Monthly Archives: June 2019

Dealing with Issues that Meditation Does Not Resolve

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By George A. Boyd © 2019

Q: I have been meditating for over ten years, and I still can’t seem to resolve certain patterns in my life that sabotage my success and happiness. Can you speak to how you overcome these?

A: There are two orders of mental function:

Conscious – these elements of the mind are integrated into your core identity states—ego, Self, and Soul. You use the octaves of will anchored these identity states to operate voluntarily to accomplish specific aims. These elements of the mind are aligned with your inner sense of truth and harmony, which we call in our spiritual tradition, your Dharma. When you operate in this zone of the mind, you operate in harmony with the Divine Law.

Unconscious – these elements dwell in the unconscious part of your mind, and operate autonomously from the conscious aspects of your mind. You may sense this part of your mind as split off from the conscious part of your mind, and it appears to operate independently from the octaves of the will integrated into your core identity states. When you operate under the influence of these unconscious elements, you step out of harmony with the Divine Law—and you may create new karma.

If you analyze what spiritual techniques actually do, you will see why they might not impact certain patterns that are embedded in your life matrix. For example, when we look at some of the key methods we teach in Integral meditation:

Transformational mantra purifies the karma behind the Soul and the vehicles of your Superconscious mind, and behind selected centers of your personality. Its major influence is on your Superconscious mind, and expands your capacity as Soul.

Nada Yoga clears the karmic patterns in the channels of the Nada that track through your Superconscious mind. This practice develops spiritual purity, love, devotion, and virtue. This aspect of spiritual development is integrated into your Soul.

Kundalini Yoga awakens your awareness into your Superconscious mind and allows you to become aware of the content of your vehicles of consciousness and glimpse the Soul. It does not per se impact the issues in your life matrix.

Raja Yoga trains your attention to witness the different levels of the Conscious, Subconscious, Metaconscious, and Superconscious mind; and shows you how to travel in full consciousness as your intentional consciousness, which we call the attentional principle. Witnessing or contemplating the contents of the conscious portion of your mind, however, does not typically have any effect on these wayward patterns of your unconscious mind.

Jnana Yoga can give you insight into these patterns and give you guidance to work with them, but it does not resolve them.

Agni Yoga can use attunements to elucidate what these patterns are, and can sometimes temporarily disengage them—but until these patterns are genuinely completed, they tend to come back again.

We teach these methods and many others in our intermediate meditation programs, the in-person Mudrashram® Master Course in Meditation and the by-mail and online Accelerated Meditation Program.

The core issues embedded in the physical etheric matrix of human life are typically not effaced through spiritual practices. This is the reason you continue to struggle with them, despite your experience that you are making progress towards your inner spiritual horizon. What can you do?

  1. Develop patience and acceptance of these patterns. Until you can ultimately resolve them, you may have to live with them for a time.
  2. Use insight practices to gain understanding of them. We teach these methods in our intermediate meditation programs.
  3. Pray to the Divine to help you resolve them. Sometimes things that are beyond your control can be readily resolved through Divine Healing and Ministry.
  4. Obtain assistance from others who have overcome these patterns. This may involve getting counseling, psychotherapy, or coaching.
  5. Carefully analyze your behavior, emotions, and beliefs that are contained in these patterns. This can lead to insight, breakthrough, and resolution for certain patterns.
  6. Don’t give up on yourself and the Divine, if speedy resolution is not forthcoming. It is helpful to have hope and optimism that a solution exists, and believe you are going to find it.
  7. Look to the functional patterns in your consciousness. You may tend to look to these character flaws and autonomous tendencies that arise from your unconscious mind as your great failing—and this may occupy much of your focus and concern. Realize that much of your consciousness is integrated and functional, and you may benefit from focusing more on cultivating and enhancing your strengths, instead of spending much of your time trying to root out your weaknesses.

You will find that nearly everyone you meet is dealing with these stubborn, wayward patterns. If they tell you they don’t experience them, they probably are too ashamed to tell you they have them too.

Focus on your zone of freedom to make spiritual progress and to move forward in your life. Acknowledge that today you might not have a solution for these issues, but at some point, you may find your key. Use these methods to work with these patterns and cope with them.

Using Tables in Our Books and Articles for Meditation

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Our articles are available here on our web log, on the Open Stacks page, and in our Library—you can sign up for the Library here. We also have books you can read when you want to delve deeper into our teachings. There are also downloads available for our webinars.We use a lot of tables! We have written this article in response to one of your questions on how to use the tables.

