Author Archives: george_oss

Creating the Foundation for an Effective Meditation Practice

Posted on by

By George A. Boyd © 2014

Beginning meditators often struggle with having clear and meaningful meditation experiences. Instead of experiencing insight, they experience an inner fog. Instead of experiencing movement and a sense of progression, they process sensations, feelings, or thoughts, and they feel stuck. Instead of activating the essences of consciousness and doing inner work, they drift off into reveries.

Effective meditation occurs when seven factors are in place. These factors are listed below.

  1. Objective – You do each meditation to achieve a specific purpose or objective. You know why you are doing it, and practice the technique until you have completed your objective.
  2. Effect of the Technique – You recognize what the technique does: how it directs your attention, on which inner vehicle or spiritual essence the technique focuses your attention, and you notice a distinct response in your awareness and in the operation of your inner vehicles when you practice the technique.
  3. Accuracy of Practice – You know how to practice the technique so it produces its intended results, and when at what frequency to practice the technique to bring about optimal growth and integration of your meditational experience.
  4. Presence of Internal Obstacles or Blockages – You are able to identify the obstacles that stand in the way of you making the next step in your spiritual and personal growth. You have developed a plan to address this; you are getting guidance or coaching to help you overcome this obstacle.
  5. Inner Spiritual Assistance – You are invoking your Soul, the Masters of your lineage, and the Divine to assist you make spiritual progress and overcome your identified obstacles. As you advance on the Path, you are able to establish communion with the Inner Guide form of your Spiritual Master, and are able to commune with God directly.
  6. Energetic Assistance (Grace) – You are actively receiving the Light and Grace Waves of your lineage, and allowing this omnific force to unfold your spiritual potentials (initiation), to awaken your Higher Mind (illumination), to activate your spiritual heart (Divine Love suffusion), and empower your Soul’s gifts and abilities (spiritual empowerment).
  7. Regular Spiritual Practice – You are spending the time you need on a regular basis to actively unfold your Soul and clear the channels of the Nada. You are taking the time to contemplate from the Soul’s perspective and learn about its multi-dimensional consciousness. You are using methods to work on the issues that hold you back from making personal progress and achieving success. [If you are not practicing the Mudrashram® methods of Integral meditation, then you would focus on performing the practices of your Path.]

We recommend that you evaluate which of these areas you need to improve. As you make these changes, you will see the quality of your meditations improve, and the time you spend with your inner life will be more productive and rewarding.

If you are not clear about what your meditation technique is doing and where it is taking you, you may wish to consider getting a Meditation Technique Analysis Reading, which will clarify what use of your current techniques will yield.

Getting Down to Change

Posted on by

By George A. Boyd © 2018

Q: What interventions are successful to help people change?

A: Ultimately, people must take action to change at the personal level. While people can change their understanding of what is impacting their situation, alter their perception or mindset, modify their beliefs and attitudes, most personal change occurs when you take new action.

Let us use an example of someone who is trying to lose weight. She can read some articles and watch some videos on the Internet to gain greater understanding of how the mind works and what is contributing to her addictive behavior around sweets. She can alter her perception that she is doomed to be overweight her whole life and recognize that men and women, who were overweight just like her, lost as much or more weight than she wants to lose and kept it off.

She can adjust her attitude: she can stop regarding herself as a “fat slob that nobody loves,” and recognize she is a good, loveable person. She can have some compassion for her struggle to lose weight. She might change her belief that it is impossible for her to change, and instead believe that if other could people overcame obesity, so could she.

While all of these are helpful measures, taking action is the key to her actually losing the weight that she wants to lose is to take action. This might involve doing some exercise, modifying what she eats, reducing portion sizes, or substituting foods that are nutrient dense and low calorie for foods that become stored as fat.

Many of the interventions people offer as advice, support, help, or guidance—while they can create change at the level of perception, attitude, or belief—they might have no impact on someone’s behavior. Since you cannot get behind someone’s forehead and make choices for him or her, often the best you can do is to facilitate their behavior.

We can look at different methods for influencing others to enable them to change, and note how effective this is at actually getting them to take new action:

