Getting Ready for the Spiritual Path

By George A. Boyd ©2020

Q: When does someone become mature enough so they can embrace the spiritual Path?

A: If you examine what governs people’s lives, we can characterize seven major stages:

  1. Whim governs your life – You act on any idea that occurs to you. This leads to chaos and disorganization, and you seldom achieve anything worthwhile.
  2. Other people dictate what you do in your life – In this stage, other people define your life, and tell you what you should be, do, and have. This leads to a life where you feel empty and inauthentic.
  3. Passion governs your life – You pursue a primary passion: for example, making money, being famous, becoming powerful, or making love to beautiful women or men. In this life pattern, you do whatever it takes to realize your desires and dreams, regardless of how it affects you or others. You feel temporary pleasure when you realize one of your desires, but then emptiness and boredom set in. [Some people operating at this stage use alcohol and drugs and constant distraction to deaden these unpleasant, underlying feelings of guilt, shame, inadequacy, and phoniness.]
  4. A quest for meaning governs your life – You dedicate you life to uncover your genuine values. You jettison the false values of materialism and other people’s programs for your life, and you begin to discover who you are. At this stage, a humanistic counselor, an existential therapist, or a coach can help you discover your genuine Self.
  5. You govern your life through aligning your goals to your core values – Once you know who you are as a human being, you can create a life based on what you truly want to achieve—a life that gives you real satisfaction and fulfillment. At this stage, you can also benefit from coaching, which can support you in reaching the vision of your future that you visualize for yourself.
  6. Spiritual awakening reframes who you know yourself to be – You enter this stage when you have an out of body experience, a peak experience, a psychedelic encounter with a god-like part of you, an infilling of the Holy Spirit, or the rising of your Kundalini. When this occurs, you have a glimpse of something greater than your personality. [People react to this experience in one of two ways: (a) It frightens them, and they seek to shut down the experience—they may believe they have experienced temporary insanity and they get medication from a psychiatrist. (b) They explore this experience further, and try to understand what happened to them—this openness to go deeper into this experience, we call the neophyte stage of the spiritual Path.]
  7. You dedicate your life to the spiritual quest and inner development – If you choose to explore this initial awakening experience more deeply, you begin the aspirant stage of the spiritual Path. During this phase, you discover your true spiritual essence and your Soul Purpose. Those who achieve this reorientation around this higher spiritual essence enter the next phase, discipleship. During discipleship, you develop the spiritual essence with which you identify along its track, until you reach the Other Shore of Mastery and Liberation.

Spirituality is not something you can natively integrate until you have passed through the first five stages.

At stages one to three, you are living a life that is not real, that is not authentic. You have to let go of these patterns of idle imagination, the agendas of others, and the addictive fascination with the bright shining illusions of materialism. Each of these externalizes you, and alienates you from your genuine Self.

At stages four and five, you discover your genuine Self, and begin to found your life on your real values—not the values of others. At this level, you can benefit from psychotherapy, counseling, and coaching.

At stage six and seven, you reach beyond your personality to experience your transpersonal life, and you embrace your spirituality.

Your questions about who is mature enough to enter the spiritual Path?

Those who dwell at stages one to three are not ready for spirituality—they’ve not even discovered who they are.

Those at stages four and five are building the foundation for spirituality through constructing the bedrock of character and a life established on living their genuine values.

Stages six and seven can be entered in a stable way once the personality has been made ready.

Q: How can Mudrashram® assist others in this process of embracing their spirituality in a stable way?

A: We can assist others at some of these stages; but at other stages, people are outside of our ability to assist them. For example:

At stage one, those whose lives are governed by whim follow a path that leads to madness. These need the help of a social worker, a psychiatrist, and a psychotherapist. These are outside of our purview: those at this stage are not candidates for the spiritual Path.

At stage two, those whose lives are governed by others, often experience abuse at the hands of others. Those who direct their lives might be:

  • Parents who raise them in a dysfunctional family
  • Religious, political, or terrorist groups that re-parent them to follow this group’s leader’s agenda

We can assist these ones through our dysfunctional family or cult recovery coaching programs. These programs are designed to help these people rehabilitate their lives, so they can find wholeness, and be ready to embark on their spiritual journey.

