How to Raise your Level of Consciousness

In this post, you’re going to learn all about how to raise your level of consciousness.

Contrary to what you might have heard, this is relevant and accessible to everyone. Having a higher level of consciousness can be the difference between feeling burnt out and tired of your day-to-day life and being in alignment and feeling grateful for your life.

Raising your level of consciousness is not some mystical journey that you have to leave the world to undertake. It’s a grounded aspect of your life that can be done in parallel with your material life.

In this blog post, you’re going to learn all about what it means to raise your level of consciousness and how to do it.

What is Consciousness?

Let’s begin by understanding what consciousness is.

Consciousness is a very subtle concept.

Scriptures with thousands of pages have been written to define and describe consciousness from every angle.

I will not attempt to do the same thing here. Instead, I will recommend the Yoga Vasistha (my favourite scripture) and explain to you why this concept is even relevant to your day-to-day life.

Let’s start from the top, shall we?

Consciousness is your very existence.

It is the substance that enables you to exist and experience the flavours of this world;

• The ups, downs, joys, contentment, and heartbreak
• The jealousy, anger, generosity, amusement and your entire range of emotions
• Childhood, teenage years, youth, middle age, old age
• Meeting your person
• Travel
• Healing
• Having and raising children
• Growing as a person
• Pursuing your career
• Creating your home and safe space
• Reconnecting with yourself

And everything in between that defines life.

Consciousness is your very experience of life.

What is Higher Consciousness?

Now that you have an understanding of what consciousness is, let’s talk about higher consciousness and higher states of consciousness.

Someone who is at a higher state of consciousness is also at a higher level of awareness. They are more aware of their surroundings, the people around them, their own emotions, the patterns in their lives and their own minds.

To fully appreciate this, let’s look at other states of being and compare and contrast.

Low State of Awareness

Someone who is at a very low state of consciousness or is at a low vibrational state is completely consumed by their ego.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re egotistical, it means that they live their lives at the mercy of their egos and the world around them – this person is constantly reacting to the world.

An animal is driven by nature. It has no choice but to rise when nature has decreed, to eat, to mate, to sleep and to follow the same patterns that nature has decreed for centuries. Throughout this daily routine, the animal is reactive to its environment and the changes therein.

People who are at the mercy of their egos are similarly consumed by events. They are not able to separate themselves from their emotions or the events around them. They are not able to observe anger as it rises, they simply embody it. A thought will arise, and they will take it to be truth.

This is a highly reactive state. These people are mostly on the defense and there is rarely a moment of rest for these people.

Rising State of Awareness

A being who has begun to do the work to raise their state of awareness has likely undergone some painful events and lessons in their lifetime.

They have made the decision to be better rather than bitter and break the cycle of misery.

Here, they start their healing journey by releasing stress and trauma stored in their body.

As they release more traumas and begin to feel safe and present in their body, their level of awareness will rise.

They will be able to identify triggers, notice when their mind is becoming disturbed and remove themselves from situations that are not contributing to their mental health and wellbeing.

These people are generally less reactive and are focussed instead on healing.

High State of Awareness

These people have done the inner work to release much of their traumas and are much more aware of their surroundings, how their words affect others, and their internal state of being.

They generally have stronger boundaries, healthier habits and take better care of themselves than people at low or rising states of awareness.

People at high states of awareness also generally have a certain level of serenity that radiates from their being. Their presence alone will make you feel settled, calm and at ease.

What is the Higher Self?

Your Higher Self is the version of you that exists beneath the ego. When you are at higher states of awareness, the light of your Higher Self can shine through more easily. This is also when your intuition can speak to you more loudly and clearly.

The ego can be considered to be a shell or a mould around your Higher Self.

It has been created and conditioned by the events of your life. It has learned and does its best to keep you safe, emotionally and physically. This can look like becoming defensive when triggered, running away, freezing up or any of the other defense mechanisms that we see in people today.

These mechanisms are learned through childhood, family life and life events and will come up any time an individual feels threatened or unsafe.

Breaking the mould of the ego will allow the light of your Higher Self to shine through.

Releasing the Ego’s Defence Mechanisms leads you to your Higher Self

Life naturally flows from a low state of awareness to a higher one.

We are on a journey of learning that extends from birth to death. The situations that happen to us and the energies that we’re exposed to – beginning from the moment we’re conceived – are meant for us. They are there to teach us the lessons we’ve come to this life to learn.

As you age and go through your life, you will outgrow certain patterns.

Take the example of a soldier returning from war.

While being constantly on alert for gunfire and bombs was useful while on the battlefield, it is no longer useful at home. In fact, it’s a hindrance to normal life.

