Becoming Conscious Collection: Table of Contents
Explore our collection of researches, field notes, perspectives, and in-depth explorations of conscious experience.
Transformative Courses for Intentional Evolution
Courses for intentional evolution, based on scientific approaches to psychological development: “Generating Transformative Change”, by Pacific Integral (Terri O’Fallon); “45 Days to Awakening Challenge” and “Finders Course”, by Jeffery Martin; “Leadership Maturity Coaching”, by Vertical Development Academy (Susanne Cook-Greuter).
The Emergence of Intentional Evolutionaries
Across the planet individuals are emerging who are choosing to dedicate their lives to consciously advancing the evolutionary process. They see that their lives are an important part of the great evolutionary process that has produced the universe and the life within it. They realise that they have a significant role to play in its future evolution.
A Perspective on Autism, Deep Connection, and Pre-Conscious Awareness
This research is based on our field notes and observations in the last five years, as we tested some methods to connect better with the individuals on the autism spectrum, and support their development. Our observations show that a deep connection style is already used by some therapists and family members of individuals on the autism spectrum, and those who seem to use this method, along with the classical approach, consistently produce excellent results, and that encouraged us to advance on this path and study the underlying mechanisms.
Dreamwork Psychology – Online Course in 9 Steps
Learn to explore your dreams and work with your unconscious mind. The course is a simplified and easy-to-use version of the dreamwork psychology methodology developed by Strephon Kaplan-Williams, designed to be used by everyone interested in exploring their dreams.
This course is provided for free in partnership with dreamwork-psychology.com.
Kundalini Activation: The Downside of Bliss
Imagine being caught in a condition in which pleasure is no longer pleasurable because one is buzzed out of one’s tree on a permanent high. This can be the state we find ourselves in, at the tail end of a kundalini awakening when endorphins levels are permanently elevated.
Enlightenment’s Evil Twin. Exploring the Shadow Side of Meditation
The benefits of mindfulness meditation have very quickly become one of the good-news mental health stories of our time. But meditation also has a shadowy seam. Is there a link between some forms of mental illness and the freedom promised at the heart of meditation?
Inner Growth Challenges: Spiritually Transformative Experiences
These guidelines are adapted from the “Cultural competency guidelines for professionals working with clients who report issues related to their Spiritually Transformative Experiences”, a document developed by American Center for the Integration of Spiritually Transformative Experiences.
What It Feels Like to Change?
What it feels like when I change? What it feels like when other people change? Even if inner transformation is something that we intentionally seek out, we still have to bear it. We have to bear when it happens and when it doesn’t. We have to bear what shape it takes. We have to bear its speed – fast, slow, or something in between.
The Ball of Light: A Story of Spiritual Emergence
Spiritual emergencies are moments of messy awakening, crises of ego dissolution and rebirth that are often misunderstood and unskillfully managed by psychiatry. This life experience was published in “Breaking Open: Finding a Way Through Spiritual Emergencies”, a collection of 16 spiritual emergence stories edited by Jules Evans and Tim Read (May, 2020).
Whales Are People Too
The true promise of the Cetacean Nation will only be realized to the extent that we, as a species, can recognize we’re surrounded by a rainbow of exotic cultures and narratives. We’re invited to be participating members in the community of nature, connected as though by invisible lines of echolocation to all these other “persons” on our planetary home.
Sharing Awareness Consciously Together
This simple way of being together has reliably allowed anyone interested to experience a mirror-like ‘awakeness’ with others inside of 90 minutes.
Give it a try for free and you will see. Experience gradually establishes a habit that becomes your new normal. This can take many years. Still, it is a true path to a pathless Peace and unconditioned Love which is ripe to be shared by All.
When I Was Thirty-Two. An Experience of Collective Consciousness
“I unmistakably realized from this experience I was wholly responsible for ending fear in relationship. That how awake I am is more important than anything else I might do or say.”
The Evolutionary Awareness in a Planetary Society Based on Cooperation
Evolutionary awareness shows us that developing the psychological skills needed to transcend our social and biological past is part of an evolutionary event of great significance on this planet. And it makes us aware that our growing evolutionary awareness is itself an important part of the unfolding of this evolutionary event.
Attention to Attention: An Introduction to Attention Styles, Open Focus and Object-Less Imagery
Attention to attention and attention training represent an experiential-subjective and neurofeedback-objective voyage through an uncharted and vast awareness-space, an awareness-space limited only by walls of attentional bias and habit. Never did a brighter ray of promise light our way to human optimization and conscious evolution than does practicing and researching the characteristics of attention and attention to attention.
Psychology of Becoming Conscious I: Inner Growth Journeys
This is a collection of research notes about Growing Up journeys. I use an experience-based terminology to describe the developmental dynamics related to Self-identity, and I try to speak directly to the lived experience, without using complex linguistic frameworks, such as “bottom-up theory” or “phenomenological approach”.
