Metahuman: The Best Solution to Personal Problems

Anytime that I’ve written or spoken about consciousness, someone is bound to ask, “But what should I do?” This is only natural. When faced with a challenge, problem, obstacle, or even a desired goal, people automatically want to do something. They feel helpless if they don’t.

A Cloud of Causes

This reaction may be so ingrained in you that you may miss an obvious fact: Every human problem is embedded in a cloud of causes, as I call it. There are multiple ways to describe why someone became depressed, anxious, financially challenged, and so on. But if you pierce through the fog, the root of the problem is always found in consciousness, which is also where the root of the solution lies.

The best way to solve a problem, therefore, is not to hunt around for partial answers or to act on the next solution that pops into your head. The vast majority of people vacillate when they face a personal problem. One day they try to fix it, the next day they simply put up with it, and the day after that, they consider walking away. This vacillation occurs at the level of the restless mind drive-by frustration.

What if there is a better way? That’s the question I pose in a new book, Metahuman, whose title indicates what a better way looks like. “Meta” is Greek for “beyond,” so metahuman means going beyond the normal limitations that everyone thinks apply to human beings. In reality, these limitations are mind-made, and what the mind has made, it can unmake.

How Your Mind Limits You

Here are examples, taken from the cloud of causes, for how your mind limits you.

• You see yourself as lacking because you learned that from childhood.
• You adopt secondhand thinking from your family, friends, and society in general.
• You harbor memories of failure, humiliation, setbacks, and old wounds.
• You have self-doubt and want to defend yourself where you feel vulnerable.
• You depend upon others to be responsible for you, another inheritance from childhood.
• You want to conform in order to belong and be accepted.

Nothing on this list would be news to a trained therapist—diagnosis is the easy part. The hard part comes down to two things: It is very difficult to deal with causes when you are facing a cloud of them, and in the end, the healing you seek will only be partial.

To Find Solutions, Seek Pure Consciousness

For transformative change, meaning that a problem is solved once and for all, there is no alternative than going beyond. You must find the level of the solution, which is beyond the level of the problem.

For example, when faced with difficulties in a long-term relationship, it does no good to alternate between trying to fix it, putting up with it, or walking away. You must find a place inside yourself from which any of those options could be the right choice. This place is pure consciousness, which has total knowledge about every situation. You perceive a cloud of causes because you are operating from the same confusion and conflict that gives rise to problems in the first place.

In meditation, you learn to reposition your awareness so that you come closer to pure consciousness. It is always available—in fact, everything that happens in the body-mind has its source in pure consciousness. The reason you don’t hear a clear message is due to your level of awareness not reaching deep enough.

How to Tell When You Reach Pure Consciousness

You can easily tell what it is like to be closer to pure awareness by the following:

• You have clear thinking.
• You can rely upon your intuition.
• You trust your thinking.
• You don’t judge or doubt yourself.
• Insights come when they are needed to solve a problem.

When you put these elements together, they describe a permanent state of awareness that I call metahuman, because you find it natural, effortless, and effective to go beyond the level where problems occur.

If you took the inner journey that makes the leap to metahuman, you would no longer find yourself in confusion and conflict. As higher consciousness dawns, you become more awake, and eventually, you arrive at the awakened life. Since an awakened life is based on the ultimate reality, which is pure consciousness, there is no predicting what will change. But all the changes will be in a positive direction.

This promise is good simply because your glimpses of higher consciousness have been occurring all your life. Why not turn these glimpses into a lifestyle, a way of being that gives you the full experience of human potential?

Learn to break free from life's restrictions and experience higher consciousness. Unleash your infinite potential with Deepak Chopra, M.D.'s new book Metahuman.