Operating on All of Your Cylinders

By George A. Boyd © 2019

Q: What does the expression, to operate on all cylinders, mean?

A: We can draw an analogy between the awareness and functioning of human beings and the operation of a 12-cylinder car, like a Jaguar. These inner shifts in awareness and functioning appear to take 12 postures:

  1. Only senses function – You are aware of your body and the world around you. You dwell in the world of consensual reality at your waking state of awareness.
  2. Senses interface with memory – You activate the faculty of imagination. You are able to tell stories and express your creative ideas.
  3. Ego activation – Your desires are highlighted. The world revolves around you. You may wish to present the best impression of yourself to others, which may engage your defenses and lying to not show others any weakness or vulnerability.
  4. Mindfulness – You are able to collect your attention and observe the contents of awareness. You become aware of what is arising in the present time.
  5. Attentional travel – You are able to shift your attention and examine the focal points within your mind, and consciously shift perspective.
  6. Third eye opening – You awaken as the attentional principle, and you are able to use intention and suggestion to work on your life issues.
  7. Conscious life direction – You awaken the Self, which directs your entire personality through volition. You take charge of the direction of your life.
  8. Awakening of the heart – You become aware of your spirit. You awaken your inner wellsprings of love and devotion.
  9. Archetypal identification – You awaken a nucleus of identity and identity with it. You express the native virtue, abilities, and intuitive knowledge that this essence holds.
  10. Enlightenment – You become aware of the Soul and identify with it. You experience enlightenment and Gnosis.
  11. Higher octave awakening – You awaken an ensouling entity, spirit, or nucleus of identity in the Transplanetary, Cosmic, Supracosmic, or Transcendental bands of the Continuum. You identify with the essence and express it.
  12. Satchitananda – You awaken as the Infinite Consciousness, and behold each of these other octaves within you.

Those that meditate open the possibility to activate cylinders four to twelve; those that don’t awaken their witnessing faculty, commonly are delimited to operating only with their first three cylinders. We teach you how to awaken cylinders four through ten in our intermediate courses, the in-person Mudrashram® Master Course in Meditation and the by-mail and online Accelerated Meditation Program. We introduce you to cylinders eleven and twelve in the Mudrashram® Advanced Course in Meditation.

Through awakening your awareness and learning how to do inner work, you can activate each of your human and spiritual potentials, and begin functioning on all of your cylinders. If you are interested in learning how to do this, we can teach you how.

Reflections on Levels of Thought

By George A. Boyd © 2018

Q: There are certain coaches, eastern Gurus, and New Age teachers who state that there is no thinker, that thoughts “arise by themselves,” and that thoughts are a false story that veils the truth of our inner Divinity and perfection. Can you shed some light on this?

A: If you hold your attention in certain altered states of consciousness, this appears to be true. You have to keep your attention fixed in this altered state of consciousness, however, to maintain this perspective.

For this reason, these exponents of this view advocate that people do continual inquiries or process meditations, or keep their mind fixed or absorbed in this “enlightened” state. They may teach a number of techniques to keep you merged in this state, or they may have one key method to bring about this state of awareness.

If you simply notice the layers of thoughts you experience, you may discover that there are several different bands of thinking, some of which directly impact human life and others that transcend it and view it from a detached perspective. These 16 major platforms of thought are shown below.

Levels of Thought Directly Impacting Human Life

  1. Stimuli – These are thoughts that your contact with objects in the environment generates. They typically remind you of things you want or things you need to do.
  2. Reactions – These are emotionally laden thoughts that events or things people say trigger in you. These are your issues or “buttons” that express as upset, rage, sadness, or terror.
  3. Dreams or fantasies – This is where you imagine what you want to do, be, or have in your life.
  4. Logic – This is the activity of reason, which operates like a computer—making the calculations for your behavior, analyzing probable outcomes, and assessing the truth or falsity of statements. This aspect of your mind is responsible for reality testing.
  5. Schemas – These are associated thoughts that you organize into categories. These are integrated within the role identities of your ego. For example, if you are a bowler, you have all bowling-related thoughts compartmentalized within the capsule of your “I am a bowler” role.
  6. Task oriented thoughts – This is the activity of your concrete mind, which plans, schedules, identifies key points, and steps to completion of a project.
  7. Conceptual thought – These comprise the problem-solving and conceptual reflection functions of the intellect. You use these intellect’s cognitive strategies to learn, solve problems, and explore ideas.
  8. Emergent thought – These are mental impressions that arise within the present time, which come into conscious awareness—they seem to arise independently from the “thinker.” These enter the Conscious mind through the preconscious portal. They enter the Metaconscious mind in the state of being, where it seems that behavior and decisions happen spontaneously. They arise in the Superconscious mind in the wave of the present time on the Akashic Aether—the Soul’s thought and intention enters human life at this stage. Many process meditation groups, coaches, and metaphysical teachers consider union with the wave of the present time to be the state of enlightenment.

