I have been writing on Medium for about ten months now. 

Once I exhausted my initial ideas I got interested to know how to create deeper and more engaging content.

I am particularly impressed with the work of Zat Rana, who has written articles that are amongst the most read on Medium. 

As I started pondering the question, as if by some serendipity, I was led to four levels of consciousness, a concept explained by Vishan Lakhiani in the book “The Code of Extraordinary Mind.”

Last week I wrote an article where I explained that at Level 1 your goals come from the culturescape. At Level 2 and 3, they come from within us but at Level 4 they come from a higher source — the Inspiration. 

Call it God, or Universe, or Supreme Being, or Higher Power, but Inspiration become our unlimited source of creation when we realize we are much more than just a body but a part of the “whole.” 

When we feel connected to every living being and become a part of the universe, Inspiration starts whispering to us. 

It talks in the form of intuition.

When you get an idea of a book in the shower, or a theory in the bathtub or a complete melody in a dream, it is not you, it is the inspiration talking to you.

You need to make sure you’re tuned in when Inspiration whispers because if you are not, it will go to someone else.

And if it finds you listening and up to the challenge, it will give you the intention (courage to act) and it will remove all the roadblocks.

That is the state you want to be as creators. 

I have covered these concepts in my previous two articles, Everything Changes When You Start Working From The Fourth Level of Consciousness and How To Make Sure You Listen To Inspiration When It Whispers.

Today I want to take them to another level.

The concept of Being.

Eckhart Tolle, talks about a concept called “Being” in his book The Power of Now.

There is an eternal, ever-present One Life beyond the myriad of forms of life that are subject to birth and death. Many people use the word God to describe it; I often call it Being. — Eckhart Tolle

Being explains nothing, nor does the word God. But according to Eckhart Being has an advantage, it’s an open concept.

It is open because it does not reduce the infinite to a finite entity. God has been given several forms already. Each religion has given it some symbol, shape, or image. In many mythologies, God looks like humans.

But it is impossible to form a mental image of Being. Becasue “Being” is not a noun but a verb. 

So what is Being?

According to Eckhart, Being is your very presence. It is your true nature. Your own deepest self. 

It is accessible to you all the time. 

It is accessible to you now as a feeling of your own presence. Which is only a small step from the word “being” to the experience of Being.

It is a bit hard concept to understand. If you try to understand it with your logical mind you may not be able to. If you try to give it a form you will not be able to. Because Being can’t be seen it can only be felt.

That too when your mind is still and your intention is fully in the present.

Being is not only deep within but also beyond. It is in every form as its innermost invisible and indestructible essence.

Being is also the pathway to gain enlightenment. Enlightenment is not some superhuman accomplishment, it is simply your natural state in oneness with Being.

To regain awareness of BEING and abide in that state of feeling-realization, is enlightenment. — Eckhart Tolle

So Being is a state of connectedness with something big. Something that is essentially you and yet it is much greater than you. 

It is you your true nature beyond the name and form.

There is a connection between the concept of “Being” and the concept of “Four Levels of Consciousness.”

At the fourth level of consciousness when we feel connected to every living being and become a part of the universe, Inspiration starts whispering to us.

So when we are in the state of “Being”, we are connected to the Inspiration. 

Eckhart says it this way.

When your consciousness 

is directed outwards, mind and world arise. 

When it is directed inwards, 

it realizes its own Source

and returns home into the Unmanifested.

Eckhart goes on to explain that in this state of inner connectedness, you are much more alert, more awake, fully present. As you go more deep in this state of pure consciousness, you feel your own presence with such intensity and such joy that all thinking, all emotions, your physical body as well as the whole external world become relatively insignificant in comparison.

Yet it is not a selfish but a selfless state. It takes you beyond what you previously thought of as “your self.”

That presence is essentially you and at the same time inconceivably grater than you.

So Being is the higher state of consciousness and you can reach this state by simply incorporating a practice of focusing your attention into the Now.

By feeling your very presence. 

By connecting to your true nature. 

By connecting to your own deepest self.

By connecting to the universe. 

 — — — — — — — — — — — — 

I am going to stop here. I will be writing more on the topic. Stay tuned.