Psychology of Becoming Conscious II: Awakening Journeys
The Awakening Journeys is an in-depth psychological approach to the process of becoming conscious, which incorporates various types of Waking Up experiences into a wider psychological perspective.
Psychology of Becoming Conscious III: Patterns of Transformation
I have described here some of the processes and the patterns of inner transformation, which I have researched and observed both in myself and in other people with whom I have connected. Some of these patterns are already mentioned by other researchers on human development (Terri O’Fallon and Susanne Cook-Greuter), or they have been mentioned in some spiritual texts (e.g. Satprem).
Psychology of Becoming Conscious IV: Psychological Explanations of Inner Growth Challenges that are Currently Labeled as Psychiatric Conditions
Understanding what really happens inside the experience labeled as “delusion” may be useful for psychiatrists and psychologists. Eleven experiences that are currently labeled as delusions are explained, including an 8-step method to get out of delusions.
John Rowan’s Interview About Subtle, Causal and Non-Dual Layers of Conscious Experience (video)
In this interview by Iain McNay on Conscious TV, John Rowan tells his fascinating personal history, explores the Subtle, Causal and Non-Dual layers of conscious experience, and describes the differences between these layers using experiences from his life.
Kundalini Awakening: Pitfalls on the Path
Kundalini and our beliefs about God and spirituality are not important. What is of ultimate value to us is Life, love and relationship. If our kundalini and our beliefs are interfering with our Life, love and relationship then we must do everything within our power of awareness to rectify this situation.
The Promise and Peril of Spiritual Belief
When it comes to the cosmic weird stuff, I’m learning it may be better to say less and just be as present as possible. Reality will do its thing regardless.
Designing Computer Games That Awaken
Can computer games be designed to produce the same kinds of effects as meditation? Are computer games able to motivate and guide the kinds of practices that awaken human beings? Does the ability of computer games to overlay real life give them the potential to motivate the practices needed to awaken us in the midst of ordinary life? This article explores the significant potential of computer games and related media to develop humanity and advance the collective evolutionary process.
The Anxiety of the Long-Distance Meditator
“Stream entry,” is a Buddhist term for initial enlightenment — a shift in perspective where the practitioners’ mind flips inside-out, and for a split-second recognizes its own inseparability from the rest of the natural world.
Entheogenic Insights I: Psychology of DMT/Ayahuasca Experience
The Psychology of the DMT/Ayahuasca experience is an experiential harmonics theory, based on a vibrational view of subjective experience (generated either by exogenous plants or endogenous processes). Some of the principles listed here are well-known facts, but the idea was to include only the facts that are necessary and sufficient to make sense of the DMT experience.
Entheogenic Insights II: Some Methods to Access and Consciously Use “Psychedelic Visions”, Without Exogenous Psychedelics
This is a manifesto for an active attitude toward psychedelic experiences. The usual “safe” way is to prepare the set and the setting, then to let go, and let the plants do the work. My view is that we can consciously co-participate in the psychedelic experience flow, while we maintain a flexible-fluidic configuration. We can be “the shaman” and “the journeyer”, simultaneously.
Entheogenic Insights III: Depth Perception, Space Awareness, and Other Visual Explorations
These explorations started as a result of entheogenic experiences that showed me new perceptual ways of connecting with reality. I like to think of this research as a tribute to Patanjali and the wisdom of Yoga Sutras.
Plant Medicine and Meditation
These days it seems everyone is into ayahuasca, an indigenous plant medicine that has become the focus of a fledgling tourism industry in greater Amazonia.
Some Collective Perspectives from the CQ-i Assessment
Do you think that the world is fair to everyone? Have you experienced moments when you felt like you had no ego? See what 1312 individuals answered to these inquiries and other 12 questions about their inner experience.
Witnessing awareness and modes of cognitive awareness
Introducing a new terminological framework for the psychological assessment of witnessing awareness experiences, based on a rational perspective and the first-person reports of both Eastern and Western practitioners.
Among the Nonduals
Proponents of nonduality tell us that we take a leap of faith and actually live our lives from the truth of direct experience, eventually the age old barrier between inside and out will erode.
Interview with Leading DMT Researcher Dr. Jimo Borjigin
If Dr. Rick Strassman can be considered the “King” of DMT research based on his studies from the early 1990’s and wildly popular book “DMT: The Spirit Molecule”… Dr. Borjigin can be considered the “Queen” based on her extremely important work in the field since 2012.
DMT, Microtubules, Kundalini and Witnessing Energy Awareness – Research Hypotheses
“It may be that the DMT (N,N-Dimethyltryptamin) is enhancing the resonance-induced conductance in single microtubules, a process that would be inhibited by anesthetic gases”.