Spiritual Forum

Life is about evolution.  Emotional, mental, and spiritual.  In this article we are going to explore the top 5 best ways you can speed up your spiritual evolution right now.  NOW now.  By the time you finish this article you will have felt something shift inside you because you will realize just how easy it is to live from a higher state of consciousness.

You don’t need programs, retreats, classes, books, knowledge, or crystals.  All of these things may help catalyze your evolution, but they are not necessary.  Not to mention, it can be super stressful if you are stuck in the habit of thinking of “enlightenment” as something far away that takes years of effort and practice to obtain.  What if you can experience it right now?  What if you can get a glimpse into higher states by initiating a shift in your consciousness in a matter of minutes?

Forget about how much clock time you have spent trying to evolve spiritually.  What matters is how deep you have went into yourself, the world, and silence.  Depth is the measure of evolution, not number of experiences or clock time.  This means that if you teach yourself to dive deep, you are essentially teaching yourself transcendence.  Here are the 5 best ways to speed up your evolution:

1) Zoom out. WAY, way out.

The further you zoom out in terms of perspective, the deeper and deeper into the layers of your soul you go.  We normally live and operate as a ‘person’ or an ‘ego’ with responsibilities, preferences, likes, dislikes, vices, etc.  When we step outside of our ego and become the witness of ourselves, we shift into a state of consciousness that is more expansive than a mere personal state of consciousness.  Right now, for example, you are thinking.  But you are also AWARE that you are thinking. Who is it that is outside of thinking that is noticing that thinking is happening?  What part of you is that?  Which part is more primary: The thinker, or the awareness beneath the thinker?

And if you get really still and zoom out even further by relaxing your mind and become intensely present, you will be able to notice that you are noticing.  In other words, you become aware of the fact that you are aware, and thus become self-aware.  Instead of living life operating in space and time as a mind in a body, practicing zooming out and witnessing yourself.  Instead of acting as the avatar, become the observer of the avatar.  Practicing meditation is the best way to do this because it helps you train yourself to not re-identify with the stream of mental chatter that keeps your awareness trapped on a personal level.

2) Meditation

There is shortcuts that can be taken if you are looking to step into your highest wisdom.  Don’t get me wrong, there any many shortcuts you can take to shorten the take it takes for you to reach a certain level of seeing, but there is no way you can take a shortcut through something that requires depth and silence.  There are things you will learn and see when the mind is still that cannot be learned through study, psychedelics, or reflection.  Meditate for just 10-20 minutes each day, and allow yourself to become still enough to feel your brainwaves change state.

There comes a point in your meditation where your consciousness shifts to such a degree that it results in the alteration of brainwaves, where you shift out of the alpha wave state (or egoic state of consciousness) and into less personal and more connected states.  Consciousness is a fundamental property of the universe just like space and time.  It’s part of the universal fabric.  It’s not created in the brain.  When you meditate and become silent, you literally vibrate with the fabric of the universe instead of operating as this creature dancing on top of the fabric. Make sense?

3) Serious reflection

An unanalyzed life is not worth living.  But at the same time, you can’t live if you are only analyzing.  Learning to find the balance between living life and reflection upon your life is so important for your spiritual development.  If you set aside time in nature to actually reflect on who you are and what you want, you can shave years of life experience off of your rise to higher states of consciousness.

For example, you may be going through school without really knowing why.  You may be carrying around a sense of frustration with you as you go to your classes for four years, and you feel deeply unsatisfied after getting your degree.  Only after reflecting on why you feel so unsatisfied, you realize that you only went to school to please your parents and only wanted a degree to land a job so you could impress your peers with your income.  In other words, you went to school for someone else, not for you.

The key here is self-honesty.  First, discover what it is you want out of life.  Then, discover what part of you wants that and for what reason.  This applies to jobs, education, relationships, and most importantly, small tedious daily interactions and behaviours.

4) Lucid dreaming & astral projection

The most important part about lucid dreaming and astral projection is the wisdom and insights that can be extracted from these experiences and applied to real life.  These are just not fun things to do for an adventure.  These can have powerful transformative impacts on your life permanently.  For example, I have had many lucid dreams that were more vivid than real life, to the point where I would question within the lucid dream whether or not I was still lucid dreaming.

Then I thought to myself, “If I’m not sure if I’m awake or dreaming right now, how can I be so sure real life isn’t just one big dream?”.   It makes you more connected to the dreamlike state of reality and helps you to stop taking “real life” to be so concrete and real.  Another way you can think about lucid dreaming is to think of it as an opportunity to use your sleep hours for spiritual exploration.  When we are awake, we daydream our life away.  When we are asleep, we sleep our dreams away.  Why not become lucid in both?

For more information on how to become the best lucid dreamer possible, here is an article on 10 essential steps to having a successful lucid dream.

5) Live like this is your last 60 seconds you have

One time I was biking home from a forest after what I considered to be an unsuccessful meditation.  I was far too distracted with my thoughts, and they were preventing me from feel free and expansive inside.  After I exited the forest I stopped biking and turned back to stare at the trees, trying to shift perspectives to see which one would induce the most transcendence. I tried looking at the trees as if I was dreaming, as if they were God, as if they were an expression of me, and as if they were a product of infinite intelligence.  Nothing, in that moment, created any real shift for me.  Then I looked at the forest as if I only have 30 seconds left to live on earth.  I look at the trees as if it was the last time I would ever get to see a tree again, and I began to cry.

One of the most humbling realizations is that impermanence is an unchanging truth.  You will never get to experience this moment ever again.  Everything around you will pass with time.  The trees, the buildings, relationships, accomplishments.  Perhaps even the universe itself.  The only things that will remain are memories.  Life is so so temporary.  We all know how fast time seems to fly by.  Whether you believe you have a soul or not, here is a truth that has literally changed the way I see life:

There will be a time in this life where you will be old and near passing.  You will be reflecting on your past experiences, on how you spent your life, on all of the great times you had, and maybe even on how often you took life for granted.  There will come a time in your life where you would give ANYTHING to be in this position right now.  Alive, youthful, healthy.   You would give your arm and a leg if you could just experience life as a 20 or 30 or 50-year-old again.  Imagine yourself being on your deathbed and wishing you could go back for just 30 seconds to extract more experience from life and to fully appreciate how amazing it is.  Consider this moment, right now, being your wish granted. What are you going to do with this moment?

That shift you felt right there was you shifting into waking lucidity in by doing nothing more than remembering that one day none of this will be here.  Speaking more technically, your awareness detached from your mind and rested inside itself.  Shifting from person to presence is the essence of all spiritual practice, and it doesn’t even take decades of organic time.

Zoom out, meditate, reflect, explore the dream world, and live as though you are living your last 60 seconds.  You don’t need to go meditate in a cave for 10 years to speed up your evolution.  All you have to do is be here now in your center.

Hope this helps!

Steven Bancarz,