10 ways to expand your consciousness

By Ezra

Spirituality is a huge topic of discussion lately as more and more people are awakening to a higher sense of truth and curiosity about the nature of the universe. Often, we hear people discussing the “Expansion of Consciousness”... But what exactly does that mean?

Typically, whomever is speaking this aphorism is telling you to raise your awareness, because through awareness of great truths, one finds freedom in the understanding. It does not mean to change yourself or alter who you are, but rather to realize that you are not your body or mind, but the observer, and we all have a lot to learn.

Here are some ways that you can do this, to become more free, and less constrained by issues that come up in life.

Trust Your Inner Voice

That little voice inside your head is actually a big deal: your subconscious mind. So if it tells you to take a different path to work or school today, listen! You never know what you’ll come across. Chances are it’s something your subconscious feels that your conscious mind can’t attune to.

Rise Above The Bicameral Mind

The ‘Bicameral mind‘ is a concept coined by psychologist Julian Jaynes, presented in his book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Essentially, the idea is that one part of the brain speaks, and another part listens (and obeys). Jaynes theorizes that the breakdown of bicameralism is ongoing, and leads to introspection and consciousness. In the next stage of evolution, we will overcome this duality.

Travel

If travel is impractical or not affordable, the study of other cultures through the internet, documentaries, books and periodicals can serve as a replacement (however, there is no substitute to immersing one’s self in another area of the world). Compare the standards of other cultures to your own.

What does it mean to be beautiful and successful to the other culture? What are the differences in their cultural history lessons? Knowing these is important, as it makes one realize that perceived objectivity and standardization is easily demolished.

Listen To Binaural Beats

These are simply sounds tuned to a certain frequency that can shift your brain waves to a meditative state easily. There is information on YouTube on this subject, and they are easy to find and free to use.

Check What’s Important To You In Life

If you search your life and find that you’ve assigned significant meaning to material things, such as your car, home, hair, clothes, or other possessions, try to revise how you think about them. These can often be a substitute for actually reflecting upon the self, as we can easily link our personality to our things.

Be Intentional

Good results take on a whole new meaning if the intentions were not good. At times we can find ourselves doing good while at the same time backslapping ourselves for doing good things, or doing them for recognition. Have positive intentions to be assured that what you are doing is within your truth.

Be Humble

We are all human: fragile with an endpoint. When we are honest with one another about our essential humanity, we can find common ground and love for people. If you are hurting, don’t be afraid to share. If you find that confessions are hard, they are likely the things you need to share the most.

Growing As A Person Is An End In Itself

We don’t want to become better people with the intention of making more money, being more successful, or impressing that person you think would be an ideal partner. In addition, personal growth is not about becoming more happy, pleasing god or because it’s the right thing to do. All of these examples are how we change into the person we think we should be, rather than simply accepting who you are and how you will change over time naturally.

Feel

Feelings are to be appreciated, because they offer an opportunity to be immersed within an experience. Be conscious and present with your feelings, and be totally within the moment of experience.

Let Love Guide You

Remember that if you catch yourself being jealous or having a feeling of superiority, that is coming from the ego. The Soul, however, acts from a point of love. Being aware of your core being and where your thoughts come from is the first step in becoming more conscious.

Link: http://thespiritscience.net/2016/01/10/10-ways-that-can-expand-your-consciousness/

Cultivate What You Want by Loving What You Have

By Carley Hauck

The concept of a new year can bring promise and sometimes a sense of not being content with what we have. Our mind is naturally inclined toward the negative and as a result we may focus on what needs to be fixed or what isn’t going well in our lives. We can bring an energy of discontentment into the New Year and with it a feeling of pressure. Have you ever heard yourself think, “This is the year that I have to…exercise more, meet the man/woman of my dreams, land that dream job, etc.”

The New Year is an opportunity to grow and develop new qualities that will more closely align with the kind of person we want to be and the life we want to be living. But first, it’s important to acknowledge everything that we already have and bring into the New Year with us. If we forget this important step, we are setting too lofty of expectations for our year because we are coming from a sense of lack vs. a feeling of “I have enough.”

