How Not to Be An Asshole

By George A. Boyd ©2021

Q: Why do some people act like assholes much of the time?

A: The problem is that they spend their time in asshole consciousness. What is asshole consciousness? We describe this in our article, “The Nine Stages of Personal and Spiritual Growth.” We excerpt from the article: the nine stages are explained below:


When you regard human beings, there are nine stages of personal and spiritual development. These are:

  1. Degenerate – These are the layers of criminality and insanity to which human beings can embody, when they are functioning at their worst.
  2. Ego-driven – At this level, people’s personal desires are primary drivers of their behavior.
  3. Conscience-overshadowed – This level is focused on reformation of character and overcoming the excesses of the ego.
  4. Self-direction – People functioning at this level set goals and make plans to actualize their dreams.
  5. Receptivity to the Superconscious mind – Those that access this level are able to activate the cords of faith and intuition to receive emotional comfort, guidance, and insights into the nature of Ultimate Reality. This marks the beginning of the aspirant or seeker phase of spirituality.
  6. Mystic awakening – Those that operate at this level awaken as the attentional principle, the spirit, and/or their Soul. These ones become capable of depth meditation and inner work.
  7. Higher integration – These individuals align with their Soul Purpose and begin to express it in human life. The Soul actively guides their daily life.
  8. Accelerated spiritual evolution – These intrepid individuals use transformational methods to travel through the seven stages of the spiritual Path—Subtle, Planetary, Transplanetary, Cosmic, Supracosmic, aligned Transcendental Path, and the Bridge Path, T6, and T7 to the Infinite Stage (Param Moksha Desh). This is the disciplic phase of spirituality.
  9. Divine Empowerment – These individuals complete their spiritual development and ascend to the stage of Mastery in their tradition. The Divine empowers them to minister, teach, guide, and initiate others.

People who reach level five can entertain the concepts of spirituality. For these individuals, Mudrashram® has articles, webinars, and books to help educate them about spirituality. To bridge from this stage of development to the stage where they can begin to do conscious inner work, we have put into place the Introduction to Meditation Program.

Those who reach level six, Mystic Awakening, can begin to actually practice meditation. These ones can take and benefit from one of our intermediate mediation courses, the in-person Mudrashram® Master Course in Meditation or the by-mail or online Accelerated Meditation Program.

In Mudrashram®, we actively guide people through stages seven through nine. We have students who have already reached Param Moksha Desh, and are beginning to develop their capacity to function as an Initiate in our tradition, which we call an Adi Sat Guru or Multiplane Master.

For those who are focused on reformation and recovery at stage three, we have coaching courses that will assist those who are recovering from addiction, working on overcoming the issues of growing up in a dysfunctional family or abusive relationship, or seeking to return to normal functioning and healthy spirituality after involvement in a cultic group.

For those currently established in stage four, who are developing the potentials of the Self, we have our Life Coaching Program to assist them rehabilitate their ability to function at their best and achieve their goals. These individuals can also benefit from taking the Introduction to Meditation Program, which teaches them how to turn on and utilize the executive functions of their personality.

Those who are polarized at the level of the ego, stage one and two, perhaps only truly grasping the consequences of continuing to function at this level can change them. Those who do break out of this armored mindset, typically do so through religious conversion and repentance, and resolve to change and reform themselves.

In Christianity, there is an outreach to “preach the gospel,” to evangelize those who are operating in the “sinful” mindset of the ego, and lead them to a life based on moral principles and faith in God—there are similar roles that other religions play to reach and reform those who operate in these two lowest strata of personal functioning…


Stages one and two comprise the zone of asshole consciousness.

For people to move out of being “living demons”—criminals and monsters capable of committing atrocities and horrific crimes against other people—they need to find legal and socially acceptable means to achieve what they desire without harming, threatening, or manipulating others.

For people to break out of the defensive prison of egoic polarization, they need to gain insight into how they are wasting their life and how they are harming themselves and others through their speech and actions. They have to decide to stop doing this behavior and let go of their arrogant attitude, and become willing to be corrected.

