What is Focal Awareness?

By George A. Boyd © 2021

Focal awareness means your attention is fully focused upon an immortal essence of consciousness—attentional principle, spirit, or ensouling entity. Seven stages mark the attainment of focal awareness:

  1. Nescience – you don’t know the essence exists and you don’t know what and where it is
  2. Conceptual knowledge – you learn about the essence, so you know it exists, but you don’t know what and where it is
  3. Map – you are given a description of the place you find the essence, but you are unable to go there and merge with it.
  4. Remembrance – you locate the essence along the thread of consciousness and you acquire it as a meditation target.
  5. Traveling to it – you move your attention along the thread of consciousness until you come into its presence and you mentally touch it and feel it
  6. Union – you use micro concentration to merge into the essence at its brain center and look out from its perspective
  7. Fusion – you become one with the essence so observer and observed become one. You are the attentional principle, spirit, or ensouling entity and experience what it experiences.

How do you learn focal awareness?

To gain focal awareness, you need to enter stages six and seven.

You achieve stages two and three by reading our articles and books.

In our intermediate meditation classes—the in-person Mudrashram® Master Course in Meditation and the by-mail and online Accelerated Meditation Program—you learn to remember the essence and move your attention into its presence, which enable you to reach stages four and five.

In our advanced meditation class, the Mudrashram® Advanced Course in Meditation, you learn about the fine points of gaining union and fusion, which help you experience stages six and seven.

Focal awareness is key to:

  1. Having a depth experience of meditation
  2. Seeing and hearing within
  3. Traveling the Path in full consciousness
  4. Having conscious communion with your guide and Supervising Initiate
  5. Being able to contemplate and study your essences of consciousness, your vehicles of consciousness, and the bands of the Continuum
  6. Consciously carrying out Attunements and spiritual ministry
  7. Performing the work of transformation and experiencing the downpour, feeling your ensouling entity and its vehicles unfold, and sensing your spirit opening the channels of the Nada

If you are having difficulty achieving focal awareness, you may want to schedule a meditation consultation to learn ways to overcome your difficulties identifying and traveling to these spiritual essences, so you can shift into union and fusion. We stand ready to assist you reclaim this core meditation proficiency that will allow you to move into your next level of spiritual experience.

If you don’t know how to reach these spiritual essences and you have never taken our classes where we show you how to focus on them, we recommend that you sign up for the Mudrashram® Master Course in Meditation or the Accelerated Meditation Program. If you are not sure whether that is right for you or not, schedule a spiritual discovery session with us.

Reflections on Realization

By George A. Boyd © 2020

Q: What brings about Realization? How can I move beyond simply receiving information and truly grasping the essence of what I am taught?

A: We begin the process of Realization through inquiry, or questioning.

Questioning requests an answer from the ensouling entity, when you ask your ensouling entity; from the spiritual Master, when you query him or her; and God, when you invoke Divine guidance.

When you receive information, your first task is to understand it. This process of understanding engages your intellect and your Illumined Mind (Buddhi). As you study new information, you add to your conceptual map of your own nature and the Path ahead of you. You keep revising this map, as you gather more information and have more experiences.

Whereas information layers on the thread of insight and understanding, which we call the Antakarana, experience occurs when you contact one of the ideas referenced in the information you have learned. You do this through focusing your attention, your attentional principle, or your spirit upon this idea.

Examples of these “ideas” you can experience include:

  • The meaning of spiritual ideas or “seed thoughts”
  • The content of inner vehicles of consciousness
  • The inner centers of vehicles of consciousness, such as chakras
  • The seed atom of a vehicle of consciousness
  • The movement of energy in a vehicle of consciousness, such as Prana or Kundalini
  • The array of vehicles of consciousness that your ensouling entity animates
  • Your attentional principle
  • Your spirit associated with your ensouling entity at the cutting edge of spirituality
  • Your spirit in other domains
  • Your ensouling entity at the cutting edge of spirituality
  • One of your ensouling entities at another Octave of Being
  • A personal integration center, such as the ego in the Conscious mind or the Self in the Metaconscious mind
  • A Superconscious integration center, which we call a nucleus of identity
  • A universal nexus of consciousness, such as the Holy Ghost at the entrance to the abode of the saints in the First Mesoteric Planetary Initiation, or the Supreme Light of Creation at the top of the Ideational Plane in the First Cosmic Initiation
  • A form of the Divine, such as the Father God in the First Mesoteric Planetary Initiation, or Brahman in the First Cosmic Initiation

When you experience something, you gain a new perspective on the object of meditation you focus upon:

  • You gain new information.
  • You make new connections and correlations.
  • You begin to fill in the missing pieces of the inner map of the Continuum you are building.

With each new experience, you gain insights, and begin to truly know the essence of the idea you have used to lead you to the object of meditation. So for example, you truly recognize what is your ego, what is the Self, or what is your attentional principle—you truly grasp the essence to which the idea or concept points you.

The next order of processing is Realization, or enlightenment. Realization means that you know something, because you are one with it:

  • You know your Soul directly, because you are the Soul.
  • You know your attentional principle directly, because you are the attentional principle.
  • You know your spirit directly, because you are your spirit.

Realization is not description [information] or attentional union [experience]; it is identity. You know the essence because you are one with it.

As you progress upon the Path, you come to know the nodal points, Subplane and Plane markers, and the forms of the Divine that operate on each level, as your cutting edge ensouling entity actually traverses this terrain—you know each aspect of the Path, because you have taken each step upon it.

Q: What allows you to know what your ensouling entity has realized?

A: The key that allows you to release the Soul’s knowledge, to open its Buddhic capsule, is Samadhi. When you turn the four outgoing streams back to their core, there is an inner explosion of Realization that takes place: this is the Illumination that takes place during Samadhi.

We teach you how to generate Samadhi at the level of the Soul and each higher Octave of Realization in the Samadhi Week Program. Those who complete the Mudrashram® Advanced Course in Meditation are eligible to take this class.

So when you can achieve Atma Samadhi at the level of the Soul, you can extend this to higher Octaves of Being. This opens the full spectrum of Realization, which includes your Monad, Astral Soul, Supracosmic Soul, the Soul of the Bridge Path, and each of the ensouling entities of Transcendental Paths one to seven.

Q: What if I have difficulty in experiencing Samadhi?

A: Like any skill, it takes time to master it. If it is important to you, you will devote the time to reach Samadhi.

It won’t come instantly, but in time, you will get it. This will allow you to truly know and realize what you’ve opened on the Path. It won’t be conjecture or speculation; you will genuinely know.

Q: What happens if the ensouling entity I’m meditating upon has been liberated?

A: You’ll know the Source from which this ensouling entity has emanated—and the complete Path of the ensouling entity, from beginning to end. In this vortex of Creation from which your ensouling entity has originated, you will also intuit the other ensouling entities that dwell at that level, and their distance from the Source.

If you’ll reflect upon these three levels—information, experience, and Realization—you’ll be able to differentiate them. With practice, you will begin to be able to shift between them at will, when it is appropriate to operate at that level.