“Changing is like being in a ship on the sea. You must build a new boat with material from the old one you’re traveling in. You can’t go on shore to destroy the old one first and then build a new one, but you have to reconstruct while sailing.”
—Otto Neurath

As we move into 2016, I encourage the following steps to cultivate a contented New Year.

1. Acknowledge all the qualities you possess, your relationships, and experiences from the last year you are bringing with you into the New Year

When the New Year arrives, you don’t become a NEW you. You are the same person, but you have an opportunity for change and growth. You are bringing your compassion and your resiliency. You may bring your inner critic, your wisdom of the mind, body, and heart, and even your resistance to change. Make a list of what you are bringing with you.

2. Reflect on what you are grateful for

I notice for myself that when I dream of living a different life than what I am living, wanting something else, someone else, striving for something that isn’t right here, I suffer and I am not content with what I have. I take a lot of comfort in knowing how the simple act of bringing gratitude to the moment I am in shifts my mind from a sense of lack to contentment. If I can be happy now, under these circumstances and conditions (which are always changing and different than I sometimes wish them to be) then I can be happy anywhere, at any time. Allow yourself to feel the abundance in your life and then see how this impacts your hopes and wishes for the New Year.
I feel grateful for:

• my health
• my professional opportunities
• my friends and family
• living in a place where I can access nature easily
• my meditation practice

3. Cultivate an intention vs. a goal

 In the New Year, we often set very specific goals with a short timeline. This creates a feeling of striving for the unachievable and instead of succeeding, we fail. Meaningful change happens on a continuum over time.

An intention is something we build and cultivate over time. It grows by watering it with attention, patience, and wise effort. A goal tends to have a specific result and is time oriented.

Goal Example: I must find the love of my life in the next two months.

Intention Example: My intention is to cultivate more love in my life. I know that by aligning my actions with this intention, I will be more loving and will attract more love in my life.

4. Share your intention with friends, family, and your greater community

When we share what we want in life and are witnessed in this, we have more power to manifest our greater potential. Here are some intentions I have heard this year.

• I want to cultivate more compassion toward myself and others.
• I want to become more generous.
• I want to develop more patience.
• I want to feel more proud of the person I am.
• I want to feel more comfortable with uncertainty.

5. Identify what actions are in alignment with this intention

Using the example above, if I am committed to bringing love into my life I will:

• Spend time nourishing my mind, body, and heart so that I can love all parts of myself.
• I will choose love over fear and dare to trust.
• I give the benefit of the doubt to other person and trust in their goodness.
• I will be more open to new people, no matter how they appear in my life.
• I will share with those around me, my intention for love in my life.

6. Be 100% committed to your intention for change

With repeated effort and staying true to your intention you will create what you seek. Be open to the surprise of how and when it occurs.

7. Review your progress over the year

I have been setting intentions for my life for several years and I find that checking in on my progress 3 times a year is really helpful. Identify a time when you will reflect on your progress with kindness and acceptance. Compassion vs. criticism is the greatest motivator toward change.

8. Let go so that you can bring in the new

In order to grow something new in your life you must make space for it. For example, if you are cultivating more patience then you must start to let go of impatience. By letting go of a certain way of being or a pattern in your life, you can manifest something different.
What do you want to let go of in 2015?
What do you want to bring in?
May your New Year be full of light, love, and peace. If you want to cultivate greater mindfulness and well-being, sign up for the free Mindful Training workbook.

Carley Hauck

Carley Hauck works as an educator, life coach, writer, mindful researcher, and change cheerleader with corporate organizations. Carley has had a long-standing meditation practice and teaches mindfulness as the first step toward well-being. She teaches on a variety of subjects related to greater happiness, health, and wisdom in worksites such as Pixar & LinkedIn and with her students at Stanford University.

Five Things Pixar’s “Inside Out” Teaches Us About Emotions

By Jennifer Wolkin

Inside Out revolves around the life of an 11-year old girl named Riley, who is moving across the country with her family. At such an impressionable age, a move is a huge transition, and she experiences an outpour of emotions as she leaves her home, friends, and hockey league behind. Enter the main characters, Riley’s feelings: Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear, and Disgust, who provide a glimpse into the workings of Riley’s mind as she navigates this life-changing experience.

