George A. Boyd © 2017
Q: Some people cannot see within, even despite years of meditation? What causes this spiritual blindness?
A: There are a number of causes. Some have to do with incorrect meditation technique. Some have to do with encountering inner blocks or barriers—or the mind seems to defend against interiorization. Some have difficulty transcending the structures of belief that they have constructed, or moving beyond the content of the mind. Some never move far enough the thread of consciousness to activate the immortal essences—the attentional principle, the spirit, and the Soul—so the sight of these conscious principles of their nature never awakens.
There are several types of spiritual blindness that you may encounter:
- Your awareness awakens, but your attention remains fixed in the waking state of awareness. You remember the altered state of awareness, but you don’t go there as your attention.
- Your attention travels within, but then meets a barrier that it cannot surmount. This barrier blocks further inward progress, so the attention remains separated from the attentional principle, the spirit, and the Soul—and these spiritual essences do not awaken.
- Your attention does not lift from the waking state of awareness, because you cannot access the thread of consciousness through any pathway. [See the article, “The Journey Inward” — this describes twelve different tracks through which you can interiorize. This article is published in our book, A Mudrashram® Reader: Understanding Integral Meditation.] As a result of inability to enter the doorway to the thread of consciousness at the point between the eyebrows, you remain only conscious of your brain, and do not enter an altered state of awareness.
- Your attention remains at the waking state of awareness, because your awareness remains blocked below the seat of the attention at the medulla center, and does not rise into thread of consciousness.
- You engage in intellectual thinking or reflection, emotional expectation or reaction, and imagination or visualization—without moving your attention at all. You are immersed in the content arising from your vehicles of consciousness, but do not move your attention through it and transcend it. You must isolate and focus your attention to move beyond the content of these strata of the mind. You also experience this content immersion, when you are locked in the prison of belief. [See our web log article, “Breaking through the Bubble of Belief.”]
- Your attentional principle journeys into the higher vehicles of the Subconscious, Metaconscious, and Superconscious mind, but you are not aware of its experience, because your attention remains separated from it. Similarly, your spirit moves into the channels of the Nada, but its experience is also veiled from you, because you are not able to unite your attention with your spirit.
- Elements in your unconscious mind actively veil and block your deeper incursions beyond a certain level along the thread of consciousness, effectively pushing your attention back; this occurs whenever you try to penetrate beyond a certain point. [Unlike type two, which is a gate or barrier along the thread of consciousness—like the gateway to the Subconscious mind center—that your attention cannot get through; in type seven, there is an emergence from your unconscious that blocks your further interiorization, which sabotages your attempts to move your attention beyond where that unconscious mind material arises.] Karma drives this type. It appears to stem from two scenarios in your past lives:
- You have a trauma associated with meditation in a past life. For example, you were killed when you were sitting for meditation.
- You did evil deeds to those on the spiritual path. For example, you were cruel to monks, nuns, priests, or holy wanderers (sadhus).
Overcoming these Hindrances
These types of inner blindness can be overcome.
- For types one, three, and five, you must work on collecting your attention and following the thread of consciousness with your attention. If you do this successfully, attentional seeing will begin to arise.
- For type two, you need to practice alternative methods to surmount or get through the barrier upon the thread of consciousness. [We discuss these remedies in the Mudrashram® Correspondence Course.]
- For type four, to get your awareness to rise into the seat of attention and up into the thread of consciousness, you need to work out the blockage. Some have found that body-mind modalities such as body work, breath work, Hatha Yoga, or martial arts helps them move through this blockage.
- For type six, you must train your attention to unite with your attentional principle or spirit through moving through each focal point up to where these spiritual essences dwell.
- For type seven, you may benefit from psychotherapy, hypnotherapy, or coaching to help you work out these issues that block you from moving beyond the level of your mind where this trauma is embedded. You can also work with them yourself using the invocational techniques and the methods of Jnana Yoga and Agni Yoga that we teach in our intermediate courses, the in-person Mudrashram® Master Course in Meditation and the by-mail and online Accelerated Meditation Program.
If you are suffering from a type of spiritual blindness, where you cannot see anything within in your meditations, we encourage you to:
- Identify the type of spiritual blindness that you are experiencing
- Practice the remedy that we suggest above
- Try alternative methods to move your attention along the thread of consciousness [vide “The Journey Inward”]
- Have a consultation with someone who specializes in helping you rehabilitate inner vision, if you cannot remedy this problem yourself
It is possible to rehabilitate your inner sight. We urge you to not give up until you find an answer, because inner vision is your birthright.
