5. Awareness Traveling through the Mind
Sadhana Practice§
Exercise for wandering: Think back to your last visit to a large city. Recollect the various parts of the city you traveled through. Impress yourself with the idea that you are the traveler moving through the various sections of the city. Now reflect on the states of consciousness, both positive and negative, you have been experiencing the last few months. Impress yourself with the idea that you are the inner traveler, awareness, moving through these different areas of consciousness that are always existing§
Quote from Gurudeva§
Consciousness and awareness are the same when awareness is totally identified with and attached to that which it is aware of. To separate the two is the artful practice of yoga. §
Supplementary Reading§
To the awakened mystic, there is only one mind. There is no “your mind” and “my mind,” just one mind, finished, complete in all stages of manifestation. Man’s individual awareness flows through the mind as the traveler treads the globe. Just as the free citizen moves from city to city and country to country, awareness moves through the multitude of forms in the mind. (Merging with Śiva, Chapter Six)§
This fifth exercise introduces the idea of awareness traveling. §
Gurudeva develops this idea in one of his Merging with Śiva lessons: “I look at the mind as a traveler looks at the world. Himalayan Academy students have traveled with me all over the world, in hundreds of cities, in dozens of countries, as we’ve set up ashramas here and there on our Innersearch Travel-Study programs. Together we have gone in and in and in and in amid different types of environments, but the inside is always the same wherever we are. So, look at the mind as the traveler looks at the world.§
Just as you travel around the world, when you’re in meditation you travel in the mind. We have the big city called thought. We have another big city called emotion. There’s yet another big city called fear, and another one nearby called worry. But we are not those cities. We’re just the traveler. When we’re in San Francisco, we are not San Francisco. When we’re aware of worry, we are not worry. We are just the inner traveler who has become aware of the different areas of the mind.”§
As we mentioned, Gurudeva created the Shum words eeeef and neeemf to name the experience of observing one’s awareness flowing or traveling from one area of the mind to another. The vast areas of the mind contain many things such as pictures, concepts. Our individual awareness flows from one place within it to another.§
The traveler, the experiencer, is of course referred to as awareness. What it experiences, the various areas of mind, is called consciousness. We can drive through a city, such as San Francisco, and experience the different districts in it such as the downtown business district, Chinatown, the fancy hotels on Nob Hill, the wealthier residential districts and the poorer districts. Just as the different areas of San Francisco are always there, the various states of consciousness always exist—they don’t go away just because we are not aware of them at the moment. §
In our last spiritual identity exercise we learned to identify with the experiencer rather than the experience, being awareness rather than consciousness. The current exercise takes this one step further by realizing that awareness can travel from one state of consciousness to another. When we drive through San Francisco, we can choose which district to drive to. Similarly, in the mind we can choose which area of consciousness to have awareness travel to.§
Our car can malfunction and we can end up stuck in one district of the city unable to travel. Likewise, our awareness can become stuck in a particular area of consciousness seemingly unable to move to another. Gurudeva has an insightful statement describing this: “Consciousness and awareness are the same when awareness is totally identified with and attached to that which it is aware of. To separate the two is the artful practice of yoga.”§
What are some keys to achieving the ability to move our awareness freely through the various areas of consciousness?§
A good place to start is to understand the tendency of awareness to move around because of what others are saying to us and how they are treating us. Some people’s state of consciousness is totally at the mercy of others. If what they are saying and how they are treating us is problem free, then we are happy. If they are saying things we do not want them to or mistreating us then we are unhappy. Also casual interactions with others can move our awareness into the same states of consciousness as the other person, if we are not careful. §
To have the ability to move awareness, we need to avoid conflict with others. Conflict upsets and externalizes us, and this makes it easy to get stuck in an externalized state of mind for a few hours or even a few days. §
Another point is that we really need to intellectually accept the idea that all areas of consciousness are always existing and that our awareness can travel to them if we learn how to direct it. Inner light is always there, ananda, bliss is always inside of us. §
Regulating our breath, pranayama, is also important in gaining the ability to move awareness. §
Gurudeva: “In meditation, awareness must be loosened and made free to move vibrantly and buoyantly into the inner depths where peace and bliss remain undisturbed for centuries, or out into the odic force fields of the material world where man is in conflict with his brother, or into the internal depths of the subconscious mind. Meditate, therefore, on awareness traveling freely through all areas of the mind.”§
Additional Resources§
Merging with Śiva, Chapter 35: The Story of Awareness§