Techniques are endless, but practice is profound. Levels of consciousness and states are many, you already are experiencing them, but they may not be organized and named. One way of becoming aware and reorganizing yourself is to practice meditation and get a measure of calmness from which you can see what is going on. I tend to use physical and energy practices because my awareness is developed in these areas. People can be expanded or narrow in their consciousness. Breathing exercises tend to expand and allow the consciousness to be moved and directed. If you are expanded you may lack a coherent
self-center. Centering practices help to build up awareness of the many levels of your own consciousness, its many personalities, and movements from these levels. Our spiritual and personal sense of self tends to be too dependent on lower mental formulations without the integration of the emotions and without the higher faculties of intuitive judgment and
vyapti, the ability to
Identify with something so as to know it. Another way of describing this is the
surface consciousness predominates not the
inner consciousness. Or there are genuine deeper movements, but they are still controlled and they are covered by a disorganized surface.
To do
point concentration, or focusing on a
chakra, then the prerequisite is some form of
mindwatching. My favorite comes from Swami
Radha whose description of this timeless technique is to focus on some object for a few minutes and then after wards write down everything that happened in your mind during your concentration. We our not so concerned with getting it right or what the content was, but rather with the act of being aware of the mind while focusing with it. This can be practiced with different objects of focus for longer times. For instance gazing, or listening, or even reading. The awareness will increase as well as seeing patterns and
subtleties of the consciousness and it's movements through the thoughts, emotions, sensations, imaginations, memory, etc.
The first step in point concentration is to concentrate on a point. This leads to
Connectedness, that is to feel the point as a
center for the body/mind. The body here means the energy body, however at first this is really felt more as a physical sensation of the body volume and an awareness of space around the body.
When you are able to have
connectedness then the we go into either light, an inner vision of light, often very bright and not initially very vivid, because it is so bright, or we go into a flavor of energy. This flavor can be felt as weight, whether the energy is heavy and thick, or whether it is light and airy. You may experience both. When this is maintained then we move on to experience of the
Frequency.
The
Frequency is how the consciousness operates at the chosen
level of the point. The things happening in the mind begin to reflect the frequency of the point being concentrated on, and with practice you can distinguish these
movements of the mind at this frequency. You recognize the state of consciousness, you are aware of where you are centered and that the mind is operating from there. So at the third eye the mind will begin to act differently in a consistent way and you will recognize it. This recognition has two aspects, the content and the form. So for example you will recognize a more luminous type of thought and you will have a feeling of the
state of consciousness that you are in. Note that there is a higher and a deeper, a higher
consciousness can act through a lower level by taking up the instrument, the path of involution, or you can also deepen the experience by having a more subtle connection to the worlds of consciousness at the chosen level. You will notice that lower levels influence higher ones also, so for instance an argument can be a mental rational activity or can be an emotional vendetta that takes up the reasoning for its own justification. You can have a pure heart that will come to influence the higher mind as you purify and go deeper. There is however what can be thought of as a
native action, what that level of
consciousness is, and the principles by which it operates. Mental formulations have doubt. Survival consciousness is predominated by lack.
Then we seek
Stability,
stability has two dimensions, the first is the ability to center on the point itself, calling in the consciousness of that level, and the second is the dynamic active side where you act from the consciousness of that point. From this you move into
Abiding where you have stabilized to the point of requiring no concentration in order to maintain the
central dynamic.You already have many areas where you are
stabilized. Your work
personalities are a good reference as you become aware of them and name them, after all they are all too familiar and you live them. Then of course there are lower movements, ignorant one, that you also have that you want to move out of or refine. Peronalities are a mix of knowledge, will, trained reaction, and centered activities. So someone at a Starbucks has an identity, more or less defined that is the respresentation of them, the name of what they do. The personality is how they live the knowledge of their job, how to make drinks, what's in them, how to operate and clean various machines, and how to fill out paperwork, work a cash register, how the scheduling works, their benefits, the small wills that carry out these, the underlying motivations, and habits of the body, the list is endless. They also have interconnected interpersonal relationships with their coworkers and customers. The emotional dynamic they have at the counter with customers is often the measure of their quality. As one works with point concentration one will begin to see the movements of the mind in these various personalities. So they may be very cheerful with customers, but very cyncial about paychecks, or towards their medical benefits. They may have a work ethic that stands behind what they do that is a self-measure, or they may be more like an automaton having simply ended up in the situation without much awareness.
As the awareness grows, then for instance point concentration at the third eye will begin to change their interaction with customers. They may get sudden insight into the people at the drive up window, and spontaneous conversation becomes more meaningful. The mystical aspect of life become more prominant. They may find they have accurate perception of what will happen at work before they arrive. They will also feel that lower emotions such as complaining are more powerful, lowering their energy, even being very unpleasant and they will start to shift their views. Stabilizing at the heart may change not only their own feeling, but the ability to project cheerfulness, to relax people and create harmony around them. They will learn to call in the deeper higher heart movements, and reject the lower distortions and mental interference.
Spending time refining doesn't mean being critically aware of everything, that is actually a mental process coming in to try control everything. That will not really yeild much growth. That is a pitfall to be avoided. Better is to get a feel, energetic, emotional, or via inner sense, or inner vision of light as to the right movement in the consciousness. Best to be calm and receptive and allow things to flow....
Focus your awareness on a point. Experience the mind at that level. Recognize and then return to that level until it is stable.
"Once you have these basic patterns, then the thing that you need to feel is the connectedness. This means that the energy is flowing through the body out to the extremities. At first energy may be something that you confuse (it's an over used term until experience grows), but instead of thinking of it as energy feel it as the body's momentum. You can feel that when you handle objects, feeling their, weight, knowing where they are space by touch. As you feel your momentum and your sensitivity grows then you can find areas in your body where there are dead spots, or dead weight, blocks of tension. You want to work to smooth those areas out.
