Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Along your path of awakening, there are many, many tools that you can use that will aid in your awareness and your expansion, your awareness of your essential nature, your awareness that you are not separate, but you are one. You are part of the whole. You are everything.
[00:00:21] One of the main tools that people use is meditation. So today I want to share with you what may very well be a new perspective on the tool of meditation and how there are actually levels of this tool. And depending on your current level of awareness and consciousness, you may be using this tool at a different level. And these levels aren't necessarily always sequential. Sometimes, even if you have a very broad level of awareness and you know the truth and you've experienced glimpses and you feel yourself in that oneness state, quite frequently, you may at times change levels. And that's very, very normal. That is the human experience.
[00:01:18] So I want to go through the different levels that I have discovered on my own path to awakening and that I've essentially gleaned from listening to many masters on the path of awakening speak to as well, although I don't know that I've heard anyone speak to it quite like I will today. So let's dive into it. What is the four levels, or stages, if you will, of meditation and how your experience of meditation can vastly change as you move through these levels. So level one of the uses of meditation is someone that is new to a awakening journey, a meditation journey, a personal transformation journey, and they are just opening up to the tool of meditation. Level one of meditation use is really about just learning the technique of meditation, of sitting still with yourself, of returning to the breath. There are so many good apps out there that can get you acquainted with just the practice itself of meditating. Headspace, for instance, is coming to mind. Insight Timer, of course, has many, many meditations. A lot of these meditations will just introduce you to what is it like to sit still? What is it like to feel my breath moving in and out of me? How can I just be present with this moment here and now? Now, for many people, when they first start meditating, that is a very difficult thing, because in the world, we are not taught to slow down and be still, return to our breath, return to our body, return to the present. And so it can feel really itchy and difficult at first. To a lot of new meditators, that is a totally normal experience. In level one, the main goal is to narrow your focus, because as we move throughout our days, our focus is so wide and vast, we're focusing on a million things at once. We're popping from here to here to here in our thoughts and in our life. And so the purpose of kind of level one meditation is to narrow our focus down to just one thing. And what that does is it calms us down, it regulates our nervous system, it helps to decrease our activity in our default mode network, which is a collection of areas of the brain that are generally over activated. And it helps us to essentially just slow down and regulate. Examples of a level one technique would be transcendental meditation, where you have perhaps like a mantra or a saying that you repeat again and again. And as you just slowly repeat this, you are narrowing your focus in and down to this one thing. And what that helps you to do is to click out of your patterns. It helps you to slow down the habitual, automatic patterns and behaviors that you most likely have that you don't realize that you have. It helps to regulate your nervous system. It just helps you to come home to yourself a little bit. So transcendental meditation, where you are repeating a mantra just very slowly again and again, is an example of this. Another example of this is coming back to your breath and using your breath as a point of focus throughout this level one practice. And as I said, these aren't, these levels aren't necessarily like, once you transcend a level, you never come back to it. Very experienced meditators will return to this level one practice frequently. And sometimes what you can do is you can drop into like a level one practice. And then if you are an experienced meditator, it will quickly elevate you up through the levels during your actual sit or meditation practice. The overall, I would say goal of level one is to start to disconnect from your automatic behaviors, from your dysregulated nervous system, from your sense of, in a way, getting lost in the world. When we are moving through the world and we haven't done a lot of self reflection, we tend to get lost. We are just automatically responding to everything around us. And so level one helps us to turn away from the world and turn towards kind of ourselves and go inward and recognize that we don't have to get totally lost in the world and in our patterns. There is a way to return to ourselves, to connect, to anchor to something else that resides within.
[00:06:06] And this has all sorts of benefits. I mean, we can start to feel better, we can start to feel more calm, we can start to have more focus, we can actually be more efficient throughout our days. It starts to help us to control our reactive responses more. We start to become more aware of our breath and our body. Sometimes during meditation, interestingly, people can become more aware of their breath and their body. Or actually, if they feel really unsafe in their body, meditation will actually click them out of their body. And that's why we want to be a little bit careful with the way we use meditation. If somebody is extremely dysregulated and has a significant history of trauma, sometimes meditation is actually not the best path for them to start with because they do tend to just dissociate. So if you ever find that you're in a meditative practice and then you have to, like, quote, come back to your body, or you are being led by a meditation teacher and they say, okay, come back to your body, I would be cautious of that because the goal of meditation, I guess I would just say, is not to leave the body unless that is your exact intended goal. But if you have a history of being dysregulated or you have a history of trauma and not feeling safe in your body, or being overwhelmed by emotions, or actually just being a little bit kind of numb and shut down, you wanna be cautious about your meditation techniques. And this is a little bit of a divergence from what I was talking about with just the level one practice. But I do feel like it's pertinent to say, if you are a new meditator, to just be really aware that whenever we practice something again and again, we are wiring that pat pattern more deeply into our mind and our body. So if you have a pattern of dissociating going up and out of your body, you want to be cautious that you're not sitting down and meditating and continuously leaving your body, because you are then training yourself again and again and again with all of your meditating, that it's actually not safe to be in your body. So if that is in fact the case for you, then one thing you may want to try is feeling your body, putting your hands on your body while you meditate, putting some light pressure on your body, just making sure that you're not actually fully leaving your body. And then you also want to do some nervous system regulation practices.
