Levels of Consciousness
In the book Power vs. Force by David R.
Hawkins, there’s a hierarchy of levels of human consciousness. It’s
an interesting paradigm. If you read the book, it’s also fairly easy
to figure out where you fall on this hierarchy based on your current
life situation.
From low to high, the levels of consciousness are: shame, guilt,
apathy, grief, fear, desire, anger, pride, courage, neutrality,
willingness, acceptance, reason, love, joy, peace, enlightenment.
While we can pop in and out of different levels at various times,
usually there’s a predominant “normal” state for us. If you’re
reading this blog, chances are you’re at least at the level of
courage because if you were at a lower level, you’d likely have no
conscious interest in personal growth.
I’ll go over these levels in order, mostly focusing on the ones
between courage and reason, since that’s the range where you’re most
likely to land. The labels are Hawkins’. The descriptions of each
level are based on Hawkins’ descriptions but blended with my own
thoughts. Hawkins defines this as a logarithmic scale, so there are
far fewer people at the higher levels than at the lower ones. An
increase from one level to another will result in enormous change in
your life.
Shame – Just a step above
death. You’re probably contemplating suicide at this level. Either
that or you’re a serial killer. Think of this as self-directed
hatred.
Guilt – A step above shame,
but you still may be having thoughts of suicide. You think of
yourself as a sinner, unable to forgive yourself for past
transgressions.
Apathy – Feeling hopeless or
victimized. The state of learned helplessness. Many homeless people
are stuck here.
Grief – A state of perpetual
sadness and loss. You might drop down here after losing a loved one.
Depression. Still higher than apathy, since you’re beginning to
escape the numbness.
Fear – Seeing the world as
dangerous and unsafe. Paranoia. Usually you’ll need help to rise
above this level, or you’ll remain trapped for a long time, such as
in an abusive relationship.
Desire – Not to be confused
with setting and achieving goals, this is the level of addiction,
craving, and lust — for money, approval, power, fame, etc.
Consumerism. Materialism. This is the level of smoking and drinking
and doing drugs.
Anger – the level of
frustration, often from not having your desires met at the lower
level. This level can spur you to action at higher levels, or it can
keep you stuck in hatred. In an abusive relationship, you’ll often
see an anger person coupled with a fear person.
Pride – The first level
where you start to feel good, but it’s a false feeling. It’s
dependent on external circumstances (money, prestige, etc), so it’s
vulnerable. Pride can lead to nationalism, racism, and religious
wars. Think Nazis. A state of irrational denial and defensiveness.
Religious fundamentalism is also stuck at this level. You become so
closely enmeshed in your beliefs that you see an attack on your
beliefs as an attack on you.
Courage – The first level of
true strength. I’ve made a previous post about this level: Courage
is the Gateway. This is where you start to see life as challenging
and exciting instead of overwhelming. You begin to have an inkling
of interest in personal growth, although at this level you’ll
probably call it something else like skill-building, career
advancement, education, etc. You start to see your future as an
improvement upon your past, rather than a continuation of the same.
Neutrality – This level is
epitomized by the phrase, “live and let live.” It’s flexible,
relaxed, and unattached. Whatever happens, you roll with the
punches. You don’t have anything to prove. You feel safe and get
along well with other people. A lot of self-employed people are at
this level. A very comfortable place. The level of complacency and
laziness. You’re taking care of your needs, but you don’t push
yourself too hard.
Willingness – Now that
you’re basically safe and comfortable, you start using your energy
more effectively. Just getting by isn’t good enough anymore. You
begin caring about doing a good job — perhaps even your best. You
think about time management and productivity and getting organized,
things that weren’t so important to you at the level of neutrality.
Think of this level as the development of willpower and
self-discipline. These people are the “troopers” of society; they
get things done well and don’t complain much. If you’re in school,
then you’re a really good student; you take your studies seriously
and put in the time to do a good job. This is the point where your
consciousness becomes more organized and disciplined.
