A Prescription For Living Deeply

"Transformation doesn't require going to the mountain top," shares Marilyn Mandala Schlitz, Ph.D., co-author of Living Deeply and researcher at the Institute of Noetic Sciences. "Something as mundane as road rage, for instance, is the seed for a moment of compassion."

Schlitz and her colleagues ((Vieten and Amorok) have spent the last 10 years investigating human consciousness and the nature of transformative experience. What is transformation? What are the common triggers? What barriers keep us from having transformative experiences more often? And how can we set the stage for these experiences as well as sustain their impact?

Their research project was inspired in part by Richard Gunther, a businessman and father, who had a significant transformative experience and wanted to understand if there were others like him. "I experienced a profound spiritual awakening...my awakening was this: we are all part of a single entity. I was part of all others and all others were part of me. I soared into this new awareness, losing all sense of myself as individual. There was no me alone, only a universal us."

Seeking to understand the mechanics of Gunther's awakening, and others like him, the team inquired into the triggers for transformation, which can be broad ranging. According to their findings, transformation can be sudden and unexpected, like the kind Gunther experienced while gazing down the dramatic Big Sur coastline on a brilliant, sunny afternoon. It can be triggered by crisis or intense suffering - a brush with death, loss of a loved one, ending of a relationship - that shatters our defenses and opens us to a new perspective. Or transformation can be gradual, taking form in our consciousness over time through the influence of certain experiences or personal practices.

The study defined consciousness transformation as "a profound shift in perspective resulting in long-lasting, life-enhancing changes in the way you experience and relate to yourself, others and the world." It is a shift in perception from the limited, individual 'I' to a consciousness that embraces the larger sense of the collective. "My 'me' becomes a 'we'," says Schlitz. "Even in our diversity we can see the whole."

Physician Rachel Naomi Remen describes witnessing this transformative shift with cancer patients: "There's a moment when the individual steps away from the former life and the former identity and is completely out of control and completely surrenders - and then is reborn with a larger, expanded identity."

So what keeps us from recognizing this expanded reality in our normal, everyday lives?

According to Schlitz, our cognitive science has a term called "inattentional blindness." It is something akin to patterned grooves in the mind that shrink our awareness to a very small percentage of what's actually going on around us. "Our culture primes us in a material, acquisitive, success-oriented worldview. When we form an opinion, it is based on our lifelong brain conditioning. As a result, our attention is focused on only a tiny fraction of the information available to us -- most of what we experience is not conscious."

Here, it seems, science and spirituality see eye-to-eye. What cognitive science recognizes as conditioned cognitive pathways, spiritual traditions have addressed as the limitation of "personal identity" or "ego" or the "false self". Both maintain that if we could see the full truth of our reality moment by moment, without censorship from our culturally and socially conditioned grooves or "blindness," we would experience a wholly new and expanded consciousness.

During their decade-long research, the Living Deeply team investigated how over 2,000 individuals (both masters and laypeople) across a broad range of spiritual traditions set about expanding the mind - how they create the conditions for transformative experience and how they've integrated their experiences in order to live more consciously.

According to Schlitz, it boils down to a few key concepts: Intention, Attention, Repetition and Guidance.

Setting an Intention: One of the primary ingredients of conscious transformation is personal choice - the desire to use the experiences of our everyday lives as opportunities for positive evolution. Clear intention is important because transformative practice isn't always a walk in the park - moments of sublime expansion may be juxtaposed with mundane moments of agitation, boredom or fear of the unknown. By setting a clear intention, while releasing the need for any particular outcome (a concept the Buddhist tradition calls "non-striving"), we can start to bring our whole self to every situation we encounter.

Shift in Attention: Another key component of transformative experience is a fundamental shift in perspective -- from a narrow, personal focus to a larger field of meaning. We begin to see the world through an expanded lens. Personally, I remember a meditation, many years ago, in which this transformative shift occurred for me. In an instant, I realized that every breath, every action, every movement was a sacred offering to collective humanity, a prayer for the peace and happiness of the whole. Pondering my personal well-being gave way to pondering the well-being of the collective body. Through shifts like this, we naturally start to develop deeper ways of attending to the world in which we live.

