting because it is much like having been asleep and oblivious to yourself and the immediate surroundings. Interestingly, when you come out of absorption, it appears as though time has passed very quickly. You may take a look at the clock and say something like, "Where did the time go?"

Attention

For most people, attention is about as far as they will go in consciousness because they don't know that it is possible to go further. In school, students are often told by their teachers to "pay attention." A person can be "paying attention" and all of a sudden fall back into absorption or waking sleep without knowing it. Attention requires effort, while absorption and waking sleep require no effort at all. Unlike absorption, however, there is a feeling of separation between the observer and the observed - you and the object. For example, if you are looking at a tree, you experience being separate from the tree and that there is distance and space between you and the tree.

Let's go back to the example of watching a move. This time rather than being absorbed you remain attentive to things around you - the person next to you, the frame around the movie screen, people coming and going in the theatre. You are not disturbed by what's going on around you. You are simply attentive. If your focus suddenly becomes narrower and deeper, and you become emotionally involved in the movie you can easily slip back into absorption. This is neither good nor bad, it just is. It is something you can experience for yourself. You can experience going back and forth between absorption and attention while doing most anything - running, riding a bike, walking, watching a ball game, watching television, talking with someone, etc.

Awareness

This level of consciousness is not difficult to experience - the difficulty comes in staying there because the mind will snap you automatically into waking sleep, absorption, or attention. Being aware is a higher level of consciousness than the first three. Awareness is simply noticing what is happening in you and around you with a very keen sense of understanding. You may be noticing cars whizzing by, people walking, birds flying overhead, dew on the grass, and so on. At the same time you are also aware of yourself. You may be walking and you are feeling your feet coming down heel to toe, hearing the "crunching" of the leaves, feeling your arms swinging, your breathing, and the wind blowing across your skin. Awareness is like opening up and letting things come to you - a field of experience opens and life is being fully and completely witnessed by you.

Awareness also includes the ability to observe things and events with impartiality and non-judgment. It is an acceptance of whatever is happening in your experience at this very moment - not a year ago, not yesterday, and not a minute ago. It means staying with the experience, whether it is "good" or "bad" and allow it to yield its meaning to you. This doesn't mean, However, that you let things happen without getting involved. If you see someone in need of help, you help them. If you hear a baby cry, you go see if something is wrong. Let the experience of awareness yield its meaning to you by understanding exactly what is happening within you and outside of you this very moment.

Practice staying in awareness by relaxing into the present moment. It is very important to remain relaxed at all times. The more relaxed you are, the more aware you become. But don't let your mind wander into the lower levels of waking sleep, absorption and attention. Stay alert, but also stay relaxed. You might think that these two terms, relaxed and alert, are opposing one another but they are not. In fact, they compliment one another. The mind is alert (aware) and at the same time it is not having any thoughts of the past or the future. In other words, the mind is attuned to the present moment. The body, as well, is relaxed and not tense. Move like a graceful dancer - fully alert and relaxed.

Pure Awareness

Pure awareness is the ultimate level of consciousness. It is somewhat like awareness but it is not so much an experience as it is a knowing. To go into pure awareness you must first of all be in the state of awareness. While in awareness all you have to do is expand your consciousness to include the infinite space inside of you and the infinite space outside of you. This may not be so easy at first, so use your imagination to focus inward into your body starting with a cell and go smaller into molecules and then into atoms, subatomic particles, and on into infinitely smaller and smaller particles. This is the infinite space inside. Do the same thing going outward into the space beyond your body - to the stars and planets, further and further indefinitely. This little trick of the imagination allows your consciousness to expand to its fullest limits.

Keep your consciousness expanded into infinity for as long as you can while walking around in a state of awareness - expanded awareness. Sooner or later your consciousness will shrink back into waking sleep, absorption or attention, and when it does, bring it back into expanded awareness. At some point in time, while practicing coming back into expanded awareness, you will feel as though you and everything are actually the same. At first, it may be for just an instant but when it happens, you are pure awareness. Existing in this state, no matter for how long, is not in the mind nor the body; it is knowing that everything is one. That is what pure awareness is all about. With practice, you will be able to stay in pure awareness longer and longer.

