By George A. Boyd ©2015
Many people are not aware of their Soul. Their experience only encompasses the world of their senses, their body, their relationships, and their faculty of reason. Others have access to deeper layers of the mind, but their awareness is not raised to the level where they can cognize levels of their Superconscious mind, or their conscious essences—attentional principle, spirit, or Soul. Because they do not penetrate into these deepest levels of spiritual experience, they operate with a veil over their spiritual core.
It appears that successive states of identification come forward as layers of potential awareness progressively become dominant in the mind. These states of identification and potential awareness are shown in the table below.
|
Veil |
Level |
Dominant Faculty |
Who demonstrates this |
| 85.7% to 100% | Empirical | Reason | Scientists |
| 71.4% to 85.6% | Egoic | Ego | Politicians, actors, businessmen |
| 57.1% to 71.3% | Attention | Attention (travels through the layers of the mind in the astral body) | Psychics, hypnotists, channelers, New Age practitioners, healers: these enter trance states through their astral body or meditate on the chakras |
| 42.9% to 57.0% | Attentional principle |
Attentional principle (collects attention and leads it along the thread of consciousness, directs it via intention) |
Mindfulness practitioners, Raja Yoga meditators, those who utilize creation or manifestation meditation |
| 28.6% to 42.8% | Self | Self (faculty of volition directs human life and destiny) | Coaches, teachers, counselors, and therapists |
| 14.3% to 28.5% | The spirit |
Individual spirit (spirit awakens and travels in the channels of the Nada) | Mystics, devotees, Nada Yoga meditators |
| 0% to 14.2% | Soul | Ensouling entity (realizes the God essence within) | Enlightened meditators, practitioners of Integral meditation, Psychosynthesis, Jnana Yogis who experience Gnosis |
As potential awareness becomes established over time in each successive identity state, the veil begins to gradually lift until the Soul is revealed in its true essence. But this veil does not lift simply because you raise your awareness, it often requires that you work on the issues that hold it in place.
What Constructs the Veil?
The following factors play a role in construction this veil over the Soul:
- Unprocessed life experiences – This occurs when you never sort out your experiences through reflection or in the dream state, which keeps you stuck in a particular layer
- Karmic accretions – These are emotionalized, desire-laden impressions in the unconscious mind that form a barrier that blocks you moving to a deeper layer. You may have an unwillingness to confront these issues, which may bring up feelings of fear, guilt, or shame.
- Automatized awareness – This occurs when you maintain your awareness at one of these levels through routine or habit, or when you must function in that level through the demands of career or family.
- Lack of meditation practice – In this scenario, you don’t pierce the veil because you never lift your awareness through meditation to penetrate to your core.
- Limiting beliefs – You learn beliefs and values that dissuade or frighten you from entering deeper states of awareness. You may have learned that entering certain other states of awareness are states of insanity, or states where you lose control.
- Inner gates – You may come across inner gates that prevent your attention from moving deeper into the layers of the mind. Two common gates are the one that blocks entrance to the Subconscious mind, and the one that limits access to the Superconscious mind.
There are a variety of meditation methods to begin to deconstruct this veil. These methods include:
- Process meditation – This enables you to help you work through and complete specific issues, so they no longer influence you from the unconscious mind.
- Active reflection and decision-making – This allows you to analyze the nature of the inner block or barrier. Once you know what it is, you can make new decisions to release its hold on you.
- Breakthrough – Through moving through the entire unconscious mind and the issues stored in it, you can break through into union with your attentional principle, spirit, or Soul. This can sublimate the desire-laden impressions and give you greater control over their expression in your life.
- Mindfulness – Through creating the inner mental habits of self-observation and mindfulness, you can begin to break out of the hypnotic spell of habit and routine.
- Conscious ascension to deeper layers of awareness and identity – Through learning how to direct your attention along the thread of consciousness to unite with the attentional principle, Self, spirit, and Soul.
- Inventory and introspection – Through structured inventory and introspection, you can discover the beliefs and values that keep you locked in an identity state. You learn to cultivate courage, faith, and curiosity to drive attention to explore deeper layers of the mind.
- Breaking up mindsets – You can use affirmation and autohypnosis to counter limiting beliefs. You can utilize evocative coaching questions to shift your mindsets to entertain other possibilities.
- The truth shall set you free – Be willing to tell the truth about your experience and about your failings; be willing to face the truth about yourself that you have been evading, and to face the uncomfortable feelings that uncovering surfaces. Psychotherapy can facilitate this.
- Find another pathway – If you encounter inner gates, try adopting a different form of meditation to help you get around these barriers.
- Transmutation – Burn away the barrier through drawing down the Light of the Spirit through implementing a transformational meditation technique.
For Ralph Waldo Emerson, “the unexamined life was not worth living.” He insisted upon opening his awareness to the transcendental vistas of the Soul, and looking at life from this expanded perspective. Perhaps people do not achieve their full potential because they do not expand their awareness to the level where their true promise can be known and actualized.
For those who wish to take on the project of deconstructing their veil and fully actualizing their potential, we teach many of these methods in our intermediate Integral meditation programs, the in-person Mudrashram® Master Course in Meditation and the by-mail and on-line Accelerated Meditation Program. These courses provide the meditator with a variety of tools to counter these inner barriers that construct the veil over the Soul, and dismantle them. Those who wish to learn more about our system of Integral meditation that promotes person growth, enlightenment, and unlimited spiritual growth can do so at our website, https://www.mudrashram.com.