Your conditioned ego responses (or trauma responses) to day-to-day life can also become a hindrance to the smooth progression of your life. At some point, you will outgrow the situations that these responses were useful in.

It’s at this point that the events in your life will conspire to bring you the people, knowledge and situations you need to allow yourself to release outdated parts of your ego.

This release will ultimately raise your level of awareness and bring you closer to your Higher Self.

Concepts in Action

The goal of healing is to become stronger and more resistant to life’s triggers.

Each and every single one of us is a work in progress. We each have our own traumas and we’re all trying to live our best life despite them.

When you go down the path of healing, you will be invited to sit with your traumas and work through them.

When you succeed, you will no longer be triggered by the events that triggered you in the past.

If you consider a trigger to be something that takes you away from your center and allows your ego responses to take over, then healing enough to become immune to that trigger effectively allows you to maintain your centre despite being in non-ideal scenarios.

This is the definition of being at a high state of awareness.

When you are at a high state of awareness, you’re able to separate yourself from what’s happening around you and remain grounded, calm and centered despite everything.

What does it look like to exist at higher states of consciousness?

When you exist at higher states of awareness, you are calm, centered, peaceful and in alignment.

You accept people and situations as they are and have the strong faith that only the best will come to you.

It is this acceptance and faith that allows you to be a pillar of light and strength for the people around you.

Existing at higher states of awareness means that you have done the work (and continue to do the work) to heal your body, mind and soul.

How does the day-to-day state relate to a state of higher consciousness?

A key point to remember in the journey to heal all your traumas and become a perfected being is that it is okay to be in the world.

To be balanced, you should be able to operate fully in the world while maintaining your connection to your innermost Self.

If you have been working on yourself and your inner journey for some time and find that from time to time, you become entangled in the world, it could be that your prana or life force energy is low. When the prana in your system is low, you are more prone to losing sight of your Self.

If this does happen, know that it’s okay and that when you raise the level of prana in your system, you will once again regain the level of awareness that you were at previously.

The very recognition of entanglement frees you from it and allows you to rise above it.

What stands between you and higher states of consciousness?

This is a bit of a complex question.

It is true to say that nothing stands between you and higher states of consciousness and it’s also true to say that many things stand between you and higher states of consciousness.

The key is how you define yourself.

If you consider yourself to be your body, then there is quite a distance between you and your Self.

If you consider yourself to BE the Self, then there is no distance.

Let’s look at it from the perspective of identifying yourself with the body.

If you consider yourself to be your body bundled with your thought patterns, emotional responses, traumas, habits, ideas, likes and dislikes, then all of these identifications stand between you and your Higher Self.

That’s to say that all the conscious and unconscious programming that comes from your childhood, life events and traumas stand between you and higher states of consciousness.

Yogic scriptures have defined the panchakosha or 5 layers of the Self.

The five layers are:

• Annamaya kosha
• Pranamaya kosha
• Manomaya kosha
• Vignanamaya kosha
• Anandamaya kosha

Or:

• The food layer
• The energy layer
• The mind layer
• The knowledge layer
• The bliss layer

The body resides in the food layer and the Self resides in the bliss layer.

These layers can further be broken down into the body, breath, mind, intellect, memory, ego and Self.

You must work through everything that is stored in the layers between the body and the Self to reach higher states of awareness and higher consciousness.

How to maintain higher states of consciousness

It follows that to become established at higher levels of consciousness, you need to do the inner work to clear your inner space.

If the things that live in your inner space keep your attention drawn outward, then there is no way that you will be able to maintain higher states of awareness, let alone reach higher levels of consciousness.

How to do the inner work to raise your level of consciousness?

So now the question becomes, “How do I do the inner work so that I can raise my level of consciousness?”

This is the right question to ask and if you’ve made it this far into this blog post, you’re part of a very special group of people.

You’re ready to do the work, burn through your karma and reach higher states of awareness and higher consciousness.

Here are some resources to help you do the inner work.

• Free Yoga Class to Reconnect with your Authentic Self – This yoga class will activate your para-sympathetic nervous system to allow the stresses you’re storing in your system to come up to the surface to be processed and released for good.
• The Spiritual Secrets of Clearing your Space Free PDF Guide – This is a more advanced process that can bring up a lot of resistance and attachment. The key is to do this process with awareness as it will tell you what you’re still holding on to and what you may need to work on releasing.
• How to Deeply Reset in 5 Minutes Free PDF Guide – This free PDF shares powerful techniques to deeply reset your nervous system coupled with a free meditation to guide you deep into your inner world.
• The Book of Balance – The Book of Balance is a 4-week program designed to guide you deep into the subtle layers of existence to release limiting beliefs, reconnect with your Higher Self and create the life of your dreams.