Tag Archives: nucleus of identity

Zones of Concentration

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By George A. Boyd © 2021

Q: Can you explain the role of concentration in spiritual life?

A: Concentration means that you shrink the focus of your attention and hold it on an object. There are several levels at which you can apply concentration:

  1. Schema – this is a category in which you access stored knowledge about a particular topic. You use this in study and academic education. You might, for example, focus on the schema where you have learned rules for grammar. You would learn the new material about this subject and remember it in the frame of the schema, associating it to your current knowledge.
  2. Matrix of experience – You access this level when you ask your deeper mind questions and listen for the answers. You might ask for a particular incident (process meditation), a specific fact (mnemonic recall), how you feel about something (emotional inquiry), what something means (cognitive inquiry), what your options and choices are (personal inquiry), or ask for information about spiritual topics (metaphysical inquiry). You concentrate in this band when you are doing personal process, inner dialog, or psychotherapy.
  3. Reflection – You access this level when you think deeply about something and you want to solve a problem. This accesses your intellect, whereby you apply your intelligence to explore ideas and to solve problems. Those who are writers, scientists, and philosophers tap into this level of concentration.
  4. Archetypes and arrays – You access this level when you interface with elements in your Superconscious mind. You might encounter an archetype and reflect on the meaning of the form you see. You might explore the meaning of a myth or wisdom story. You might contemplate the meaning of a scripture. You might associate symbols in an array to do an intuitive reading. Theologians, metaphysical counselors, psychic readers, and transpersonal psychologists interface with this level.
  5. Nucleus of identity – You access this level when you focus your attention on one of the integration centers of your Superconscious mind. These centers include, for example, the Star Seed on the Psychic Realm, the Moon Soul in the First Planetary Initiation, Cosmic Consciousness in the First Cosmic Initiation, or the Supracosmic Seed Atom on a Supracosmic Path. Those following a religious or spiritual group focus at this level.
  6. Attentional principle – Focusing your attention at this level awakens your intentional consciousness. Once you can function at this level readily, you can perform inner work on your personality and in your Superconscious mind.
  7. Individual spirit – Focusing your attention at this level awakens the love and devotion of your spirit. Once you can readily focus your attention at this level, you can participate in opening the channels of the Nada through which your spirit returns to its origin.
  8. Ensouling entity – Focusing your attention at this level awakens the Soul. This brings about the experience of Samadhi and Gnosis. This conveys the Realization of the Inner Divinity within the Soul, and aligns you with the Soul’s Path of spiritual evolution.

Direct spiritual experience is contingent upon your ability to concentrate upon the spiritual essences at levels five through eight. We teach you how to tap levels 6, 7, and 8 in our intermediate meditation courses—the in-person Mudrashram® Master Course in Meditation and the by-mail and online Accelerated Meditation Program. We teach contemplation of nuclei of identity, level 5, in the Mudrashram® Advanced Course in Meditation.

Developing facility with levels one and two is important for successful learning and adult functioning. Those who are thinkers and who are able to access the creative and intuitive channels of their mind learn to tap into levels three and four.

We encourage you to become familiar with each of these levels of concentration, and learn how to use these attentional foci skillfully and efficiently to bring success in your life and to awaken to your full spiritual potentials.

Levels beyond Ideas

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By George A. Boyd ©2021

Q: What lies beyond ideas?

A: There are seven layers of the psyche that lie beyond ideas. These are:

  1. Patterns
  2. Archetypes
  3. Seed atoms and vehicles of consciousness
  4. Nucleus of identity and personal identification centers (ego and Self)
  5. Attentional principle
  6. Individual spirit
  7. Soul

These higher layers beyond ideas can be defined as follows:

  • Patterns are repeating sequences we observe in Nature, like the seasons and the cycles of the moon.
  • Archetypes and symbols are containers of meaning that are present in the unconscious and Superconscious mind.
  • Seed atoms are the activation nexus that allows you to utilize the knowledge, wisdom, virtues, and abilities that dwell within the forms through which the Soul incarnates and expresses.
  • Nuclei of identity and personal identification centers allow the mind to identity with a center that integrates the activity of the Conscious (ego), Metaconscious (Self), and bands of the Superconscious mind (nuclei of identity)
  • The attentional principle is the essence of consciousness and intention that enables you to do inner work.
  • The spirit is the essence of love and devotion that yearns to return to God.
  • The Soul, or ensouling entity, is the center that holds and operates through these other centers. This is your core identity.