At stage three, those who are near the end of their dance with an addictive passion—and have tried to deaden their feelings with alcohol, drugs, gambling, sex, or thrill seeking—can receive value from our addiction recovery program. When they have uncovered the real issues that made them pursue their addictive patterns and address them, they can re-own their genuine Self and rise to the level when they can become open to their spirituality—to pursue what 12 step groups call the 11th step.

Those at stage four and five, who are seeking an authentic life, will find our life coaching program helpful. Indeed, in each of our coaching programs, we give exercises to help those who are taking the programs explore the deep questions of stage four.

However, our true strength in Mudrashram® is guiding others through the aspirant Path, and leading them through their disciplic journey to Mastery and Liberation. We do this through our beginning, intermediate, and advanced meditation classes that teach others how to awaken spiritually and how to transform themselves to reach their highest spiritual potential.

Q: Who influences people at stage two? Who governs their lives?

A: There are several scenarios through which people come under the control of others. These include:

  1. Parenting – dysfunctional family upbringing leaves lasting issues you must work to overcome
  2. Peers – getting involved with gangs and criminality leads you into involvement with the criminal justice system and the dangerous criminal underground
  3. Politics – political cults that develop around charismatic political figures can take charge of every aspect of your life
  4. Religion – religious cults that develop around charismatic religious and spiritual leaders can dictate every aspect of your life—behavior, beliefs, values, choices, and life direction
  5. Radicalized groups – terrorist groups that form around doctrines of hate and prejudice can waylay your life and lead you to acts of violence and crime
  6. Military and police – militaristic groups can program your life to regard others as the enemy; you are ever vigilant and ready to go into battle with the enemy, forgetting about your own life in the process
  7. Media – Influential media personalities can shape your beliefs and values; this is typically a gateway to involvement to scenarios three, four, or five.

Q: How do you avoid letting others shape and govern your life?

A: Until you know who you are and what you stand for—it’s very easy for others to control you. Look beneath the surface, and you’ll discover they are manipulating you through fear, shame, and guilt to enact their agendas. They give love and approval if you do what they want; they make you afraid, shame you, threaten you, and make you feel guilty if you do not.

Q: How do you get free?

A: Well first, you have to leave: get out of the arena of their influence. You need to find a safe place where they cannot find you.

Next, you have to heal and discover through you are and what you stand for. This isn’t an easy process: it’s hard and often painful. It means you have to look at each way others used and manipulated you. A therapist or support group can help you do this.

Q: It seems like most of this process to awaken to spirituality is a personal journey.

A: Yes. You have to genuinely know who you are before you can authentically embrace your spiritual nature.

When cults get a hold of you, they can lift you into the spiritual realms, but they do so before you discover who you are as a human being.

In this case, you are readily hypnotized, manipulated, or programmed to carry out the cult leader’s agenda, instead of living your genuine human and spiritual potentials.

So instead of living the core values of your life, you’re living to bring people to Jesus or to enlist people to chant Nam Myoho Renge Kyo. You don’t know who you are or your genuine Soul Purpose—rather, they are giving you an identity and having you carry out their purpose.

That’s why it’s important for you to reach personal maturity before you start the spiritual Path. This enables you to free yourself from other people’s thrall and start from step one—knowing who you are and knowing what you stand for.

You can achieve the first step, knowing who you are as a person through psychotherapy, coaching, and our Introduction to Meditation Course. You can learn to awaken your authentic spirituality—your attentional principle and spirit—and unfold your Soul’s spiritual potentials in our intermediate courses, the in-person Mudrashram® Master Course in Meditation and the by-mail and online Accelerated Meditation Program.

The Great Gulf between the Ego and the Soul

By George A. Boyd ©2019

Q: What keeps the sense of ego separate from the Soul? What happens if we drop the ego?

A: I can share from my own experience how I have learned to cope with having an ego, as opposed to trying to dissolve it or destroy it.