[00:08:31] Perhaps find a somatic experiencing practitioner to work with or a therapist that has training with the nervous system. I also have a course on healing your nervous system and coming back into your body and feeling your emotions and all of that. You can find that course@the transformationschool.com. that course is called Transform Foundations. But you just wanna be cautious about repeating a meditation practice if you are leaving your body. Um, sometimes, if you are a very embodied person, meaning, like, you're not ever dissociated and you feel very, very deeply connected to your body. You may have a practice where you do wanna kind of disconnect and leave your body for various reasons. And that is a different thing. But for the majority of people, this is one thing that I guess I would say if you're at that level one stage or you're thinking about getting into meditating, to just be cautious and aware of. Of. Ok, to make sure as I'm sitting down and doing my meditation practice, I'm not totally dissociating from my body. Because in the long term, that will not benefit you. So as a little recap here of Level 1 meditation, the goal of Level 1 meditation is to kind of turn away from the world and turn towards yourself and to find a place kind of within that feels like an anchor point or it feels like home. And generally we are cultivating a more narrow band of focus in Level one meditation, where we are focusing in on one thing, whether that be returning to your breath or a mantra, something of that nature. And that helps to regulate us. It helps to slow us down, it helps us to decrease activity in the default mode network, and it helps us to start to disconnect from our sense of being a little bit lost in our reactivity and our patterns and our unconscious behaviors. You can't generally ascend up the levels if you don't go through level one at some juncture. So everyone must pass through this level one stage.
[00:10:31] For some, it goes faster than others. And like I said, even very experienced meditators or people who live the large bulk of their lives in an awakened state will return to Level one practices here and there. Level two meditation is a form of meditation where you can start to truly disconnect from, I would say, the character in the play.
[00:10:54] So there is now a shifting into the observer and the witness. So if you've ever meditated with someone that has guided you that has said, like, okay, now be the observer, the idea behind that is that you can start to separate from your separate sense of self from the character in the play. And you can in a way kind of fall back and it's like you're watching yourself. You're able to just witness yourself. And this has enormous benefit because when you can start to observe yourself from a higher perspective in Level two, you start to become aware that there is more than just you that you seem to have a connection with and that more than just you, that you are connected to you are able to kind of shift into that state of bigness, of oneness, and then observe your smaller self in that state. So in a way, this truly is, if you can imagine, it's like your kind of higher self, let's say, your soul or your conscious awareness can sort of step back and then start to observe. Like, oh, this character in this play, you know, if it were me witnessing myself, I would be able to step back as the observer and then just witness Stephanie and witness how she's sitting here meditating. Witness how she is working so hard in her life to do this or that and how this happened to her. But I'm able to really observe things as though I'm just from the outside looking in a little bit. And that separation of realizing that you're more than just the character in the play or the actor in the movie can be extremely beneficial and in a way, very nourishing and regulating and soothing. Because even though you may not be able to put words around it, you will really feel this vastness and this sense of safety when you shift out of the kind of separate person into the bigger perspective of the, you know, witness or the observer. So when you can start to do that in a meditative practice. And sometimes if you're new to meditation or you've been meditating for a while, this will just happen spontaneously for you at some juncture, especially if you're being guided, someone that knows how to facilitate that, you can shift into kind of that witness or observer perspective. And then all of a sudden, it's like you're clicking into something bigger. And you're like, whoa, I'm not just that person. There's something bigger than I'm able to kind of fall back into and witness. And oftentimes when you click into this space, you will be overcome with peace. And if you go really deeply into this space, you may experience a kind of a silence there and a pervasive peace that will overcome. And maybe thoughts start to subside, and you just fall. It's like you fall into something very vast and beautiful and wide and expansive. And there's a lot of peace there. And from that space, you're able to observe yourself. You're able to witness yourself. A lot of people, when they meditate, they will kind of feel like they had a good meditation practice. If they sit down, they start with a level one practice of really narrowing in their focus on their breath or on a mantra. And then