Acceptance – Now a powerful
shift happens, and you awaken to the possibilities of living
proactively. At the level of willingness you’ve become competent,
and now you want to put your abilities to good use. This is the
level of setting and achieving goals. I don’t like the label
“acceptance” that Hawkins uses here, but it basically means that you
begin accepting responsibility for your role in the world. If
something isn’t right about your life (your career, your health,
your relationship), you define your desired outcome and change it.
You start to see the big picture of your life more clearly. This
level drives many people to switch careers, start a new business, or
change their diets.
Reason – At this level you
transcend the emotional aspects of the lower levels and begin to
think clearly and rationally. Hawkins defines this as the level of
medicine and science. The way I see it, when you reach this level,
you become capable of using your reasoning abilities to their
fullest extent. You now have the discipline and the proactivity to
fully exploit your natural abilities. You’ve reached the point where
you say, “Wow. I can do all this stuff, and I know I must put it to
good use. So what’s the best use of my talents?” You take a look
around the world and start making meaningful contributions. At the
very high end, this is the level of Einstein and Freud. It’s
probably obvious that most people never reach this level in their
entire lives.
Love – I don’t like Hawkins’
label “love” here because this isn’t the emotion of love. It’s
unconditional love, a permanent understanding of your connectedness
with all that exists. Think compassion. At the level of reason, you
live in service to your head. But that eventually becomes a dead end
where you fall into the trap of over-intellectualizing. You see that
you need a bigger context than just thinking for its own sake. At
the level of love, you now place your head and all your other
talents and abilities in service to your heart (not your emotions,
but your greater sense of right and wrong — your conscience). I see
this as the level of awakening to your true purpose. Your motives at
this level are pure and uncorrupted by the desires of the ego. This
is the level of lifetime service to humanity. Think Gandhi, Mother
Teresa, Dr. Albert Schweitzer. At this level you also begin to be
guided by a force greater than yourself. It’s a feeling of letting
go. Your intuition becomes extremely strong. Hawkins claims this
level is reached only by 1 in 250 people during their entire
lifetimes.
Joy – A state of pervasive,
unshakable happiness. Eckhart Tolle describes this state in The
Power of Now. The level of saints and advanced spiritual teachers.
Just being around people at this level makes you feel incredible. At
this level life is fully guided by synchronicity and intuition.
There’s no more need to set goals and make detailed plans — the
expansion of your consciousness allows you to operate at a much
higher level. A near-death experience can temporarily bump you to
this level.
Peace – Total transcendence.
Hawkins claims this level is reached only by one person in 10
million.
Enlightenment – The highest
level of human consciousness, where humanity blends with divinity.
Extremely rare. The level of Krishna, Buddha, and Jesus. Even just
thinking about people at this level can raise your consciousness.
I think you’ll find this model worthy of reflection. Not only people
but also objects, events, and whole societies can be ranked at these
levels. Within your own life, you’ll see that some parts of your
life are at different levels than others, but you should be able to
identify your current overall level. You might be at the level of
neutrality overall but still be addicted to smoking (level of
desire). The lower levels you find within yourself will serve as a
drag that holds the rest of you back. But you’ll also find higher
levels in your life. You may be at the level of acceptance and read
a book at the level of reason and feel really inspired. Think about
the strongest influences in your life right now. Which ones raise
your consciousness? Which ones lower it?
One thing I like about these levels of consciousness is that I can
trace back over my own life and see how I’ve been moving through
them. I remember being stuck at the level of guilt for a long time –
as a child I was indoctrinated into a belief system where I was a
helpless sinner, being judged according to the standards of someone
at the level of love or higher. From there I graduated to the state
of apathy, feeling numb to the whole thing. By high school I had
reached the level of pride — I was a straight-A student, captain of
the Academic Decathlon team, showered with accolades and awards, but
I became dependent on them. I hit the level of Courage in my late
teens, but the courage was very unfocused, and I overdid it and got
myself into all sorts of trouble. I then spent about a year in
neutrality and moved through willingness and acceptance during my
20s with a lot of conscious effort. At present I’m at the level of
reason and getting closer and closer to completing the leap to love.
