Finding Core Motivation

Posted on April 22, 2022 by George Boyd

Q: I find that I seem to have lost my passion. How do I motivate myself?

A: It is important for you to find your core motivation. There are several levels of motivation that drive people. These include:

Addiction and compulsion – these patterns of craving and obsession well up out of the unconscious mind. Those under the spell of these powerful mental forces often feel they are not in control of their behavior, when these patterns stir into activity.
Manipulation – other people activate emotional patterns of rage, fear, and horror in people, and then, tell them what to do. People that are manipulated in this fashion can be programmed what to buy, who to vote for, who to love and who to hate. Those under the thrall of conspiracy theories, hate groups, and religious and political cults act under this motivation that misinformation, lies, and the malicious persuasion of others instills in them.
Excitement and passion – This arises when you sense there is an opportunity to attain your desires and to realize your dreams. Many salespeople promise that their product or service will fulfill these desires, and it produces hope and optimism. When these dreams are not fulfilled, however, your passion may give rise to apathy and your excitement to depression.
Inspiration and revelation – Those who have opened portals into the Psychic Realm may receive inspiration and revelation from a spiritual guide. Some feel motivated to embark on the spiritual path and bring out their Soul’s potentials listening to these messages—unfortunately, these messages can also convey false information, which can lead to delusions.
Holy guidance – those who commune with the Holy Spirit and are able to listen to its whispering within the altar of the heart in the Moon Soul can be guided to carry out activities of charity, compassion, and service—but, this moral octave of volition can be shaped and conditioned through sermons of clergy with devious agendas, who can effectively take control of people’s lives to serve a religious group or its leader.
Soul Purpose – those who can connect directly with the Soul can intuit the activities that carry forward the Soul’s Purpose, and they carry them out. Unlike levels (2) through (5), this form of guidance is mental, not emotional, and is task and goal oriented. When this form of motivation becomes the dominant force in your life, your transpersonal will of the Soul starts to overshadow your personal will, and guides you to carry out actions that develop your skills, that give you the necessary experience, and enable your Soul to express its purpose in your human life.
Divine Will – Those who ascend to the heights of spiritual Mastery at different octaves of the Great Continuum of Consciousness receive the anointing of the Divine, and are directly shown the spiritual service and ministry they must carry out. When advanced disciples surrender to their spiritual Master and receive his or her direction (Agya), the Master conveys the Divine Will to them.

Many people experience the emotional roller coaster of levels (2) through (5). When the tranquil guidance of the Soul’s Purpose at level (6) begins to operate, it may feel strange at first, because it doesn’t stir your emotions and passions. The challenge of aspirants and disciples is to cut through these emotionalized layers of the mind and to contact the clear mental and intuitive streams coming from the Soul.

Greater serenity and a clear sense of direction is the by-product of following the Soul’s guidance. While you will still continue to react emotionally to the events of your life and in your social and community environment, and the struggles and lessons that arise when you follow your Soul’s direction, you will have a greater willingness to face these issues and obstacles and press to overcome them.

Those who are dealing with the addictions and compulsive drives of level (1) will need to find the necessary support and guidance to help them recover from these destructive patterns. Some may find our Addiction Recovery Coaching Program can help them understand, sublimate, and uproot these negative mental tendencies.

Methods of Jnana Yoga, which we teach in our intermediate meditation classes—the in-person Mudrashram® Master Course in Meditation and the by-mail and online Accelerated Meditation Program—teach you how to tune into your Soul’s guidance.

Much of the turmoil that you experience in your life comes from tapping these emotionalized layers of motivation—with their inevitable highs and lows… ups and downs… wins and losses. When the still, small voice within can cut through this mental cacophony, you can begin to find your way amidst a thousand siren voices that seek to lead you away from what you were born to do.

Moving from Self to Soul

Posted on April 8, 2022 by George Boyd

Moving from Self-Polarization to Soul Awareness

Q: I’ve been able to experience my Self and I have a reasonably good grasp of functioning from this level, but I am having difficulty lifting up into Soul awareness. How do I make this next step?

A: First, you have to engage the connection of the Self with the Soul through the inner portals:

You shift from using your will to get things done to the passive reception of guidance for action from the Soul, using reflective or receptive forms of meditation.
You move from empathic and caring engagement with other people via inner withdrawal. You invoke the Soul’s unconditional love, and receive that love as an emotional healing Attunement.
You change from applying your intellect to solve problems to establish a dialog with the Soul and listen to the downpour of its intuitive wisdom.
You transfer the focus of your attention from union with the Voidness of Being with heightened aliveness of your senses to union with the Soul through Pratyahara and Laya, riding up the inner sensory channels into the presence of the Soul.
You transition from active learning, study, and remembering information to contemplation of the vehicles of consciousness of the personality and the Superconscious mind, up to the presence of the Soul.
You lift out of the mode of personal discipline, conscientiousness, living up to your values and striving to live with integrity to remembrance of the Soul and God, using prayer, chanting, and worship. In this passive mode you invite in the gifts of the Soul or the anointing of the Holy Spirit to express through you.
You change over from the mode of enacting your dreams and goals to turning off the vehicles of the personality and the Superconscious mind and awakening the Kundalini Shakti into the presence of the Soul and entering Samadhi.