I don’t feel cut off from the Soul, but from my egoic perspective, I recognize it as another order of Nature. So as I am anchored in human life and it is anchored on the spiritual Plenum, there is no way my ego is going to become the Soul—the seed atoms that make up the egoic complex come out of God and are placed in the helix of human life to enable the Soul to express in finite space and time, in this world.

While we can move attention into Union with the Soul and look from its perspective, and can view the limitations of the egoic perspective, the Soul does not drop the egoic atoms until it is ready to drop the body for good at the time of death.

I’ve had experiences of dropping the egoic atom and the entire complex in Samadhi. You cannot think. You cannot speak. You cannot move. You cannot breathe. This is not a very functional state.

Now we can give ourselves the suggestion that only God is real, there is only the unified oneness of the Soul. With practice, we can hypnotize ourselves into believing this for a time—but even if we can keep our attention fixed in this realization, the egoic complex does not dissolve—and to the degree we attempt to deny or suppress that complex and its needs, we only succeed in driving this underground into the unconscious.

I find that it is much healthier for me to not try to disappear the ego, but to accept its legitimate place and purpose in the hierarchy of the mind—and where possible, to take care of its needs, so it can function optimally.

I went through a phase when I was a teenager, where I went around believing I was God, but this was also a period in my life when I was not particularly functional—I would not have been able to hold down a normal job, study in school, or complete a project. I could float in this blissful state; but my life, and the expression of my Soul through my life, was not yet established.

I also had a subsequent realization that the God in me (Soul) was just a tiny atom of the Great Life that pervades all things (the Divine); this helped me heal my solipsistic delusion.

Until individuals take the First Initiation—particularly those who dwell on the Psychic Realm—they can come to believe they are the All, and conceive that the entire universe revolves around their needs.

This “spiritual narcissism” is only transcended when these individuals realize something that there is something far greater than themselves—and genuine humility is born in their Souls.

A spiritual teacher needs to fulfill the requirements to become an instrument of the Divine, and express that anointing to serve those who come to him or her. This expression can take the form of initiating, teaching, counseling, coaching, guiding, empowering, or healing others; it can be expressed through art or writing; it can radiate through their Presence.

Many spiritual teachers choose to remain much of the time in an altered state of consciousness. I do not. I do not abandon my humanness. I do not remain detached from my ego. I enter altered states of consciousness when I need to do my spiritual work; when I’m done, I come back.

This means I directly encounter my ego. I feel my suffering and my joy.

I don’t presume I am perfect; I am not. I don’t presume I know all things; I do not. I don’t presume I have miraculous powers; instead I judge whether these alleged “siddhis” produce tangible, measurable results.

As a human being I recognize I have flaws. My intuition is not always accurate. My reason sometimes comes to irrational conclusions. My senses sometimes deceive me. There are times when my beliefs turn out to be erroneous and unfounded.

I continue to quest for answers as a human being. As a human being I am not Almighty God, and I will never become Almighty God. If in meditation, I am able to unite with the atom of the Divine that dwells within my Soul, as a human being, I will never be that atom.

I call upon our brothers and sisters who have imbibed New Age teachings, I AM Movement teachings, and the teachings of the Yogi Preceptors and Gurus—who teach that you are Divine, and that your human Self and its personality and the ego embedded in your experience of your human life are unreal—to not lose touch with your humanness and your vulnerability, as you are immersed in the ecstatic state of union with your spiritual core.

There are times when we must bring forth our inner Divinity. There are times when we must function as a human being. May we find the wisdom to recognize when it is appropriate to operate in each state.

The Seven Rays and Thematic Life Issues

By George A. Boyd © 2003

Human lives pass through seven stages, which are described below.

