Tuning into Higher States of Consciousness to Live Your Life Mission

Fulfilling your life’s mission is perhaps one of the most daring goals you could ever achieve. It takes a lot of effort and dedication to pursue your dreams and live life on your terms.

But before you embark on this wonderful journey, you need to gain a profound understanding of yourself. You need to look beyond material gains and explore the spiritual nature of your being.

One of the ways in which you can discover your true purpose and live your life mission is by tuning into higher states of consciousness. Through meditation, yoga, and visualization exercises, you can explore the depths of your consciousness and gain a clear perspective on who you are and what you want to achieve in this life.

What is consciousness?

Human consciousness is a controversial topic. Throughout the years, countless philosophers, great thinkers, spiritual leaders, and researchers have tried to explain this phenomenon.

In fact, every person who’s interested in self-discovery and self-growth has probably contemplated the mysteries of consciousness. If you are one of them, you probably know how difficult it is to grasp this concept in all its complexity.

Consciousness is our spiritual mentor, a guide that helps us go through certain crucial stages and find our real purpose in life. It is also the moral compass that draws the line between ‘good’ and ‘bad,’ based on the values and principles we choose to adopt. It tells us what to do and how to do it, by taking into account some factors that can influence our path such as the risks to which we expose ourselves and the consequences that result from our actions and decisions.

From a psychological perspective, human consciousness is like a binding agent, bringing all our mental processes together to form what we call the human experience. Thanks to this amazing phenomenon, we can practice self-awareness and thus understand the way in which thoughts generate decisions which later materialize into actions. In short, consciousness gives us the opportunity to separate ourselves from what we think, feel or do and adopt an ‘outside-in’ perspective on our life. 

Consciousness represents the source of our spiritual energy and the voice of our soul. It is the primary ingredient in every thought, emotion, sensation, and decision that trigger and influence our actions. 

Although consciousness research is slow – mainly due to the difficulties scientists encounter when trying to observe and measure this phenomenon – there are some interesting studies which can give us a glimpse into the inner workings of human consciousness.

An older article on transcendental meditation explains how meditative practices can help us gain a better understanding of human consciousness. As Maharishi Mahesh Yoga states:

The process of thinking starts from the deepest, most refined level of consciousness and becomes grosser as it develops. Eventually, it becomes gross enough to be perceived on the surface level of consciousness, the ordinary level of thinking. An analogy will clarify the principle. A thought starts from de deepest level of consciousness, from the deepest level of the ocean of mind, as a bubble starts at the bottom of the sea. As the bubble rises, it gradually becomes bigger.

It appears there’s much more to our existence than the thoughts that go through our head, the emotions we experience, and the actions we take. Underneath the surface of our consciousness, there’s an entire unexplored universe that transcendental meditation can help us access.

Overall, it appears that practices such as hypnosis, or meditation can facilitate our access to higher states of consciousness. 

Individual and collective consciousness

Since consciousness is a complex phenomenon that involves many aspects of human experience, it’s almost impossible to distill it into a straightforward definition.

Nevertheless, we’re going to try and explain it by highlighting its essential elements.

In broad lines, human consciousness represents the expression of our inner self. It is the filter through which we interpret reality. Without consciousness, we would be unable to exercise self-awareness or visualize the outcomes of our actions.

In a way, we could argue that consciousness is what brings together our physical, mental, and spiritual aspects. It is what makes us feel whole and ‘complete.’   

No matter how divided the world may seem and how many differences people can see between themselves and others, the undeniable truth about human beings is that they have a lot in common with the other inhabitants of the planet.

Linked to a common destiny, we all play a part in forming the collective body of all conscious life on this living planet. In other words, consciousness is not only individual but also collective. That’s why all cultures, societies, and religions share common elements. That’s why people from different parts of the world share common behaviors. For example, values such as honesty, love, or bravery were (and still are) considered worthy of respect by most civilizations.

Collective consciousness: Tapping into the universal knowledge

As the name suggests, collective consciousness encompasses the shared experience of all the individuals. It represents the sum of every mind and soul that has existed on this planet, united in one form, with the aim of both individual and collective growth. 

We all share an ancestral connection. In fact, everything in this universe is interconnected at levels we can’t even begin to imagine.

And there are many examples which could explain collective consciousness: people in a community thinking the same things as others elsewhere, similarities between various religious approaches, people who spend a lot of time together and start to emulate the same ideas, and the list goes on.