— — — — — — — — — 

If you like my work, subscribe to my newsletter A Whimsical Writer.

Last weekend, as usual, my husband brought a pile of books from the library. Our household is an avid user of the public library.

Amongst those, one book with an interesting title caught my eye. The title was:

MAKE YOUR BED

A tiny book of mere 130 pages was written by Admiral William H. McRaven, a former Navy SEAL.

How come an admiral was writing a book on making a bed? 

It is a job of a mother. A habit I have tried to install in my kids. 

The introduction to the book turned out equally interesting. 

On May 17, 2014, Admiral William H. McRaven addressed the graduating class of the University of Texas at Austin on their commencement day.

Taking the inspiration from the university’s slogan, “What starts here changes the world,” he shared ten principles he learned during Navy Seal training that helped him overcome challenges not only in his training and long Navy career but also throughout his life.

And the first one of those was — make your bed.

Start Your Day with a Task Completed

Admiral’s argument is to start your day with a task completed as soon as you wake up. 

You may not think making a bed a task, but it is. Try leaving it unmade for a few days and you will see the untidiness it portrays. And it becomes much of a chore if you don’t do it first thing in the morning.

If you make your bed as soon as you get up, a sense of fastidiousness takes over and you already feel on top of the day. 

Admiral McRaven tells the story of when he joined the basic SEAL training in his younger days. SEAL training is the hardest military training in the world. For six months, the recruits are constantly harassed by professionally trained warriors who seek to find the weak of mind and body and eliminate them from ever becoming a Navy SEAL.

But the training also seeks to find those who can lead in an environment of constant stress, chaos, failure and hardship. 

Each morning, Admiral McRaven’s instructors, who were all Vietnam veterans, would show up in the barracks and the first thing they would inspect was recruits’ beds. 

The corners needed to be square, the covers tight, the pillow centered just under the headboard, and the extra blanket folded neatly at the foot of the rack. 

It is a simple task, mundane at best. 

But why do it to such a perfection?

It might seem ridiculous, particularly in the light of the fact that they were aspiring warriors wanting to be trained in battle tactics, but there is wisdom in this simple act.

Incidentally, it is the first requirement of nursing training as well, an equally arduous profession. 

If you make your bed every morning, you will have accomplished the first task of the day. It will give you a small sense of pride and it will encourage you to do another task and another and another. By the end of the day that one task completed will have turned into many tasks completed. Making your bed will also reinforce the fact that the little things in life matter. If you can’t do the little things right you will never do the big things right.

— Admiral William H. McRaven

In December 2003, U.S. forces captured Saddam Hussein. He was held in confinement, during which he was kept in a small room. He also slept in an Army cot but with the luxury of sheets and a blanket. 

Once a day, Admiral McRaven would visit Saddam to ensure the soldiers were properly caring for him. 

He couldn’t help notice, with some sense of amusement, that Saddam didn’t make his bed. The covers were always crumpled, at the foot of his cot and he rarely seemed inclined to straighten them.

Admiral McRaven’s address to graduating class of the University of Texas went viral. For years he had been stopped on the street by people telling him their own stories, how they didn’t back down from the sharks, how they didn’t quit, how making their bed every morning helped them through tough times.

If by chance you have a miserable day, you will come home to a bed that is made — that you made — and made bed gives you encouragement that tomorrow will be better.

So, if you want to change the world, start by making your bed.

Here is Admiral’s whole speech if you want to hear about the other lessons he learned in the basic SEAL training.

Image by Jill Wellington from Pixabay

Last week I wrote everything changes when you start working from the fourth level of consciousness, where I introduced levels of consciousness as a roadmap for growth.

At level one of consciousness, we are a part of the Culturescape. Our goals are given to us by the society, the culture that we are part of. “Get good grades.” “Get a good job.” “Become a doctor.” “Make a lot of money and live comfortably.” “Invest, build a portfolio.”

As we are achieving those goals, at some point, we start questioning society’s norms. We start questioning other people’s expectations from us, whether they are our parents or spouses, or bosses. We start questioning the religion. And we start realizing we don’t have to follow what we have been told all our life That we can choose our own experiences in life.