they're able to shift back into that observer. And they start to feel that pervasive peace and a silence befalls them. And it's like all of a sudden, you know, they fall into a deep regulated state with some heart coherence and a shift in brain waves from the dysregulated beta waves into potentially a more like alpha wave or theta brainwave state. And everything kind of shifts in your body. And when you leave a practice after reaching that level two state, you will often feel very nourished and a lot more just at peace and regulated. And hopefully you're clear when I use the word regulated. What I mean is that your nervous system is actually regulated. So our nervous system can be dysregulated or it can be regulated. When we're in a dysregulated state, we're often overthinking. There are tense emotions in our body. Our body itself is often tense, or we may even feel a little bit disconnected and shut down. A regulated state is when we feel very connected. We feel hopeful, we have energy. Things feel like they're flowing in our body and in our life. We have solutions for things. We don't feel stuck. That's a very regulated state versus the dysregulated state of feeling activated or stuck or shut down. So after a really nice deep level two meditation practice, we will often feel like we are connected and we are hopeful. We have solutions, we have energy, and we're ready to kind of move out into the world in a really connected way.
[00:16:02] Now level three is really where we finally reach this awakened state. And if you have not listened to my episode titled First Glimpse, I would highly recommend that you listen to that, because I'm going to be referencing it now. When people talk about a glimpse, what they're talking about is how they have glimpsed our essential true nature, how they have glimpsed the actual embodied state of oneness, where they have slipped into a felt sense within their body of a knowing and a felt sense of a feeling of, oh, my gosh, I am one, I am everything, and you will, I would say in 99% of cases, know if you have experienced the state because it is one of. Of in general, real ecstasy and a.
[00:16:56] A sort of sudden realization and knowing that you are everything. And again, if you don't know what I'm talking about when I talk about this state or this glimpse, I would highly recommend that you listen to my episode called First Glimpse of this podcast, because I go deep into my experience of my own first glimpse. Now, interestingly, my first glimpse was not while meditating. And a lot of people experience these Glimpses of oneness, not while meditating. In fact, for me, a large majority of the initial, I would say dozen times where I fell into this state. Some, this state lasted 20 minutes, some several days, up to a week or two of just a consistent kind of perpetual state of, of this oneness state. For me, for the first several years that this was occurring, it actually generally didn't happen while I was meditating. However, since I have been able to re access this state many times over now, I can now fall into it while meditating. So level three of the tool of meditation, and this is the ultimate purpose of meditation. Your level one and level two are not stopping points. Like, you don't stop when you just get really good at level one. You don't stop when you're like, okay, I'm really good at coming back to the breath and coming back to my mantra, and that's it. That's my meditation practice. That's the only purpose. No, your, your goal then is to ultimately reach level three. So same as level two. If you're very good at like falling back into the witness or the observer perspective, that's amazing. But the ultimate goal is to reach level three and then ultimately level four, which we'll get to in a second. Level three is when the observer and the one being observed are no longer separate, but they dissolve back into one.
[00:18:50] So in level two, you might be in a meditation practice. You shift back into the observer. You feel this deep kind of pervasive peace, and you're able to kind of witness yourself. If you shift from level two to level three, what happens is suddenly you are no longer separate from you just observing yourself. You are both the observer and the one being observed. And your essence, your sense of self suddenly ripples out and you actually have a felt sense in your body that you are one with everything. You are the meditation pillow that you are sitting on. You are the room that you are in. You are the air that you breathe. You are the sun outside. You are the moon, you are the trees, you are the birds. You are everyone and everything.
[00:19:36] And this is very easy cognitively, maybe understand, like we can, we can say, like, okay, yeah, I know that I'm not separate. I know that I'm one with everything. It's very, very, very different, like to an exponential degree, to know that versus feel it in your body. Because when you feel it in your body, it is truly a life changing experience. And this is why when people have these glimpses or they have these moments of sudden realization and awakening, they talk about it because it is, it is life changing to experience that state of oneness. And that is your original nature. Your original nature, meaning that is the state that it is who you truly are is this oneness is everyone and everything.
