“How do I reach the highest states of consciousness without…

“How do I reach the highest states of consciousness without psychedelics? Should I meditate? Should I watch non-dual youtubers?”

The highest states of consciousness happen by themselves automatically. Unconscious intelligence will take over naturally. Meditation and youtubers are not necessary. If you wish to start the process, try this simple progression that can be followed by anyone.

Please try the progression without explanations first. Don’t worry if something doesn’t “make sense”, just try it without expectations. You can trust yourself to do it naturally, the best you can.

After you’ve followed the progression, sit with your experience for a while. Later, if it feels fresh, you can try again after reading the explanations. The “language” of all this, getting it conceptually, all of that isn’t important...just have fun working on it, and let intuition help you out.

Progression:

1) Gently suspend the mind and “enter awareness”

2) Experience yourself as openness

3) Extend the openness to infinity, feeling vastness

4) Feel as much love as you can for one thing, and extend that love out to all things. Relax as this love.

5) Feel as much love as you can for one thing, and extend that to all aspects of yourself, including sensations, emotions, thoughts and past experiences. Relax as love itself while saturated with it.

6) While feeling this inner and outer love, notice the energies in your body. With this feeling central in awareness, sit with what arises (emotions, memories, thoughts). Now, metabolize what is naturally arising in experience, turning it into more energy and presence.

7) Appreciate that what is naturally arising is FOR this metabolization process, and all experience is a fuel source (arising, loved, dissolved into more love, arising, loved, more love etc):

If you want them, below are some explanations and suggestions for how to play around with this progression.

1) Gently suspend the mind and “enter awareness”: the easiest way to suspend the mind is to temporarily accept everything as it is. In acceptance, be aware of your body while opening your focus—you can use the felt sense of your entire body, or a specific location like your heart, belly, or between your eyes. To open your focus, just relax and expand your visual field... notice the corners of the room while still seeing the center, for example. This process is very low effort: accept everything, rest in a feeling of yourself, and expand the visual field a bit. Trust yourself to do a Good job!

2) Experience yourself as openness: Feel yourself open into space. Take up as much room with your energy as you like. Let yourself be porous, rather than dense. You may feel the liquidity of your energy, or a sense of expansiveness. Everything is already inside you, there is no need to defend anything, and you welcome all that is happening as it is. You’re ready for life, the universe, and everything...curiosity, gratitude, joy can all boost this feeling of “being open”. Some like to call it “spiritual surrender”, surrendering resistance, blasting the doors wide open...

3) Extend the openness to infinity, feeling your vastness: a simple way to do this is to feel yourself opening until you are the size of the universe, of reality. You can slowly double over and over. If it ever feels like too much of a stretch, relax for a second, take a breath, and continue. You are vast. Problems that seem like mountains when we are small are grains of sand as we expand into our vastness, eventually fading from view. This perspective shift can be important for healing, which I’ll discuss in another post.

4) Feel as much love as you can for one thing, and extend that love out to all things. Relax as this love: the simple thing to do is picture the thing you love the most and really feel the love. Say you feel the most love towards your mom, or a puppy. Start to see your mom’s heart, or the puppy nature, inside all things. Try on this view for a moment: the core of things, even painful things, is made of that “puppyness”, and so naturally, now, you’re feeling your love go out to it. The whole world is the love of your mom, or a really adorable puppy, just beneath its surface, just like your own love is just beneath your “surface”. Extend this feeling of love out to the entire universe, and all that is, that has been, and will be. To all that is real, and all that isn’t. Relax as your love.

5) Feel as much love as you can for one thing, and extend that to all aspects of yourself, including sensations, emotions, thoughts and past experiences. Relax as love itself while saturated with it: Just like we did to the “outer universe”, we now extend love to our “inner universe”. Feel as much love as you can and extend that feeling to any and all parts of yourself. Send love to all thoughts, feelings, and sensations. Lovingly hold everything within until you feel saturated, lightened, and energized.

6) While feeling this inner and outer love, notice the energies in your body. With this feeling central in awareness, sit with what arises (emotions, memories, thoughts). Now, metabolize what is naturally arising in experience, turning it into more energy and presence: observe what spontaneously pops into your mind. Do you suddenly see the face of someone you’re angry at? Do you remember that you’re stressed about work? That’s great. Let it come up and feel it in your body while you are feeling the love. That will slowly and joyfully digest the experience. Eventually, what has happened and what is happening will become light, expansive, open and energizing etc.

7) Appreciate that what is naturally arising is FOR this metabolization process, and all experience is a fuel source (arising, loved, dissolved into more love, arising, loved, more love etc): you may experience this as one field of energy with lots of layers. Now, what you have digested and converted to pure energy, other people will more easily digest in your presence. Where you are open, others will be more open. What you have deeply experienced, others can “download” from your presence, your words, and your field of being. You’ll go up and down this progression spontaneously as you get comfortable, and you will be able to remember more and more. When you focus on your heart, others will feel their heart more, etc etc etc. From here you can naturally live in service, feeling a profound sense of purpose.

I'll post this same progression with pointers from Maharaji in the next post.