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Personal and Spiritual Cognitive Strategies

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By George A. Boyd © 2021

Q: What cognitive strategies would help me make progress in my personal life? Which cognitive strategies are helpful in spiritual development?

A: Personal cognitive strategies are primarily functions of the intellect. Spiritual cognitive strategies are functions of the intuition and Illumined mind in the Superconscious mind.

Personal cognitive strategies include:

  1. Goal setting – This visualizes a clear goal image. It determines a plan to achieve it. Then, you execute that plan.
  2. Empathic listening – This operates when you listen to the words of other people and sense their meaning; this can take the form of internal dialog with subpersonalities to understand your psychological issues.
  3. Project management – This identifies the steps of multiple activities and scheduling them so they are coordinated, and the end product is delivered on time and within the allotted budget. This can be applied to organizing homework assignments in school, caring for children and family and coordinating each family member’s schedule, and to achieve work objectives.
  4. Creative listening – This receives ideas from the Subconscious and Metaconscious mind and organizes them in a “presentation envelope”—for example, as music, poetry, an essay, a screenplay, or a marketing proposal.
  5. Analysis and testing – This subjects hypotheses to rigorous testing and uses specific criteria to determine whether the findings are valid. This is the primary approach of scientific research.
  6. Introspection – This searches your conscience and notices how you have deviated from your standards and moral values. It looks for solutions to improve your behavior and reform your character.
  7. Synthesis – This ties together the contribution of multiple factors in a system to enable you to visualize the whole, and to understand the relative influence of each factor with that system. It identifies key factors within the system that can be “perturbed,” to bring about necessary, desired changes.

There are also spiritual cognitive strategies drawn from Jnana Yoga, the Yoga of Intuition; Raja Yoga; and other invocational techniques. These include:

  1. Yoganidra – This examines the track of one level of the unconscious mind and identifies each issue within it. You then apply methods to work with each issue that you find there.
  2. Contemplation – This focuses attention on a particular object of meditation. You allow your awareness to open until you are able to become aware of the content that surrounds and arises from your object of meditation.
  3. Studying Interrelationships – This studies individual elements in an array and notes their interrelationships with other elements in that array. This cognitive strategy plays a role in Pathwork and the intuitive sciences. In Pathwork, you might adopt this strategy in working with an Enneagram, or studying the Tree of Life (Kabala). In intuitive sciences, this is used in doing an astrology reading, a tarot card reading, or in numerology.
  4. Becoming Mystery – This enables you to penetrate beyond words to become one with the object of meditation. This state of fusion has been called Gnosis, Samadhi, and Oneness.
  5. Finding the origin – This strategy uses a technique to trace a trace an issue to its origin. Examples of techniques that help you achieve this aim include sustained attention to an issue as a felt sense in the body and opening into it (Vipassana); asking repetitive questions to the unconscious mind (Process Meditation); identifying progressive layers of the issue down to its core (Mandalic Reasoning, the Mandala Method); and dialoguing with the issue and finding its core (Rainbow Method).
  6. Remembrance and Invocation – In this strategy, you bring your attentional principle or spirit into “center”—this may be the nucleus of identity or the ensouling entity in your spiritual tradition upon which you meditate—and from this location, you invoke the Grace and Guidance of the Divine or the Masters of your tradition. This inner listening—to the voice of the Soul, the Holy Spirit, an angel, or a guide—is called Receptive Meditation.
  7. Dimensional expansion – This progressively opens the mind to encompass a broader experience of the object of meditation. These dimensions include:
    • 0 – the point where attention focuses (focal point)
    • 1 – the thread of consciousness that connects focal points
    • 2 – the field of perceptual content contained within each focal point
    • 3 – The space containing the focal point, which appears as a form or inner body, which we call a vehicle of consciousness
    • 4 – The present time experience at that focal point, where you notice what arises in that level of the mind in each moment
    • 5 – Integration center; this is the aspect of the mind that contains and operates that facet of the mind. In the Conscious mind, ego is the integrating center; in the Metaconscious mind, the Self is the nexus; and in the Superconscious mind, the Soul ties together the functioning of the vehicles in this zone of the mind.
    • 6 – Inner witness; this is the essence of consciousness and intention, which we call the attentional principle. It witnesses each of these dimensional states and can use intention to open the origami-like folds of the mind to expand awareness into these larger perceptual and experiential frames.

Depending on your dominant Personality and Soul Rays, and your training and experience with these different personal and spiritual strategies, you may find that certain of these approaches are easier for you to utilize. These personal and spiritual strategies that are almost like second nature to you are your strengths.

The challenge for the aspirant and disciple is to learn to use these non-dominant strategies when required. This ability to switch Rays and dimensional perspectives empowers you to understand what you currently cannot grasp; to solve problems employing new methods that you do not currently apply; and to find ways to surmount your obstacles through an alternate approach.

See if you can learn to use each of these personal and spiritual cognitive strategies to enhance your ability to function in your life and to receive insight and guidance from your spiritual pole. For those of you who would like to learn several of these evocative spiritual cognitive strategies, we teach them in our intermediate meditation courses, the in-person Mudrashram® Master Course in Meditation and the by-mail and online Accelerated Meditation Program.

Making Improvements in Your Life

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By George A. Boyd ©2021

Q: I feel stuck in my life and I don’t feel like I’m making progress. How do I get unstuck?

A: You need to give your attention to activities that shift your health, relationships, work and finances; and that empower you. Most people waste their time doing things that do not move them forward, so they feel that they are spinning their wheels. Let’s look at some of these things you can do that can create movement:

Health – Regular exercise; regulation of your diet; doing deep, full breathing; and doing hatha yoga for stress release and flexibility will help improve your health

Relationships – Enhancing your communication; and when necessary, obtaining psychotherapy or couples counseling to clear the issues you are bringing into the relationship can help clear interpersonal conflicts you are having

Career and Finances – Learning to set goals and to achieve them; establishing habits that upgrade your productivity and effectiveness; developing the abilities to be assertive, to negotiate, and persuade others underpin greater success in your career—and as you are more successful in your career, this is often reflected in increased income

Education – Gaining greater proficiency in study skills; reflecting on ideas to distill their meaning; and actively using knowledge you acquire facilitates you becoming a better student

Values and character – Examining your values through introspection; practicing loving-kindness meditation; active listening and empathic reflection; identifying values you want to implement in your life will assist you in refining your character

Wisdom and insight – Doing Reflective Meditation, Vipassana, and dialoging with your Soul can support your acquisition of wisdom and insight.

Consciousness and Spirituality – Awakening your attentional principle, spirit, and Soul; discovering the many dimensions of the mind through contemplation; and transforming your personal and spiritual potentials through mediation can augment this area of your life

The things that enable you to make these shifts in these and other important areas of your life are:

  1. Visualize what you want to achieve
  2. Believe these changes are possible
  3. Learn how you can make these changes
  4. Set a goal to achieve this and break this goal down into a series of achievable steps
  5. Choose to begin enacting this goal and begin working on the first step
  6. Continue this process until you are able to achieve what you visualize

As you shift your focus to constructive activity instead of time-wasting activity, you will find that your life will begin to change for the better. This will encourage you to continue this positive movement.

Those of you who wish to improve in the areas of wisdom and insight, and consciousness and spirituality will benefit from learning to meditate. We teach many of these insightive and transformation skills you need to begin generating movement in these areas in our intermediate meditation classes, the in-person Mudrashram® Master Course in Meditation or the by-mail and online Accelerated Meditation Program.

Those of you who wish support in making these life changes will find benefit from our Life Coaching Program, which trains you step-by-step into how to get back into control in your life and implement the changes you want.