Rapidly shift to higher consciousness

 

The Octagon in Ely Cathedral

A dear friend, who wishes to remain nameless, reminded me that many who work don’t have time for long meditations of the kind I have mentioned in some previous blogs. It reminded me of that old joke:

Student – “How long should I meditate for?”
Teacher – “Aim for about 20 minutes a day to begin with.”
Student – “But I’m far too busy to meditate that long!”
Teacher – “In that case meditate for 40 minutes a day.”

Sorry about that... It did get me wondering though if there are practices that can reliably evoke deeper levels of consciousness but without the long practice durations that usually takes. After all, many things can rapidly raise our level of consciousness, from a beautiful natural scene, to a piece of music or art, to visualising a loved one, and many more. Not many things can achieve that reliably and ‘to order’ though! And even people who do have the time may find it useful to evoke deeper awareness quickly for a moment of creative inspiration, wanting inner peace for a while, or to deal with a situation that needs sensitive handling, or because you want to do a quick metta meditation yet still bring some depth to it...

There are practices that purport to do this, although I have yet to find one that works reliably for me. If you know of something that works well for you I would be very grateful to hear about it...

This is a subject that has also engaged medium and teacher Suzanne Giesemann (see, for example, her book listed in the Sources section below). Here is my brief paraphrase of her BLESS ME Method, which is a mnemonic for connecting to higher consciousness “rapidly and with greater focus.”

These are the components of the method:

B: Breathe
Take several slow, deep breaths and visualise life energy flowing in and out in time with the breaths.
L: Lift
Use one or more mental tools that work for you in giving the feeling of an elevated mental state.
E: Expand
Take in a deep breath, and as you exhale, imagine your human energy field in the shape of a sphere expanding rapidly in all directions.
S: Surrender
Silently state the words, “I surrender” to assert your willingness to move your focus from the ego’s ‘story,’ and identify instead with your true nature as a soul.
S: Shift
This step shifts your focus from the physical world to the world of no form, no time, and no space. Choose any keyword or imagery that helps you to shift your awareness from form to spirit.
M: Merge
Through intention, merge your energy field with that of any other being that serves the greater good.
E: Experience
Spend as much time as you need to experience whatever is supposed to happen during this final and most expanded state of the process.

The idea of this method is that, after experiencing the whole process a number of times, it is possible to use a link, such as inwardly saying “Shift,” and that immediately evokes deeper awareness.

This method is part of Suzanne Giesemann’s view of how things are and not all of that works for me – I see one or two things slightly differently. However, the idea of developing one’s own way of making a rapid shift into deeper awareness seems like a good one and I wanted to acknowledge her method here before describing a process that works for me.

Similarly, you may want to develop your own way of rapidly deepening that suits your own way of seeing things and that builds on a practice that already works well for you.

I have written blogs previously about two meditation processes that take me to deeper places within:

    • The traditional Buddhist jhana meditation (see ‘What are the jhanas and how can they help?’ at https://herethewaking.blogspot.com/2023/04/what-are-jhanas-and-how-can-they-help.html) and
    • Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche’s ‘Sacred Space’ meditation, which likely originates from Tibetan Buddhist and Bon practices (‘Awakening to inner stillness practice’ at https://herethewaking.blogspot.com/2023/05/awakening-to-inner-stillness-practice.html).

Although the jhana meditation goes very deep, and I have sometimes dropped into one of the higher jhana states while doing other meditations (see the paper I published in 2021, that is listed in the Sources section below), it is a longer process that does not easily lend itself to rapid deepening. The Sacred Space meditation seems more amenable to that.

Several versions of the Sacred Space meditation exist. The one I use is about 42 minutes in duration and the details are also in the Sources section below. An important point that I want to emphasise is that, for the rapid practice to work, you need to have gone through the complete, longer practice and reliably achieved deep concentration before going on to the linked rapid practice.

Having gone through the whole practice at least 20 times (sorry, I didn’t count) I have found it reliably (i.e. every time) evokes a deeper state. So, what happens if I try to rapidly evoke a deeper state with a link to that long version? I played around with a few methods and found the following quickly evokes expanded awareness - not the deep awareness of the whole practice, but deeper than my day-to-day process:

    • Pause whatever you are doing.
    • Take several deeper, slower breaths and make the out-breath a bit longer than the in-breath.
    • Say inwardly, “Still, silent, sacred space.”
    • Visualise the inner spaciousness evoked by the longer, complete meditation.

It just takes me a minute or two and I found that all of these steps were needed, otherwise I remained in my usual day-to-day process. Again, I should emphasise that this is a quick link to the longer specific meditation practice that worked well for me – the ‘Sacred Space’ meditation. I doubt this would evoke a deeper state if I had not previously done the whole meditation a number of times.

As usual, I have just been playing about with this on my own as I no longer have easy access to a pool of willing participants, an ethical review committee and all the other things you need to do publishable research in the UK these days. Perhaps someone who reads this will be inspired to take on a larger scale study to see if this process is useful to more people than just the author...

In summary then, if you would find it useful to have a brief practice that takes you into a state of expanded awareness then this method may well help you to do that. And if you adapt this method using a different, longer meditation that is effective for you then I would love to hear how you get on with it.


Sources

Forster, P. M. (2021). The inner life of an experienced meditator: From shopping lists to awakening. Spiritual Psychology and Counseling, 6(1), 89–105. https://dx.doi.org/10.37898/spc.2021.6.1.129
Giesemann, S. (2024). The awakened way: Making the shift to a Divinely guided life. Hay House LLC.
Wangyal, T. (2017). Sacred space: The practice of inner stillness. Interstate Industries, Inc.

Key words

altered states, awakening, awareness, BLESS ME, consciousness, meditation, practice,  Tenzin Wangyal, sacred space,

Image

A picture I took of the Octagon in Ely Cathedral, Cambridgeshire.

Link

https://herethewaking.blogspot.com/2024/05/rapidly-shift-to-higher-consciousness.html