10 Small Things That Will Expand Your Consciousness In Big Ways

Did you know “ignorance is bliss” is actually a misquote? The entirety of the line is: “Where ignorance is bliss, ’tis folly to be wise.”

Unawareness is a major player on the team of ‘shit that causes us to suffer.’ Freedom is in realizing that we are not what we think or feel, but we are what observes the thoughts and feelings.

“Expand your consciousness” is just a fancy schmancy way of saying: be more aware of what you do, what you experience, how you react, and what that reaction means to show you. It doesn’t mean to feel less or do less or be different; just to be more aware, more conscious.

It’s a means to pave a path to be freer, less confined by the problems you create for yourself because you were conditioned to.

1. Listen to binaural beats if you find meditating on your own difficult. They’re just different frequencies that play and shift your brain waves (sounds scary, but will mellow you out to a meditative state.) You can download apps or songs or just listen to them on YouTube.

2. Don’t be afraid of feeling: no feeling will last, but it will return until you take what you need to learn from it. Fighting the feeling gives it the power because it brings the issue to your awareness and puts tons of ‘fight or flight survival’ energy toward it unnecessarily. You suppress it and give it all your power by doing so. You have to relearn what it means to appreciate every experience, and focus on the fact that whatever it offers in that moment is something to be conscious of and present for.

3. Your personal growth is not a means to an end. If you only want to become a better person to get a partner or to prove someone wrong or to make more money or feel perpetually and forevermore “happy,” or to appease your “God” or because it’s the “good and right thing to do,” you’re always going to be stuck on evolving toward what your partner would want, what the job requires, what allows you to avoid experiences so to not experience pain, what your particular religion of choice says is right, what you were conditioned to believe “good” is. You have to let go of framing your idea of what should be, it’s the only way to genuinely accept what is.

4. Identify the meaningless things to which you’ve assigned meaning. If you think happiness is in getting a certain thing, you’re never going to find it so long as it’s external. If you’re attached or controlling about your clothing, your hair, your home, your relationship, etc. understand that you’ve assigned a deeper, personal projection onto that thing as some reflection of who you think you are and how you think you’re doing. Rather than allowing things to reflect yourself to you, you try to control them so as to not have to see yourself clearly.

5. Grow your “little voice” into a big one by trusting in what it says, just once. If something tells you to take an umbrella with you in the morning and then you realize that it did indeed rain that afternoon, you’ll be so in awe of how powerful your subconscious is you’ll immediately start to grow it into a powerful, resounding, deep and underlying knowing as opposed to a little voice you oppress.

6. Travel to see and study how other people live. If that’s not practical, look it up online. Watch documentaries. Read. Ask a friend who’s been somewhere you haven’t. I’m not talking about what it’s like to see the leaning tower of Pisa, I’m talking about what beauty standards look like around the world, what people value. What their history books looked like in elementary school (we don’t all learn the same story.) Once you realize that there isn’t only one standard of success, fortune, happiness, beauty, wealth, whatever it may be, you will realize that the one you were holding yourself to was just made up in your mind.

7. Question your intentions. We tend to evaluate our actions based on how we understand other people will perceive them. So if we do something that looks good, even though it’s rooted in something malicious, we’ll convince ourselves that it is, indeed, good.

8. Start to analyze what you do (and how humanity at large behaves) through the Bicameral Model of the mind. Level one is when obedience is most important. Two is when being ‘right’ is most important. Three is when producing results is most important (growth, art, evolution, understanding, etc.) and you are in control of your thoughts and feelings, which is how you’re able to do so.

9. Find humility in realizing how human you are. There is something so incredibly endearing about being honest about your humanity. It’s the way people bond. The kind of honesty that matters isn’t the kind that’s easy to confess. But you have to realize that the only reason it would ever not be easy is because we are the only animals who don’t want to be animals. We think there’s something wrong with being flawed and imperfect, so we try to cover it up and fix everything to be accepted until eventually we realize that the most genuine love and acceptance comes from being honest about being not okay. (People mostly can see through things like that anyway, don’t be so naive.)

10. Act with love (or rather, realize how often you don’t.) Differentiate soul and ego. One is your essential nature, the other is your identification with the “I.” It’s the brain’s understanding of who and what you are versus the essential nature that doesn’t require definition to exist. The ego will act out of jealousy and survival and desire to be superior; the soul will act out of love and understanding and compassion. There’s a difference between your inner and outer self. Becoming aware of the root of your thoughts and intentions is the first step in understanding it.