That is when we move to level two of consciousness. At level two, we look for a purpose for life, a way to contribute to this universe. This is when our goals come from inside us.

At level three, we discover we are a part of a greater whole. We see everyone else as part of us and everything else as part of us. We begin to see things differently to act differently to react differently and experience ourselves in a brand new way, a way that can change your life forever. We start re-coding ourselves, and we find ourselves at the fourth level of consciousness.

But we are level four; the goals are coming from a completely different place.

The goals come from Inspiration.

Now, what is Inspiration?

You could call it God, you could call it the Universe, or you could call it your superconscious.

You think you came up with a brilliant idea for that book, or you came up with that brilliant idea for that new program, or you were the genius who came up with the idea for your business, but you did not.

You were simply the conduit.

You have a boss, and that boss has been whispering in your ear. She’s been telling you and pushing you and inspiring you to make that happen.

That is Inspiration.

And that inspiration gives you your intention.

When you start showing that you have intent to listen to it, and you’re going to start moving towards it, she removes the roadblocks.

So you don’t set goals; the goals are not coming from society, they are not coming from you, but they are whispered to you.

You hear whispers.

You have these little intuitive nudges you feel get while you are showering or waking up in the morning, and bang! An idea for that next blog post. Or an idea for that next product you have to build. The idea for the next course you want to serve. It just hits you.

This is Inspiration.

There is this really interesting story about what happens when you start listening to inspiration.

Michael Jackson would wake up at three am and call his manager, and would go, “Butterflies. Butterflies.”

The manager would say, “Michael, what the hell is going on. It’s three am.”

Michael would say, “I got this idea for a song. It’s about butterflies; I got to write it now.

Exasperated, his manager would say, “Michael, it is three am. Can this wait till tomorrow morning?

Michael would respond, “No, if I don’t write it, Prince will.”

How to listen to the Inspiration?

Vishan Lakhiani, in his book “Code of Evolution,” states that at level four, we start feeling that we are particles of God having a human experience.

He calls humans Godicles. We are all God’s equals here on planet Earth, playing God within our own cognitive plane.

When that happens, we feel a deep sense of connectedness with all life with all human beings.

With this sense of connectedness, we open up to intuition.

What is intuition?

Intuition is one of these words that gets thrown around a lot but not many people know how to cultivate the skills to be able to hear their intuition on a daily basis. — Emily Fletcher

And if you ask any high performer CEO, any entrepreneur, how did you come up with an idea, they would say it was just my intuition. I just had this feeling in my gut.

So for many people, intuition is a sort of elusive gut thing that can be how they know something without the involvement of their critical mind.

Our left-brain critical mind is always screaming at us. I suck. I suck. I suck. And it’s very hard to hear your intuition when your critical mind screams at you because your intuition whispers. It says, write that book. Start that business. Compose that song; here is the melody.

If you don’t have a daily meditation practice that it’s very hard to tell the difference between your critical mind and your intuitive mind.

And if you’ve got this screaming, I suck. I suck. I suck voice happening all the time; how are you supposed to hear that intuitive voice?

What meditation does is that it takes our right brain to the gym every single day.

Our right brain is the piece of you that is in charge of intuition. It is the part of you that actually connects to collective intelligence.

Think of intuition and creativity as a Wi-Fi network, and your right brain is the router. Your right brain is the piece of you that allows you to connect to collective intelligence. And your left brain is the actual computer.

You could have the most developed intellect and incredible life experience, which would be like having the fanciest computer. But it doesn’t matter how good a computer is; it is no good if it is not connected to the internet.

Now, Imagine you connect that computer to the internet; how much smarter it becomes? How much more capable it becomes because you’re exchanging ideas. You’re able to intuit other people’s intellect. You’re able to hear how nature actually wants to use you to deliver your fulfillment.

So sit in silence and tune in to Inspiration to get the intuition.

But herein lies humanity’s problem.

Blaise Pascal made huge contributions to physics and mathematics, notably in fluids, geometry, and probability. He died at the young age of 39.

Right before his death, he was hashing out fragments of private thoughts that were later released as a collection by the name of Pensées.

