How Do You Develop Discipline

Posted on March 29, 2019 by

Q: I find that I have intentions to do something, and then I never seem to do it? Could you give some suggestions about how you develop discipline?

A: You progressively develop discipline as you grow spiritually and personally. It appears to follow these steps as you mature as a person and evolve spiritually:

Discipline in one area – you concentrate your attention and develop good habits in one area that is important to you. This may be in sports, weight lifting, playing music, or you may be able to be disciplined at your job.
Coordination of discipline – when you have developed the capacity to discipline yourself in more than one area, you schedule blocks of time when you can act in a disciplined manner in more than one area of your life.
Disciplining others – when you have learned to discipline yourself to reach your objectives and adhere to high standards of behavior—and you internalize this—you gain the capacity to discipline others. You do this when you perform supervision of others or you patent you children.
Disciplining your ego – as you begin to function more as the Self and are able to more fully embrace the executive functions of your personality, you use your conscience to improve your character and check the wayward impulses of your ego, and overrule your ego’s rash decisions with the more considered and mature choices of the Self.
Disciplining your entire personality to achieve specific goals and objectives – at this level, you begin to take charge of your life. You identify those goals that you want to achieve in your life, and you enact them through making a plan. Through this means, you progressively actualize your core life’s dreams.
Disciplining your Self to carry out the Soul’s Purpose – as the Soul evolves and rises into its crown of purpose, your Soul begins to direct your Self to enact aspects of its Soul Purpose—beginning with education and training; practice of the skill as creativity, in your career, and in service to others; and then perfecting the skill through insight and innovation.
Disciplining the Soul to follow the Divine Will and complete the Divine Plan – When this stage dawns, you embark on the path of discipleship. You work with your Supervising Initiate to unfold your Soul and actualize your spiritual destiny. Step-by-step, you ascend closer to Mastery and Liberation under the guidance of your spiritual Master.

Wherever you are on this scale today, start generating greater discipline through visualizing the next step in this process. For example:

What does discipline in one area look like?
In what other areas could I develop discipline? What would that require of me to achieve this?
Now that I’ve disciplined myself in several areas, how could I schedule these disciplined blocks of time, so I can make my day more productive?
What ways do I know to encourage others to observe self-discipline to be more orderly, efficient, productive, and respectful?
In what ways does my ego run the show? What behavior and attitudes could I change? How can I change that behavior?
Now that I’ve begun to restrain my ego, and I’m less distracted, what core goals do I want to achieve in my life? What are these goals? What is the plan to achieve each one? By when do I hope to accomplish each of these goals?
In what ways has my Soul intimated its purpose to me? What do I need to do to align with this purpose? How can I improve my ability to get clear on what I need to do?
If I have begun the spiritual Path, what do I need to do to make spiritual progress, and improve my ability to meditate and commune with the spiritual Master(s) of my tradition? What is required of me to move into the next step of my spiritual growth? What does Mastery in my tradition entail?

In general, to improve your productivity and your discipline, try these things:

Aim to accomplish one key thing each day
Put aside blocks of time in which you can focus exclusively on your goal without distraction
Sit with your resistance to change until it subsides, then press on to accomplish your objective
Work on your goals tenaciously; do not relent until you accomplish them. Engage your commitment and your resolve.
Challenge yourself to improve yourself; strive for excellence
Set up your workspace to be distraction free and orderly. Do one thing in that space, so you can gain the association that you will do that activity in that place.
Reflect on how you will feel when you accomplish this goal. If you think of this as a reward, it will motivate you to keep working to reach your goal, even when there are obstacles.
Do one part of your goal at a time, and progressively work to finish each remaining part. Check off your progress towards your goal on a checklist.

If you can set up your life to allow you the space to accomplish your goals, you can make this a productive, fruitful, and fulfilling life. Resolve that you stir your native will power into action and take charge of your time and your life, and make your dreams come true.

Don’t wait for others to make your dreams come true. If you want them, make them happen!

