In his book, Handbook to Higher Consciousness, Kenneth Keyes outlines a simple, straightforward path to raising your energy and increasing your ability to love unconditionally.

I discuss Keyes’ 7 Centers of Consciousness in this post, but today I wanted to lay out what he describes as the 12 Pathways. These are 12 statements that you can use in order to overcome your addictive negative programming, and start living a more peaceful, aware, and loving life.

The Five Stages of Learning

Before I share the 12 pathways to higher consciousness, I want to explain a little more about how you can apply them in order to start raising your consciousness quickly and easily.

Keyes identifies 5 stages of learning that everyone passes through.

In the first stage you are not aware of these ideas and go about our day to day life with no recognition of your spiritual nature. You automatically respond and react to the events and circumstances around you.

In the second stage of awareness you become aware that there is a better way to live, and begin practicing these pathways. But, you are still often upset by events in your world and still fall back into your automatic programming often.

In the third stage of learning you become more adept at using these concepts, and can quickly identify your emotional trigger, and which pathway is best suited to overcome it. Bit by bit, you realize you do not upset as easily as you did before.

Fourth, you may start to bring these 12 pathways into your practical, everyday experience, such that when you start to become frustrated or upset by something in your environment, you immediately think of the solution, and choose one or more of these statements to help you dissipate the negativity and redirect your automatic action, before it arises.

Lastly, you enter a stage in which you have overcome your habituated tendencies to lower consciousness, and you find that you are no longer triggered by events in the world. You enter a state of detached, joyful fulfillment.

How To Use These Statements

The key to using these statements is to become aware of your automatic reactions, and gradually begin to redirect them.

I believe the best way to accomplish this is by stepping back throughout the day. Whenever you feel any negative emotion, practicing taking a moment to reset.

Watch this video to learn more about how to step back.

After you take a moment to step back, identify the emotion you are feeling, and what your automatic reaction might be.

Then, choose one of the 12 pathways, and repeat it as an affirmation. Taking time to repeat it several times, reprogramming your belief system to the new, more conscious idea.

Read this post to learn more about how to use affirmations correctly.

The 12 Pathways from Kenneth Keyes: Handbook to Higher Consciousness

Keyes groups these 12 Pathways according to how you can apply them to different areas of your life. They are not “steps” insofar as you can pick and choose different ideas for different circumstances and negative triggers you might encounter, but they are all necessary foundations for an awakened mind.

Freeing Myself

The First Pathway

“I am freeing myself from security, sensation, and power addictions that make me try to forcefully control situations in my life, and thus destroy my serenity and keep me from loving myself and others.“

The Second Pathway

“I am discovering how my consciousness-dominating addictions create my illusory version of the changing world of people and situations around me.”

The Third Pathway

“I welcome the opportunity (even if painful) that my minute to minute experience offers me to become aware of the addictions I must reprogram to be liberated from my robot-like emotional patterns.”

Being Here Now

The Fourth Pathway

“I always remember that I have everything I need to enjoy my here and now — unless I am letting my consciousness be dominated by demands and expectations based on the dead past or the imagined future.”

The Fifth Pathway

“I take full responsibility here and now for everything I experience, for it is my own programming that creates my actions and also influences the reactions of people around me.”

The Sixth Pathway

“I accept myself completely here and now and consciously experience everything I feel, think, say, and do (including my emotion-backed addictions) as a necessary part of my growth into higher consciousness.”

Interacting with Others

The Seventh Pathway

“I open myself genuinely to all people by being willing to fully communicate my deepest feelings, since hiding in any degree keeps me stuck in my illusion of separateness from other people.”

The Eighth Pathway

“I feel with loving compassion the problems of others without getting caught up emotionally in their predicaments that are offering them messages they need for their growth.”

The Ninth Pathway

“I act freely when I am tuned in, centered, and loving, but if possible I avoid acting when I am emotionally upset and depriving myself of the wisdom that flows from love and expanded consciousness.”

Discovering My Conscious Awareness

The Tenth Pathway

“I am continually calming the restless scanning of my rational mind in order to perceive the finer energies that enable me to unitively merge with everything around me.”

The Eleventh Pathway

“I am constantly aware of which of the Seven Centers of Consciousness I am using, and I feel my energy, perceptiveness, love, and inner peace growing as I open all of the Centers of Consciousness.”

The Twelfth Pathway

“I am perceiving everyone, including myself, as an awakened being who is here to claim his or her birthright to the higher conscious planes of unconditional love and oneness.”