163. HIGHER LEVELS — A

CLUES 25, 26, 114, and 146 all dealt with consciousness. The triptych for this week focuses on the higher levels of consciousness. In a recent lecture that I gave on the benefits of dialogue, I noted that we are more inclined to practice dialogue when we reach higher levels of consciousness. My explorations in consciousness have led me to believe that we need to challenge ourselves to stretch our levels of consciousness for a variety of reasons. In this and the next two posts, we will visit perspectives that seem to point in that direction.

First, we will hear what Ken Keyes Jr. had to say about higher consciousness. He reminds us that when we humans were evolving millions of years ago, we lived in jungles and had to fight for our survival. We needed instant full attention response and readily available adrenalin in our blood to jet power our muscles to take on tigers or whatever else might be threatening us. Therefore, we were programmed with automatic feelings of immediate threat and paranoia. Likewise, survival called for a consciousness that would equip us to meet the perils of the jungle.

As we evolved, our consciousness also evolved to include an awareness of family, community, and human bonding. However, our brains were still programmed for the jungle, and we tended to make mountains out of molehills. In addition, the incongruities of our existence distorted our energy and our insight as well as our ability to trust and to love.

So, said Keyes, we must learn to cut through our paranoid jungle programming and move on to a higher consciousness. He suggested that we must stretch our consciousness to a level that is more open to love and community. He called this expansion of consciousness — the Living Love Way. Keyes builds this “self-help system” upon the following Twelve Pathways:

1. I am freeing myself from security, sensation, and power addictions that make me try to forcefully control situations in my life and thus destroy my serenity and keep me from loving myself and others.

2. I am discovering how my conscious-dominating addictions create my illusory version of the changing world of people and situations around me.

3. I welcome the opportunity (even if painful) that my minute-to-minute experience offers me to become aware of my addictions. I must reprogram to be liberated from my robotlike emotional patterns.

4. I always remember that I have everything I need to enjoy my here and now unless I am letting my consciousness be dominated by demands and expectations based on the dead past or the imagined future.

5. I take responsibility for everything I experience for it is my own programming that creates my actions and also influences the reactions of people around me.

6. I accept myself completely here and now and consciously experience everything I feel, think, say, and do (including my emotion-backed addictions) as a necessary part of my growth into higher consciousness.

7. I open myself genuinely to all people by being willing to fully communicate my deepest feelings, since hiding in any degree keeps me stuck in my illusion of separateness from other people.

8. I feel with loving compassion the problems of others without getting caught up emotionally in their predicaments which are offering them messages which they need for their growth.

9. I act freely when I’m tuned in, centered, and loving, but, if possible, I avoid acting when I am emotionally upset and depriving myself of the wisdom which flows from love and expanded consciousness.

10. I am continually calming the restless scanning of my rational mind in order to perceive the finer energies that enable me to unitively, merge with everything around me.

11. I am constantly aware of which of the seven centers of consciousness I am using, and I feel my energy, perceptiveness, love, joy and inner peace growing as I open all of the centers of consciousness.

12. I am perceiving everyone, including myself, as an awakening being who is here to claim his or her birthright to the higher consciousness planes of unconditional love and oneness.

Q: What do you think about Keyes’ approach to reaching higher levels of consciousness?