Aspirants and disciples need to cognize and work with these higher levels of the mind beyond the realm of ideas. These higher essences are the object of spiritual work that enables you to grow in insight and wisdom, and to transform your spiritual essences to evolve spiritually.

Types of Ideas

Ideas are a spectrum, which dwell in your Manomayakosa. There are 12 major layers of ideas:

  1. Chaotic, nihilistic (motivated by a lack or meaning or purpose for living)
  2. Depression, self-harmful (motivated by loss of hope, lack of belief that dreams can be attained)
  3. Delusional, paranoid (motivated by a desire to preserve identity, liberty, and power)
  4. Fearful, anxious (motivated by survival and attachment)
  5. Destructive, demonic (motivated by anger and hatred)
  6. Sexual, sensual (motivated by lust)
  7. Money, accumulation of wealth (motivated by survival and greed)
  8. Power and fame (motivated by narcissism and egotism)
  9. Altruism (motivated by love and the wish to be of service)
  10. Creative, scientific (motivated by the quest for knowledge and discovery)
  11. Metaphysical, philosophical (motivated by the quest for wisdom and the discovery of truth)
  12. Seed thoughts (motivated by the direct inspiration of the Soul)

Fear, ignorance, and passion dominate the first eight layers of ideas. The four higher orders of ideas are avenues for your Soul’s expression.

Part of the inner transmutation process is to burn the clinging of desire off of ideas that embody the negative passions, and to only let ideas remain that actualize your Soul’s Purpose. This inner alchemy melts away imprisoning desires, and replaces them with the detached, compassionate wisdom of the Soul.

We note that today’s prevalent conspiracy theories tap level three of the spectrum of ideas.

What Are Dreams Made of, Virginia?

Your dreams are ideas clothed in your desires. You have an idea of a perfect spouse or partner. You have an idea of a perfect home. You have an idea of an ideal career. You have an idea of an idyllic retirement.

You take these ideas, which are neutral, and you make them meaningful. They become the motivating factors of your life, for your company, for your vision about how the country should be. You choose to embody this idea, and you powerfully desire it. You obsess about this idea until you have made it real.

We suggest you contemplate what are the ideas that you have clothed with desires. Notice which of these embody the negative passions, which you can live without, and those which are the foundations of your life that you choose to retain. Also note if any of these ideas embody your Soul’s altruism, creativity, and intuitive knowledge.

Through culling the desire-laden ideas from the mind, you empower your Soul to shine through the mists and to embody its purpose in your human life. You may find that many of the ideas that you have clothed with desires, others have transmitted to you—these ideas that do not belong to you and do not fit, you may simply jettison, so you may let your true essence come forth.

What is a Nucleus of Identity?

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By George A. Boyd © 2017

Q: You use the term, “nucleus of identity,” frequently in your writing. I’m still not clear what this is.

A: We often refer people to our article, “Understanding Nodal Points and Nuclei of Identity,” to define what a nucleus of identity is. The easiest way to understand this is that the Soul has four quadrants of activity. You can visualize this as a pie cut into quarters.

We call these four quadrants, the Poles of Being.

Pole One

On the first pole, at zero degrees, is the Soul. When you meditate upon this pole, you are contemplating the essence we generically call the ensouling entity, on its own Plane. Depending on where on the Continuum of Consciousness you place your attention, you will encounter one of 13 ensouling entities.

For example, if you put your attention in the Planetary Realm, you will encounter the ensouling entity that is called the Planetary Soul. We simply refer to this essence as the Soul, since this is the cutting edge for so many people. Some refer to the Planetary Soul as the Higher Self, the God Immanent, the Transpersonal Self, or the Atma.

If you put your attention in the Cosmic Sphere, you’ll encounter your Astral Soul on this pole. Please see our article on the Great Continuum of Consciousness to learn about the 13 ensouling entities.

In Mudrashram®, we teach our students to meditate on their ensouling entity that is infused with the animating force of the Divine Spirit—this is what we call the cutting edge of spirituality.