  1. Promoting intuitive insight – You could do a psychic reading for someone or do some type of psychological process that enables them to gain understanding of what motivates them, or what something means or signifies. At this level, you get insight into why you do something—or why you don’t do something that you believe you should do; or want to do, but don’t. You might also get ideas or inspirations about what you could do. The impressions you gain at this level, however, are vague: they must be concretized into a plan and action steps.
  2. Program or strategy – This broad-brush identification of the steps to achieve a goal, the issues that need to be resolved to succeed, the areas on which you need to focus can help you formulate goals and make some choices that will start the change process. Many coaches and professionals will present their programs at this level, with a training offer to learn specific skills to implement these strategies.
  3. Theory – Teachers adopt this approach when they present relevant research that sheds light on the areas in which you want to improve. At this level you can identify which methods yield the best probability for success, so you can employ effective measures, and not waste your time with strategies that don’t bear fruit. Theory generally proceeds training, as you need to understand the why—the rationale for doing certain practices—before you begin to learn how to do something.
  4. Training – This takes the form of in-person training or video presentation that shows you how to do something. Here you implement what you learn through doing it. Through regular practice, you turn the behavior you learn into a habit. With further practice you can innovate and improvise on that skill, and gain greater mastery and proficiency with the skill.
  5. Benchmarks – Benchmarks test your proficiency and mastery of what you have learned. Academic tests are one type of benchmark. These scales or evaluation criteria that measure your performance tell you how well you are doing relative to others in your comparison group. Knowing how well you are doing compared to others can spur you to improve your own performance. If the task appears to be impossible, however, it may paradoxically lower your motivation to continue—you might even give up if it seems you can never reach the high standards or lofty goal that is ahead of you.
  6. Guidelines – These give you frames for behavior: when to do it, when not to do it. When to use a method, when not to use a method. Guidelines seek to channel your behavior into the most productive, effective, and efficient pathways, and steer you away from ways that don’t work as well, may produce unexpected consequences, or may wind up harming yourself or others. Guidelines share practical wisdom with others, and may provide shortcuts to trail and error.
  7. Behavior – This is when you actually do something. You might have learned about what to do, but this is where you implement your learning; this is where you use the skills you’ve practiced. This is where you actually create the change in your life.

Coaching aims for behavior change: improved performance, better results, reaching benchmarks, achieving goals, and actualizing potential.

Psychotherapy and hypnotherapy focus on removing internal blocks or barriers that stand in the way of you taking constructive action. Counseling clarifies choices, and looks at the potential outcomes of following each alternative—action follows from resolute choice.

Not all action leads to success; in many cases, it leads to failure and frustration. But not taking any action leaves you where you are now: if you want to change, you must take new action.

Profiles of the Spiritual Dilettante

Posted on by

By George A. Boyd © 2017

The spiritual dilettante, also known as the lookie loo seeker, is an all too common pattern in aspirant spiritual circles. Some of the markers of these spiritual dabblers include:

  1. They have a fascination with Gurus and spiritual Masters, and they go to see them, or watch their videos on the Internet
  2. They read the books of these spiritual teachers, they get excited, and they want to be initiated.
  3. They get initiated, practice for two to three days, and then get distracted and stop practicing.
  4. They may repeat steps 1 to 3 for several spiritual traditions.
  5. They are not clear exactly why they are desperately seeking a spiritual Master, or what they are actually seeking in their multiple attempts at initiation.
  6. They may be driven unconsciously to enact this spiritual seeking pattern to escape deep shame, a sense of personal failure, or memories of abuse or trauma. They want to get out of waking awareness and stay out, so these painful memories won’t surface.
  7. They never complete the paths they start; they keep looking for the right Path or the true Guru.

As a result of following this pattern, spiritual dilettantes:

  • Demonstrate a familiarity with a variety of Paths, without a deep appreciation of their rich heritage and lack a thorough knowledge of any of them.
  • Have a track record of incompletion—they start many Paths, but they don’t finish any of them.
  • Have a strong proclivity to engage in spiritual gossip; they look for flaws, character weakness, or sins of their spiritual Master, but avoid personal introspection to weed out their own character weaknesses.
  • With their increasing failure to make any spiritual progress on any of these Paths, they may become critical, skeptical, and mistrustful of any spiritual Paths or any spiritual teacher. They may characterize all spiritual teachers as frauds, charlatans, or cult leaders, without even investigating the merits or deficiencies of that teacher or that Path, based on their own prior experience of frustration and failure with meditation.
  • May undergo a period of excitement when they anticipate getting initiated, and they tell their friends about their discovery. After getting initiated, however, they find flaws and deficiencies, make excuses for not practicing, and then abandon the Path and its practices.
  • May show multiple spiritual imbalances and symptoms of dissociation, detachment, and difficulty to make personal decisions, if they have practiced the techniques of the path long enough to produce inner transformation, before leaving for greener pastures.
  • May show patterns of anomie, nihilism, or despair, if they have multiple frustrations and failures in this area; some of them abandon their faith and become atheists.

We encourage those of you who might have been inadvertently following this pattern to consider the fowling questions:

  • What do you find fascinating about the spiritual teachers and paths to which you have been attracted?
  • Do you want to become like these teachers? Why?
  • What would it actually take for you to achieve what they have attained? How much meditation would you have to do to reach the stage they attained? What might you have to sacrifice or give up to reach this stage?
  • What would happen if you sustained your meditation and made progress upon this Path? How might that change your behavior? How might it alter your perception of your Self and the world? How might it affect your character?
  • What’s at the bottom of you patterns of seeking, getting initiated, and then, doing little or nothing with the Path into which you have been initiated?
  • What is it that you are actually seeking?
  • Might you be trying to escape or avoid something through these patterns? What would happen if you confronted these issues, and stopped running away from them, but concretely worked to resolve them?
  • What spiritual Path could you embrace that you would be willing to complete? What would happen if you completed this Path?

