Power vs. Force: The Hidden Determinants of Human Behavior (Power vs. Force, #1)

by David R. Hawkins

As is commonly observed, growth, both individual and collective, can take place either slowly or suddenly. It is not limited by restraints, but by tendencies. Innumerable options are open to everyone all the time, because people want the context that would make them attractive. One’s range of choice is ordinarily limited by one’s vision.

The most important element in facilitating an upward movement in consciousness is an attitude of willingness, which opens up the mind through new means of appraisal to the possible validity of new hypotheses. Although motives for change are as multitudinous as the innumerable facets of the human condition, they are most often found to arise spontaneously when the mind is challenged in the face of a puzzle or a paradox. Deliberately creating such an impasse is a customary device in certain disciplines, such as Zen, to finesse a leap of awareness.

The second is at the 500 level, reached by accepting love and nonjudgmental forgiveness as a lifestyle, exercising unconditional kindness to all persons, things, and events without exception.

In fact, this is a holographic universe. Each point of view reflects a position defined by the viewer’s unique level of consciousness. If you are on this side of the hologram, your perception will hardly agree with that of the observer on the other side. “He must be crazy!” is a common reaction to such wide discrepancy. And the world is a set of holograms in limitless dimensions, not, as is often said, of mirrors—which are fixed in time and place and offer only a single reflection. Auditory experience also is part of a holographic series of attractor fields of all the sounds that ever were. The physical world is tactile, too. It has texture, color, dimension, and spatial relationships such as position and shape. Each of these is, again, part of an underlying sequence that, with all of the other qualities, goes back in to the “end of time” to the original source of its existence, which is now.

The nature of the stream of consciousness, its patterns of thought, perception, feeling, and memory, are the consequence of entrainment of the attractor energy field by which it is dominated. It is well to remember that this domination is volitional. It is not imposed, but is the outcome of one’s own choices, beliefs, and goals.

By consent we synchronize with a field pattern that implies specific styles of processing and influences all our decisions according to its accompanying set of values and meanings. What appears as important and exciting from the perspective of one level might be boring or even repulsive at another level; truth is subjective.

What seem to be truly original thoughts appear only through the medium of genius and are invariably felt by their authors to be found or given, not created.

Great leaps in level of consciousness are always preceded by surrender of the illusion that “I know.” Frequently, the only way one can reach this willingness to change is when one “hits bottom,” that is, by running out a course of action to its end in the defeat of a futile belief system.

If life is viewed as a teacher, it then becomes just that. Unless the painful lessons of life with which we deal are transformed through humility into gateways of growth and development, they are wasted.

There is nothing the mind believes that is not fallacious at a higher level of awareness.

One of my favorite quotes. It’s helpful to remember during bouts of despair, that ALL thoughts can be written of as false.

A mind that is being watched becomes more humble and begins to relinquish its claims to omniscience. A growth in awareness can then take place. With humility comes the capacity to laugh at oneself and increasingly to be less the victim of the mind and more its master, as demonstrated by the famous Zen ox-herding pictures.

To the materialistic scientist, the question will appear nonsensical and a fruitless exercise in tautology. To those at the other pole (the “enlightened”), the question will seem comical, and the limited perception it reveals will elicit compassion. The common man might take on faith the authority of either, or of conventional religious teachings, to answer the question.

This awareness of self as Self is the culmination of the process of eliminating limited identifications.

Enlightenment is said to be relatively rare, not so much because of the difficulty of following the necessary steps, but because it is a condition of interest to very few, particularly in modern society. If we were to stop one thousand people on the street and ask them, “What is your greatest ambition in life?” how many would say, “To become enlightened”?

We have frequently pointed out that man is unable to observe or recognize an event until there is a prior context and language for naming the event. This inability, called paradigm blindness, is the direct consequence of a limitation of

The difficulty of inner work results from the great effort required to escape from the familiar gravity of lower attractor fields and move to the influence of a higher field. In order to ameliorate this struggle, all religions issue proscriptions against exposing oneself to the lower energy fields; it is only from an authoritarian viewpoint that such error is depicted as “sin.”

In consciousness-raising programs in general, a universal dictum is that one is powerless until one tells the truth. All spiritually oriented self-help groups require this first step. They are unanimous that an open mind and willingness are necessary prerequisites to progress; in other words, one must have reached an energy field of 200 in one’s own inner development to be healable. Lingering within the influence of fields below this entails a real danger of becoming so deeply entrained that one cannot escape. This is not always so, however; history has noted many occasions of individuals in the very depths of such entrainment who suddenly break through to a high level of consciousness.

Besides having relinquished the infusion of the combined power of their fellow members, their assertion that they can “go it alone” is a notorious symptom of an oncoming relapse as the ego arises, because it indicates an infiltration of arrogance and pride, calibrating at 175, which is below the power of the energy field required for healing.

A devotee can abet his own progress by merely focusing on an advanced teacher and thereby aligning with that teacher’s energy field; in our testing, it was shown repeatedly that holding in mind the image of an advanced spiritual teacher made every subject go strong, irrespective of their personal beliefs.

On the flip side, holding in mind lesser-advanced individuals tends to lower one’s consciousness to their level.

In a holographic world, any “single” event is actually the result of all events in the universe; “events” as such have no self-existent reality. The universe is man’s consciousness. It requires a comprehension beyond that of just the intellect alone.

From a higher perspective, it is all too clear how tedious and trivial reason’s infatuation with itself can become. Reason is the mirror of the mind’s vanity; ultimately, there are few things more boring to observe than self-admiration.

An individual’s level of consciousness is determined by the principles to which they are committed. To maintain progress in consciousness, there can be no wavering about principle, or the individual will fall back to a lower level.

From a social-behavioral viewpoint, as we said, truth is a set of principles by which people live, regardless of what they might say they believe.

Don’t trust people’s words to figure out their truth or what they believe. Instead, observe their actions and behavior.

The only way to enhance one’s power in the world is by increasing one’s integrity, understanding, and capacity for compassion.

True power is inaccessible to those lusting for power. True power comes to those worthy of wielding it and it comes organically according to one’s integrity.

Knowing our own and everyone else’s human foibles gives rise to forgiveness, and thence to compassion. Compassion is the doorway to Grace, to the final realization of who we are and why we are here, and the ultimate source of all existence.

But perhaps from compassion for each other’s blindness, we can learn to forgive ourselves, and peace can then be our assured future.