Thinning Carrots and the Art of Discernment

I read this beautifully written editorial and it struck such a chord within that I wanted to pass it on. I think you'll find it educationally inspiring and it will definitely make you think about your own life. 

Sunday afternoon, with an hour to spare, I wander to the garden to thin some baby carrots - those wee beginnings of carrots, just tufts of green really - so as to create more space for the few I leave to fully grow and flourish. The sun is warm on my back as I get busy with this task that takes focused attention: one pull too many and a whole potential carrot is gone!

As I make my way down the rows slowly and carefully, I notice the challenge I face every time I perform this gardening task: To enable a few to thrive I need to pull out a lot of others and the thicker I originally sowed, the more I have to yank out. I don't like yanking out baby carrots, even if my logical mind tells me they're just tiny carrots and my gardening experience knows that if I don't do this, none of them will do well. As I go about the task, I wish I hadn't planted quite as thickly to begin with. I also try to figure out which ones look strong and healthy (those ones I leave) and I pay attention to spacing them evenly, so that each one left has enough soil and light to grow in.

During my carrot-thinning hour this Sunday, as I curiously follow my inner resistance to the task at hand, I have to chuckle... what a perfect reflection of my struggle with letting go of any of the "too many projects on the go!" I feel such gratitude for the delicious fullness of life, the many varied and richly textured projects I get to initiate, co-create and be involved in ... and sometimes it just feels like "too much", like I'm juggling ten balls at once and any of them could drop at any moment. Or worse still, I actually forget one of them for a bit and slack on my integrity with others (projects or people). Do you ever feel that way? Excited and engaged in many meaningful, fun and interesting projects that encourage you to grow, stretch, be challenged and offer your gifts, yet with a nagging underlying sense that you may be compromising depth for too much width in your life?

That you might serve more if you focused on less? Overwhelm doesn't reap the best results.

Back to the garden ... the more I sow the more I eventually have to thin. The more I am unsure how many seeds will germinate, the more likely I am to over-sow to make sure that at least some will make it. And the feedback loop is clear: If I don't thin, I end up with crooked, wonky, small carrots.

So what is your sweet spot, where you seed just the right amount, saying yes to what you can
manage well and thrive rather than survive? That place of not too much and not too little? And is there anything in your life you need to thin? Anything that is taking too much time and focus away from what you are really here to do? The more capable and multi-passionate you are, the more urgent this question becomes, for you could do so much. Question is: What truly makes your heart sing? What fills the cells of your being with inspiration? What are you responsible for? When do you feel most alive and in service to life itself?

The answers to these questions may change over time. As you continue to grow and evolve, the
ways in which you serve and show up will likely take on different forms. This is an invitation
for ongoing discernment, for a daily practice of touching in with what moves you, what you are
committed to, clearing the clutter and engaging in a regular practice of spring-cleaning. What
perspectives and beliefs are serving you and which ones are holding you back? Are you giving
enough time and attention to the things that ultimately matter most to you and those entrusted to you? Are you in touch with your authentic purpose, or do you first need to get rid of some clutter to feel into this question? What motivates you -- is it fear, love, shadow, egoic drive or an authentic impulse to serve?

And once we get clear on what to keep and what to let go of, we still don't need to make it all
happen ourselves. Same as the garden requires ample sun, water, minerals and further weeding to grow strong and healthy, we too can complement our initial discernment on how much to sow (what we say "yes" to) and our ongoing discernment on what to thin (what to let go of and what to stick with):

We can ask for support and help.

We can delegate, collaborate and syngerize with others.

We can communicate when we need to make adjustments to what we have committed ourselves to.

We can be attentive to timing -- perhaps "not now, but later", or find a rhythm that allows for more balance, extending the time frames in which projects get completed.

And in all these and other ways of dealing with the thinning, lies the core spiritual practice of
discernment: To grow in awareness of who we truly are and to make choices that align us with our essential authentic self. In this way, we can grow our true gifts and offerings like strong healthy carrots. We can make good use of this precious life we are given, contributing with depth and sincerity to the great unfolding Whole, without burning out, being overwhelmed and compromising integrity.

Blessings to you as you clear the clutter, follow your true joy and come together with others to
bring all of you into ever-greater alignment with your authentic nature and service -- with enough space, time and energy to breath deeply and live healthily!