What Are Techniques For Raising Consciousness? (not spiritual)

[The Renaissance Man]

Do you have any techniques to raise consciousness that can be systematically applied. It's clear to me how practice, repetition, and lots of it is a requirement for serious change, and so I'm looking for ideas for "consciousness/self-dev practices" one can do, and create a sort of training program to follow 1-2 hours every day.

Some practices:

• I recently learned about Nathaniel Branden (six pillars of self esteem) and his sentence completion exercises, where you complete a sentence with 6-10 endings rapid fire, without thinking. For example: If I bring 5 percent more awareness to my impulses to avoid unpleasant facts... I haven't done this practice yet.
• Tracking my time and all activities I do during the day
• Keeping a list and noticing what activities made me happier or unhappier

[Princess Arabia]

Who wants to raise consciousness. Is that Consciousness talking or the mind.

[CARDOZZO]

Breathwork. 

[Ulax]

Trauma release exercises, yoga

[UnbornTao]

Question your experience of stuff throughout the day.

What is boredom? What is learning? What is language?

Edited October 20 by UnbornTao

[Ninja_pig]

When we're talking about raising consciousness, the practices you have listed would definitely work. Any practice where you are observing some part of your experience closely is effective. The most straightforward and most effective practice is meditation though. It would do you well to simply meditate for 2 hours a day. Your progress will speak for itself even after only 2 weeks or so. I would recommend reading some books or watching some you tube videos which detail what you will probably experience as your consciousness increases, so that you can gain more confidence in your practice as you see these predictions come to fruition.

[The Renaissance Man]

@Ninja_pig Thank you. What kind of meditation? Also, can you help me understand it better? Even though it's super popular, I never quite understood the practical connection.

For example, let's say I have social anxiety, and consciousness over its false nature could solve it. How would meditation help?

Or maybe I lack motivation because I'm not conscious enough of my goal, the process, or I distort the unpleasantness of the action. How does meditation help?

[Ramanujan]

Read  lots of self improvment books

Edited October 28 by Ramanujan

[Lyubov]

journaling and self inquiry 

[Schizophonia]

What does raisin consciousness even mean eheh.

[Ninja_pig]

On 10/27/2024 at 7:54 PM, The Renaissance Man said:

@Ninja_pig Thank you. What kind of meditation? Also, can you help me understand it better? Even though it's super popular, I never quite understood the practical connection.

For example, let's say I have social anxiety, and consciousness over its false nature could solve it. How would meditation help?

Or maybe I lack motivation because I'm not conscious enough of my goal, the process, or I distort the unpleasantness of the action. How does meditation help?

I personally like "do nothing" meditation. You can also try transcendental meditation. I recommend experimenting with a few techniques to see which one gives you the best results. I said in my original comment you should do 2 hours a day, but this is probably too much to start out with. Two 20 minute sessions each day will suffice at first and then you can increase it later as you see fit. As I said, just practice it for like 2 weeks and the results will speak for themselves.

The purpose of meditation is to still/calm your mind to the point where you have a highly enhanced ability to focus. Once you have stilled your mind sufficiently, it is much easier to see your thoughts, emotions, and ego for what they are. You will be able to observe an internal experience or think about something for a very extended period of time. This basically corresponds to an increase in consciousness because now your subjective experience is more cohesive and stabilized. There are probably more things that meditation gives you but this is what I have noticed myself.

Increased consciousness won't "solve" your social anxiety. It will probably help you work though it though. By become more aware of your emotions you will be able to see social anxiety as a natural feeling that simply exists in your experience, rather than a force which completely prevents you from talking to strangers. The only real way to solve social anxiety is to find some good friends that you feel comfortable and accepted around, and also face your fears by talking to strangers.

If you are having trouble with motivation, start small. You clearly WANT to increase your consciousness, you just don't have the discipline to do so because your mind is too messy. It's a mistake to want to go and start doing 2 hours a day right at the beginning because you will inevitably give up before a week has passed even if you are already starting to see results. Start with 2 20 minute sessions each day, and just do that for 2 weeks or a month. If you feel so excited about it that you want to do more, spend that energy doing something else like getting work done, exercising, or whatever. Meditation is very effective at calming the mind and after a little while you will be more able to discipline yourself because to a calm mind discipline comes naturally.

[Human Mint]

Good quality sleep. Harder to get than it seems, considering that it requires dozens of lifestyle micro-corrections. But our life is as good as our sleep efficiency. Anything you practice will be impacted by your sleep; either it will be catapulted up or dragged down... We invest a third of our lives sleeping, so we better pay attention to it.

If you wonder: good sleep, particularly sleep rich in REM, increases your natural ability to see the big picture. You connect dots more easily. Is not your cup of coffe, but sleep.

[Jacob Morres]

@The Renaissance Man Nathaniel Branden also has a book called the art of living consciously. Been a while since I looked at it but I think there are some exercises in that 

[Sugarcoat]

On 2024-10-28 at 5:40 PM, Schizophonia said:

What does raisin consciousness even mean eheh.