While the book is mostly a mathematician’s case for choosing a life of faith and belief, the more curious thing about its clear and lucid ruminations on what it means to be human.

He wrote:

“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”

Zat Rana, another Medium writer, wrote in an article that has got the most claps ever, wrote our aversion to solitude is really an aversion to boredom.

At its core, our addiction to TV, social media, movies, social gathering is in faction an addiction to a state of not-being-bored.

At its root is the dread of the nothingness of nothing. We can’t imagine just being rather than doing.

But according to Zat, there is a solution. The only way to beat this fear is to face it like any other fear. Face the boredom and let it take you where it wants so you can deal with whatever it is that is really going on with your sense of self.

That’s when you’ll hear yourself think, and that’s when you’ll learn to engage the parts of you that are masked by distraction.

The beauty of this is that, once you cross that initial barrier, you realize that being alone isn’t so bad. Boredom can provide its own stimulation.

When you surround yourself with moments of solitude and stillness, you become intimately familiar with your environment in a way that forced stimulation doesn’t allow. The world becomes richer, the layers start to peel back, and you see things for what they really are, in all their wholeness, in all their contradictions, and in all their unfamiliarity.

When you get to this state, you don’t just get your goals, your purpose; you get much more from the universe.

Read about any great person, whether they were spiritual leaders like Buddha, musicians, or entrepreneurs, they all followed a nudge at some point in their life.

Elon Musk woke up one day in the middle of the night with an idea on how to create a better rocket. Likewise, John Lennon got the music of his greatest song in a dream.

The Takeaway

Start understanding that there is a bigger source where you can tap, and that source is Inspiration. You can call it God, Universe, or you Superconscious.

Inspiration speaks in whispers. You need to be attuned to it to be able to listen to it.

You need regular daily meditation practice to hear the whispers of Inspiration that we call intuitions.

The hardest thing to do for humans is to sit quietly in a room, alone.

But if you can develop that practice, you will get in touch with the world within you and the whole world that we call the universe.

A big shift begins to happen then, and things shift, very, very, rapidly.

— — — — — — — — — — 

Resources: Four Levels of Consciousness, Mindvalley

Zat Rana: The Most Important Skill Nobody Taught You

— — — — — — — — — — 

If you thought this was helpful, please recommend it below, or write a response.

— — — — — — — — — 

If you like my work, subscribe to my newsletter A Whimsical Writer.

The last few days have been mind-boggling. I am witnessing a paradigm shift happening right inside me. I am amazed at my transformation and the speed with which it is happening.

Many years ago, roughly twenty-plus, I had this tiny desire to write. It was no big deal. I wanted to express myself better, record my story for my children, write some short stories, and maybe a novel someday.

But there was only one problem. English was my second language, and I was terrible at it. But the more I sucked at it; the more my desire grew to get better at it.

I joined a life story writing course and wrote stories of my growing up in India. They were pathetic. We were supposed to read them to the group, and it used to terrify me. I spent hours making my stories coherent. Still, when I read them, they were fragmented, muddled, and plain old boring.

Anyone in their right mind would have given up and picked some other hobby.

But I couldn’t

My desire to write wouldn’t go away.

So I continued. For twenty years, I agonized over my lack of skill to be able to write well. I wanted nothing more than to be fluent and original.

Persistent paid. I got better at expressing my ideas. But writing still demanded a lot of “effort.”

I got swayed by the other writers. I read all the advice there is on how to succeed as a writer. The list was very long. I myself have written many such lists.

Fast forward to Friday last week.

I was lying in the bathtub listening to random YouTube videos when a guy appeared on a video and started talking about how we operate from different levels of consciousness.

I am not new to mind-body-soul learning. But this one made me think about writing in a completely different way.

There are four distinct and unique levels of consciousness from which we operate from. These levels determine how our consciousness and our self-awareness relate between us and the world around us.

I will come to my thought process a bit later, but let me tell you what I learned about four levels of consciousness.

Four levels of consciousness.

In 1968, Alan Watts, a British writer, speaker, and Zen master, appeared on CBS with a group of students to teach a unique zen philosophy.

He asked the students three questions:

• Who am I?
• What do I desire?
• What do I know?

