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Mudrashram Institute of Spiritual Studies |
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Varieties of Experience of the Present Time |
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By George A. Boyd © 2004 "Being here now" and "being in the present" have become popularized in books, and in psychological growth and meditation seminars as a sine qua non for enlightenment or living an enlightened life. We point out that there are a variety of states in which you can experience "the present time," and not all of them are necessarily enlightened. Major "present time states" are categorized below:
Present time awareness levels (4) through (8) in the Conscious mind are featured in Buddhist Vipassana styles of meditation, which emphasize mindfulness of present time experience as a means of processing through the issues of life and breaking though into a transcendent enlightened state. Psychotherapy methods use levels (5) feeling awareness, (6) thought awareness, and (7) ego awareness as primary tools to help clients work through personal issues. It is not surprising then, that some practitioners are beginning to examine Buddhist meditations as a means of facilitating working through issues, as these meditation and psychotherapy use similar bands of awareness for their intervention and exploration. Key centers of the Subconscious mind used in spiritual work are (10) the attentional principle and (11) the spiritual heart. The timeless experience of transcendence meditation arises when attention is fully focused in one of these two conscious principles, which yields visions of the ineffable vistas of the beautiful inner Planes and dimensional worlds. We suggest mastery of the ability to attune with these states is key to doing spiritual work, as opposed to merely entering passive states of witnessing or observing the phenomenal states of consciousness with the attention. Awareness of present time choices through the volitional center at level (17) plays a role in forms of psychotherapy that emphasize taking responsibility for your behavior and life. Forms of psychotherapy that seek to facilitate integration of split off or disowned elements of the personality favor working with the Self at level (18). Awareness of the Soul's "thought and intention" experienced at level (20) at the gateway to the Akashic Records Subplane of the Abstract Mind Plane is touted as the state of enlightenment by some groups. While this is a breakthrough center through which you may glimpse the overshadowing presence of the Soul, we suggest that the attention must be raised into the presence of the Soul at level (21) to bring about core enlightenment. Level (20) resembles standing upon the shore of an ocean, whereas level (21) is awakening as the ocean. We invite you to study these different types of present time experiencing, so you may learn to differentiate between them. Moreover, we hope you will be able to recognize and utilize the three immortal centers—your attentional principle, your spiritual heart, and your ensouling entity (Soul)—to begin to consciously unfold and develop your spiritual potentials. If you are unsure of how to proceed with this unfolding and developing your spiritual potentials, you may wish to embark on a deeper study of meditation. We teach the foundations of this process in our Mudrashram® Master Course in Meditation, which you may wish to investigate among other avenues for pursuing this objective.
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