Shamanism for the Age of Science: Awakening the Energy Body - Kenneth Smith 2018

Heightened Consciousness
The Formation of Reality

There comes a time in learning when the energy body has been made sufficiently conscious that heightened awareness results. Colors are deeper, shapes clearer, and there is the recognizable emotional sense of connection with the world. In addition, this state also enables the use of imagination in the midst of any activity, lending a dreamlike quality to waking consciousness. As a result, some investigators refer to this state as dreaming awake.¹¹ This is appropriate, as in heightened consciousness the general landscape has a sense of viscosity that is characteristic of dreams.

This is not necessarily a peak experience where one may have a sense of a transcendent reality or at least that of an enhanced awareness of human potential.¹² Peak experiences embody more transient, almost euphoric events, while heightened consciousness is more calm and lasting. They are related, though, as aspects of peak experience bridge heightened awareness and also mystical experience, a transcendent state of consciousness, which is covered in the next chapter.

Stepping purposefully into imagination equates with entering heightened consciousness. Doing so enables you to use imagination more skillfully as well as explore other modes of perception. Seeing, for instance, is not as difficult in imagination because the bindings of perception are automatically loosened, not unlike the Hubble telescope being able to take clearer pictures of deep space because Earth’s atmosphere doesn’t cloud the view.

When the conscious domain extends significantly beyond the beginnings of heightened awareness, you enter another level of growth. Then the terms learning, imagination, first and second energy fields, and all the explanations and details bringing them into focus, become obsolete. In general terms, one of two things occurs. Either consciousness begins dealing with yet another model of reality, or you transcend reality as a model altogether. It is the latter that speaks more directly to being. You have reasoned your way out of reason and are in experience itself rather than experiencing a description of reality.

Figure 4.1. Heightened Consciousness

Stimulated by imagination and anchored by learning, the conscious domain expands throughout the energy body. At a certain level, waking awareness becomes heightened due to the conscious intermingling of the first and second fields.

This illustrates the importance of not getting lost in the schematics and blueprints of terminology. The terms used here, for instance, such as “known and unknown,” “learning and imagination,” and “first and second energy fields” are different designations to help approach and understand central features of the energy body. Their purpose is to provide references to consciously explore imagination, to accelerate learning, and to properly engage discovery—not to bind perception along specific lines of thought. When you act in such a manner, individual effort is then on track to move this awareness into group consensus, accepted social reality.