Asshole Consciousness

Some of the markers of asshole consciousness include:

  • Not caring about other people’s feelings or welfare, only caring for yourself (selfishness)
  • Having a sense of entitlement to obtain whatever you desire, and to get it through any means fair or foul, regardless of whether others are harmed or exploited (greed)
  • Having a sense of entitlement to enjoy sexual pleasure with whomever you are attracted, using them to obtain sexual release, and then abandoning them (lust)
  • Having the desire to acquire far more than you need to show yourself as successful and wealthy and to compete with others to show you are superior (attachment)
  • Expecting others will fulfill your every wish, will always agree with you, and will always give you everything you want without resistance or complaint (narcissism)
  • Expressing rage at others if your desires are thwarted or hindered in any way (egotistic anger)
  • Considering yourself to be far superior, much more intelligent and important that others, and treating others without respect—even being rude, cruel, and abusive to them (arrogance)

In mystic poetry, the person who is locked into these two stages of egoic polarization is pictured as living in a prison. The system of defenses locks their awareness in the Conscious mind, and makes them unable to transcend this band of the mind.

The ego has six personal layers:

  1. Behavioral – this is the ability to use the vehicles of the Conscious mind; the egoic octave of your volition operates here.
  2. Motivational – this is the array of desire images that drives your behavior from the ego.
  3. Ego identity and roles – these are the “I AM statements” you make about the roles you play—for example, as a worker, parent, or a member of a political or religious group. At this level, you are actively engaged in pursuing your desires, and you are aware of your behavior, emotions, thoughts, and motivation that operate in this role. [Those who meditate upon this layer of roles discover that each of these roles operate to fulfill some aspect of desire.]
  4. Life narrative – This is the story you tell yourself about what you have achieved in your life. When you are functioning in asshole consciousness, you may highlight and exaggerate your successes and achievements; and minimize, omit, or lie about your deficiencies or failures.
  5. The layers of defenses – This defensive layer holds your core pain, shame, and fear out of your awareness, and lets you maintain the illusion that you are invincible, you are always right, you are superior to anyone else, and you are entitled to instantly have whatever you want.
  6. The Shadow or Personal Unconscious – This is the repository of your painful feelings you hide from others, the secrets you do not want to reveal to others. For you to transcend egoic polarization, you need to disarm your defenses, to re-own your inner woundedness—to tell the truth about these feelings and stop pushing them away—and decide to stop being an asshole.

Undergoing psychotherapy or having a religious conversion facilitates this gradual transition to the place where you are able to inventory your character flaws and begin to transform them.

An evocative exercise to help you begin to dissolve these negative components of asshole consciousness is called the Renunciation Meditation.

Imagine that there is an inner flame, an Altar of Sacrifice, behind your ego—from which your ego ultimately arises. By meditating on this lighted flame, you will come to understand how this negative construction of the ego arises, and how these layers of negativity are dissolved. Holding your attention on this inner flame reveals the following defensive layers of the ego:

  • Resistance and limits – This layer sets boundaries and keeps people away from your core of pain and shame. Typical statements that come from this layer are, “Stay away from me! Stop that!”
  • Anxiety – You feel worried that someone will come to know your secrets, the things about which you feel ashamed—and will make you experience what you fear. You might feel worry and fear arising at this level and feel like your world is falling apart.
  • Projection – When you can’t accept what others say about you, you may attribute it to them. You might say, “You are to blame! It is you who are the angry one!”
  • Introjection – At his layer, you get into touch with the statements others have said to you or you have said to yourself that make you feel badly—ashamed, inferior, unworthy, or incompetent. This layer brings up statements like, “I really am no good! I’m a jerk!”
  • Regression – If your normal defenses do not protect you, you may go into earlier ways of defending yourself—you begin to act in ways that you used when you were younger, even going back to the way you acted when you were a child. You might have a temper tantrum, for example, or begin throwing things at other people.
  • Denial, paralysis, and shock – At this layer, your defenses begin to break down. You feel that others are going to be able to see what you have been hiding and will hate you, shame you, and reject you. Statements that signal you are broaching this layer are, “This isn’t happening! This is a nightmare!”
  • Surrender – At the core of this layer of defenses, you can no longer hide your shame, your pain, your fear, your rage, and your self-hatred. You feel in this inmost layer of your defenses like giving up and surrendering. You feel you can no longer fight against the world, and you surrender. This moment of surrender allows Love and Grace to touch you and heal you.