In the stream of light where the ensouling entity exists are the nodal points of the Path that the ensouling entity has awakened, and it dwells in a nodal point. By identifying where the ensouling entity is on its Path, we can determine how far it has to go to reach Liberation.

People who meditate on the ensouling entity typically meditate on the brain chakra—or on the Transcerebral chakra, which is the center above the top of the head—to encounter this essence. The path of unfolding the ensouling entity has been called the brain path.

Pole Two

If you rotate your attention 90 degrees to the right (clockwise), you come upon the second pole. Here you identify as the spirit. People also call this spiritual essence the spiritual heart, inner spiritual awareness, the loving heart, or Surat.

If you were to drop your attention into the inner streams of light and sound we call the Nada, you would ride up this current into the spirit that is associated with your cutting edge of spirituality. [This technique is called Surat Dhyan. We teach it in our intermediate meditation courses.]

But like the ensouling entity, you can focus on this spiritual essence at different levels of the Continuum. We call these discrete segments where the Nada begins and ends, domains—we have mapped twelve domains on the Continuum. [Please see our article on the Great Continuum of Consciousness about the 12 domains of the spirit.]

People usually associate the spirit with meditation upon the area of the heart, but some domains begin where you feel your spirit at the point between the eyebrows or even the navel. The practice of opening the channels of the Nada through moving your spirit along them, ultimately to the source of the spirit, has been called the heart path.

Pole Three

If you rotate your attention another 90 degrees to the right to 180º, you encounter the pile of being of the vehicles of consciousness of your Superconscious mind. It is on this pole that you encounter the integration centers we call nuclei of identity.

We have located nuclei of identity in the first through fourth Planetary Initiations, the first through fifth Cosmic Initiations, and on each Supracosmic Path. People who meditate on the spinal axis, sometimes called the cerebrospinal axis, the spinal tube, Sushumna, or the chakras typically come to identify with a nucleus of identity, instead of the Soul or the spirit.

Probably the three most common nuclei of identity with which people identify are:

  • The nucleus of identity of the First Planetary Initiation, which has been called the Christ Child, Christ Consciousness, or nephesh. [In our writings, we commonly refer to this nucleus of identity as the Moon Soul.] Christians and Jews focus their attention on this center and commune with the forms of God that can be known in the First Exoteric Initiation and the First Mesoteric Initiation.
  • The nucleus of identity of the First Cosmic Initiation, which has been called cosmic consciousness or the Atman. Disciples of Yogi Preceptors identify with this center.
  • The Supracosmic seed atom of each active Supracosmic Path: Buddhists, Shaivite and Vaisnavite Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, and Jains—among others—typically identify with the seed atom of their Supracosmic Path. [For a full listing of these Supracosmic Paths, see our article “Faiths of the Supracosmic Sphere” in the Library section of our website. If you haven’t done so already, sign up for a free Library membership. For a full listing of nuclei of identity, read the article on our website, “Nodal points and nuclei of identity,” which you can access on our Open Stacks page.]

Pole Four

Finally, if you rotate another 90 degrees to 270º, you come to the fourth pole. This is divided into an upper and lower zone.

The upper zone contains your attention, the thread of consciousness, and the principle of intention and consciousness, which we call the attentional principle. This essence has been called the inner witnessing consciousness, the third eye, or Nirat.

The lower zone contains your personality and your life. This is where you encounter the two personal integration centers, the ego [the personal identification center that is embedded in your experience of your life, in what we call the Conscious mind] and the Self [the personal identification that governs your entire personality; it dwells in the Metaconscious mind]. This zone also includes the bands of the unconscious mind that express in your life—this is the level of the mind that psychologists call the shadow.

The attentional principle dwells in the system of chakras of the Subconscious mind slightly above the point between the eyebrows. It is from this perspective that you behold the thread of consciousness that travels through each band of the mind. It is from this perspective of the fourth pole that you view the map of the Great Continuum of Consciousness.

We encourage aspirants to familiarize themselves with the perspectives on each of these four poles of being. In the Mudrashram® system of Integral meditation, we uniquely train you to work on all four poles of being and give you meditation tools that actualize you personally and spiritually. You learn these methods in our intermediate courses, the in-person Mudrashram® Master Course in Meditation or the by-mail or online Accelerated Meditation Program.