The three questions sound simple enough, but they go very deep.

According to Alan, if you ponder these questions long enough, they will unlock many new meanings in your life.

Your answers to these questions depend on what state of consciousness you are in.

Vishan Lakhiani, a writer and CEO of Mindvalley, explains in his book “Code of Evolution” four levels of consciousness.

At each level of consciousness, you react and shape the world in different ways. — Vishan Lakniani

Level 1 — Culturescape

Culturescape is the tangled web of rituals and beliefs, and ideas that come from the culture. Whether we live in a tribe in a developing part of the world or in modern tribes such as a corporation, all of us are part of Culturescape.

We believe in what our parents, teachers, priests, politicians, media, advertisements, authors, books, and thought leaders tell us. But we don’t see it just like fish swimming in water.

The rules by which each tribe lives do not apply to everybody, but they apply to that tribe. The problem with Culturescape is that it feels real. We become a victim of it.

At this level world happens to us. We suffer breakups, business failure, being hospitalized, book launch failure, newsletter failure, not-being-able-to-build-a-subscriber-base failure. You get the point.

A vast majority of people exist at level 1.

At this point, we give this kind of answers to Alan’s questions:

Who am I? — I am a writer. I am a three-book author. I am a bestselling author.

What do I desire? — I want to get better at writing. I want to make a living from writing. I want to write a book. I want my book to be a megaseller. I want to earn big royalties.

What do I know? — I know I am a kind person. I know God is on my side. I know if I put in 10,000 hours, I will get better at writing.

But at a certain point, people start waking up. That is when they go to level 2.

Level 2 — Awakening

At this level, people start going back to the childhood nature of questioning. They question their parent’s expectations; they question religion, they question the social- norms, and they realize they can choose their own experiences in life.

Life doesn’t happen to them, but it starts happening from them. It emerges from them. This is when they start creating their own rules.

They don’t follow society’s so-called normal professions and start following their passion. They do that because it is fulfilling. They might become a coach, or set up a business. They still identify themselves by what they do but their desires are in line with their inner being.

At this level, they really start embracing personal growth.

When they do that enough, they go to level 3 — Recoding Yourself.

Level 3 — Recoding Yourself

This is when you realize the world is not just outside you; the world is inside you as well. And you start paying attention to your inner world. You start listening to that tiny little voice inside you.

When you start going within yourself, you start recognizing that you are more than just a physical body.

At this level, the big shift happens at question #1. The answer to that question becomes:

I am a soul having a human experience.

Level 4 — Becoming Extraordinary

As soon as you start going within, it opens you to level 4. And level 4 is when you start becoming extraordinary. An important shift happens that really transforms how you live your life. It puts you in 1–5% of human beings who are truly fulfilled and happy.

You realize you are so much beyond your body. “You” extend to all other human beings and all the life on the planet. “You” become a part of a great “whole.”

The more you expand your circle of compassion to other people, the greater the opportunity the universe gives you.

At level 1 our society teaches us to have goals and the goals are given to us by Culturescape. At level 2, the goals come from our soul. But when we get to level 4, the goals come from a completely different place.

According to Vishan Lakhiani, they come from Inspiration.

Call it Inspiration or God, or Universe, or Supreme Being, or Higher Power, but when we become a part of the “whole,” Inspiration leads to intention.

Inspiration leads to intention.

We might think we came up with the brilliant idea for that book or that song or that business, but we are simply a conduit.

When we say we got inspired, what we really mean is Inspiration whispered in our ear.

When someone gets an idea in a dream (John Lennon) or in the bathtub (Archimedes) it was Inspiraton whispering. And when Inspiraton has your attention, and you are receptive, it clears the roadblocks and starts moving you towards it. I gives you the intention.

That is how inspiration leads you to intention.

But you got to be listening. Your antenna needs to be attuned to hear the whispers. Whispers can come in any form. As an idea in the shower, or a nudge in a seminar, or as a YouTube video. You never know.

You got to be ready.

As soon as you show that you will take the nudge and act on it and you have the confidence to make it happen, luck starts being on your side.

The Inspiration doesn’t just whisper to you. It clears the way for you.

Your job is to listen.