By George A. Boyd © 2019

Q: I noticed in many of your articles on the website and your books that there are a lot of tables. I’m not sure how I can make use of this information. Could you shed some light on this?

A: Tables can be used to compare alternate viewpoints across the Seven Rays, the content of chakras or inner centers, the perspectives from different octaves of being, or uncovering greater depths on the Continuum. These tabulations organize information so it can be readily assimilated and compared against other elements within the table. We utilize several types:

  1. Horizontal spread – tables of this type compare and contrast the content of the Seven Rays.
  2. Vertical array – these tables compare the viewpoint of ensouling entities, nuclei of identity, or spirits at different octaves of the Continuum. They can be also be employed to show varying abilities or powers at different bands of the Continuum, or progressive stages of spiritual Mastery.
  3. Depth mandala – these tables show progressively deeper layers of the psyche. Tables of this type might detail the content of each nodal point, or deeper layers of the unconscious mind. Depth mandalas are often used to show you the steps to reach a certain inner center, such as the steps to unite attention with your attentional principle (Purusa Dhyan), the Self (Swa Dhyan), your spirit (Surat Dhyan), your Soul on its own Plane (Adi Atma Dhyan), or with a spiritual guide (Guru Dhyan).
  4. Vehicular study – these tables will detail the content of chakras for selected vehicles of consciousness. This is also applied for contemplation of the attentional principle and the spirit through microconcentration.
  5. Nested array – these tables show vehicles of consciousness that encapsulate other vehicles of consciousness, like Russian dolls. For example, the form of the feeling center of the Conscious mind is subsumed under the larger frame of the bubble of the entire Conscious mind. This is in turn subsumed under the larger frame of the entire Personality, which the Self integrates. The Personality can then be viewed from the standpoint of the Soul, as an instrument of its expression in the human world. The Soul, in turn, appears to be contained within the Macrocosm of the Planetary Man or Woman.
  6. Continuum snapshots – these tables show the different Subplanes and Planes that make up entire Divisions of the Great Continuum of Consciousness. These types of tables are used in our studies of the Great Continuum of Consciousness, and delineate the Path of spiritual development through entire segments of the Superconscious mind.
  7. Thematic analysis – these tables show the content of different bands of the unconscious mind as progressive layers with a common theme. We utilize types of tables in our Karma Readings. Rather than show you steps through this band of the mind, we describe the content at that level.

If you can identify what type of table is in a particular article or book, you can readily understand what the Swamis are showing you, and you can gain maximum value from reading this article. Many of our articles are written not only to be an exposition—e.g., giving you information about something—but also to be a meditation, where you will contemplate each row of a table as a way of penetrating more deeply into the subject matter.

It will be helpful to ask yourself, based on the topic of the article, what type of explanation will elucidate this subject. This will give you a clue as to what type of table we are presenting. So for example, if the topic of the article is “Ministry across the Seven Rays,” you know that the table will take the horizontal perspective and show you the content on the parallel tracks of the Seven Rays (type one). The topic, “A Study of the Chakras of the Psychic Guide,” on the other hand, will likely present a vehicular study (type four).

Seven Modalities for Change

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By George A. Boyd © 2019

Q: I feel stuck. How do I change my life?

A: You need to apply one of the seven change strategies that will help get you moving again. These seven modalities for change are:

  1. Coaching – this empowers your choice and holds you accountable to make change.
  2. Psychotherapy – this finds the origin of patterns that are hindering your success and works with you until this pattern is resolved. Psychotherapy can address issues such as fear; limited belief about what you can do, be, or have; shame; self-sabotage; need to control; traumatic experience; or addiction—it keeps you focused on this issue until you have insight, breakthrough, and are able to change this area of your life that is not functioning.
  3. Counseling – this gives you information to facilitate your choices that yield successful outcomes. This may involve assisting you to set achievable and realistic goals, and troubleshooting your failures to design an alternate pathway to your objective that achieves the result you want.
  4. Hypnosis and affirmation – This uses suggestion and affirmation to activate your Subconscious and Superconscious mind to create change, augmenting the efforts you are making at the level of the ego [behavior] and the Self [vision of your life direction].
  5. Education and training – This gives you the knowledge and skills to accomplish a specific personal objective. It is usually employed to prepare you for your career, but education and training can be applied to any area of your life where you want to improve your functioning.
  6. Faith – When you embrace faith, you pray to God or other efficacious, empowered spiritual agency, whom you regard has the ability to remove your obstacles and help you achieve an outcome you desire. Invocation of the Divine in this way can release forgiveness, promote healing, and facilitate inner transformation and change through the work of the Spirit (Holy Spirit, Shakti).
  7. Meditation – This provides you with the inner tools to work on the issues of the personality, to promote insight and change, and to transform your spiritual potentials.