Aligning with the Soul and expressing it appears to pass through several steps. Some people will move through these steps progressively, one-after-another; others will be drawn to specific steps and directly begin to function from this level.

These steps are:

You maintain receptivity and openness to spiritual experiences. A series of coincidences, signs, or serendipitous encounters guide you to explore choices that you would not have considered when you operated in rational and linear context of the Self.
The still small voice or voice of intuition gives you clear guidance for action. It may also warn you against taking certain actions.
You begin to travel as your attentional principle with attention conjoined into the Subtle Realm beyond the Self. Here you behold the archetypes and myths of this realm.
You engage with the vehicles of consciousness of the Probationary Path—the Biophysical Universe, the Abstract Mind Plane, the Psychic Realm, and the Wisdom Plane—and express the Soul’s abilities and wisdom from these levels of the Superconscious mind.
You interface with your Moon Soul nucleus of identity and commune with the Father God, the Christ, the saints, and the Holy Spirit. You may use prayer and supplication to direct the Light of the Holy Spirit to heal and minister to your own needs and the needs of others.
You gain union with the Mighty I AM Presence and speak the Word of Power as a decree. You use this power within you to change negative conditions into positive ones, and to effect personal transformation and character reformation.
You connect with your Manasic Vortex center and you get direct guidance from your Soul, your Monad, your Supervising Initiate, and you have direct prehension of the Soul’s purpose.
You gain union with the Soul in its essential nature. You witness it expressing its abilities in the Superconscious mind and channeling its love, wisdom, and ability through your personality.

Direct meditation on your Manasic Vortex center, your Crown of Purpose [if you have one], and your Soul’s essential vehicle will speed the rate of integration of the Soul’s experience and expression. We teach methods to meditate directly upon the Soul in our intermediate courses, the in-person Mudrashram® Master Course in Meditation and the by-mail and online Accelerated Meditation Program.

Roberto Assagioli, an Italian psychotherapist, referred to this opening of awareness to encompass the Soul and to allow its expression, as spiritual Psychosynthesis. To promote this higher order integration, you need to cultivate conscious communion with the Soul, until it clearly emerges and begins to overshadow the personality, and guide it to carry out the Soul’s purpose—and make the personality into an instrument for the Soul’s creativity and gifts.

Enacting Your Own Agenda

Posted on March 19, 2022 by George Boyd

Q: It seems a lot of people I meet live unsatisfying, inauthentic lives. Do you have any insights for them?

A: If someone is living an inauthentic life, it suggests they are carrying out someone else’s agenda for their loves, and not their own. They are following the life prescriptions of:

Their parents
Their romantic partner
Their employer
Their religious minister or clergy of their faith
Their commanding officer in the military
The leader of a criminal gang, a terrorist cell, or a hate group
A political leader
A spiritual leader, a Guru or spiritual Master

We invite you to notice whether you are following the agendas of these other people in your own life.

When you follow someone else’s agenda, that other person dictates the guidelines for:

What you should do in your career
What you should believe about other people, about yourself, about God, or about politics
What you should think
What you should do with your life
Whom you should marry, or whether you should not marry
To what you should dedicate your life

As you examine your own life, in what ways are other people setting the guidelines for your beliefs, thoughts, values, and behavior? If this truly is your life, what guidelines will you set for yourself instead?

What’s going on here? You are allowing other people to program your beliefs and behavior, and doing what other people tell you to do. Now, certainly it is not a good idea to not do what your employer or drill instructor tells you to do, as the situation requires that you obey them—except when what they tell you is illegal or immoral. But in many other situations, you are following the guidance of other people without honoring your own essential truth—your dharma—and this is why you feel inauthentic.

To begin to emerge into you own authentic life, questions like these will help you get into touch with what your life is about:

Who am I?
What are my values? What do I know is true apart from what other people tell me?
What do I want to do with my life? What would bring me fulfillment?
What is the purpose of my life? What is my deepest nature attempting to bring forward in my life?
To honor that vision of what I am meant to become, to what do I need to make a commitment? What actions to I need to take to make that vision real?
What is holding me back from stepping into my authentic life? Whom do I need to remove from my life to embrace my true calling?
What specific steps will I need to take—and in what time frame—to extricate from my inauthentic life and step into my genuine one?

If you take this step, certain people in your life will not be pleased. They will criticize you. They will argue with you. They will tell you your judgment is flawed… that you are crazy… or perhaps, that the devil is seducing you.