As you dissolve this negative armoring over the ego, it will begin to domesticate. You will begin to jettison your asshole consciousness piece by piece, and you will begin to act with honor, integrity, kindness, and consideration for others. You will develop a genuine humility, and feel gratitude for the blessings of life.

If you hold your attention on this inner altar until your ego’s defenses are exhausted and it surrenders, you will open the portal to your conscience, your Higher Self, and the Divine—this will allow the character reformation of the third stage of personal growth to occur. As you let go of the tenacious defensiveness, narcissism, and manipulation that asshole consciousness embodies, you will begin to bring forward your better nature—a kinder and gentler you that was veiled behind the self-constructed walls that have kept out love and healing for far too long.

Reflections on Dhana

By George A. Boyd ©2021

Q: You use a term, Dhana, in your writing. What does this mean?

A: Dhana refers to the activation of the attentional principle or the spirit to carry out spiritual ministry. This is primarily an attunement that comes from a spiritual Master to send the Light to selected individuals; in advanced disciples that reach the Cosmic Sphere and above, this beam of overshadowing can also come from their own ensouling entity.

In Planetary, Transplanetary, Cosmic, and Supracosmic levels, the Master makes this attunement with the attentional principle; in contrast, on Transcendental Paths, this attunement is commonly made with the spirit.

For the attentional principle, we begin the training process of making attunements with our Light Sittings. Those who choose the teaching empowerment track on the Bridge Path learn a series of other attunements that can be made with vehicles of the personality, vehicles of consciousness and nuclei of identity in the Superconscious mind, spirits in different domains, and with ensouling entities of different Octaves of Being.

While we tend to think of Dhana as activating the power of attunement and conveying the Light to grant initiation—unfolding the spiritual evolutionary potentials of the ensouling entity and its vehicles—it can empower the attentional principle though any of the Seven Rays. Across the Rays, this spiritual anointing of the attentional principle can emphasize:

First Ray – Attunement, Light Ministry, conveying Initiation

Second Ray – Teaching, inspired discourse (Satsang)

Third Ray – Counseling, practical guidance for life and living

Fourth Ray – Guiding the attentional principle or the spirit on the inner Planes

Fifth Ray – Contemplation of the vehicles of consciousness and the Planes of Light, doing spiritual readings

Sixth Ray – Healing and therapy, working with the core painful issues of the heart

Seventh Ray – Coaching, revealing the stages of the Path ahead and the next steps of personal growth

When this attunement is made with the spirit, it bestows the ability to convey attunements (First Ray), to teach and give Satsang (Second Ray), to guide others (Fourth Ray), and to heal others (Sixth Ray)—it does not typically activate the capabilities of the Third, Fifth, or Seventh Ray.

When the ensouling entity encounters a new ability on the inner Planes, it encounters an inner structure we call a Siddhi Yantra. This vortex of the octaves of volition in the Superconscious mind can express in five ways:

  1. The power or ability can be ignored and not activated
  2. The ensouling entity can use its octave of volition to activate the power directly
  3. The ensouling entity can send the power through the attentional principle or spirit—this is the attunement of Dhana
  4. The ensouling entity can anchor the ability in an inner center of the Subconscious or Superconscious mind; you must travel to this inner location to activate the power
  5. The ensouling entity can anchor the ability in the personality and the brain, so you only need to ask for the power to be activated.

