by Steve Pavlina
In the book Power vs. Force by David R. Hawkins, theres a hierarchy of levels of human consciousness. Its an interesting paradigm. If you read the book, its 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 theres a predominant normal state for us. If youre reading this blog, chances are youre at least at the level of courage because if you were at a lower level, youd likely have no conscious interest in personal growth.
Ill go over these levels in order, mostly focusing on the ones between courage and reason, since thats the range where youre 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. Youre probably contemplating suicide at this level. Either that or youre 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 youre beginning to escape the numbness.
Fear - Seeing the world as dangerous and unsafe. Paranoia. Usually youll need help to rise above this level, or youll 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, youll often see an anger person coupled with a fear person.
Pride - The first level where you start to feel good, but its a false feeling. Its dependent on external circumstances (money, prestige, etc), so its 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. Ive 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 youll 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. Its flexible, relaxed, and unattached. Whatever happens, you roll with the punches. You dont 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. Youre taking care of your needs, but you dont push yourself too hard.
Willingness - Now that youre basically safe and comfortable, you start using your energy more effectively. Just getting by isnt 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 werent 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 dont complain much. If youre in school, then youre 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 youve become competent, and now you want to put your abilities to good use. This is the level of setting and achieving goals. I dont 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 isnt 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. Youve reached the point where you say, Wow. I can do all this stuff, and I know I must put it to good use. So whats 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. Its probably obvious that most people never reach this level in their entire lives.
Love - I dont like Hawkins label love here because this isnt the emotion of love. Its 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. Its 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. Theres 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 youll 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, youll 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 youll 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 Ive 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 Im 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 its guiding many of my decisions already, but it hasnt yet stuck as my natural state. Ive 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 Im exploding on the inside with positive energy. It literally forces me to smile. Ive been in that state for most of this morning, probably because I havent eaten anything yet today (I find it easier to hit that state of consciousness when I eat lightly or not at all).
Well naturally fluctuate between multiple states throughout the course of any given week, so youll 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 thats whats 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 Im 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 youre at the level of reason, watching TV news (which is predominantly at the levels of fear and desire) will temporarily lower your consciousness. If youre 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. I wrote about this previously when discussing quantum leaps. Without conscious effort or the help of others, youll 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), youll 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 youve mastered reason, youll suffer from gullibility and may end up in a cult.
Going up even one level can be extremely hard; most people dont 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 arent 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 didnt 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 whos at the level of pride; theyll reject the very notion with a lot of defensiveness. And time management is meaningless to someone at the level of peace. But you cant hit the higher levels if you havent 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 youre currently at the level of pride of course.