Neil Crenshaw, Ph.D.
http://www.pureawareness.info

How To Attain Higher Consciousness

Being in touch with our higher consciousness throughout moments in our lives can help us bring all the joy and fulfillment we fundamentally seek. The more we can connect with our higher self, the more we can bring balance to our world. With all the global changes we are going through this is the best thing we can do for ourselves.

The way to connect with our higher consciousness is to let it come to us, we cannot control this, what we can do is to prepare ourselves for this energy to flow through us. Yet we may want to control getting this because this is one of the most fulfilling and enlightening experiences we can have.

How we begin to open up to experiences of higher consciousness is by looking at ourselves as a whole. We are beings of energy, energy flows through us, that is what creates the lives we have. What is important is how our energy flows through us. When energy flows freely in us, that is when we have the greatest experiences and when it doesn't we can feel lost.

The functionality of our energy dynamics is not something that is commonly known, it is something that we ignore, maybe partially because we fear the unknown. We are conditioned to live in our minds, we are always thinking and we forget that there are other states of mind that we can have. When we want to improve a certain situation, we try to control our thoughts in order to control the outcome. What if we decided to seek a higher state of mind to improve a given situation instead?

When events in our lives work out really well, we have a great experience, we are filled with positive and rewarding energy. This energy is very powerful and we most likely use this towards an ego boost. A mental boost feels great, but it will quickly deplete the energy and we don't get any further benefits from that experience. What if we could properly harness it and take ourselves to a higher level of awareness?

When we look at ourselves as a whole, we see that our personal energy dynamics influence our minds and our minds influence our energy levels. In other words how we fundamentally feel affects the level of our thoughts and our thoughts influence how we feel. We can worry, think negatively or believe in ourselves and think positively. These type of thoughts we have will have a major influence on the experiences we get. Understanding this will motivate us to stay with the positive vibes and we can adapt our thinking to be more like this. But sometimes that can be impossible, that's when we have to understand how our energy dynamics are working and why. When we make the necessary changes on this level, it will affect every aspect of our being. Our energy will flow more freely and we rise to a higher level of consciousness which will cause us to grow much faster.

The main cause to the restriction in our energy flow is our fears. Fears can easily accumulate in us over time to the point we don't even realize we have them or that they are affecting us everyday. We let this happen because we use our minds to hide them through the creation of belief systems. Our minds alone cannot conquer fear because it is an energy. Only our feelings can bring us directly to fear. We don't have to avoid these feelings of fear when we can learn how to properly overcome them. This is what will free us.

The way to properly overcome fear is to start by surrendering to its energy. We have to feel it and follow it to the source. This will take some strength and courage but what are we without it. We just need enough motivation, it comes very strong when we realize how our lives have been suppressed because of them. Some fears will be easier than other to conquer. They are all interconnected therefore we have to respect their pattern of creation. The bigger fears cannot get conquered without overcoming the smaller fears that lead up to it.

Overcoming fear is the greatest gift we can give to ourselves, it frees up our energy and allows us to do better in so many aspects of our lives. During the breakthroughs of fear, its release of energy leads us towards higher consciousness where we see everything clearly. At the same time we can let go of the restrictive belief systems we created and free our minds to new wisdom.

Our ego boosts are also created by fear, therefore when we can recognize that we can learn to eventually let higher consciousness flow in when we have boosts of energy. When we look at ourselves as a mind-body battle, we learn to wake up from our bubbles and begin to truly experience reality. This is how we can connect with our true potential and bring balance to this world.

I have written a simple manuscript for guidance into recovering your energy and conquering your fears so that we can free our minds. This simple view can lead us to expand our consciousness and evolve into freedom.

I have written a simple manuscript for guidance into recovering your energy and conquering your fears so that we can free our minds. This simple view can lead us to expand our consciousness and evolve into freedom. [http://www.evolvetofreedom.com]