And if you chose to ignore it, the Inspiraton goes to someone else.

I like this idea.

To me “Four Levels of Consciousness” is like a roadmap for growth.

I like that at fourth level of consciousness your goals, your purpose is assigned to you by a higher power.

At level 2 we keep looking for a purpose for life, a way to make contribution to this universe and most of the time we have no clue what that purpose is. So we pick one thing, something we like and enjoy and declare that this is the purpose of our life.

And when we don’t achieve success in our endeavor, success as defined by the society or culture, we give up.

In my case it was writing. I picked it up and made it my vocation. I have pursued it for a number of years without getting much success as in terms of making money, having a big subscriber base, building a business on it.

But the truth is I don’t need any of that. I write because I see it as a means of personal growth.

I can’t give it up. It is the reason I get up each morning, energized and ready to work. My drive to write is so strong that even if I want to give it up, I can’t.

So there is a possiblilty that universe might have a purpose behind it. Or maybe it has something completely different and I haven’t even got a clue.

How can I find out.

Listen, I suppose. Wait and listen.

How to listen? I will write about it in my next article.

Image by Comfreak from Pixabay

I couldn’t believe it when I opened the email.

I thought it was a mistake. A prank? Or worst one of the fraud emails?

It was not until three other writers reported in a SLACK group that they too got a bonus check of $500 that I realized that I had made my first real money from writing.

I am one of 1000 writers to get a $500 bonus from Medium.

I have been publishing one article a day for about 27 days now. Before that, I was averaging two articles a week. I have put an insane amount of hours into learning the craft of article writing in the past two and half years.

It feels good to be recognized.

It is not the money, but the recognition, that someone took notice of my work that feels good.

This $500 will go a long way.

Many writers like me needed this proof that we can develop a career by writing online.

This money is not enough to pay bills for many, but it is enough to give us the taste of online work. And it is a world with abundance. Thousands of entrepreneurs are building millions (nee billions) of dollars worth of businesses online. We just needed a tiny proof for ourselves.

I quit (I don’t like the word retired) a job where I earned $175K per year to start my writing career. This money is the first proof that the world is changing. That blogging could not only be intellectually satisfying but a means of earning a living.

I won’t be fully relying on Medium, but I want to thank them for the gesture.

I think they are going on the right track.

Most Medium members are interested in each other’s success. We want to hear each other’s views and learn from each other, not just about making money but also how to live this life better.

At Medium, we are part of a “scenius.”

Brian Eno, a musician, record producer, and visual artist, came up with the term “scenius.”

The word conveys the extreme creativity that a group, place or “scene” can occasionally generate. His actual definition is:

Scenius stands for the intelligence and the intuition of a whole cultural scene. It is the communal form of the concept of the genius. — Brian Eno

I first learned about scenius from Austin Kleon, who wrote in his book Steal Like an Artist, “What is great about the idea of scenius is that it makes room in the story of creativity for the rest of us: the people who don’t consider ourselves geniuses.”

It is not about how talented and how smart you are it is about what you have to contribute, the idea you can share, the quality of connections you can make and the conversations you start. — Austin Kleon

If we can forget about the geniuses and concentrate on how we can nurture and contribute to a scenius we can lean and grow much faster. Internet is basically is a bunch of seniuses. Blogs, social media sites, email groups and discussion board forums are the platforms where people hang out and talk about things they care about and share ideas. — Austin Kleon

Medium is that scenius.

Individuals immersed in a productive “scenius” blossom and produce their best work. When buoyed by scenius, you act like a genius. In addition, your like-minded peers and the entire environment inspire you.

At Medium, we are a whole scene of people supporting each other, looking at each other’s work, learning from each other, sharing and comparing and contributing ideas, and growing together as a group.Ev Williams, if you can keep Medium as a scenius for readers, writers, and thinkers, it will become a realization of your vision — Where good ideas find you.

I believe in Medium’s vision statement.

Medium is an open platform where readers find dynamic thinking, and where expert and undiscovered voices can share their writing on any topic.

In the meantime, that you for $500. They will pay for my next ten year’s subscription.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — —

If you like my work, you can subscribe to my newsletter at A Whimsical Writer.