Levels of Thought that Do Not Directly Impact Human Life

  1. Psychic impressions – These images and ideas become impressed on conscious awareness. They arise from your vehicle of consciousness on the Psychic Plane, or they may be channeled from guides or spiritual beings from this Plenum. Typically, you need to enter into an altered state of consciousness—through hypnosis or meditation—to become aware of these thoughts
  2. Voice of wisdom – This marks the emergence of the teacher within, which gives you guidance for your life and answers your questions. This arises from your form on the Wisdom Plane. Your mind has to be silent and receptive to receive this thought stream.
  3. Inspired thoughts – These are revealed truths and insights that arise from your revelatory mind and from the Holy Spirit. You contact this level through contemplating the nucleus of identity of the First Planetary Initiation, the Moon Soul or Christ Child.
  4. Voice of the Mighty I AM Presence – These are decrees that you speak aloud or you hear as “power thoughts” that arise from the Mighty I AM Presence in your form on the Second Planetary Initiation. You must raise your attention to this level to be aware of this thought stream.
  5. Thought ministry – These are the higher mental activities that operate in your Manasic Vortex in the Third Planetary Initiation. These activities include contemplation of seed thoughts, visualizing blueprints for projects and organizations, creating mental synthesis and synergistic cooperation between people, actualizing the gifts of the Soul, enacting Soul Purpose, receiving intuitive guidance from the Masters of the Planetary Hierarchy, and participating in thought ministry through reception and transmission.
  6. Illumined mind – This downpour of intuitive knowledge arises from the Illumined Mind or Buddhi from your vehicle of consciousness in the Fourth Planetary Initiation. It purifies your attitude, reveals truths, uproots ignorance and superstition, shows the content of your vehicles of consciousness and the inner Planes, awakens the abilities of your forms in the Superconscious mind, guides your spirit and attentional principle on the inner Planes, and brings remembrance of your Soul’s essential nature.
  7. Attunement – This is the channeled Light from the Divine Spirit that purifies the inner vehicles of consciousness; promotes physical, etheric, and emotional healing; counsels and guides the attentional principle and spirit; awakens revelation and illumination; and bestows initiation to unfold the spiritual evolutionary potentials of the Soul.
  8. Samadhi – This is the direct, wordless experience of the Soul beyond thought. This confers Soul Realization and Gnosis.

Those that seek to put you into the state of enlightenment will typically ask you to attend to the upwelling of emergent thought in the wave of the present time (level 8). In this state of consciousness, it appears that thoughts arise without a self or a thinker—and that life is just unfolding on its own and the “mind” and its stories are just an overlay upon that perfect state of being.

We suggest it is important for you to become aware of each of the layers of thought and how they impact your life, or how they enable you to view your life from a detached, higher perspective. While it may be productive to do certain aspects of spiritual work from the wave of the present time on the Akashic Aether, we do not recommend that aspirants maintain that state of awareness beyond the time required to perform their process, inquiry, or contemplation; instead, they should ensure they return their attention to their fully grounded awareness again after their meditational inner work is completed.

Those of you who are interested in learning how to access these many layers of thought can acquire specific techniques that allow you to do so in our intermediate meditation programs: the in-person Mudrashram® Master Course in Meditation and the by-mail and online Accelerated Meditation Program.

How You Can Become Illumined and Enlightened

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.

Limitations of the Types of Knowing

By George A. Boyd ©2018

Q: There are so many crazy ideas that come out of religion and mysticism! Why would anyone want to venture into that territory and become a complete cuckoo?