  1. Degenerate – lives marked by lack of conscience, cruelty, selfishness, harm to self, others and the community; criminal and barbaric lives
  2. Chaotic – lives marked by severe conflict, confusion, or madness, difficulty in sorting out inner priorities and interpersonal turmoil, often marked by dysfunctional family environment, struggle with addictions
  3. Thematic – lives relatively well adjusted to the ambient culture, but with repeating patterns of frustration, self-sabotage, and limitation with discrete issues
  4. Revelatory – lives devoted to pursuit of meaning, self discovery and overcoming limitation; these lives are growth-oriented, embrace experimental risk-taking to act and think in new ways, and achieve profound, life-transforming insights
  5. Steady effort – after several lifetimes of effort towards fulfilling Soul Ray purposes, these individuals enter with gifts and talents, which they steadily improve and earn their fortune and fame with these gifts
  6. Great achievement – these individuals are true luminaries, and leave lasting contributions to their culture and to humanity. These areas of achievement across the Rays are:
    • First Ray – Political/military/legal or legislative achievement
    • Second Ray – Teaching/counseling/psychotherapy achievement
    • Third Ray – Philosophical/scholarship/business management achievement
    • Fourth Ray – Artistic/musical/entertainment achievement
    • Fifth Ray – Scientific/research/technological achievement
    • Sixth Ray – Self-mastery/religious/spiritual achievement
    • Seventh Ray – Understanding of principle or truth/application/dissemination of their discovery through communication or marketing
  7. Avataric– lives of liberated, God-realized beings who incarnate Divine Love, Grace, and Power.
    Degenerate lives are ego-polarized, unchecked by the Self or spiritual influence.

Examining these lives, it appears:

  • Chaotic lives represent the transition between ego-polarization and more integrated self-directed lives.
  • Once the Self gains ascendency over the ego, the individual enters thematic lives where he or she is confronted with patterns that keep repeating, over which volition has little or no control.
  • After enduring and accepting these patterns, the individual may shift into the active questing of a revelatory life, that emphasizes overcoming these limiting patterns, and may result in profound realizations, through which they release these karmic issues and transcend them.
  • With the freeing up of energy bound in self-defeating patterns, the individual is able to make steady progress in Soul Ray areas of development, moving ahead by learning academic knowledge, acquiring experiential skill, achieving cognitive insight and understanding through creative mastery of the subject matter.
  • After several lives of progressing steadily along these lives, these individuals begin to develop refined talents and gifts of genius in these areas. This sets the stage for lives of steady effort, marked by expression of these talents and gifts. These individuals may become teachers, mentors, or coaches for others, assisting them to develop their own gifts and talents.
  • Some of these individuals press on to reach the fulfillment of development along these lines, and we see the flowering of genius in lives that inspire and move the multitudes in lives of great achievement. In some of these profoundly gifted individuals, multiple trends of genius combine to create unique hybrid combinations, thus we may see twin trends of spirituality and art give rise to poet saints, like Kabir or Rumi, or the blended politics and spirituality of a Gandhi, and other combinations.
  • When all tracks have been developed and all karmic issues worked out, the Avatar incarnates the infinite potentiality of humanity. This quickens the development of each individual and germinates new creativity within the collective mind of humanity. The reappearance of an Avatar lifts humanity onto a new plateau of cognition and ability; their perennial advent ensures that the course of growth and development of human lives will follow the overshadowing guidance of the Divine Plan.

Meditation upon these life trends will permit the disciple to identify the key strategies for maximizing the opportunities of his or her current human life. Understanding these patterns of human life will point out the subsequent work that is required to produce the fulfillment and full flowering of human life.

Thematic Lives

Thematic lives have special relevance to the work of a psychotherapist and we will explore them in greater depth here. It is these individuals suffering from personality disorders, neurotic relationship styles, and adjustment crises, when they appear in the therapist’s office are stubbornly resistant to change. The challenge for the psychotherapist is to catalyze their movement through:

  1. Guiding them into reflective thinking
  2. Having them consider the life consequences of their behavior
  3. Helping them uproot their defenses that prevent insight and the emergence of painful feeling, which leads to gradual dismantling of these self-defeating patterns and their replacement by healthier patterns of thinking, acting, and relating to others.

Thematic issues of life involve certain irrational or destructive behavior that continually repeat for an individual, so that he or she faces them again and again in different contexts.

These life themes range from pathological intensity, where they destroy relationships, sabotage career success, and dash hopes and dreams to simply annoying personality traits.

These annoying personality traits appear only occasionally, arising only in certain contexts that are novel or stressful, or where opportunities for indulgence of the trait exist.

More severe thematic issues appear as personality disorder, and severe adjustment issues to the clinician; however, few of these individuals recognize they have these character flaws.