Repetition, Repetition, Repetition: Whether it's pruning the roses in our garden or a more formal practice like meditation, transformative experience can be enhanced by doing our practice repeatedly with a certain discipline and order. "With repetition, we lay down neural pathways," says Schlitz. "Our brains actually change. We can continue training ourselves to be unhappy, or we can find nurturing affirming ways to shift our intention and attention, then reinforce it through repetition."

Guidance from a Teacher: Finally, a teacher can enhance our own noetic intuition and inner authority. If we wanted to become physically fit, we would hire a personal trainer to expand our skills and confidence to enact a lifelong health regime. If we wanted to become an Olympic athlete, we would insist on having a world-class coach to guide our development. So it is with spiritual or transformational teachers who understand the unique territory of unraveling the conditioned grooves of the mind. A good teacher can gently guide us to our highest potential, supporting us on the path to our own realization.

What is the outcome of all this? What are we transforming into?

"When we integrate the essence of transformation, everything becomes practice. Life is the practice," says Schlitz. "Sacred is not some abstraction. It is every moment, even the challenging moments like when we are in conflict with ourselves or someone else. Every experience becomes an opportunity for deeper awareness and compassion."

Comments

[Vesela]

In addition to the insights and work of Marilyn Mandala Schlitz, I would like to also acknowledge the contributions of Tina Amorok, PsyD, and Cassandra Vieten, PhD, who joined Dr. Schlitz as principal investigators in this research and coauthored LIVING DEEPLY. Ten years in the making . . .

[tiedtothewhippingpost]

There's just too many people in this world to try and figure it out so just pay your taxes and shut the hell up already.

[transendentilist]

What does overpopulation have to do with this??

[SamThornton]

There is a body of thought which identifies transforming experiences and similar religious epiphanies as closely related to the psychotic breaks periodically suffered by schizophrenics. This is based on the similarity of experiences described by those having these moments.

Be careful what you wish for.

[fairwitness]

It's facinating to see that there is a growing spirit of inquiry and so a growing body of knowledge in the West about the nature of human consciousness and its context. That spirit has been at work for millenia in other cultures--there has always been a core, often secret (or at least veiled) teaching about consciousness, its source, and its "transformation". Aldous Huxley wrote a wonderful book called "The Perennial Philosophy" in which the essential story is well documented.

The contemporary teacher Eckhart Tolle is, so far as I've seen, the clearest and most accessible embodiment of the fruits of the transformative process. He stresses that transformation of our human consciousness is a naturally-occurring response to the overall conditions of this planet at this time. He sees it more a matter of "allowing" it to happen, rather than "making" it happen through personal effort. A subtle distinction, yes, but if not observed the process is liable to be hijacked by an ego hungry for more and greater things and experiences. As Stephen Levine puts it, "The ego wants to be present at its own funeral."

Since it's impossible to conceptualize adequately what consciousness is and what it might be transforming toward, a mind that is very conditioned ( and so "egoic"--narrowly focused on the imaginary "I") should be very careful fixing on any "intention" in particular--the idea of "transformation" can easily be hijacked by the ego and made into a project to actually enlarge and fortify the "I". And also the effort one musters toward personal transformation can serve to merely reinforce that egoic "I" concept. On the other hand, the failure of the ego's projects for personal improvement serve as powerful lessons in just what it is--and isn't--and where it is, its relationship to--or, rather, identity with--the whole of Being. And so it learns and, in spite of itself, it "transforms" beyond itself throught he sheer grace of what is, in many contexts, called "realization". Effort, as we usually think of it, is a hindrance more than a help, in that it points away from the truth of the ever-present "Now", the reality of which is never separate from our true being.

The real key seems to be "attention­"--finding out where it is at any given time, finding out how it operates to distract us from reality, and seeing that attention itself IS our true, living being. As Ken Wilber phrases it, we are "Always Already" the embodiment of Being as it manifests at this particular time and place, and so, with attention here and now, there is no need for "transformation" as such. Stephen Levine says, "What we are looking for is...What is looking!"

Good news, no?

[transendentilist]

Don't follow so-called spiritual leaders. The best way to transform one's self is to become familiar with differing religions, philosophies, to get a grasp of the concept of the total harmony that exists within all things. Many religions, if not all, are trying to reach the same end, through different means. I tend to regard philosophers more than religions. There is great stuff out there. R.W. Emerson, and Lao Tsu, are excellent examples.