The Gentle Art of Making Spiritual Progress

Posted on March 22, 2019 by

Q: I feel dissatisfied with the amount of spiritual progress I have been making. How can I speed up my rate of spiritual progress?

A: You need to be able to give sufficient time to spiritual development. The relative rate you work through the impeding karma between successive nodal points is a function of the relative density of the karmic accretions between each nodal point, and the time you have available to do transformational work.

Your time is divided into three major divisions: duty, karma, and sadhana.

Duty comprises the time you spend nurturing your relationships of family, friends, and relatives; the time required for you to prepare for your career through education and to perform the tasks of your job; and the errands of your daily routine.

Karma consists of the time that is taken up through absorption in your desires, curiosity or fascination, or you when you are operating under an internal compulsion or addiction. Sometimes karma will appear as something new in your life, to which you must respond. In other cases, it will arise as physical or psychological issues that demand your attention, time, and effort—requiring problem solving, personal process, medical treatment, or therapy.

Spiritual work (Sadhana) includes your aspiration, or desire for spiritual progress; your inner work, the active transformation you do with your ensouling entity and its vehicles of consciousness, and your spirit; and reception of guidance, when you tap into intuition to gain understanding, to communicate spiritual truths to others, or to glean practical guidance for your life.

A disciple must free up as much time as possible for sadhana through simplifying his or her duties, and working out the issues that make up his or her karma. To complete the work of ascension to Mastery and Liberation, God must be your first priority. Your sadhana must be one-pointed and unbroken, your aspiration unwavering, and you must be steadfast in your efforts to transform your spiritual potentials and commune with the Master.

Your development may not always be easy; at some places on the Path, the karma is denser. The demands of your duty and karma may leave you will little time to devote to your sadhana; yet you need to make time for this and maximize your results in meditation.

As you gain mastery over the basic meditation skills of Integral meditation, you can utilize the shortcuts we have taught you to do more in the time you have. Once you master using intention to unite your attention with the attentional principle, traveling to your cutting edge of spirituality on the beam of Light, and combining your transformational mantra with Nada Yoga during the same meditation session—you can move ahead both on the track of the Soul at least one nodal point and open the track of the spirit to that same level in about twenty minutes.

We teach you these basic meditation skills of using your unique transformational mantra, opening the Path of the spirit through Nada Yoga, and traveling as your attentional principle up to the presence of the Soul in our intermediate meditation classes, the in-person Mudrashram® Master Course in Meditation and the by-mail and online Accelerated Meditation Program.

If you can give an hour for meditation, increase the time you spend doing your transformational mantra, so you can open three to five nodal points each day. If you are not in a level of the Continuum where you must integrate the contents of the nodal points you open that are essential to carry out your Soul’s purpose, you can extend the number of nodal points that you purify beyond five.

You can make palpable spiritual progress through doing the work. If you cannot reach a touchdown every time you sit down, you can make a gain of forward yardage with each meditation session. When you open up this new level of your mind, take the time to contemplate it and integrate its knowledge, ability, and virtue.

In time you will find that you have completed your work in the Subtle, Planetary, Transplanetary, Cosmic, Supracosmic, and your aligned Transcendental Path, and you have reached the Bridge Path—faster than you even realized was even possible. If you are unflagging in your effort, you will make progress and reach the goal at last.

[Those of you who have completed one of our intermediate courses] You have all the tools you need to do this fundamental work. Use them. They will serve you well.

On Becoming a Spiritual Guide

Posted on March 15, 2019 by

Q – How do you learn to become a spiritual guide?

A – There are different ways you can meditate:

You can absorb your attention into an energetic stream (Laya).
You can concentrate your attention on a focal point within a vehicle of consciousness, a nodal point along the path of the Soul, or a Nadamic tone on the path of the spirit (Dharana).
Once your attention is focused there, you can contemplate the content arising in your awareness at the focal point, the nodal point, or the Nadamic tone (Dhyana).
You can listen to the verbal and intuitive downpour of the Soul listening in the verbal intuitive channel of the Soul, which identifies stages of the path, intuits correspondences on different Planes of Light, and gives teachings to guide the personality.
You can focus your attention on your spirit, and travel with it as it opens the channels of the Nada (Udgit).