But if you do this, you will discover the reason you were born. You will unearth your passion. You will uncover your truth. Your will connect with your Soul and the Divine in a new way. You will change in ways that you could not have imagined.

When you re-establish your link with your Soul, you reconnect with your true agenda—not someone else’s agenda… but what you were meant to do. It will feel real… authentic… genuine… and true. You will emerge from your cocoon as your inner butterfly.

Those of you who are in need of support in moving from the fake you to the real you, we offer you coaching. If you are attempting to empower yourself to begin to live your authentic life, we offer you Life Coaching. If your mind has been programmed in a religious or political cult, we offer you Cult Recovery Coaching. If your inauthentic life arises from experiences you had growing up a toxic family or in an abusive relationship, we offer you Dysfunctional Family Coaching. If addiction has warped your beliefs, values, and behavior, we offer you Addiction Recovery Coaching.

If you have been leading an inauthentic life: stop! Make a new choice. Take a new direction that leads you to reconnect to your truth and your Soul. This will redeem your life and give you back what was stolen from you. You can do this, if you choose.

Types of Dissociation and How to Come Back

Posted on October 28, 2021 by George Boyd

Q: How do you comeback to grounded awareness if you remain continually dissociated?

A: It’s important to identify what type of dissociation you are experiencing:

Type one – You are dissociated because of delusional beliefs and disorganized thinking. This type arises from psychosis, and you may need the assistance of psychotherapy and a psychiatrist.

Type two – You are voluntarily keeping your attention in union with an ensouling entity, and you disidentify from your life and your personality. This type of dissociation comes when you identify with an ensouling entity or nucleus of identity and you choose to remain in this state of awareness—you may believe that it is the Supreme Reality and you choose to embody this essence. Followers of Vedanta and Advaita schools of Jnana Yoga practice this type of dissociation, with an aim to realize union with Brahman.

Type three – You remain in an altered state of consciousness to avoid facing a painful life experience or trauma. This type of dissociation is found in those who try to stay high with alcohol or drugs, or those who seek out ecstatic spiritual experiences to avoid focusing on core issues of pain, shame, or fear.

Type four – You maintain a state of consciousness of being present, where it appears that your life unfolds on its own. You stay in the flow state and witness your life occurring without you making any choices. This type of dissociation occurs in those who attempt to remain in a state of mindfulness, and is found among those who practice Taoist and Zen contemplative detachment from life.

Type five – You are so abstracted into mathematical or theoretical modeling of the world that you no longer identify with your life or your Self, but you see them as theoretical constructs or ideas. Those who are philosophers, mathematicians, or physicists can dissociate from their normal lives through abstraction into science and philosophy.

Type six – You identify with a spiritual essence, or with the loving, devotional mindset of a nucleus of identity and become abstracted into union with that spiritual essence. You regard the world from this lens of love and virtue, and you may forget your Self and your life as you live from this consciousness of pervasive love. This type of dissociation is found in saints, and devotees of Bhakti Yoga and traditions anchored in the Transcendental Sphere.

Type seven – You involuntarily identify with a nucleus of identity or ensouling entity when your Kundalini rises and becomes fixed in that spiritual essence. Here your attention becomes dissociated from life and your personality, and you re-identify with this spiritual essence.

At the bottom of several types of dissociation—particularly types one, two, three, four, and six—is the sense that it’s not OK to be in your normal awareness. You feel or believe that it’s somehow unworthy or demeaning to be in this normal state, and you seek to be present in a transcendent state.

Other types of dissociation appear to be trance-like states that arise with deep concentration—these are typical of types four and five. While it might be all right for someone to be in the waking state of awareness in these perspectives, the depth of their contemplation keeps these individuals dissociated while they are engaged “following the Tao” or seeking a deeper layer of truth and meaning.

In two types of dissociation—types one and seven——you experience detachment and dissociation as largely involuntary. You might wish to return to your waking state of awareness, but powerful intrapsychic forces keep you locked in an altered state of consciousness, regardless of what you might wish.

The Possibility of Coming Back from Dissociation

Remaining in altered states of consciousness through dissociation can bring with it a series of untoward symptoms. Among them are:

Derealization – this is the sense that the world is unreal.
Depersonalization – this is the sense that your life and your personality are unreal.
De-motivation – this is the loss of desire to pursue personal goals and dreams.
Emotional numbing – this is the inability to feel your feelings.
Disembodiment – this is the sense that you are viewing your body from outside from the standpoint of being in your astral body.
Mental silence – the experience of absolute silence and stillness in your mind, so that you cannot think.
Volitional paralysis – this is the inability to choose or carry out voluntary behavior.
Heightened suggestibility – this occurs when your reality-testing mechanism is shut off in an altered state of consciousness, and you come to believe in conspiracy theories and delusional ideas—and follow unquestionably the suggestions of charismatic leaders who come to dictate many aspects of your belief and behavior.
Perceptual decoupling – this is the experience of beholding the world from a mythological or mystic viewpoint that is divorced from any practical application in your life.
Cognitive disorganization – this is the experience of hearing voices that lie to you about what is real and what your life means, and that construct delusional beliefs.

