VIDEO 3: The 5 Levels of Mind
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THE ROADMAP OF AWARENESS WORKBOOK
Download the Roadmaps Workbook PDF which contains summaries of each video, the map of the 5 levels of awareness, instructions for the daily practices we recommend, and written transcripts of the video.
VIDEO SUMMARY
In this video we dive into the 5 Levels of Mind on our Roadmap. Each level is introduced as an overview and then Anna-Lisa dives deeper into each one with additional distinctions and descriptions of the transitions into these dimensions of our consciousness. Here we are building a map of your awareness so that you can locate where you are and begin to consciously track your awareness.
In this video we practice the shift from the 'ordinary' thought-based knowing to a more direct experience of awareness. At each level we'll explore the added well being and liberation available at each step along the path.
The purpose of teaching this Roadmap of Awareness is to open a doorway to added dimensions of our consciousness that invites us into experiencing reality as it truly is so we experience more of who we actually are. In that process of recognition, this invitation brings more wellbeing and liberation at every shift.
Why describe this map? To understand that...
There is a simple path that can help us us find a way to know what we have glimpsed.
There is a simple path that can help us locate ourselves.
There is a simple path that we can all access into our awakening.
There is a simple path that can help us into deeper dimensions of who we actually are.
DAILY PRACTICE: Tracking Your Access of These Levels of Awareness
On a daily basis, during your regular practices and meditations and your normal routine, track which levels of awareness you accessed. Notice for what duration you tended to stay in that state and how frequently you were there. At the end of the week tally up the access, frequency, and duration of these states and notice any changes over the course of the week.
5 LEVELS OF MIND
ORDINARY MIND:
The ordinary mind is what a lot of spiritual traditions refer to as the ego mind. It is the mind that's caught in the conditioning and is the enculturated habitual mind. Ordinary mind is the thought-based mind. This level is associated with being identified with our thoughts and the gross level of reality. The experience of being in this level of mind, is often felt as being located in our head looking out at the world. It is based in duality and a subject object view. This level is associated with being identified with our thinking and the emotions that arise from it.
SUBTLE MIND
Subtle mind is the movement from being caught in the ordinary mind, the thought-based knowing into a more direct, awareness-based knowing. Instead of being identified with the thinker, we become the awareness of our thoughts, beliefs, emotions, and sensations. At this level of mind, awareness has not yet discovered it boundless limitless awareness, that is an aspect of awake awareness. It is experienced as a witness consciousness, “I am aware of my thoughts, or I am aware of a part of me …“ There is still duality here and a feeling of a local awareness that is aware of objects outside of it; a subject and object view. When we open to this level of awareness, we also begin to become aware of subtle energy. We are able to sense beyond form to the energy that is within our self, others and pervading the world around us.
AWAKE AWARENESS:
Awake awareness is the shift from a local awareness, into a limitless and timeless awareness, that infinite awareness and unbound. At this level of mind, awareness is aware of itself rather than the contents of reality. This is an empty spacious awareness, that is knowing and awake. This is a non-dual view where nothing is outside of our awareness. This is a connection to the dimension of ourselves that is boundless, spacious, unchanging, and free. It is the ground of our being that doesn't come or go and there is an experience of no self. It always is and always will be, it is our eternal dimension. This dimension of ourselves is free of all the problems, stories, beliefs, and limitations. It is beyond our personality, beyond energy and form, it is the formless level of our being.
SIMULTANEOUS AWARENESS:
Simultaneous means the union of both awareness and the contents of awareness. It is awareness, energy and form. It includes the formlessness of awake awareness AND the all-pervasive dimension of energy. In Buddhism the phrase “emptiness and form are one”, describes this phase. It is a shift from experiencing only emptiness, into an experience of emptiness ~ fullness. This is the seamless dimension where we realize we are not separate from form and we are not separate from energy. We are not separate from the floor or the walls, we are not separate from nature, we are limitless awareness seamlessly within everything. As we make the shift into simultaneous from something that felt more empty, transparent, clear and light, it shifts into a more saturated feeling, a felt sense of the substance of knowing, and a subtle persistent bliss. It's a shift from the invisible seamless awake knowing into that which is seamlessly interconnected with all life, all energy, and all form simultaneously.
TRUE NATURE:
In our true nature, the final level of awareness, this dimension is the end of the feeling of separation and the individual consciousness merges with all of reality. In this final location the individual consciousness, the ego identity, is actually letting go of its sense of separate identity and control and is merging or dissolving into one mind, one body, one greater intelligence. Some traditions would describe this as becoming one with God. Another way of describing it in Buddhist traditions might be the individual consciousness merges with its mother consciousness, an all pervasive wisdom. In this level of mind, all of reality merges the individual consciousness into totality, into absolute wholeness, into absolute resolution of everything. It's the absolute end of suffering. A completeness of being where there is nothing missing.