The Bridge is my analogy to explain a wider and exciting concept of how we can have dual awareness through our “normal” day. That is, we are able to train our minds to be simultaneously conscious at different levels.
Sleep is “unconsciousness” in a way, but the brain is most definitely active during sleep, so the neurophysiologists define sleep as another level of consciousness. We can’t be fully asleep and fully awake at the same time. It is as if our brains are unable to power down the circuits enough to allow sleep, and still maintain enough power in the circuits for the environmental surveillance and intensity of verbal thinking that we associate with being awake.
And yet we can be in meditative consciousness and fully alert at the same time. It takes practice to develop simultaneous awareness of several levels of consciousness.
Imagine two parallel rivers running parallel to each other, separated by a rock wall. A flat bridge spans both the rivers with its wooden walking boards just above the flowing waters. Call one river the river of “normal waking consciousness”, and call the other one the river of “meditative conscious states”. Meditation states are wide and varied, from a light relaxation right through to profound deep meditation when the heart and breathing move into a type of slowed-down hibernation state.
Imagine you are on the bridge, and that you are free to move from one end to the other, and direct your focus to the water beneath you with the constant flow of information. Most of us spend the greater part of our time at the “normal waking” end of the bridge, with perhaps brief excursions across to the “meditation” end of the bridge. By cultivating prayer, mindfulness or meditation techniques, we develop the ability to move quickly back and forth across the bridge, and to spend more time comfortably at the “meditation” end of the bridge. It is not an easy part of the bridge for some people to hang around, whereas others really take to it naturally.
With practice, we can develop lightning transition speeds. The sprint across the bridge, so to speak, becomes instinctive and easy. We use the meditative end of the bridge to quickly recharge, relax, see our problems from a wider perspective, remember how to forgive, and to let go of tension.
Having a simultaneous awareness of “normal waking consciousness” and the “meditative conscious states”, is certainly possible, and can be developed with practice.
In other words, we can be aware of both ends of the bridge at once.
This is best tried during relatively quiet periods of mental activity, and there seems to be a built-in protection in the mind to prevent us splitting our focus when we need to be completely engaged in the physical world.
This is not to suggest that we don’t have dedicated meditation periods each day, but that the two worlds are not separate and that we can, during a normal day, find many moments in which we consciously have a foot at each end of the bridge. And, the whole process becomes automatic. This awareness of our duality can help us in sensing the right response, the right word, and the right action. At any time.
