Imagine walking into a dark room. You know there are objects in the room but it’s pitch black, so you bumble around knocking things over and acquiring little injuries in the process. The dark room becomes dangerous, threatening, capable of inflicting pain and giving rise to stress and uncomfortable emotions.

Then, someone else walks in the room and turns on the light switch. Just like that, the room is illuminated and no longer threatening. You walk around the room with ease, dodging any potential collisions and putting back into place the things that were knocked over when the room was in darkness. 

Now, imagine that room is your mind. The objects in the room are your thoughts, your beliefs about yourself and your place in the world, your past experiences, stresses and traumas. The light is your state of consciousness. When consciousness is dark or dim, we have little awareness of the “objects” in our mind that govern the way we engage with ourselves and with the people, places and situations in our daily life. We unconsciously live out our thoughts, beliefs, and stresses with little capacity to witness how our past is determining our present. Without the ability to witness the inner workings of our mind, we move through life repeating old patterns and habits. We may feel perplexed that history continues to repeat itself and wonder why creating positive change in life seems so unattainable. 

What dims our consciousness state is stress. Stress is stored in the body, and it has a fogging effect on the mind. Not only does stress make us feel foggy, if we don’t let go of our past stresses they trigger us into irrelevant reactivity in the present. Every time the body has a stress response it takes a sensory snapshot of everything we were experiencing through our five senses at the moment the body went into fight-flight. We store these sensory memories in the brain as pre-cognitive commitments (PCCs). Anytime you start to feel uneasy or stressed for no obvious reason, the brain has recognised something in your environment that was there previously when you got stressed, and preempted a stress response so you can respond more quickly this time. At the extreme end of this spectrum is the experience of having a panic attack. Whilst being a beautifully sophisticated survival mechanism, when we’re carrying around years or decades worth of stress those PCCs drain our body’s resources and dim our consciousness. The average person has tens of thousands of PCC stored in their brain, making being in the present moment incredibly challenging.

When we learn Vedic meditation, we switch on the lights. Expanding our consciousness is like adding light to a dark room. Consciousness illuminates the inner workings of the mind, allowing us to become the silent witness of our thoughts and beliefs rather than unconsciously repeating patterns of behaviour based on our past experiences and wounds. With the lights on, creating change in our life no longer feels like an impossible feat. We may choose to heal on our own or with the support of a therapist, kinesiologist, counsellor or coach - whatever path we choose, it is more fruitful and frictionless with the lights of our awareness set firmly in the on position. 

As well as giving us the gift of greater awareness, Vedic meditation systematically liberates our stresses and PCCs. Stress is removed from the body through deep rest, no amount of talking about stress will undo the impact that stress has on our physiology at a cellular level. 

With the light of our awareness shining brightly and a body no longer weighed down with a lifetime of accumulated stresses, we are liberated to be, feel, behave and engage with ourselves and the world as our true selves. As an infinitely loving, kind, compassionate, patient, accepting, creative being of infinite potential. As a fully expressed being capable of engaging fully with the present moment, with the light of our awareness illuminating the way.