Many of us come to recognize a profound truth on our spiritual journey: the answers we seek cannot be found in the same state of mind that generated the questions and problems in the first place. Ascension is the process of building a conscious bridge into what can be called the superconscious mind—a realm beyond the ego’s limitations and illusions, where true solutions and healing reside.
To understand this, let’s first distinguish between three levels of the mind: the subconscious, superconscious, and conscious.
The subconscious mind is familiar to most of us—it’s the part of our consciousness that lies just beneath the surface of our daily awareness. This level harbors the ego’s thought system. A system of deeply held beliefs and assumptions that perpetuate feelings of loneliness, lack, and fear. It is the realm that generates magical thinking—a system of beliefs and strategies aimed at manipulating the external world to obtain the love, safety, and worth the ego is convinced we lack. This level of mind never questions the ego’s mistaken assumptions, preventing us from realizing that they are the root cause of our suffering.
The superconscious mind lies beyond the ego's grasp. It is the realm of divine truth, where the Holy Spirit, or Christ Mind, abides. Unlike the subconscious mind, which perpetuates separation, the superconscious mind knows only truth, unity, love, and our shared divine connection. It is here, beyond the veil of the ego’s illusions, that we find the solutions to our deepest questions—not by reinforcing the ego's beliefs but by transcending them entirely.
The conscious mind is the level of awareness we engage with daily—the part of our mind that processes our thoughts, decisions, and perceptions as we navigate the world. It is shaped by both the subconscious and superconscious mind, often reflecting the conflict between the ego’s fear-based beliefs and the truth of our higher spiritual nature. While the conscious mind allows us to make choices in the moment, it is often influenced by the deeper, hidden assumptions of the subconscious. Ascension practices help us bring the conscious mind into alignment with the superconscious so that our thoughts and actions are guided by love, truth, and unity rather than the ego’s illusions.
The Separation Mistake
In A Course in Miracles (ACIM), Jesus teaches that the core problem of the human condition is the belief in separation—the mistaken idea that we are separate from God, love, and each other. This belief forms the foundation of the ego’s entire thought system. The ego depends on maintaining this sense of separation because it is the only way it can survive.
The subconscious mind is the domain of the ego, containing its beliefs, interpretations, and memories. It reinforces the separation paradigm, keeping us trapped in a cycle of fear, guilt, and conflict. In response to the pain this paradigm creates, the ego convinces us that the solution to our suffering lies in controlling, manipulating, or changing the external world. It leads us to believe that if we fix what’s outside of us, we will find peace within. But this is nothing more than magical thinking—it keeps us looking in the wrong direction, constantly searching for peace, love, and joy outside of ourselves, where they cannot truly be found.
The ego’s paradigm is built on the premise that conflicting, irreconcilable beliefs can coexist. Its dual thought system divides reality into pairs of opposites—self and not-self, good and bad, right and wrong, beautiful and ugly. This worldview produces a constant state of cognitive dissonance in the unconscious mind, a kind of inner distress. To cope with this, the ego projects what it does not want to acknowledge onto others. For example, it may claim "good" for itself while projecting "bad" or "evil" onto the external world, assigning blame to others.
While projection temporarily eases the conflict in the conscious mind, it comes at a cost. It reinforces a false paradigm, making the external world appear full of threats—bad people, evil, death, ugliness, and all the negativity within its paradigm the ego has rejected. Even its experience of "good" is tainted, as the underlying fear remains unresolved. It constantly fears that the "bad" it has projected onto others will return, keeping us in a state of defensiveness, anxiety, and insecurity.
As long as we operate from the ego’s agenda—driven by its belief in separation—we remain blind to the deeper truth of our inherent light, love, and peace. We seek answers within the very paradigm that causes our suffering, perpetuating the cycle rather than rising above it.
The Superconscious Mind and Miracles
The superconscious mind offers a way out. This is the level of mind where the Holy Spirit dwells, guiding us back to our true nature. This level of mind has different names in different traditions, such as the Voice for God, the Christ Mind, the Son of God, the higher self, and so forth. Regardless of the term one uses, this is the level of consciousness where we are able to learn that our belief in separation is a mistake, a misunderstanding in the mind that can be corrected. This correction is what A Course in Miracles calls a miracle—a shift in perception from fear to love.