A: We base our sense of reality—what is true, what is knowable, what is valid to believe—on different mental faculties that we use to determine what is real. Each of these types of knowing has limitations. Each type of knowing has a particular strength, but it isn’t helpful outside these parameters. Let’s look at some of these types of knowing and what their strengths and limitations are:

  1. Reason – This faculty of knowing operates through the mental seed atom in your Conscious mind. It is one of the primary tools you use to determine whether something is true. It uses logical tests to determine what is true; if your logic is fallacious, you may come to a wrong conclusion. It also helps you test reality—what is real in the environment around you. Optical illusions, stage magic, and people engineering what information you receive, however, can fool your reality testing. Reason is based on the information you receive from your senses or the instruments you use to extend them: it can’t detect anything beyond these limits, so the range of what it can know is limited.
  2. Memory – This faculty of knowing dwells in your Subconscious mind, and records your experience as it occurs. You can highlight certain aspects of your experience as more important to remember, as when you are studying information for which you will be tested. Certain highly emotional and meaningful events in your life will be more memorable. You use mnemonic cues to recall memory; if you don’t give the right cue, you cannot recall the information you have stored. Since memory stores its information in the biological hard drive of your brain, if your brain becomes damaged, you may not be able to recall what you have experienced or learned. Since memory records associations and these associations can change over time, you may incorrectly recall what actually happened to you.
  3. Intellect – This faculty of knowing exists in your Metaconscious mind, and uses your intelligence to operate certain problem solving skills. It allows you to solve problems using mathematics. You can use deductive, inductive, dialectical, and synthetic reasoning to reflect on ideas and uncover their meaning and interrelationships. You can form a hypothesis, and subject your conjecture to testing to determine whether it’s true. You can communicate your ideas verbally, in writing, and through symbols. Your level of education, which conditions how many problem solving and communication strategies you learn, may limit the problems you can solve—for example, if you only learned college algebra, you would not be able to solve problems in trigonometry or calculus. Certain neurological conditions may limit your ability to use intellectual problem solving skills, and suppress the operation of your native intelligence. If you have incorrect data or ask questions that do not yield a correct solution, your intellect may not be able to solve your problem.
  4. Collective Scientific Knowledge – This repository of the collective knowledge of humanity dwells on the Temple of Science Subplane of the Abstract Mind Plane in the Superconscious mind. Our knowledge continues to grow as scientists investigate different aspects of the physical world, our bodies, and our mental functioning. This knowledge is stored in journals, disseminated in seminars and professional conferences, discussed in books, taught in classrooms, and subjected to analysis and re-analysis, critique and testing. We continue to update this knowledge as we learn more. Sometimes we find that something we concluded was true based on our testing was inaccurate, and we have to revise our theories and beliefs about something we had accepted as true. Science is developing new technologies to penetrate deeper into the world and ourselves; it never arrives at a final truth; it continually revises its theories as we learn more, and discover that what we formerly believed was inaccurate or flawed.
  5. Psychic Sensing – Psychic sensing operates in your vehicle on the Psychic Realm of the Superconscious mind. It synthesizes three streams of knowing: the data coming from the senses of your astral body, the operation of the intuitive knowing of your “psychic eye,” and the intuitive guidance received from spiritual guides. It initially appears as a series of images, felt impressions, or words of intuitive guidance that you can hear. If you do psychic readings for others, you communicate these images, impressions, and words to others. Projections from your unconscious mind, and fantasy and imagination readily contaminate your faculties of psychic sensing and intuition.
  6. Illumined mind – Your Illumined Mind or Buddhi fully operates on the Buddhic Plane, to which your Soul has access when it takes the Fourth Planetary Initiation. However, this faculty of mandalic reasoning and discernment operates partially through out the Soul’s spiritual sojourn, expanding its range of penetrating intuitive knowledge as you evolve spiritually. Like scientific knowledge, your Illumined Mind continually revises your sense of what exists in the Superconscious mind as you continue to progress upon the spiritual Path. You tap this vast reservoir of intuitive knowledge in the deepest stages of meditation—this state of mind has been called Samadhi, Illumination, or Enlightenment—in which the Soul reveals to you what it is experiencing on the Higher Planes. This is the most important faculty by which you come to know your Soul and to gain knowledge about the spiritual worlds. Because much of this knowledge has never been framed in language, much of it is ineffable—you cannot put this ecstatic downpour of supernal knowledge into words.
  7. Soul Gnosis – This state of Oneness and Mystic Union has been called Gnosis and Realization. It brings about the direct experience of who you are at your core. This experience is difficult to access for many people, so those who enter this state are relatively rare. While you can enter into union with the Soul in the deepest stages of meditation, you may not be able to derive contextual clues, e.g., where you are on the Path. Since these states of Soul Union are highly blissful and ecstatic, it is possible for some individuals to believe that they have attained the highest stages of spiritual development and Mastery, when in fact, they are in a relatively rudimentary stage of development. If spiritual aspirants do not adequately prepare for this experience, they can become grandiose and delusional.