Which of these modalities are relevant for you?

  • If you already are resourceful and you just need someone to support you and stand with you to facilitate your change, consider coaching
  • If issues from your past are holding your back, psychotherapy may be what you need.
  • If you don’t know the steps or what resources are available to you to achieve what you want, you may need the guidance of counseling.
  • If you’ve tried to change, and your efforts are not working, you may wish to enlist the forces of your Subconscious and Superconscious mind, and try hypnosis and affirmation.
  • If lack of knowledge or skills is holding you back, education and training will help you.
  • If you’ve tried all the other methods and nothing seems to work, invoking a Transcendent and Omnific Power through faith may be your solution.
  • If you seek to empower yourself to make change and generate transformation from within you, you may wish to learn meditation.

You need to identify what you need to change, and the best way that will help you change. Not every method will work for you. You need to find the key that unlocks your lock.

If you feel that meditation is the method that is best matched to the way you wish to generate change, we teach a complete program of meditation:

If you set your mind upon change, you will find which of these modalities that work for you and produce the results you want.

Criteria for Spiritual Advancement Revisited

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By George A. Boyd © 2019

Q: What are the criteria for spiritual advancement? How will I know if I’m making spiritual progress?

A: There are a number of things that can be measured. One dimension of spiritual development we can say is the actual progress on the Path that transformation generates. This includes:

  1. Number of nodal points your Soul moves
  2. Number of Nadamic tones the spirit purifies on each track of the Nada
  3. Development of the seed atoms on the vehicles of consciousness on each Plane of Light; how many vehicles have been redeemed from the unconsciousness and the relative activation of each vehicle that has been awakened
  4. The track of the thread of consciousness, which reveals whether the attentional principle has opened this thread up to the Soul, where it can establish the state of enlightenment
  5. The relative depth to which attention can follow this thread, and whether it can gain union with the Soul, entering the state of Atma Samadhi.

Another dimension of spiritual progress are the outcomes spiritual transformation produces. Here you might look to:

  1. The development of holy virtues and improvement of character; the ability to use volition in positive ways
  2. The clearing of karmic issues, leading to greater serenity and positive relationships with others
  3. The enhancement of wisdom and discernment; the uprooting of ignorance and prejudice
  4. The ability to express the Soul’s gifts and creativity; the emergence of new abilities points to spiritual progress; the awakening of the inner sensory faculties
  5. The accession of new, previously veiled knowledge; the transformation of the unconscious permits awareness of that which was buried beneath the accretions of karma
  6. The increase of love and devotion to God; augmenting the drive to be of service to others and to assuage their suffering
  7. The creation of mental synthesis; the capacity to express the Soul’s service and to enact the Soul’s purpose

When we do a Soul Reading, we are looking at the measure of spiritual progress—the first five of these factors. However, to the degree that you are actually making progress, you should see changes in one or more of these additional seven by-products of spiritual unfoldment.

For example, your behavior, attitude, and character might change. Additionally:

  • You might be more serene and calm—less stressed out—as a result of your spiritual unfoldment.
  • You may have greater understanding of others and insight into your own motivations.
  • You may develop enhanced spiritual discernment.
  • You may discover new spiritual abilities that you didn’t have before.
  • You may gain penetrating knowledge about your personality and your higher mind.
  • You may experience enhanced devotion and love, or feel motivated to help others.
  • You may arrive at core insights that reveal your Soul as it is, and shows you its service and purpose.

You should be able to verify that you are progressing on the spiritual Path, and be able to notice that this new aspects of the Soul’s innate love, wisdom, and ability that emerge as this progress takes place. This is not something that you should take on faith, but learn how to detect these markers of change—and with gratitude, acknowledge the dynamic alchemical metamorphosis that is taking place within you.

If you wish to generate actual spiritual transformation you can measure, you can learn these methods in our in-person Mudrashram® Master Course in Meditation and the by-mail and online Accelerated Meditation Program.