[00:20:26] And it is our world and our sense of separation and all of our programs and our conditionings that causes us to forget that and then think that we are separate. So when you drop into a level three meditation practice, what happens is you become one with everyone and everything. Now, let me tell you a little bit about what happens to me when that occurs. For instance, this morning I sat down on my meditation pillow and I started with a level one practice. I just started breathing in and out and I focused my attention on my breath, breath. And then I would say within maybe five minutes, I kind of shifted a little bit into an observer where I was able to observe myself. And then I would say within 30 seconds of that, I shifted out into a level three where I suddenly felt myself as everyone and everything. And immediately when that happened, my entire body relaxed. The way I was breathing completely changed. And a smile came across my face and I felt a huge amount of love in my heart.
[00:21:34] And oftentimes when this has happened to me, which now happens to me very frequently, my eyes will fill up with tears and I will just feel an ecstasy and inhalation. Now, you do not need to necessarily feel that level of ecstasy inhalation. When you sense yourself as everyone and everything, it varies. It will vary. Like sometimes you may just sense yourself as everyone and everything, and you may feel really regulated and you may feel really at peace, and there may almost be like a curiosity there. Like you're just looking around and you can't believe it's happening. And oh my gosh, I am that tree. I am. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm describing this as though there's thought. But when we actually reach this level three state, there's actually generally not thought.
[00:22:21] And if there is thought, it's like you don't attach to it. You're just watching it. But it's not a watching it as though you are the observer. And. And you're just observing this thought that's separate from you. You actually know that that thought is a part of you, but it doesn't define you. And so you're just letting it rise and fall away. And you're just experiencing everything as it's just literally moving through you and emerging out of the vast space of oneness that you are.
[00:22:51] It's very difficult to describe the level three State in words.
[00:22:57] I'm doing my best here, but it is. It is really a beautiful state beyond words, so it can be difficult to articulate. With that said, you know, I have to say that I've heard a lot of people describe it quite well and that it was really helpful for me when I heard other teachers describe it when I was trying to reach this level three state. Now, once I, for instance, like this morning once I dropped into kind of like a level three state of. Of awareness, and I felt myself as everyone and everything. Like, my body was just totally relaxed and my breath was moving and it was so organic, and I was just so full of love, and there was such an ease and there was no thinking, and I just stayed in that place. Now, sometimes, you know you're going to experience that level three state, and then maybe all of a sudden a thought will come in and then you'll realize, whoa, I've clicked out of level three. And maybe you're back at level one and you're thinking, and then you just come back to your breath, breath. Maybe you shift into the level two observer, and then you shift back out into one with everything as the level three state. Now, when you are in this level three state, it's beautiful because in that state, you literally have zero problems. You just suddenly realize in that state that life is exactly as it is supposed to be, that consciousness is alive and moving, and that nothing is out of place. Everything has an order, everything has a flow to it. All of your solutions are coming to you exactly as they should. The goal with meditation, the ultimate goal of meditation is to shift into this Level 3 state of total connectivity, of oneness, of being one with the dao, and then being able to open your eyes and maintain that state and moving out into the world in that state, that is the ultimate goal of meditation, is to then move out into the world from a place of love, from a place of oneness and of unity. Because when you are love, when you are aware of your infinite nature, of your essential self, and you're moving in the world, everything you do is going to be from a place of love, from a place of creativity. You're going to be spreading peace and joy through the world. And that is stage four. Stage four is now being able to come up off the meditation pillow and staying in a level three state with your eyes open. That is stage four, level four, where you can move into the world now from a place of unity, consciousness. Now, this is. This is the work of a lifetime. If you hear amazing teachers in the world that live the majority of their lives in a more awakened state at this juncture, people like, like Byron Katie, Rupert Spira, teachers like this, where they have a real anchor point in oneness. They will say that for the most part, it took some effort. Now, let me, Let me caveat this. So someone like Eckhart Tolle or Byron Katie, they had kind of a glimpse experience, and from that glimpse experience, they did not fall out of oneness. If, if I'm correct in their stories, based on what I've heard them talk about, it sounds to me like what has happened with Byron Katie and Eckhart Tolle is that they had a glimpse experience where they felt themselves as everyone and everything, this level three meditation. And they, in a way, never really left that state. They had a spontaneous awakening. Now, the majority of the world, 99.9999% of us, that doesn't happen. We will reach these glimpsed states, and then we will kind of fall out of them. And then our work towards awakening, towards becoming awakened, is to continuously come back to those glimpsed states and then try to shift into, like, a level four state of living from there. Okay? Maintaining that sense of unity, consciousness and awareness in a lived state. And this is something that Rupert Spira has done and is why he is my, One of my favorite spiritual teachers, because he has done the work to do that, and that is the work of a lifetime. So once you have glimpsed your essential nature, your original nature, oneness. And by the way, Henry Schucman is another example of a teacher that has done this brilliantly as well. And he's been on all sorts of podcasts, including, like, the Tim Ferriss podcast, and he has a very, very beautiful book. Both of them have amazing books that are very helpful. But once you've reached level three, you want to start practicing, okay? How can I maintain the state of connectivity, of universal oneness, of being aware of my original nature and moving into the world while maintaining that connection, you know, with the dao, with. With life force, with the awareness of who I really am and not get lost in the drama. Again, not get lost in. I am the character of the story. And, and this is nuanced, okay, because it would be easy to say, like, once you've reached level two, like, observer, like, okay, yeah, I'm going to move level 2 observer, and I'm going to go out into the world and I'm just going to be observing myself.
