Consciousness focusing is a technique that can be used in reprogramming your mind to free yourself from emotional addictions. It is especially useful when you are emotionally “hot.” Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) is another useful reporgramming tool, but is best utilized when a person is emotionally “cold” or accessing the more rational part of their mind.

This month’s challenge is inspired by my desire to engage in consciousness focusing. According to Ken Keyes Jr.,

Your most deep-seated beliefs were burned into your brain by trauma or repetition, especially at times when you were highly emotionally charged. The theory is, you can change them by working up high emotional voltage then pounding in the new programming with repetition.

Consciousness focusing works best after you have thoroughly intellectually convinced yourself it would be a good idea to get rid of the addiction, that you would definitely be better off without it. You don’t want any last minute reservations coming up once you raise your emotional voltage.

Consciousness focusing is probably most effective in a large sympathetic group where you don’t hold anything back when expressing yourself (including yelling and crying). However, it can also be done in a quiet way, just repeating your chosen phrase over and over to yourself meditatively as you sit, walk, jog or ride a bicycle.

Below are the highlights of this technique that I gleaned from the Handbook to Higher Consciousness:

1. Welcome the people and situations that can help you become clearly and strongly aware of your addictions.
2. Stop blaming the outside world when you are emotionally upset.
3. Whatever you tell yourself at this time is absolutely crucial so be sure to blame all of your uptightness on your emotional programming.
4. Be aware of the programmed automation of your biocomputer when you get emotionally upset.
5. Find the phrases and thoughts that generate the strongest emotions when you are upset; shout them as loud as you can over and over again.
6. Build up the voltage of your emotional responses.
7. Cry as much as possible – for crying helps you to reprogram faster.
8. Keep telling yourself that you programmed yourself many years ago and that you can deprogram that which you programmed.
9. Don’t let any person or any of your thoughts cool you down.
10. Develop the confidence that you can absolutely be the master of yourself.

I have wanted to utilize the consciousness focusing technique for quite some time, since reading about it and resonating with the concept. However, I found myself lacking a supporting spiritual medium to facilitate the practice. This is one of the benefits to having a religious or spiritual belief system that you regularly reinforce. It allows for a convenient on-ramp to connecting with your higher self.

This month’s challenge is about creating and sustaining that on-ramp, so that when I feel consciousness focusing would be effective, I have a prebuilt system of ramping up my emotional voltage that feels familiar and safe.

My objective, therefore, is to have regular daily communion with my higher self (call it God-consciousness, the Universe, or whatever helps me to plug in and connect). I am going to borrow from one of the pillars of Islam for this challenge: Salat (daily prayer), and set 5 times throughout the day to engage in communion.

• Before sunrise – Specifically, between civil dawn and sunrise, which is approximately 6:45 to 7:15AM right now.
• Midday (after the sun passes its highest) – Specifically, within 1/2 hour after solar noon, which right now is between 12:30-1:00PM.
• Late part of the afternoon – This one is more broad, but I would like to try to aim for between 3PM and 4PM.
• Just after sunset – Specifically, between sunset and civil dusk, which is approximately 5:30 to 6:00PM right now.
• Between sunset and midnight – This one has the most latitude, especially this time of year when sunset is so early. However, I am going to make a point of doing my last communion practice 15 minutes or so before retiring to bed for the day.

I want to “pray” for a minimum of 20 minutes each day, and a minimum of 2 minutes per communion session, though I want to keep track of the time informally so as not to have a rigid time structure affecting the practice.

The only other criteria I have is that I want to do all of my sessions outside on some type of mat. For now, a yoga mat will work just fine, though I might look into buying a special “prayer” mat as the challenge gets underway.

What I do during each session is entirely up to me in that moment. Chanting, bowing, thinking out loud, crying out, and repeating mantras are all great ways to engage the time, but none of them are required. The point is to focus on connection with my higher self/the Universe/God-consciousness and use whatever phrases or modalities accommodate this objective.

Namaste.