A Reversal of Consciousness

Discovering the potential within

Every night when we sleep, we reverse the direction of our focus. From conscious awareness of the outer and often frenetic external world, we ease into an inner space of relative calm.

Photo by YAWAN SAHU on Unsplash

Our brain activity mirrors the change as it begins to slow down from a busy and often chaotic pattern of wave activity in the frontal regions of the brain, to a progressively slower wave activity that moves toward the back of the brain. This allows us to shift from an outer focus to a focus that’s directed more internally.

I like to think of this as a reversal of consciousness.

It’s a bit like moving from forward gear into reverse when driving a car.

And just like driving a car, when we change gears, we are able to do things we can’t do otherwise… when we reverse our consciousness, we are able to make use of natural abilities we don’t even realise we have.

Wondrous abilities that add so much richness to our lives including…

• the ability to integrate our learnings from the day into longer term memory;

• the ability to solve our problems with a wisdom far greater than our thinking mind can grasp;

• the ability to clear our brain of toxins and debris during sleep to maintain health and prepare us for a new day;

And one of the greatest gifts of all,

• the ability to heal our feelings… all the darkness, the anger, the frustrations, the anxieties, the grief, the sadness, the disappointments, the traumas, the pain.

We were born into this life with the ability to heal not only our physical bodies, but our emotional selves too.

How different would our mental health crisis be if we were all taught this? That we carry within the ability to heal our own hurts that drugs can only numb. How much suffering might be prevented? How many lives might be saved? How much more peaceful would our lives be?

I’ve just returned from a trip to India, and a visit to the Ashram in Pondicherry. It is a very special place. At the Ashram, there is a school where the children are not only taught multiple languages - some of them speak 7! - they are also given the opportunity to learn art, music, science, physical education and most importantly, an education on the non-tangible parts of themselves, alongside the physical.

It is a more integrated education and there is a richness to their education we simply don’t have in the west.

When I work with people, this part of us is often at first a mystery. But with a little guidance, most people begin to grasp this presence in their lives quite quickly.

A favourite doctor of mine, Rachel Naomi Remen in her book Kitchen Table Wisdom, writes of ‘Mystery’ with a capital ‘M’. And she laments how sad it is that we are not raised to cultivate a sense of the great Mystery we carry inside in our western culture. Dr Larry Dossey in Healing Words, talks of this part of ourselves with great reverence, noting that when we sleep at night we give ourselves the opportunity to commune with the Divine. Psychologist Carl Jung spoke of the importance of making the unconscious, conscious.

All good doctors recognise there is a part of ourselves that is designed to heal. Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, Dr Albert Schweitzer possibly puts it best…

Each patient carries his own doctor inside him. They come to us not knowing that truth. We are at our best when we give the doctor who resides within each patient a chance to go to work. - Albert Schweitzer

We all carry our own doctor within. It’s the intangible part. The subconscious part. The supramental part. The part helps you problem solve and heal while you sleep.

As another famous Albert (Einstein) would say, it is a priceless gift.

When we quieten the thinking mind down, we can connect more deeply with this part of ourselves. And when we do this, we can engage with abilities and a wisdom most people don’t even realise they have.

One of the things I love most is the privilege of introducing people to this part of themselves. And then I teach them how to work with this wonder within to help them heal emotionally.

Once we recognise the quiet observer for ourselves, our trust and faith in what is possible changes completely.

For those who would like to know more from a spiritual perspective, I recommend this beautiful clip…