As you contemplate your vehicles of consciousness, over time you will begin to differentiate the demarcation between the conscious and unconscious portion of the mind, viewing it as a form embedded in the unconscious.

You will identify the seed atom or focal point within your vehicles.

You will witness the intelligence and volition that operate within your vehicles, and sense the qualities that emanate from them.

You will discern the integrating and energizing centers, or chakras, that organize the operations of these vehicles.

As you study your vehicles of consciousness, you will begin to sense the shells of energy and consciousness that surround your Soul that interpenetrate the physical body—the etheric, the astral, the causal, the mental, and the higher mental body—and the Soul’s essential body.

When you become more advanced in these practices, you will build a clear inner map of the portion of the Great Continuum of Consciousness that you have traversed, and you will gain the ability to guide others through the levels you have opened:

First, you will cognize discrete inner landmarks. You will do this through identifying the stable visual images, Nadamic tones, colors, and sense of the quality and energy for a selected nodal point on the Path. For example, for Trikuti, the three mountains center on the Second Transcendental Path, you might see three mountains, hear a sound like a drum, see colors of what resembles an orange-red sun, and feel the energy of great peace combined with great compassion.

Next, you will label this landmark. You give that landmark a name, “This is Trikuti.” You might wish to add a short description as to why it is a significant point on the Continuum, so you might additionally add, “It is the top of the Causal Plane, the origin of the casual covering of the spirit, and the place where the spirit first transcends the realm of the Negative Power, Kal Purusha.”

You will then remember the sequence of key landmarks along a particular segment of the Great Continuum of Consciousness. You will build an inner map for this level. You will then guide your own attention through that segment, and then guide the attention of other people through that segment.

As your inner Mastery grows with your Soul’s expanding consciousness, you will be able to guide others through entire regions of the Great Continuum of Consciousness.

Eventually, you will recognize and be able to guide others through all levels of the Continuum depicted in A Mudrashram® Reader: Understanding Integral Meditation.

This map can also be viewed on our web site in our article, The Great Continuum of Consciousness.

For those who wish to gain the requisite inner clarity and discernment to be able to guide others, we recommend that study of the Mudrashram® Correspondence Course. This course enables you to develop the detailed knowledge and make the fine distinctions that allow you to guide others through the inner worlds of dimension.

Those that advance in our meditation training to the level where they can teach the Mudrashram® Advanced Course in Meditation, after taking Teacher Training Two, learn how to manifest the inner guide form.

It is not easy to become a guide, but if you persevere in meditations, you will reach the inner state of discernment where you can act as a guide for others.

Transformations of Memory

Posted on March 9, 2019 by

The recent research in the study of memory at the neurological level reports that there is an actual transformation of the cells, and as these cellular changes persist, these memory traces remain. They also have discovered that there are different types of memory—such as visual, auditory, olfactory, tactile, kinesthetic, and emotional—that are stored in different locations in the brain, and are tied together to create the composite of memory.

This memory composite appears to be different each time it is recalled: different aspects of the remembrance are called forward, so what we remember each time is different than the imprint of the original incident. It has also been shown that with the skillful, intentional suggestion of an interviewer or interrogator that a subject remember something that they didn’t do, or having a subject do exercises that utilize visualization and imagination while they are relaxed, these memory traces can be changed, and false memories implanted.

The emotionalized component of memory—which is implicated in causing the affective dysphoria in phobias, post-traumatic stress disorder, and anxiety disorders—can be separated from the other components.

One novel method used to treat arachnophobia involves exposing a patient to the phobic stimulus, and then giving him or her a small dose of propanolol, which blocks the action of norepinephine. This appears to strip out the emotional component that either freezes someone or makes him or her want to run away in terror—and the patient can then approach the spider without any terror, and can touch it.