I experience the state of love more and more often, and it’s guiding
many of my decisions already, but it hasn’t yet stuck as my natural
state. I’ve also experienced the state of joy for days at a time,
but never with any permanence yet. That state is a pervasive feeling
of natural euphoria, as if I’m exploding on the inside with positive
energy. It literally forces me to smile. I’ve been in that state for
most of this morning, probably because I haven’t eaten anything yet
today (I find it easier to hit that state of consciousness when I
eat lightly or not at all).
We’ll naturally fluctuate between multiple states throughout the
course of any given week, so you’ll probably see a range of 3-4
levels where you spend most of your time. One way to figure out your
“natural” state is to think about how you perform under pressure. If
you squeeze an orange, you get orange juice because that’s what’s
inside. What comes out of you when you get squeezed by external
events? Do you become paranoid and shut down (fear)? Do you start
yelling at people (anger)? Do you become defensive (pride)? What
happens to me under pressure is that I become hyper-analytical, but
recently I just had a pressure situation where I handled it mostly
by intuition, which was a big change for me. This tells me I’m
getting close to the unconditional love state because in that state,
intuition can be effectively accessed even under pressure.
Everything in your environment will have an effect on your level of
consciousness. TV. Movies. Books. Web sites. People. Places.
Objects. Food. If you’re at the level of reason, watching TV news
(which is predominantly at the levels of fear and desire) will
temporarily lower your consciousness. If you’re at the level of
guilt, TV news will actually raise it up.
Progressing from one level to the next requires an enormous amount
of energy. Without conscious effort or the help of others, you’ll
likely just stay at your current level until some outside force
comes into your life.
Notice the natural progression of levels, and consider what happens
when you try to short-cut the process. If you try to reach the level
of reason before mastering self-discipline (willingness) and
goal-setting (acceptance), you’ll be too disorganized and unfocused
to use your mind to its full extent. If you try to push yourself to
the level of love before you’ve mastered reason, you’ll suffer from
gullibility and may end up in a cult.
Going up even one level can be extremely hard; most people don’t do
so in their entire lives. A change in just one level can radically
alter everything in your life. This is why people below the level of
courage aren’t likely to progress without external help. Courage is
required to work on this consciously; it comes down to repeatedly
betting your whole reality for the chance to become more conscious
and aware. But whenever you reach that next level, you realize
clearly that it was a good bet. For example, when you hit the level
of courage, all your past fears and false pride seem silly to you
now. When you reach the level of acceptance (setting and achieving
goals), you look back on the level of willingness and see you were
like a mouse running on a treadmill — you were a good runner, but
you didn’t pick a direction.
I think the most important work we can do as human beings is to
raise our individual level of consciousness. When we do this, we
spread higher levels of consciousness to everyone around us. Imagine
what an incredible world this would be if we could at least get
everyone to the level of acceptance. According to Hawkins 85% of the
people on earth live below the level of courage.
When you temporarily experience the higher levels, you can see where
you must go next. You have one of those moments of clarity where you
understand that things have to change. But when you sink into the
lower levels, that memory becomes clouded.
We have to keep consciously taking ourselves back to the sources
that can help us complete the next leap. Each step requires
different solutions. I recall when making the shift from neutrality
to willingness, I listened to time management tapes almost every
day. I immersed myself in sources created by people at the level of
willingness until I eventually shifted. But a book on time
management will be of little use to someone who’s at the level of
pride; they’ll reject the very notion with a lot of defensiveness.
And time management is meaningless to someone at the level of peace.
But you can’t hit the higher levels if you haven’t mastered the
basics first. Jesus was a carpenter. Gandhi was a lawyer. Buddha was
a prince. We all have to start somewhere.
Look at this hierarchy with an open mind and see if it leads you to
new insights that may help you take the next leap in your own life.
No levels are any more right or wrong than others. Try not to get
your ego wrapped up in the idea of being at any particular level,
unless you’re currently at the level of pride of course.
This article is from Steve
Pavlina, creator of the popular blog Personal Development for Smart
People.