If you have been playing the frustrating and unsatisfying role of a spiritual dilettante, we encourage you to make a change. No worthwhile goal is achieved without commitment and follow-through in your personal life; the same is true for the spiritual life. We invite you to get to the bottom of these patterns and clarify what it is you truly want, and then select a Path that fulfills those needs.

For those of you are uncertain about what a particular meditation will do or what will be the outcome of following a particular spiritual Path, we offer a specialized spiritual counseling session called the Spiritual Teacher/Path Compatibility Reading that will identify what will be the likely scenario if you embark on that Path. If you are not clear about the potential consequence of using a particular meditation technique, we additionally offer a Meditation Technique Analysis Reading. We can also support you with spiritual coaching to help you identify a resonant Path and teaching that helps you fulfill your spiritual destiny.

How You Can Become Illumined and Enlightened

Posted on by

By George A. Boyd ©2018

Q: What is Illumination? How do I become enlightened?

A: To understand how you do this, you need to understand something about the levels of mental functioning. To become enlightened, you have to move your attention to the core of your mind and unite with your Soul. But before you do this, you have to move through the other strata of mental functioning. So beyond the firing of neurons in your brain that instruments can measure, there are seven additional layers of mental functioning:

  1. Reason – At this level of the Conscious mind, the faculty of reason enables you to use analysis, deductive and analogical reasoning. With your reason, you are able to “test reality” to detect if a statement is true or false. You use this level of the mind when you investigate something or gather evidence to prove or disprove a hypothesis.
  2. Intellect – At this level of the Metaconscious mind, you are able to utilize problem-solving strategies to arrive at a solution to a problem. The intellect is capable of inductive, dialectical, and synthetic reasoning.Reflective and Receptive meditation – When you activate this connection to your Soul through the intuitive thread (Antakarana), you can ask the Soul questions and receive answers. So if you ask your Soul, “What is the purpose I am alive?” The Soul will give you an answer if this cord that connects your intellect with the Soul is functioning. You can also “sit in the silence” and passively receive guidance from your Soul through Receptive meditation.
  3. Psychic intuition – This type of knowing operates in your vehicle of consciousness in the Psychic Realm. Depending on your state of spiritual evolutionary development, this aspect of intuitive knowing allows you to read the “ethers”—the chemical ether (comprising molecules, atoms, and the subatomic unified field), the information ether, the resonance ether, the life force ether, the desire ether (e.g., the Law of Attraction), the thought form ether, and yet higher ethers up to the presence of the Soul. This form of knowing allows you to gather information about other people, so you can do “psychic readings.”
  4. Revelatory intuition – This type of knowing begins to operate in the First Planetary Initiation. It ostensibly reveals the meaning of scriptures, gives correspondences to metaphysical ideas, and constructs a philosophical framework through which you can understand the world. With sufficient acquisition of this knowledge from this source, you can begin to teach and counsel others about metaphysics and spiritual subjects.
  5. Illumined Mind downpour of knowledge – This aspect of the mind functions when you awaken the “Buddhic capsule,” the inmost mental stratum around your Soul. You can awaken this capsule through deep Raja Yoga or Kundalini meditation. When it is activated, there is a continuous downpour of intuitive knowledge, which shows you the content of every level of the mind, and reveals the Soul at the core of the Superconscious mind. This igniting of this deepest aspect of the mind is called Illumination or Samadhi. The discerning wisdom that operates at this level of the mind is called mandalic reasoning.
  6. Gnosis – This state dawns on the mind when you know the Soul from the Soul’s perspective. In Gnosis, you become the Soul. This state is also called Enlightenment.

Most people are familiar with layers 1 and 2—you use them at school and at work. Some people can also access layer 3, so they are able to ask a question to their Soul, and the Soul will give them guidance.

Usually people begin to tap into layer 4 when their Soul journeys onto the Psychic Realm; layer 5 appears when the Soul enters the First Planetary Initiation; and layer 6 dawns with the Soul takes the Fourth Planetary Initiation and it migrates onto the Buddhic Plane. There are spiritual practices that can enable people to prematurely activate layers 4 and 5—this typically results in distorted and confused information being disseminated.

You can learn ways to safely activate layers 3 to 6 in our intermediate meditation classes, in-person Mudrashram® Master Course in Meditation and the by-mail and online Accelerated Meditation Program. We explore the deeper aspects of gaining illumination (layer 6) and experiencing Gnosis (layer 7) in the Mudrashram® Advanced Course in Meditation.