The faculties of reason, memory, and intellect are your passports to scientific knowledge, which comprise levels one to four of knowing. Meditation gives you the keys to knowing types five through seven, which are beyond the ken of science—you might consider them as trans-scientific modalities of knowing.

We suggest that the rigor of scientific study and testing can be applied to your spiritual quest, as well. You can strive to verify each element of your psychic sensing, your intuitive knowledge, and your Soul’s actual station on the Path. If spirituality can be approached in this way, you can gather more valid and less cuckoo information.

As to why someone might want to embark on the spiritual journey? It is your highest potential that yearns to be actualized. It calls you to the greatest adventure, if you will hearken to its voice. It is your next step of growth beyond the threshold of science, which only considers information derived from study of the physical universe, and excludes the entire realm of spiritual experience.

No one can convince you to explore these realms if you are afraid of entering them, if you are doubtful of their existence, and you cannot conceive of their value for your human experience. When that day dawns, you can enter the portals of Light and learn to reunite with your Soul, and transform it through each stage of the Path, to ultimately attain Liberation and Mastery.

Reflections on Enlightenment

By George A. Boyd © 2017

Q: What is enlightenment? It seems every group has their own description of what enlightenment means, and it is confusing.

A: There are many definitions of enlightenment. It may be helpful for us to break enlightenment down into its component parts, so you can understand what it happening.

  1. Enlightenment is a state experienced in the Superconscious mind. In it, you transcend the personality and your attention becomes completely absorbed in a spiritual essence. In Mudrashram® we look to your union with your ensouling entity at the cutting edge of spirituality as the natural nexus of enlightenment; in other groups, they may define this enlightened essence as a nucleus of identity, spirit, or ensouling entity outside the cutting edge of awareness.
  2. In enlightenment, you experience Gnosis. This is a state of identification when the God Atom in the core of the Soul awakens, and you identify as that inner Divinity. You are conscious that you are one with the God Immanent, the Presence of God within your Soul (Atma Samadhi). In groups that teach you to identify with another spiritual essence, you experience a similar state of Gnosis for that spiritual essence.
  3. In the ecstatic state of enlightenment, your illumined mind (Buddhi) turns on so that it reveals every level of your Superconscious, Metaconscious, Subconscious, and Conscious mind. It reveals the seed atom in which your Soul is reflected and all of the content at each level of the mind. In groups that lead your attention to focus on another spiritual essence, there is a similar multi-dimensional insight that is kindled.
  4. In this state, the highest octave of will within you is switched on, and you become aware of all of the latent powers of your Soul. If you are meditating on another spiritual essence, you will experience the abilities (siddhis) that are anchored on that part of the Continuum.
  5. In enlightenment, you experience the relative omniscience, omnipresence, and omnipotence that are present in your God Atom—or in another spiritual essence that other Paths use for contemplation. This is a state beyond time and space, beyond body and universe—you feel a sense of ecstatic god-likeness.
  6. In the enlightened state, your ego boundaries temporarily dissolve and you experience yourself as the God Atom within your Soul. You may feel that a veil has been rent, and you are finally at one with the true core of you—your ego and personality are revealed to be vehicles for the Soul’s expression—and you break your identification with these personal integration centers for the period you are in the state of enlightenment.
  7. For many people, the Kundalini Shakti will be fully raised into the God Atom with in the Soul in the state of enlightenment. When this occurs, the personality shuts down and you experience the Soul in its primordial light. When Kundalini drives enlightenment, you experience is an ineffable state; you are unable to speak. It lifts you into a mystic state, which dwells far beyond the ability of reason or intellect to penetrate. It grants you ecstasy, conveying the highest bliss and joy. [The awakening of the Kundalini is not required to experience enlightenment, but when your enlightenment experience combines Kundalini awakening with attentional union and identification, it is much more profound.] In other Paths, Kundalini is raised to activate other spiritual essences, which similarly intensifies the experience.

There are a number of misconceptions of enlightenment, which we would like to briefly address.