It was further suggested that as psychologists learn more about this actual working of memory, they would be able to apply these insights to actually cure phobias, post-traumatic stress disorder, and anxiety disorders. This application has been portrayed in movies such as “The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” and “Inception.”

The new concept of memory has changed with these new discoveries. It is no longer viewed like a collection of books in a library, but rather it is like a dynamic hard drive in a computer, where data can be recalled or modified as new input comes into the mind.

Meditation and Memory

Meditation builds upon these discoveries about memory that neurologists and psychologists have made. Meditation sees that memory can be utilized and transformed in ten ways:

Memory retention and recall – this aspect of memory is the foundation of learning and experience, and is embedded in the neurological substrate of memory.
Imagination – this creatively combines the components of memory composites in new ways, to come up with novel constructions.
Praxis –this uses remembered motor skills to carry out a behavior, or remembered data to solve a problem or communicate an idea. This is the skillful application of memory.
Life recall – this is the autobiographical aspect of memory that appears to be layered in six temporal zones—that which is being recalled in the moment, the life narrative back to the first conscious memory, the memory traces arising the zone before the first conscious memory to birth, the organismic memory of embryonic experience going back to conception, and the experience of eternity, where the Soul views the entire life as a detached observer. This is the aspect of memory that is encountered in the first layer of the Subconscious mind.
Intuitive memory – This is the categorical summarization and application of experience that takes place in the chakras of the Subconscious mind, which enables you to synthesize your associations to create correspondences, analogies, and metaphors, and to group similar associations together. For example, in one of the petals of the second chakra, your diverse and varied associations related to courtship are brought together in one place. This is the aspect of memory that is encountered in the second layer of the Subconscious mind.
Applied etheric memory – This aspect of memory utilizes the dynamic, computer-like functioning of the etheric body of the Metaconscious mind, which has access to the knowledge and experience stored in each band of the mind up to this level. This interface between the Subconscious mind and the executive functions of the Metaconscious mind—commitment, persona, conscience, concrete mind, intellect, personal intuition, and volition—enables you to dynamically draw upon your skills and knowledge to carry out the activities of daily life and work.
Stored etheric memory (Akashic Records) – This aspect of memory is found on the fifth Subplane of the Abstract Mind Plane, and it records each moment of life in multiple dimensions—sensory, emotional, cognitive impressions are all recorded here. Process meditation can tap this level. This zone is the level at which you can access remembrance of past lives. This level records the lives of this Cycle of Time; at higher levels of the Continuum, there are bands that retain the experiences of even more ancient Cycles of Time.
Karmic memory (Samskara) – In the causal body of the Soul—and layered on the inner helix that makes up the unconscious mind—the impressions of karma are stored. These desire-laden impressions that underlie motivation and craving influence thought, emotions, and behavior. Transformational meditation transmutes and integrates the positive impressions, and dissolves the evil impressions that are stored in this zone of the mind.
Illumined memory (Buddhi) – This is the eternal knowledge that the Soul retains throughout eternity. As the Soul ascends of the spiral of spiritual evolution, it expands this sphere of illumined knowledge. This zone of the mind has been called mandalic reasoning, spiritual discernment, and viveka.
Gnosis and Path Knowledge (Bodhi) – This is the Soul’s remembrance of its eternal essence and the path ahead to Liberation. Accessing this level of consciousness confers enlightenment.

Those who meditate access the deeper aspects of memory that are contained in the inner vehicles of consciousness. Types 1 to 3 operate in the Conscious mind. Types 4 and 5 come from the Subconscious mind. Type 6 functions in the Metaconscious mind. Types 7 through 10 arise from the Superconscious mind.

If we do not alter our awareness from the waking state of awareness, it appears that all aspects of memory, behavior, affect, and cognition are products of the operation of the brain and nervous system. Those that move their attention on the thread of consciousness behold the working of these inner vehicles and the subtler aspects of memory, conation, emotion, and thought that operate within them.