We encourage you to acquire techniques from intuitive meditation (Jnana Yoga), so you can begin to access the deeper layers of your mental functioning. We teach these techniques in our intermediate and advanced classes to help you reach the states of Illumination and Gnosis.

The Progression of Integration

Posted on by

By George A. Boyd ©2017

Q: How does the process of psychological integration progress? Do people become more integrated as they grow spiritually?

A: Integration first occurs at the level of the personality and then progresses to encompass transpersonal and universal perspectives. Transpersonal integration occurs when you begin to incorporate elements of the Superconscious mind, and ultimately come to identify with the Higher Self or Soul. Universal integration occurs when you are able to minister to thousands and millions of other Souls—this is the state of spiritual Mastery.

Integration appears to progress through seven stages:

  1. Relative disintegration – You sense that you are composed of multiple parts or subpersonalities. Your parts are often in conflict, and it is hard for you to move forward in your life, because it is difficult to decide on what you really want to do. As a result, you cling to what is known and comfortable, even if it doesn’t make you happy. You may find that elements from your unconscious mind regularly run your behavior: things you sense in the world around you and what other people say and do trigger you to do and say certain things, even though you may feel this is not right or good.
  2. Partial integration – Your life begins to make sense and have a relative coherence. You identify with your roles at work, as a parent, as a partner in a relationship, and with activities you do in the community. You have established regular routines that make your life more efficient and less stressful. You begin to honor your needs, and you have set times for work and productivity and times in which you relax and rejuvenate. You continue to improve your results as you periodically monitor your behavior and modify things to do even better. You have trusted, supportive role models who guide you and mentor you. You may have the support of a religious or spiritual community that inspires you to do your best, or influential business leaders who show you how to prosper and how to advance in your career. You continue, however, to have aspects of your behavior you do not control. For example, you might have emotional outbursts, or be immoderate in your eating or using alcohol.
  3. Personal integration – You become self-aware, and you recognize that you create your personal destiny through what you choose. You set goals in each area of your life, and you manage your time and resources to achieve them. You are able to dialog with each of the subpersonalities within you, and find ways to meet their needs. Unconscious patterns and the influence of others govern less of your behavior; you consciously chart your course through life and make your own decisions. You become clear about what you want to do, be, and have in your life; you set about making that happen.
  4. Genius – You begin to tap into the abilities and knowledge of your Soul and begin to express them in your life. With your established capacity to make the things you choose happen in your life, you begin to concretize the inspiration of your Soul as creativity, inventions, new theoretical knowledge, and novel procedures and methods that improve productivity and performance.
  5. Transpersonal integration – You discover your Soul’s purpose and you begin to cooperate with your Soul in carrying that out. Your Soul fully expresses through you and you become its instrument. You gain discernment of the true nature of your Soul and you can guide and teach others to discover their own Soul and its gifts.
  6. Universal consciousness – When your Soul evolves to states of universal consciousness, you begin to minister and teach the multitudes. This first stage of universal integration allows you potentially influence millions of lives. You may originate a thought stream that inspires many people all over the world.
  7. Spiritual Mastery – At this stage, God empowers you to guide, teach, and transform other Souls, leading them to personal integration, lifting them to connect with their Soul’s genius, gain transpersonal integration, rise into universal sates of consciousness—and ultimately, rise to the same level of Mastery you have achieved.

Gaining personal integration is an ongoing process throughout your life. Using centering methods, meditation techniques that unite your attention with your Self, help you become established in this core of your personality and facilitates you taking charge of your life and incorporating your many parts into a harmonious synthesis. In addition to centering methods, there are several other methods that we teach that can help you work with these subpersonalities to help you integrate them into the Self.

As you begin to connect with your Soul, you begin to activate your Soul’s genius. Techniques drawn from Agni Yoga and Jnana Yoga assist you to make this connection and channel this wisdom.

You can begin to contemplate the Soul directly using Raja Yoga, and to awaken its innate knowledge and ability using Kundalini Yoga. This accelerates the rate at which you achieve transpersonal integration.

You achieve transformation in your spiritual development into states of universal consciousness using a transformational method. In our system of Integral meditation, we give you a transformational mantra that allows you to reach these states after sustained practice over several years.

Ultimately, if you follow the track of your spiritual development to its culmination, you will reach the stage of Liberation and Mastery. At his highest level, you will become an channel of the Divine Light.

We teach methods to help you activate stages three through five, and to ultimately rise into universal states and spiritual Mastery, in our intermediate meditation classes, the in-person Mudrashram® Master Course in Meditation and the by-mail and online Accelerated Meditation Program. We invite you to learn how to do these methods, so you can more swiftly achieve personal and transpersonal integration.