Westerners prefer to organize the world intellectually––by analyzing things and placing them in neatly-defined categories, and we tend to discount anything that does not fit that model. This favoring of rational thinking comes, however, at the expense of wisdom available from other sources.

Transcendence is a way to experience consciousness and acquire knowledge. It provides information through bodily sensations of energy. To transcend means to go beyond a limit. Spiritual transcendence means expanding our energy beyond the known world into the unknown. This expansion is not something that can be done through the intellect, by figuring it out, or by willing it to happen. It’s something that is felt. It is an experience. It’s similar to love, which is impossible to describe using words alone because love is a feeling. Like love, transcendence is the experience of an energy sensation.

Gaining an understanding of transcendence requires practice. You can come to it through meditation, martial arts, music, art, nature, ritual, or spiritual exploration. With continued practice this sensation is recorded as a memory in your body, and you can return to it over and over. Then it becomes a resource for balanced living and spiritual evolution. It becomes a way of living.