When confronted about these flaws, individuals typically rationalize or justify them, or deny them out of shame.

These traits are often ego-syntonic, meaning that these individuals accept them as a characteristic of the personality without criticism or complaint.

It is only when the individual recognizes they cause problems and pain for self and others that he or she may begin to attempt to change them. This can spur the individual to enter a reformative lifestyle where he or she begins to work on changing the self.

On the other hand, when these patterns worsen and begin to consume the individual, they can lead him or her downward into chaotic and degenerate lifestyles. For example:

  • The con-man may degrade into a thief and criminal
  • The seductive person may become a prostitute or sexual addict
  • The person with issues about assuming power may change into a dictator or tyrant
  • Bully/victim dyads may degenerate into battering and abuse
  • The immoderate user of alcohol and drugs may degenerate into a full-blown addict.

It may be noted these patterns occupy a good deal of an individual’s time and energy. While severe problems can consume up to 90% of a person’s active waking life, annoying personality traits may only be present as little as 10% of the time. To the degree that the individual exhibits these traits do they become disruptive and self-sabotaging, causing pain and misery for self and others.

Over 90%, these patterns typically transform into chaotic and degenerate expressions. Under 10%, they typically do not cause enough problems to warrant notice or correction, and tend to be situation-based and not persistent.

Meditating across the Rays, these 49 thematic issues are as follows:

Ray 1

  1. Superiority/inferiority issues; issues with attracting bully/victim dyads in relationships, at work, and other areas of life
  2. Warrior: pride/guilt issues over killing others while protecting one’s country
  3. Courage vs. fear in making life choices
  4. Accidental or unintentional injury to others/remorse and retribution
  5. Assumption of power issues, decisions that must harm others for the good of the community; the choice whether to enrich oneself by utilizing the privileges of power and misusing community funds
  6. Control vs. letting go issues in relationships, difficulties with trusting the partner to be responsible and reliable
  7. The will to conquer others/the pain of loss and failure when one loses a battle or does not win over others in competition

Ray 2

  1. Inability to learn certain subjects or skills
  2. Resisting influence of others to become individualized/integrity issues over following others advise instead of one’s own, may be overly dependent on the advice of others and become continually dependent
  3. Losing oneself in others (codependency) and neglecting one’s own needs (martyr)
  4. Issues with collective ignorance, racial or ethnic discrimination, prejudice, either as perpetrator or as victim
  5. Issues with incompletion of education or training, difficulty obtaining and keeping employment, leading to an impoverished lifestyle
  6. Promiscuity, patterns of infatuation then abandonment, difficulty in sustaining relationships, compulsive sexuality
  7. Fear of success/failure to complete goals and intentions

Ray 3

  1. Dogmatism, insistence that others believe the same as oneself
  2. Perfectionism, obsession with accuracy and detail
  3. Greed, loss of perspective in acquisition of wealth and possessions
  4. Infidelity, failure to keep commitments to others in relationships
  5. Lack of judgment or reality testing, eschewing of responsibility by taking refuge in reverie or fantasy
  6. Lack of discernment, extreme gullibility—becoming seduced by salesmen or con-men, buying things that one doesn’t really need due to wishes to please sales people
  7. Loss of freedom by involvement with charismatic individuals, embracing fanaticism and cultism

Ray 4

  1. Life is ruled by superstition and myths, lack of discernment or objective, empirical knowledge
  2. Grandiosity and narcissism, believing the world revolves around oneself
  3. Gender identity issues, issues with homosexuality [or alternative sexual identity] in a heterosexual culture
  4. Dedication of life to artistic pursuits, failure to achieve material security
  5. Insistence that art follow certain standards, criticism of others’ artistic efforts, tolerance of only certain fashions, designs, musical styles; may persecute others who express that deprecated form of art
  6. Obsession with achieving a certain look, sound, texture, quality that requires continual reworking and revision of artwork—one is never satisfied with one’s productions
  7. Failure to express or develop artistic talents because of fear, shame, necessity to earn a living; failure to express the Soul