Dhana is an element of the advanced practice of Agni Yoga, which trains you to draw down the inner Light from your Soul and from your Supervising Initiate. As you grow spiritually and activate more of your Soul’s abilities, you expand your scope of potential ministry and your capacity to operate in the posture of Dhana.

We teach the initial practices of Agni Yoga in our intermediate meditation classes, the in-person Mudrashram® Master Course in Meditation and the by-mail and online Accelerated Meditation Program. We encourage to learn this ministry using the inner Light Fire, so you can begin to become a conscious co-worker with the Divine and work with the Masters to uplift humanity.

Dealing with Criticism

By George A. Boyd © 2021

Q: I have someone who says they want to help me, but they continually criticize me and find fault with what I do. What is motivating this criticism?

A: Criticism is the first step on the helping spectrum. These steps of this spectrum are briefly described below:

  1. Destructive criticism – This attempts to undermine someone’s credibility, reputation, and self-confidence. This aims to hurt or demean the other person, even destroy them. It is from experiencing this negative, egoic platform of destructive criticism from parents, siblings, relatives, romantic partners, bullying schoolmates, teachers, bosses, or misguided clergy that originally wounds someone, and leads them to heal themselves. Those who undergo this healing process successfully often feel an urge to help others, who are experiencing similar abuse and trauma, to also heal.
  2. Neutral criticism – This identifies flaws, errors, or omissions, or someone’s attempts to exaggerate, lie, or deceive. Style editors, media fact checkers, or movie reviewers, for example, offer this level of critique. They do not offer suggestions to improve; they just point out the errors.
  3. Constructive criticism – This identifies flaws, error, or omissions as in step two, but offers suggestions at improvement. In group therapy, this sharing of constructive criticism is called feedback. Sports coaches, drama coaches, teachers, and trainers offer feedback to their students to help them improve their performance.
  4. Advisement or consulting – The consultant listens to their client’s concerns, and then offers them potential solutions. This ability to visualize a potential solution is founded upon the consultant’s knowledge, experience, or expertise working on similar problems.
  5. Counselor – A professional counselor listens to someone’s painful emotions and problems, and empathizes with their experience. The counselor allows the client to be heard and known. The counselor assists the client to identify viable options for solutions, explores their pros and cons, and then allows the client to make a congruent choice. The focus of a counselor is on the client’s present time concerns.
  6. Psychotherapist or Hypnotherapist – Like a counselor, a professional psychotherapist listens to someone’s painful emotions and problems, and empathizes with their experience. The psychotherapist will use a variety of evocative methods to help the client explore these painful emotions, work out the underlying issue, and find a way to integrate the insight so the client can live with greater serenity. A hypnotherapist aims to accomplish similar objectives, but does so through working directly with the Subconscious mind. A psychotherapist aims to assist the client to deal with lingering issues from the past.
  7. Life coach or transformational coach – A coach looks to the client’s potential to actualize his or her dreams for a better future. The coach supports and facilitates the client’s movement towards making that vision real—of actually doing, being, and having what he or she desires. A transformative coach is future oriented, and seeks to help the client move past obstacles to reach his or her goals.
  8. Meditation teacher – A meditation teacher trains students to meditate, to gain insight, transformation, and enlightenment. A meditation teacher shows students how to transcend their personality and touch the Eternal.
  9. Thaumaturge – Highly advanced meditation teachers are anointed with the Divine Fire and Light, and can make attunements to purify, heal, comfort, enlighten, and transform their spiritual evolutionary potentials. A Thaumaturge has the ability to work on the structure of mind and consciousness to facilitate spiritual development.
  10. Avatar – This most highly advanced spiritual Initiate is able to work with humanity at the collective level though sending forth tides of Omnific Spiritual Grace and Love, and progressively uplifts all humanity.

When we review these stages on the spectrum, we find:

Level one on this spectrum is the profile of someone fully established in the ego. Someone operating at this level needs to win at all costs, and dominate and control others. If others are injured in obtaining desires, it is not this person’s concerns.