Those who meditate will be enriched to learn of the neurological substrates of memory and the other functions of consciousness shown to us in the patient and methodical research of the scientists. We encourage them to begin with these foundations, and explore the vehicles of consciousness to extend these understandings into the core of being.

Those who wish to explore the Conscious, Subconscious, and Metaconscious mind can do so in greater depth in our beginning meditation course, Introduction to Meditation. Those who wish to extend their journey of inner discovery into the Superconscious mind will benefit from taking one of our intermediate courses, the in person Mudrashram® Master Course in Meditation or the by-mail and online Accelerated Meditation Program.

Environmental and Mindset Factors Influencing Human Life

Posted on March 1, 2019 by George Boyd

This article comes from our coaching theme materials. We have now put up the Breakthrough Meditation Program for students who are enrolled in or who have completed one of our intermediate courses—the in-person Mudrashram® Master Course in Meditation or the by-mail and online Accelerated Meditation Program—our students can order this from their level one or level two completer pages; active students who wish to augment the class they are currently taking with this program should contact us.

We have also completed our Life Coaching Program, and Cult Recovery Coaching Program—and as of 2/20, we have also completed our Dysfunctional Family Recovery Coaching and our Addiction Recovery Coaching Programs. These will soon available for you to enroll for those of you who wish to work on these areas—these four programs are available to members of the general public: you do not have to be one of our meditation students.

To learn more about our coaching programs, you can go here.

External environmental factors and internal mindset factors condition what you experience in your life. Understanding these factors and learning how to work with them to enhance your life is the key to promoting greater success and happiness.

Environmental factors include:

Physical space where you live and work – this is the impact of the lighting and layout of your house on your mood, your creativity, your productivity, and your ability to relax and rest.
Objects placed in your physical space that have meaning for you – this consists of artwork and objects that inspire you or elicit memories of people who are important to you.
People who positively influence you or who distract/hinder you – this is what you experience in your relationships with your spouse or lover, your children, relatives, friends, co-workers, and relatives.
The information in your environment that influences you – this incorporates what other people tell you, your sources of news, expert opinions that shape your beliefs, what you read in books and the internet, and social media.
Cultural expectations of what you are supposed to do – these are the set of rules for dress, manners, and situational behavior passed down through your ethnic or cultural group.
The political and legal environment that governs what you are allowed to do – this my allow you great liberty or it may severely restrict your ability to communicate and your personal freedom.
The secular or religious framework that influences politics, laws, and culture – this is the largest frame that impacts the societal collective to which you belong.

Mindset factors include:

Where you are developmentally – this comprises the life skills, education, and training you have received in your life, and where you perceive you are blocked in your growth.
The four-fold wheel of identity, desire, meaning, and will – these are the different ways you conceive of yourself, what you want, how you construe life’s meaning and purpose, and your perception of your ability to change to achieve your goals and dreams.
The implicit order (the Divine Law) – this embraces each Law from subatomic particles to the Divine Spirit. This is the ordered consciousness of the mind that mirrors the world and each spiritual Plane as it is, and as you are a part of it. This is your internal viewpoint on reality, your unique perspective.
The mental gestalt – this is the interplay between integrated and non-integrated aspects of your personality, and the whole picture of you incorporating both aspects.
The levels of communication – these are the modalities through which you are able to interface with others’ mind and consciousness though non-verbal behavior, speech, and writing.
The mind as a solution-seeking mechanism – this views both fantasy and applied intelligence as ways the mind seeks solutions to perceived problems.
The mirror of the Divine Plan for human life – this is the blueprint of what you must do to complete your Soul’s Purpose for this life, and to carry out its mission to serve humanity.

We encourage you to contemplate each of these environmental and mindset factors to discern which are areas that you can change to improve the quality of your life. Surprisingly, even small modifications in the areas that are within your capability to change can result in significant enhancement of what you experience in your life.