Among the keys to coming back from dissociation are:

Recognize you are in an altered state of consciousness—either voluntary or involuntary.
Remember the waking state of awareness, and move your attention back to that state.
Notice what comes up as you place your attention in your waking state of awareness—whether you feel it is not OK for you to be there
Process any beliefs you have that make it not OK for you to be in your waking state of awareness, until you can feel complete comfort in being fully grounded and present in your life.
Set criteria for when it is appropriate to be in an altered state of awareness, and delimit the time you spend in these states, so you can balance personal life with your spiritual life.
Address any traumatic or painful issues through effective self-help methods, psychotherapy—or psychiatric intervention, if required. [We teach some of these self-help methods in our intermediate meditation classes, the in-person Mudrashram® Master Course in Meditation and the by-mail and online Accelerated Meditation Program.]
Learn to lower your Kundalini back to the fully grounded state. Those of you who are having difficulty with this may wish to request a Kundalini Recovery Services consultation from us.

Some temporary dissociation is commonly experienced in prayer, meditation, and hypnosis. If you return to normal awareness again after this experience and take the time to integrate what you have learned and discovered, you will strengthen your ability to function as a human being.

If you remain in a dissociated state, however, this can lead to a variety of issues that can disconnect you from your life and detract from your ability to function as a human being. We encourage you to be able to experience and operate in your inner worlds of mind and spirit, but also to be able to live in this world in your authentic human life.

A Brief Primer on Stress and Resistance

Posted on September 17, 2021 by George Boyd

Have you ever noticed that some activities seem relatively easy to do, while others evoke reaction and resistance? It’s important to understand how this process works. We can start with a model of the psyche that graphically portrays this interplay between the conscious and unconscious zone of functioning.

chart of stress

0 is the transition point at the border of the Conscious/Unconscious boundary.

You experience the Conscious Zone of the mind as an area of light, where you are free to act. You experience the Unconscious Zone of the mind as an area of darkness, where you feel stress, anxiety, craving and desire, resistance, and dread.

When you are operating in the Conscious Zone of the mind, as the task becomes more difficult and challenging, you move from +7 to +1. Ease of action, even playfulness marks +7. The experience of challenge and having to operate at your maximum capacity indicates you have reached +1.

When you move to the 0 point, you reach the transition point between the Conscious Zone and the Unconscious Zone. You may feel a certain anxiety as you move across this border into operating from the Unconscious Zone.

At -1, you begin to feel stressed, like the task is getting to you and you are looking for something to lower the stress and demand upon you. At -7, you cannot function any more; you are experiencing your painful core emotions—such as suicidal depression, full panic attack, primal rage, or intense self-hatred.

The more time you spend relating and reacting from the Unconscious Zone, the greater physiological markers of stress you exhibit; the deeper you go into this layer of the mind, the greater emotional distress and misery you experience.

To expand your comfort zone, you need to engage activities that elicit a -1 response, and relax as you do engage in this activity. As you practice the activity more and it becomes easier to do, you may find that your stress response lowers and you are become willing to engage in the action without resistance or reaction. Through this means, you begin to open this area of your Conscious Zone to integrate new behavior; the Unconscious Zone yields this aspect of your behavior to the control of volition.

Methods such as Wolpe’s systematic desensitization, used in Behavioral Psychology; and mindfulness help this process of reintegration, as you are able to loosen the death grip of these reactive patterns of the unconscious and extend the zone of your conscious functioning.

In our intermediate meditation classes—the in-person Mudrashram® Master Course in Meditation and the by-mail and online Accelerated Meditation Program—we teach methods to work with material in the unconscious. These include methods like Process Meditation, the Mandala Method, and the Rainbow Technique. These methods empower you to work with unconscious material in the -1 to -5 range.

The deepest levels of core psychological pain and defensiveness at -6 and -7 are typically out of the range of effectiveness for self-help methods, such as we teach—these are deepest levels of the Unconscious Zone best addressed with professional psychotherapy—and sometimes, medication must be used to lessen the severe reactions and dysfunctional reactive behavior that arises from these deep wellsprings of the mind.

We encourage you to monitor your behavior and notice, which aspects of your behavior come out of this Unconscious Zone. When they come up, notice what you feel… notice what your thoughts and beliefs are when this arises… and notice any desire or aversion that accompanies this reaction. This will help you identify what your deep issues are—once you know what they are, you can work with them using the self-help methods you have learned, or seek professional help when these are beyond your ability to resolve using your own resources.