Ray 5

  1. Rebellion, refusal to follow rules or procedures or obey authority, that leads to continual confrontation with others, leading to loss of jobs, fighting, even incarceration. Besides willful defiance and insubordination, this can also take the form of passive aggression.
  2. Problems controlling temper, raging at others when things don’t go one’s own way
  3. Overbearing jealousy, obsession with the behavior and whereabouts of one’s sexual partner
  4. Gossip and backbiting, absorption in the intimate affairs of others, talking negatively about others, spreading tales about others
  5. Destructive criticism of others, holding that only one’s own views and beliefs are correct
  6. Continual dissatisfaction with one’s appearance, housing, possessions, income, and success; envy of others who are doing better, with continual drive to emulate them; ‘keeping up with the Jones’ syndrome
  7. Forgetting important information resulting in accidents, poor performance on tests, inconvenience, and interpersonal embarrassment

Ray 6

  1. Inability to find a life mate or sexual partner, loneliness and lovelessness
  2. Vanity, overvaluing of one’s beauty and abilities, leading to rejection by others
  3. Issues of being continually ridiculed, put down, or embarrassed because of one’s looks or one’s behavior over which one has no control
  4. Isolation, fear and mistrust of others, becoming an eccentric recluse
  5. Obsession over weight and slimness, and over achieving an ideal body look; may also involve repeated plastic surgeries to retain an ideal youthful appearance
  6. Packrat syndrome, obsession with collecting information or possession, inability to let go of them
  7. Laziness and sloth, failure to motivate oneself to make constructive actions when opportunities exist; this may take the form of willful avoidance of effort

Ray 7

  1. Need for others’ approval and attention, show off syndrome, seeking to be flamboyant, sexy, daring with an aim to make others’ envious or jealous
  2. Not thinking through ideas for business enterprise, leading to continual business failure and loss of investment
  3. Con-man syndrome, using others gullibility or lack of knowledge to enrich oneself despite bringing pain and misery to others, rationalization of one’s acts
  4. Absorption in occult thinking and arcane symbols of pseudo sciences, use of astrological or scriptural predictions to guide all life decisions
  5. Using one’s beauty and seductiveness to get what one wants, thinking about oneself as a sexual object wanted or rejected by others, obsession with sexual performance and enhancing pleasure; for men, may appear as the Don Juan syndrome, using the seduction of women as a self-esteem booster
  6. Immoderate use of alcohol or drugs leading to difficulty in relationships and at work
  7. Thrill seeking, dangerous risk taking for excitement; may take the form of compulsive gambling or wagering, leading to repeated personal injury or loss of money

Therapists have been trained to recognize the clinically significant expressions of these 49 thematic patterns. Where a therapist truly begins to make a difference, I believe, is when he or she can help the individual shift from lives of mechanical repetition of these destructive patterns to lives of self awareness of the power to change and grow. If each therapist could catalyze 1,000 such individuals over the course of his or her career, the results would transform society.

More realistically though, these individuals typically resist all attempts at intervention and do their best to evade discovery and capture like wary insects. They are perhaps a therapist’s toughest challenge, yet when the therapist is able to succeed in catalyzing growth, it is probably one of the most rewarding experiences a therapist can have.

Those therapists who wish to learn more about the role of using meditation to catalyze insight and therapeutic movement, will like our book, “Meditation for Therapy: Theory and Application”. Those who wish to take a deeper dive into applying meditation in therapy will benefit from taking our Meditation for Therapists Practitioner Certification Course.

Developing the Habit of Meditation

By George A. Boyd © 2020

Q: How can I develop a regular meditation practice?