”raisin” lol

jokes aside, I would ask that question too. Seriously. Seems nobody can answer it

Edited November 8 by Sugarcoat

[Sugarcoat]

I heard from Eckhart Tolle this exercise of body scanning. So while you’re going to sleep you focus your attention on different body parts one by one, then you end it with your whole body at once, and you should feel the energy of your body. I also did this thing don’t know where I heard it from, where I put like ridiculous amounts of alarms throughout the day, to each time stop, close my eyes and breathe deeply while focusing on my breath as a sort of short meditation. This is not doable though if you’re at work etc. You could just skip the alarms though and just do it as many times you remember to. 
 

edit: now that I read your title again where you said “not spiritual” I thought maybe my answer was spiritual oh my fault ..😅
 

 

Edited November 8 by Sugarcoat

[Javfly33]

On 19/10/2024 at 6:32 PM, Princess Arabia said:

Who wants to raise consciousness. Is that Consciousness talking or the mind.

 

On 28/10/2024 at 5:40 PM, Schizophonia said:

What does raisin consciousness even mean eheh.

 

38 minutes ago, Sugarcoat said:

”raisin” lol

jokes aside, I would ask that question too. Seriously. Seems nobody can answer it

@Princess Arabia @Schizophonia @Sugarcoat

Is simple, raising consciousness is just You activating yourself more and Being more intense.

Is not like the human can raise consciousness. Rather, the human can do acts (or non-acts, such as meditation), that can allow the Consciousness within to look at itself more clear and intensely.

As an analogy, imagine the little light or led of your laptop or computer:

The electricity has a lot of power potential, but the circuitry is designed in a such a way only a bit of electricity (maybe 0.1%) is passing through that Led, enough that it is on, but not more than that or it would burn up the whole thing.

With humans, a bit of consciousness is only passing through. If you know how to touch the circuitry to your benefit, you can open or close consciousness depending on your activity.

So understand the whole human mechanism as a tool that whatever you do, not do, think, not think, sit in one way, or in another way...etc... is different configurations of the circuitry which allow more or less intensity of awareness to pass through the human avatar (when there is no resistance whatsoever in the circuitry, we call that Enlightment)

Edited November 8 by Javfly33

[Javfly33]

For the OP, 'non spiritual' things would be:

• eating organic nutrient rich vegan or vegetarian food
• exercising with good quality air/nature.
• Simply Learning how to sit in ardha siddasana
• Chewing your food enough times and mindfully
• Whatever you think or speak, reduce it by 50% amount (whatever you speak, say it in 50% less words)

Edited November 8 by Javfly33

[Schizophonia]

1 hour ago, Sugarcoat said:

”raisin” lol

gnegnegne 🤔

1 hour ago, Sugarcoat said:

jokes aside, I would ask that question too. Seriously. Seems nobody can answer it

I would say simply dissolving the ego, the persona developed to guarantee my survival in the context of my experience to accessing a more holistic paradigm, persona.

For exemple, my biased life experience conditioned me to develop a a right wing archetype. ; I can maintain and even sink this archetype, become a right-wing politician and focus on right-wing issues, wear gray sweaters with a crew neck, smoke cigars, praise Catholicism, etc ; Same thing for a left wing persona.
In this case I will curb my conscience, if I don't curb my conscience i will quickly tend to see the flaws of this paradigm and tend towards something more nuanced, holistic.
But if I do that i will have an ego crisis, because of the unconscious fear of dying/being nothing. Because again, this archetype and my persona in general is a construction that allowed me to survive within the framework of my life, my traumas and the history of my ancestors (collective unconscious).

Many things you thought when you were just now seem stupid, because of the evolution of consciousness.

 

[Sugarcoat]

1 hour ago, Javfly33 said:

 

 

@Princess Arabia @Schizophonia @Sugarcoat

Is simple, raising consciousness is just You activating yourself more and Being more intense.

Is not like the human can raise consciousness. Rather, the human can do acts (or non-acts, such as meditation), that can allow the Consciousness within to look at itself more clear and intensely.

As an analogy, imagine the little light or led of your laptop or computer:

The electricity has a lot of power potential, but the circuitry is designed in a such a way only a bit of electricity (maybe 0.1%) is passing through that Led, enough that it is on, but not more than that or it would burn up the whole thing.

With humans, a bit of consciousness is only passing through. If you know how to touch the circuitry to your benefit, you can open or close consciousness depending on your activity.

So understand the whole human mechanism as a tool that whatever you do, not do, think, not think, sit in one way, or in another way...etc... is different configurations of the circuitry which allow more or less intensity of awareness to pass through the human avatar (when there is no resistance whatsoever in the circuitry, we call that Enlightment)

Interesting. Still somewhat vague though 

[Sugarcoat]

4 minutes ago, Schizophonia said:

gnegnegne 🤔

I would say simply dissolving the ego, the persona developed to guarantee my survival in the context of my experience to accessing a more holistic paradigm, persona.

For exemple, my biased life experience conditioned me to develop a a right wing archetype. ; I can maintain and even sink this archetype, become a right-wing politician and focus on right-wing issues, wear gray sweaters with a crew neck, smoke cigars, praise Catholicism, etc ; Same thing for a left wing persona.
In this case I will curb my conscience, if I don't curb my conscience i will quickly tend to see the flaws of this paradigm and tend towards something more nuanced, holistic.
But if I do that i will have an ego crisis, because of the unconscious fear of dying/being nothing. Because again, this archetype and my persona in general is a construction that allowed me to survive within the framework of my life, my traumas and the history of my ancestors (collective unconscious).

Many things you thought when you were just now seem stupid, because of the evolution of consciousness.

 

I agree that raising consciousness is related to dissolving the ego. It goes hand in hand. Also self awareness. So the more self aware you are the more “conscious” you are I think.