One of the first emblematic figures who took an interest in this fascinating connection between human beings was Carl Gustav Jung, one of the founders of psychoanalysis.

He called it ‘collective unconscious,’ a product of phylogenetic acquisition. This concept embodies not the individual experience, but the experience of the species.

Archetypes make up the structure of the collective unconscious – they are innate constructs that represent specific human situations and behaviors. For example, archetypes can appear in the form of symbols (the Christian cross), literary themes (love, death, good vs. evil), parental figures (mother, father) and the list goes on. As you can see, these archetypes can dictate the same actions and behavioral patterns regardless of the culture they appear in. A mother’s protective behavior towards her child will be relatively the same in all cultures and religions.

In a nutshell, Jung’s collective unconscious and archetypes represent the first attempt to provide a clear explanation for the collective consciousness that connects us all.

Unfortunately, for many of us, the idea of two levels of consciousness (individual and collective) might be a bit confusing. How can we be both individual and collective beings?

Perhaps an analogy will simplify things.

Imagine the universal consciousness as one giant structure with each brick representing a living being. The collective consciousness is the mortal keeping all the bricks together, forming one solid and stable structure. In other words, the collective consciousness is what keeps us connected to each other – one mind, one soul. 

Another great example of how knowledge preserved and shared as a collective good is the Upanishads. These sacred Sanskrit texts contain the core philosophical and religious principles of Hinduism, a religion practiced by almost 1 billion people from around the world.

The Upanishads teach us that the way to attain liberation is to realize that ones true self (Atman) your individual consciousness is identical and connected with (Brahman) the universal principle, the ultimate reality in the entire universe.

By studying these sacred texts, we can tap into the collective knowledge of our civilization, discovering ways to achieve mental, emotional, and spiritual balance.

All and all, by tuning into higher states of consciousness, we gain a better understanding of our individual consciousness and tap into the unlimited resources of the collective and universal consciousness. 

The miracle of human consciousness

The most amazing thing about human consciousness – be it individual or collective – is that even though we don’t have tools to measure and quantify it, we can experience it on a subjective level. But to delve into our individual and collective consciousness, we need to adopt a different mindset.

We need to open ourselves to new experiences and allow our mind to search beyond the observable reality. We need to immerse ourselves in a process of self-discovery that will eventually take us to higher states of consciousness.

By exploring your consciousness, you can gain profound insights about who you are, not just to yourself, but to the world. In other words, you get a chance to look at yourself from a global perspective.

Your consciousness is the best place to start looking for your life’s mission and discover how you could positively impact the rest of the world.

But our individual consciousness is not entirely ‘individual.’ Part of it represents the collective knowledge of our species, a vast reservoir of insights, impulses, and instincts that may help you find a higher purpose and achieve your life’s mission. 

Overall, our individual and collective consciousness represent an expression of the spiritual nature that characterizes each one of us. This is the reason why spiritual leaders and scholars have always sought ways to understand its inner workings in hopes of gaining access to it.

Meditating into a higher state of consciousness

Meditation is essentially a simple process through which we shift our attention from the outside towards the inside. It involves awareness without judgment. More precisely, it means to be in a state of relaxation, but fully aware of our reality and our thoughts, without evaluating or censoring them.

Current research indicates that seasoned meditators may be able to self-induce short-term and long-term neural changes. More specifically, long-term meditators can self-induce gamma waves, which are associated with insight and high-level information processing.

Through meditation, you can achieve a higher state of consciousness where you will find valuable insights about yourself and the world around you.

Developing a Clear Vision for Your Life Mission by 

Tuning into the Higher States of Consciousness

Higher states of consciousness that we achieve through hypnotic trance, meditation, yoga, and other similar techniques, offer us a glimpse into our most authentic self.

And by understanding who we are and what our real purpose is, we can start designing our life’s mission and live according to our core values.

When we begin to develop self-awareness; when we become mindful of how we interact with others (and the world in general); when we realize the powerful impact of our words, decisions, and actions, we finally experience that wonderful feeling of connectedness with the world that transcends us beyond individuality and into the realm of collective consciousness.

Once you let yourself be guided by your view of the world, you will no longer be constrained by other people’s demands and objections.

Once you meditate your way into higher states of consciousness, your perspective will change dramatically.

Once you discover the knowledge of the universal consciousness, you will begin to live your life’s mission.

Human consciousness holds the answers to our mind’s greatest dilemmas.