  1. Enlightenment requires that you transform a spiritual essence to a particular state on the Path. For example, some traditions teach that attainment of the 7th chakra on a Supracosmic Path or awakening of the brain chakra in the First Cosmic Initiation convey enlightenment. Actually, you can experience enlightenment at any stage along the Path on which your spiritual essence unfolds.
  2. Enlightenment occurs after only years of meditation. You can experience the enlightened state relatively early in your meditation career if you use selected meditation tools effectively. There are teachers who specialize in training you how to enter the state of enlightenment—they report even novice meditators are able to enter this state.
  3. Once you become enlightened, it is permanent. It is only permanent if you do not ever separate your attention from the Divine Atom within you—most people who experience the enlightened state of mind spend time in this ecstatic state, but return to normal awareness again.
  4. The awakening of the Kundalini is required for enlightenment. As we have said before, if you reach the state of enlightenment and your Kundalini concurrently awakens, you will have a much more powerful experience, but it is not required.
  5. Enlightenment means realizing you are Brahman. In Vedanta and Advaita Jnana Yoga traditions, enlightenment is defined as identifying with Brahman. We suggest that this is an enlightened state, a state of Samadhi, but enlightenment is normally associated with the God Atom within the Soul or other spiritual essence—the God Immanent—rather than the Soul of the Universe, or God Transcendent, like Brahman.
  6. You cannot attain enlightenment unless you maintain the highest standards of virtue and purity. Keeping the heart, mind, and body pure will certainly help your meditation, but it does not guarantee enlightenment. We suggest facility with meditation combined with the Grace of God and the Masters plays a greater role in attaining enlightenment than holiness—spiritual literature abounds with stories of rakes and scoundrels who had an enlightenment experience despite being sinners. Indeed, the enlightenment experience inspired them to change their behavior and dedicate themselves to God, which ultimately transformed them into saints.
  7. You can only become enlightened if you receive an attunement from a Master. The granting of Light Immersion or Shaktipat can trigger enlightenment, but many people experience the enlightened state without this Omnific Attunement.
  8. Taking a psychedelic drug can make you enlightened. Some people, in the proper setting, have touched the state of enlightenment during their drug experience. People have reported these experiences with LSD, peyote, mescaline, psilocybin, ayahuasca, and other hallucinogenic drugs. These drugs take you on a passive astral journey, where you have little control over the depth to which you travel in your mind or the locations you visit, so while some individuals have had enlightenment experiences with these substances, the vast majority of people do not.
  9. Once you attain enlightenment, you have completed your spiritual journey—there is no higher state to attain. When you become enlightened, you gain the relative enlightenment available in the nodal point where your Soul dwells. The Soul—or other spiritual essence—still must complete the remainder of its spiritual development to rise to Mastery and Liberation. Many misguided individuals, having an enlightenment experience, have concluded they were Buddha or Jesus Christ. We point out that Buddha and Jesus transformed their spiritual essences to the highest state of development on many bands of the Continuum. Look in the Hierarchy—they are there. Look at the stage of Perfect Master or Sat Guru on Transcendental Paths—they are lineage holders among the long line of Masters who bring the Light anew to those of each generation.
  10. Only my Master is enlightened. Enlightenment experiences can be had at each level of the Continuum—Subtle, Planetary, Transplanetary, Cosmic, Supracosmic, and Transcendental. They can be had on each of the active Supracosmic Paths and on each of the Transcendental Path. They are not the exclusive province of any Path or lineage.
  11. When you become enlightened, you become an empowered teacher. Empowerment means that the Divine anoints you to minister, guide, teach, and initiate at some level of Mastery on the Continuum. Some rare individuals have become enlightened concurrently when they were anointed, but most individuals have an enlightenment experience way before they ever ascend into the presence of the Divine and they are empowered to operate as an Initiate or Master.
  12. Enlightenment ends the necessity to reincarnate. Freedom from birth and death occurs when you complete your spiritual development, not when you discover the God Atom within the Soul. The necessity from physical embodiment is attained upon union of the Soul with the Monad after completing spiritual work at the Subtle and Planetary bands of the Continuum (the state of the Planetary Adept); from astral embodiment, with the liberation of the Astral Soul in the Brahma Jyoti after completing both the Transplanetary and Cosmic legs of the spiritual evolutionary journey; and from causal embodiment, at the Mahatma stage on the Bridge Path.

We invite aspirants and disciples—from whatever spiritual tradition you adhere—to contemplate these benchmarks that are required to enter the state of enlightenment. We also encourage you to examine whether you may be clinging to some of these misguided notions, and to jettison them.