[00:28:12] And that's the thing. That's not quite the thing, because if you are moving into the world and you're just observing self and you're trying to stay in this observer perspective and not get lost in reactivity and all of that, that in a way, you're still separate. You are separate from. You're making yourself separate from the observer perspective and from the character. And that's not quite there yet. It's a beautiful stepping stone, but it's not quite there. When you're really there, there is no separation. You recognize that you are the character in the play. You actually are that character. But you're also everything else. And you're no longer acting from reactive patterns. Instead, you're re and moving from love. So this is a lot to take in. But what I want to do is pave the path for those of you, no matter what level you're at, to get to the next level. Because as I said, the journey from level three to four is the journey of a lifetime. And for those of us that the awakening path is the most important path in our lives. That's what we are aiming to do is shifting fully into how can I live more and more of my days in a fully awakened state of oneness in the dao, in the flow of life connected to love and letting love and life spontaneously emerge through me? As I said, all of these levels are helpful to us. So although I have had so many glimpses, and I am in that stage now of shifting from 3 to 4, I often fall out of it. And I will return to my level one practice and use that as a stepping stone to reach level three and four again.
[00:30:01] The thing that's been really helpful for me on my journey of awakening is I have found that I've been intuitively guided to teachers that have just the next stage or just the next level that I am trying to get to, and that they have reached that point and they're able to speak to it in a way that is pretty articulate. And what I have found when I listen to those teachings is that I can tell there's a part of me in my body that is resonating with what they're saying. And yet, cognitively, in general, I don't know what they're saying. I don't know what they're talking about yet. There's a deeper part of me that does. And so what I will do with those teachings is I will listen to them again and again and again and again. And what I'm doing is I am creating a subconscious framework. And it's almost like I'm unconsciously preparing parts of myself to step up into that new level. And then inevitably, what happens every single time, and this has happened dozens and dozens and dozens of times now, is I will listen to a teaching that I keep being called back to again and again and again. Sometimes I'll listen to it a hundred times, then all of a sudden it'll click and I will be at that level and everything that they were saying will make perfect sense to me. And by and large, that is the path of awakening is listening to teachings that are just out of reach of your embodied understanding. Maybe you have a little bit of a cognitive, like, brain level understanding of like, yeah, I conceptually I understand what they're saying, but you don't yet feel it in your body. You haven't fully embodied that learning. But it's so useful to still listen to those teachings because it does create a framework, a construct for then you to step into. And then like I said, one day you'll just step right into it and everything will become clear and you'll say, oh my gosh, I finally understood what that teacher was saying and I'm so glad I listened to that teaching. So as I've been talking about these four level stages of meditation, if anything in your body has resonated with you, then I would say listen. Listen back to this again and again and again. Because that means that something in you is preparing for that next stage, next level. And I can't wait for you to reach it. Because every time we ascend to a new level, more and more beauty and joy is revealed to us. Us. More sense of peace and happiness is revealed and more sense of universal consciousness and oneness that makes us feel so. So deeply connected and safe in our bodies and in our lives and less alone. If you have enjoyed this episode, please leave me a five stars wherever you are listening. And if you feel like there's someone in your life that could benefit, be sure to pass this episode along to them. Don't forget to follow and subscribe to the show. Thank you for being here with me today. I so appreciate you. Enjoy your meditation practice, enjoy ascending these levels and keep journeying forward on your path of awakening. Until next time.