A: You need to identify a congruent strategy that enables you to sustain a regular meditation practice. Seven major strategies that chelas of different meditation traditions adopt include:

  1. Doing meditation under the teacher’s commandment (Agya) – Disciples meditate in obedience to their Guru and out of fear of displeasing their Master. These disciples develop strong discipline and use their will to overcome inner resistance or laziness.
  2. Asking intuition – In this strategy, you ask your intuition and Higher Self whether it is time to meditate. This inward-looking, curious, and expectant mindset invites the guidance of the Soul.
  3. Inspired reading – This strategy involves reading materials from the lineage’s teachers, or listening to audio or video recordings of their Master to inspire disciples to meditate. In the Mudrashram® tradition, this involves listening to the inspired guidance in our Light Sittings, listening to Question and Answer recordings, reading books channeled from the Swamis, studying the Mudrashram® Correspondence Course, or receiving a Soul Attunement Guidance Channeling. My third teacher, Sant Darshan Singh, encouraged his chelas to read selections from the writings of the Sant Mat Masters to evoke the desire to meditate.
  4. Spontaneous meditation – This meditation is not a voluntary, “choosing to meditate.” The spirit calls you to meditate and you are simply pulled into the slipstream of your spirit opening the Path within. I experienced this when I studied with my second teacher, Sat Guru Balyogeshwar Paramahansa: my spirit irresistibly drew my attention into the state of meditation, where I was led to open and contemplate the four channels of the Nada on the Seventh Transcendental Path.
  5. Planning meditation into your day – In this strategy, you schedule meditation every day, and you develop the habit of meditating at the same time. Going on a meditation retreat where there is a structured schedule of meditation can help you develop these habits.
  6. Strong devotion and longing for Liberation – Powerful Bhakti—love for God and a desire to be free from the bondage of the world—drives some disciples to meditate with great zeal. Those who have this gift of devotion take every unoccupied moment to meditate.
  7. Connection with the inner Master – In this variety, you do meditation when you commune with the guide form of your spiritual Master on the inner Planes. You might receive some inspired guidance and direction from your guide, and then, you do specific meditations, as the guide directs you.

You may notice that you resonate with one or more of these strategies. Whichever of these strategies you choose, it is important to do meditation daily. When you wake up in the morning, think about how you will bring meditation into your day. Ask yourself: “When will I do this?” Feel your motivation for doing meditation. Remember your goal for this session of meditation.

Those who first begin to meditate find there are many distractions that make it hard to pursue their contemplative practice. However, with further practice and deeper experience of the insight, love, and bliss of meditation, you will develop a strong desire to go deeper, to explore the next level, and to progress into your next level of spiritual growth.

Types of Bondage

By George A. Boyd © 2020

Q: What are the major issues that keep people in bondage, so they cannot awaken?

A: There are eight major types of bondage to which the aspirant and disciple is subject:

  1. Health – Certain types of physical and medical conditions make it impossible for you to meditate and to implement personality change.
  2. Addiction – When you are addicted, your entire life revolves around the object of addiction.
  3. Fear – Fear holds you back from forward movement in your life; it can also hold you back from taking your next step spiritually.
  4. False beliefs – These include conspiracy theories and paranoia, which makes it impossible for you to see the truth through these distorted perceptual filters.
  5. Cultism and religious abuse – When you are caught in this trap, you become enslaved to the group leader and it is very difficult to become free.
  6. Ring Pass Not –This makes it appear that what you see on your inner spiritual horizon is the Summum Bonum of spirituality and is the final goal of spiritual development, when it is only a stage on the Great Continuum of Consciousness.
  7. Ignorance – This affects you when you do not understand your true spiritual nature. You identify with your ego and personality, and your career and family roles become your primary focus. As a result, you forget about your spirituality.
  8. Karma – This is the substrate of desire impressions in your unconscious mind that holds your Soul back from Liberation and your spirit from salvation.

We recommend that aspirants and disciples reflect on three things:

  1. Which of these types of bondage affect your life and spiritual development?
  2. What does freedom from each of these types of bondage that affect you look like?
  3. What could you do to overcome this bondage in each area so you could be free?

We can assist you with type 2 with our Addiction Recovery Coaching Program; type 5 through our Cult Recovery Coaching Program.

You can learn to discern the Ring Pass Not of type 5 through study of the Mudrashram® Correspondence Course, which shows the beginning and the end of each Path, and what’s beyond its apparent inner horizon.

We can help you tackle ignorance, type 7, and karma, type 8, through learning to transform the Soul, activate the Soul’s intuition and discernment, and dissolve karma in our intermediate meditation classes, the in-person Mudrashram® Master Course in Meditation and the by-mail and online Accelerated Meditation Program.