Transcending the Levels of Consciousness: The Stairway to Enlightenment (Power vs. Force, #5)

by David R. Hawkins

The ego is not overcome by seeing it as an enemy. It is one’s biological inheritance, and without it, nobody would be alive to lament its limitations. By understanding its origin and intrinsic importance to survival, the ego can be seen as being of great benefit but prone to becoming unruly and causing emotional, psychological, and spiritual problems if not resolved or transcended.

Early life experiences such as neglect or physical, emotional, or sexual abuse lead to shame and warp the personality for a lifetime unless these issues are later resolved. Shame, as Freud determined, produces neurosis. It is destructive to emotional and psychological health and, as a consequence of low self-esteem, makes one prone to the development of physical illness. The shame-based personality is shy, withdrawn, introverted, and self-deprecating.

Shame is used as a tool of cruelty, and its victims often become cruel. Shamed children are cruel to animals and cruel to each other.

Despair is characterized by helplessness and hopelessness and is therefore described as a dispirited state and hellish to endure. The will to live is lost, but in the deepest depths, even the act of suicide is not possible due to lack of energy.

it is also difficult to differentiate true suicidality from the relatively more frequent suicidal gestures or threats that arise from a different problem, usually involving interpersonal relationships and resentments.

The door to Enlightenment is through the deep honesty of unknowingness.

Inclusion in what seems to be negative karmic consequences occurs as a result of prior concurrence and/or participation. Thus, the cheers at the death of a gladiator are karmically significant as is taking grim satisfaction from pain and suffering or the death of others. To cheer on the implementation of the guillotine is to join with its karmic consequences.

one’s level of consciousness represents karmic inheritance.

Spiritual progress ensues automatically from choosing good will, forgiveness, and lovingness as a way of being in the world at large rather than viewing it as a gain-seeking transaction.

Due to the nature of human development, even a mature, intelligent, fully-grown adult still has repressed or forgotten, but still functional, infantile and childish drives that operate out of awareness. One of the most common is the out-of-awareness balance between the ‘good me’ and the ‘bad me.’

Each calibrated level of consciousness indicates progress beyond the levels below it and may also represent the level to which those who were once higher have fallen as a consequence of volitional choices. This descending level is well documented in the cases of very famous political leaders who started out as integrous and idealistic, calibrating in the 400s, and who later, as a consequence of the development of megalomania, crashed to very low numbers (Napoleon, Hitler, et al.).

As people evolve spiritually, each ascended level has its corollary tests or temptations into which the unwary may fall.

At the bottom of despair, there is the exhaustion of energy and of even the will to survive. It is often only in the very pits of Hell and absolute despair that the ego can be surrendered, even right up to the point of imminent physical death.

“Heaven and hell are only one-tenth of an inch apart.”

Guilt domination results in preoccupation with ‘sin’, an unforgiving emotional attitude frequently exploited by religious demagogues who use it for coercion and control. Such ‘sin and salvation’ merchants, obsessed with punishment, are likely either acting out their own guilt or projecting it onto others.

Capital punishment is an example of how killing gratifies an angry and guilt-ridden populace, but it has never been demonstrated to have any deterrent or corrective value. Instead, it satisfies the emotional need for ‘just’ retribution.