Miracles occur when we access the level of mind that sits outside the ego’s story and thereby allow spiritual truth to replace the ego’s false beliefs. When we recognize that the source of our suffering is not the external world but our own mistaken thoughts, we open the door to healing. We’re not so easily led to believe we must control or manipulate the external world to feel safe because we realize that safety, love, and peace are already within us; they are our natural state. Instead, we learn our purpose here is to forgive ourselves for believing untrue things about ourselves and others, freeing us to experience life from the point of view of our spirit rather than our ego.
Ascension: The Bridge to Truth
Ascension is the process of training the mind to rise above the ego’s illusions and access the superconscious. It is about learning to question the ego’s assumptions—the thoughts, beliefs, and programming that tell us we are small, separate, and lacking—and replacing them with the truth of our divine nature. We accomplish this by consciously seeking to change our perception through listening to the guidance found in our higher Mind. As we do this, our experience shifts. We begin to see ourselves and others through the eyes of love. We find new ways to navigate the circumstances of our life and problems that once seemed insurmountable dissolve.
The Practice of Ascension
How, then, do we access the higher guidance that abides in the superconscious mind and experience these shifts in perception?
Ascension practices, taught by many spiritual traditions, including the works of Joshua David Stone, Djwal Khul (through the teachings of Alice Bailey), and Jesus in A Course in Miracles, offer techniques for elevating our consciousness beyond the ego’s reach.
Meditation and Inner Stillness: Regular meditation helps quiet the ego’s constant chatter and creates space for the superconscious mind to come forward. In meditation, we learn to detach from thoughts of fear and separation and open ourselves to divine guidance and inner wisdom.
Forgiveness: Forgiveness, as taught in A Course in Miracles, is the action that induces Ascension—the liberation from illusion. True forgiveness isn’t about simply pardoning someone’s behavior, which implies that we still believe in their guilt but choose to overlook it. Rather, forgiveness is about letting go of the ego’s belief that their actions define them—or us—in any meaningful way. It’s the recognition that what we perceive as wrong is part of the ego’s illusion of separation. When we truly forgive, we release these illusions that keep us bound to fear, allowing the superconscious mind to guide us back to love and truth.
Energy Alignment: Many Ascension techniques involve working with the energy centers of the body (chakras) to align our physical, emotional, and spiritual bodies with higher frequencies. This alignment allows us to access and anchor the wisdom of the superconscious mind into our daily awareness, helping us embody our innate peace and spiritual connection in every aspect of our lives. Just as listening to an out-of-tune instrument creates discomfort because its vibrations are discordant, when our energy is misaligned, we experience similar disharmony. But when the instrument is in tune, we feel ease and resonance—just as aligning our energy centers brings us into harmony with higher frequencies, fostering a sense of inner peace and balance that we can extend out into the world. This, in turn, encourages these harmonious energies to be reflected back to us through our interactions with others.
Awareness and Discernment: Ascension practices help us develop the ability to discern between the ego’s voice and the voice of the superconscious mind, or the Voice for God. The ego’s voice is loud, urgent, and fear-driven, while the guidance and insight in the superconscious mind is calm, loving, and expansive. By learning to recognize and follow the Voice for God, we cultivate inner peace and wisdom.
Our Answers Lie Beyond the Ego
Ascension practices help us rise out of the ego’s fear-based paradigm by reconnecting us to the truth. When we elevate our consciousness through these practices, we learn to move beyond the ego’s limited, dualistic thinking and into the level of Mind where only unity, peace, love, and joy exist.
From this higher perspective, we become able to see and navigate the world differently. We begin to see that others are also struggling within the ego’s paradigm, but we no longer need to use their struggles to reinforce our own sense of separation. Instead, we can look past their behavior to the truth of our shared divinity and interact with them from a place of compassion, love, and understanding. In doing so, we no longer contribute to the cycle of fear and projection but instead become instruments of peace and healing in the world.
Ready to Take Action?
If you’re ready to break free from the ego’s limitations and experience the truth of your divine nature, I invite you to join my upcoming Ascension Training Course, starting on November 6th. This 6-week journey will guide you through powerful techniques to elevate your consciousness, align with the superconscious mind, and live from a place of peace, love, and truth. Together, we’ll explore how to transcend the ego’s illusions and step into your highest potential. I would love to support you on this transformative path. And don’t worry if you can’t make every session—each class is recorded, so you can revisit the teachings and exercises on your own time, as often as you like.
Comments