Mediation, Consciousness, Sleep and Awareness.

For the past 3 years I have examined several sources and practiced several forms of meditation in an attempt to understand the relationship between consciousness, awareness and sleep. It is hard to find a point to systematically explain my thoughts on this matter, but I will try my best.

First I am going to explain Awareness. In mediation awareness is classified as a point where you are detached from your thoughts, but your thoughts flow like water. This simply means you are actually listening to your thoughts instead of thinking them. We are a sum of our parts, so awareness on this level simply means we are tuning into a part of ourselves. Our brain actually has a build in spam filter. The activities in the brain happen so fast, that we do not notice them. Meditation builds focus and thus makes it possible to observe a certain functions of our brain.

Adult dreams for example differ in degrees of self-awareness into full lucidity. Psychologically and biologically we advance in a dream state. First your consciousness shuts down, your body relaxes. You do dream in this stage, because the part of your brain that is responsible for thoughts is still active. We just don’t remember it, because our brain is in a slow wave pattern which causes the conscious part not to register it. It is in REM sleep when our brain waves speed up and our heart rate increases that we start to register the thoughts. I have easily achieved extremely lucid scenarios while meditating. This mainly happens because my consciousness was active thus I was able to register the thought and evolve them thus be lucid. When you are asleep it is allot harder to register and follow thoughts. l\Lucid dreaming is, at its simplest, the emergence of consciousness in "unconsciousness".

Higher states of consciousness is that the "self" transcends the limits, what limits you ask? The obvious limits, its opposite! For example in above mentioned scenario, awareness is turned back on itself and is aware only of itself. A mental technology like meditation can be used in order to recognize and utilize more opposites. Meditation and REM sleep are the same in its effect on waking activities, these activities are enhancement on both physiological and psychological functioning. Thus theoretically we are increasing our brain capacity by using more (opposite) analyzing techniques that we don’t normally use. This psychological and biological enhancement of REM is especially evident with the further de-embedding from lucid dreaming to the sleep consciousness of "witnessing", where the silent, blissful experience of pure consciousness is experienced.

L. Ron Hubbard, yes I know he is a science fiction writer. He wrote a book called Dianetics, Great book. But what really got me thinking was something he mentioned. We have an unconscious desire to return to the womb. The pre-birth state of safety and comfort when we were one with the mother. This state of pre-existence (before the pain of birth and the agony of a separate existence) can be considered the unconscious source of religious myths about a lost paradise. Conditions like alcoholism, violence, and suicide can thus be viewed as psychoanalytically stemming from the unresolved desire to return to this "oneness." The point I am trying to make is that we are perhaps more connected to our awareness of things and that we function in boundaries that were unconsciously created to protect us. Our evolution surely depends in our abilities to overcome these boundaries.