Levels two and three are based on comparison to established criteria. This uses the analytical ability of reason; the standards of conscience; and the problem solving skills of the intellect. In level three, there is the added element of caring about the person receiving the criticism, so they can improve their performance.

Level four is founded on the ability to intuitively grasp the reasons for the problem the client presents, and to frame an elegant solution that solves the problem and allows the client to move to the next level of productivity and prosperity.

Levels five through seven are personal helping modalities. These work to empower the Self to resolve issues and move forward to attain desired goals.

Levels eight through ten are transpersonal helping modalities. They work with the three immortal principles within others—the attentional principle, the spirit, and the Soul—to enable the meditation student to work on the issues of the personality, and to actualize spiritual potentials.

Negative criticism can arise from a variety of motivations. For example:

  • Dissatisfaction with a product or service that the helper offers
  • Jealousy that the helper is successful and gifted
  • Narcissism, needing to be superior or better than the helper
  • Anger and resentment at not succeeding, not being chosen, or not getting the good things in life

When criticism is shared as feedback, the helper can learn to provide a better service or deliver a better product.

We suggest that the element of caring—love and compassion—is at the root of the motivation to help others. The greatest love, which the Avatar and Thaumaturge express, is the deepest level of this caring for others—even beyond personal caring, or unconditional positive regard, as Carl Rogers called it—but it is suffused with the Divine Love that fills and enfolds all life, and drives personal growth and spiritual evolution.

The Pitfalls of Revelatory Logic

By George A. Boyd ©2021

Q: How is it that people can believe such crazy things? Some conspiracy theories are completely bonkers!

A: To understand this, you need to understand the different orders of logic:

  1. Sensory logic – Also called empirical logic, this holds that for objects to exist in the physical universe, they must be able to be weighed, measured, and detected by multiple observers. This employs filters to rule out optical illusion or observer bias.
  2. Inferential logic – This extrapolates from observable evidence to tease out motivation, intention, or events that occurred. In a trial, a woman is found dead in her home. The fingerprints of the defendant in the trial have been found on the murder weapon, which was abandoned in the yard where the murder occurred. While no one observed the defendant kill the woman, it can be inferred that the defendant likely pulled the trigger. Additional evidence would be needed to confirm this initial inference to prove the defendant committed the murder beyond the shadow of a doubt, and alternative conjectures about what may have happened refuted.
  3. Mathematical logic – This is based on mathematical proofs. An analogous method of proof used in philosophy examines logic to determine accurate and fallacious reasoning.
  4. Algorithmic logic – This type of logic is at the heart of computer programming. It gives instructions to a computer or device with a central processing unit to carry out. What the computer carries out is contingent on what is written in the computer coding language.
  5. Intuitive logic – This type of reasoning can be found in the “intuitive sciences” like astrology, numerology, and tarot. This begins with a symbolic array, which the reader interprets to explore what they mean. Which cards are drawn in the tarot determine what the reader will interpret; where the cards fall in the array colors their meaning, as does the relationship with other cards. Here, each symbolic element in the array (e.g., number as symbol in Numerology, tarot card, Enneagram type, planet and the house it dwells in) can be interpreted individually, in the context in which it dwells, as well as in relationship to the other elements in the array.
  6. Revelatory logic – This type of reasoning holds an idea as an infallible truth, and then looks to justify it. This infallible truth can be based on the beliefs in the authority and veracity of the source, a purported supernatural or Divine origin of the idea, or outright superstitious or magical thinking. This type of logic weaves together illogical ideas, fantasies, and distortion of facts into an incoherent system, which believers tenaciously defend as true.
  7. Core discernment logic – We refer to this type of logic as mandalic reasoning. This is based on discernment of the nature of the Soul, and describing the Path that leads to union with that essence through the levels of the mind. Those who act as guides in meditation use this type of logic to conduct meditation students to unite their attention with their Soul. This type of discernment can also direct meditators to unite with their spirit, a personal identification center (ego or Self), or a nucleus of identity.