From the moment it started, I couldn’t contain my excitement. The nerd in me was blown away by the extraordinary way in which many of the movie’s messages “measured up” to reality from a neuro-scientific perspective. For example, the way a day full of short-term/working memories is then consolidated during sleep.

While the film gave up some scientific integrity for the sake of storytelling, its poetic license didn’t drive too far away from the reality that we are, essentially, made up of personality traits that wax and wane during different points in our life.

Beyond the intricate science of it all, what Inside Out did do so well was to provide the empowering message that we should learn how to understand, connect to, and accept our feelings and memories in a way that is conducive to thriving.

Five ways Inside Out taught us about the importance of emotions:

 

1. All of our emotions exist for a purpose

Emotions are neither inherently good or bad, and to think of them in such dichotomous terms is to do yourself a disservice. Every emotion tells us something about our inner experience that might be informing our outer experience.

In fact, Rumi, the Sufi poet, waxed poetic in “The Guest House” a long time ago about how we should treat every emotion as a visitor, without looking to get rid of any of them, and instead work to understand their message and purpose.

What Rumi alluded to in his writing was also recently confirmed by research that indicates that well-being is actually predicated on having a wider range of emotions. The more you can feel—in all of feeling’s iterations—the better off you are.

2. To have emotions is to have a compass

At one point in the film, Joy tries to keep Sadness away from Riley. Although she felt other emotions, the inability to feel sadness, coupled with her mother’s request for Riley to stay happy, ultimately lead to a cold and numb existence. This state only generated poor judgment and unhealthy choices. It wasn’t until she felt sadness that Riley was able to see more clearly and reach out for support. Acknowledging and understanding emotions is much healthier, productive, and adaptive than ignoring their importance.

3. Our realities and memories are filtered through our emotional lens

Just like our present reality is seen through the framework of our past experience, the memories we look back on are colored by our present-moment experience. In Riley’s case, she recalled a championship hockey game several different times during the movie. At one point, she remembers missing the winning shot and feeling sad about it. At another point, she literally remembers the same moment, but this time, she recalls smiling as she is championed by her teammates who pick her up onto their shoulders to let her know how valuable she is to the team. Same memory, the only difference being that it was recalled through a sad lens, and then through a joyful lens.

This is a very powerful idea. What we really “need” to remember is that our memories are a part of our personal narrative, and that in many ways, we construct the narrative we believe. Because we create the narrative, we can change our story at any time. We can’t delete certain paragraphs that contain with negative facts and daunting realities. We can’t cut out chapters that we would rather not have had—they will always be there, and that’s okay. Research suggests that the actual experiences we have are less impactful than the story we tell ourselves about them.

4. Having the language to talk about emotions is empowering

Probably the most remarkable part of the movie is its existence as a film that focuses on emotions. As long as more than a modicum of scientific integrity exists, what’s important is that an illustration of the concept of emotion can now impact the dialogue we have with our children.

If children learn earlier on to embrace the way they feel, and that it’s crucial to feel all of their emotions, we can hope to see more adjusted adolescents and adults. Really, though, animation aside, this movie’s target audience is feasibly all of humanity. Why? Because to have the language to talk about our emotions, in all of their iterations, is to be empowered with an ability to learn from them, to respond to them with the utmost of compassion, and approach them with less judgment.

5. Feeling our emotions is a universal human experience

Pixar knew what it was doing when it used 5 scientifically validated universal emotions, stemming from Dr. Paul Eckman’s work (the 6th universal emotion is surprise). Through Eckman’s research, he showed that certain emotions are felt and expressed through universal facial expressions across cultures around the world. And so, the movie reminds us of our intrinsic humanity, how similar we all actually are despite our differences.

This is a very powerful idea, especially in the wake of discriminations based on skin color and/or gender/sexual identity. At the end of the day, no matter who you are, you experience the capacity for the same range of emotions. Therefore, if we can realize that we are all just fighting our own hard battles, we might experience this world with more compassion and less judgment.

This post is adapted from BrainCurves.