By George A. Boyd © 2017
Q: What is the spirit? How is this different than the Soul? How does one meditate upon the spirit?
A: The spirit is the essence of love, purity, and devotion within you that you can contact using a specialized form of meditation called Nada Yoga. Groups that teach this mediation call this practice Surat Shabd Yoga, Udgit, movement of inner spiritual awareness, and soul travel.
In our mapping of the Great Continuum of Consciousness, we have identified 12 channels of the Nada, where you can contact the spirit. If you want to know about this, click on the tab on that article that says “Map Three – The Domains of the Individual spirit.” We recommend that you do the practice of Nada Yoga with your spiritual essence in the domain that is contiguous with your Higher Self or Soul.
In Integral meditation, we identify four poles of being.
Pole One contains the Soul and its Path back to its origin. This is your spiritual brain center. When you take this perspective, you see the Soul is on a Path—part of which it has opened, part of which is filled with darkness. At the very end of that Path, you see this inner seed, which is your calling—this represents completion of your Soul’s spiritual evolution in this level of the Continuum.
Pole Two contains your spirit and the channels that connect it with its origin in this domain. Most domains have two channels, but there is one that has only one channel, one that has three channels, and two that have four channels. The spirit opens these channels until it connects with the Divine Light from which it originated. When it reaches this stage, it is said to have reached salvation or spiritual liberation. This is the heart Path: the Path of love and devotion. From this perspective, it looks like your spirit is separated from its Divine Origin: it must open these channels of the Nada to go back there.
Pole Three contains your Soul’s vehicles of consciousness. Most groups that work on this Pole identify with an integration center in the Superconscious mind that we call a nucleus of identity. On this pole, you might tune into your intuitive stream, carry out spiritual ministry, awaken your awareness into this nucleus of identity to gain union with it, or express love to those who are established in this same stage of identification. This is the spiritual spine: each center or chakra along your spiritual spine represents a different vehicle of consciousness. From this perspective, you notice the track in which this nucleus of identity dwells is partially light, and partially dark—on your inner spiritual horizon, you see the form of the Divine from which this nucleus of identity came forth.
Pole Four contains your embodied life and its witness—your attention and your attentional principle. Your attentional principle is the aspect of you that is conscious and expresses through intention. Embodied life includes the vehicles of the personality, and the personal integration centers that control them—your ego and your Self. Your attention and the attentional principle are the keys to focusing upon the other three Poles and activating them. This is the “Third Eye” Path. From this perspective, there is a thread of consciousness that runs through every vehicle of consciousness along which your attention travels. You encounter your attentional principle, and travel with your attention conjoined with this conscious essence through the entire Continuum of Consciousness. This is the perspective that you see in the map of the Continuum of Consciousness, which encompasses every level of your mind—Conscious, Subconscious, Metaconscious, and Superconscious.
So, you will need to move your attention to Pole One to experience your Soul, and Pole Two to experience your spirit. We teach the methods for doing focusing your attention on the spiritual essences of Pole One and Pole Two in our intermediate classes, the in-person Mudrashram® Master Course in Meditation and the by-mail and online Accelerated Meditation Program.
To know what your spirit is, you have to know where to focus on it and how to activate it. This is not a theory; it’s an experience. We show you how to do this in the Nada Yoga module of our intermediate courses.