The first four types of logic are the foundation of our modern technological civilization. They form a bulwark against irrationality, and work to check inherent bias and perversions of reasoning.

Outside of this, we have the questionable logic of metaphysicians, sundry true believers, and Gurus. These exist outside the parameters of the ordered world mind; those who operate within its structured boundaries of the world mind cannot verify the wild claims of those who wander off into the far country of the mind.

We can characterize seven major varieties of revelatory reasoning:

  1. Psychotic – These individuals listen to voices that emerge from their unconscious mind that torment them and tease them, and tell them to do all manner of irrational things.
  2. Paranoid – They develop elaborate defensive systems to protect their ego, and project their unacceptable impulses on others. They listen to the voices of their mental defenses that desperately shield them from the truth.
  3. Game, fantasy, and novel identification – They identify with characters in movies and television, in novels, horror and science fiction sagas. They live immersed in the themes and drama of these fictional sources, and never seem to embrace their own life. It is much more satisfying to some to be Flash Gordon or Spiderman—or other heroic, superhuman or fantasy figure—than to dwell in the boredom, loneliness, and despair of their own unsuccessful and unfulfilling lives.
  4. Political cults – They identify as members of a political party, and live their lives to support, defend, and even worship their political hero. Their political heroes, alas, are often not the invincible and mighty saviors of their values and way of life they convey through rousing speeches. Many political “saviors” have turned out to be demagogues, dictators, or authoritarian leaders, who exploit the undying loyalty of their true believers to enrich themselves and remain in power.
  5. Psychic cults – Those who join these groups receive channeled messages from sundry spiritual beings—angels, Ascended Masters, extraterrestrials, and assorted other entities—who foretell of a future where people live in a multi-dimensional world, where they operate as godlike beings who can create whatever they wish through intention, and they are unlimited by time and space.
  6. Judeo-Christian religious cults – These base their authority upon what they believe is infallible scripture, which they proclaim is the very “Word of God.” They look to God, the Messiah or Savior, or saints to save them from the sinful world and rescue them from hell after death. They often recount apocalyptic visions of the future of the Last Judgment, tumultuous Last Times, or a Rapture of faithful believers into heaven with the Lord. In addition to evangelical and charismatic Christian and Jewish groups that found their religious beliefs upon a literal interpretation of their scripture, these same patterns may be seen to play out in certain Islamic sects.
  7. Other religious cults – These groups assemble around a spiritual leader who possesses great charisma, and provides “answers” to the seeker. The leader comes to control every aspect of believer’s lives and literally reprograms their minds to accept every word of the leader’s teaching as unerring truth.

Revelatory reasoning has several characteristics:

  1. It believes things that cannot be verified in consensual reality; followers believe impossible and fantastic things.
  2. It uses internalized, subjective criteria for truth, which are often powerfully defended and tenaciously held.
  3. Attempts to question core beliefs of revelatory reasoning elicit rationalization and projection to protect these sacrosanct truths.
  4. Believers who embrace revelatory reasoning often live their lives in an alternate reality frame—they are no longer human beings, but star beings, born again believers, or are eternally in union with bliss consciousness.
  5. It accepts a fluidity of meaning and truth—in the perspective of revelatory reasoning, things mean what believers say they mean; truth is whatever they affirm it is.
  6. It utilizes superstitious thinking; believers look for signs and omens.
  7. It may look to external sources for validation and direction, and not trust their own voice of reason and conscience.

We suggest that revelatory sources of information should be regarded as unproven hypotheses or speculation until you can verify them. It is important to examine your motivation for wanting to believe the claims of revelatory reasoning. It is also valuable to ascertain from what level of the mind these compelling ideas arise.

We go into greater depth into the mindset and beliefs of cultic groups in our book, Religions, Cults, and Terrorism: What the Heck Are We Doing? We recommend to those who are interested in exploring this phenomenon further to acquire this book.