What is your "Level of Conciousness?"

[llong]

For those who haven't read it, here's the link:
http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/200...consciousness/

I've condensed the first three, given the poll choice limit, and Steve mentions that "if you’re reading this blog, chances are you’re at least at the level of courage..."

[llong]

Again, like the thread rating yourself 1-10, there's two clusters (ignoring the Enlightenment nonsense), one around Neutrality and one around Reason.

[openeyes]

I initially thought I’d fall somewhere between joy and peace as I tend to be a very joyful/playful person, while at the same time being generally unshakable, but their descriptions sound much more grand than I would usually lay claim to as a full time state. A friend last weekend described my demeanor as very calm with a certain edgy intensity he’s never seen before. Everyone else who knows me personally says about the same thing.

I’ve also been branded with the nickname of “smiley” over the years, as I often can’t help but smile upon seeing people or even when meditating. In looking at my behavior under pressure, my most common reaction to falling, dropping something, or even getting hit is to laugh spontaneously. When I was learning to walk as a child, each time I fell I laughed and got back up. I don’t really worry much about things as something always comes up and the situation practically solves itself, or it simply stops being an issue. I just open up my receptive channels more.

With the idea of having a place in multiple levels as Steve discussed, I see myself with strong highlights of joy and peace, with a baseline of neutrality so far as having nothing to prove. Several years ago I had a strong activist period, with a strong focus on time management, goal setting and doing whatever I could to help improve things. Around age 16 I felt a very strong purpose, and had I taken this survey then I'd have felt myself largely on the levels of reason and love with still strong connotations of joy and peace.

Now it seems that the world practically improves itself of its own accord, and I needn't wear myself too thin in most instances for change to occur. It's funny though, at the time I was most active, it seemed the more I did the more energy I had, and the more I could do. I may just be experiencing a bit of downtime right now. On occasions when worthy causes where I feel able to make a real difference come up I’m happy to step in, but until then I’ll be sipping some hot chocolate or massaging a friend

[llong]

Interesting....in Steve's article, Love is only reached by 1/250 of the population, and Peace by 1/10,000,000.

Congrats.

[Freelancer]

I picked acceptance but I feel like I'm at the high end of it right now. The changes are happening in my life and love/joy are becoming bigger and bigger parts of my life. It would be nice if there was an option in the poll to select multiple levels, although I'm not sure if its possible right now.

[Sunnybayes]

Originally Posted by openeyes

Now it seems that the world practically improves itself of its own accord, and I needn't wear myself too thin in most instances for change to occur. It's funny though, at the time I was most active, it seemed the more I did the more energy I had, and the more I could do. I may just be experiencing a bit of downtime right now. On occasions when worthy causes where I feel able to make a real difference come up I’m happy to step in, but until then I’ll be sipping some hot chocolate or massaging a friend

[quote]

Yup, kinda in the state of well, the world is advancing along just fine without me. Now I'm ready to jump back in again. I think its because I'm not so busy with physics right now that I have the time to self reflect and really get some purpose and direction and motivation.

Totally felt the same way in high school. I was doing everything possible and felt really awesome about it. Was doing sports all year around, band all year around, hard classes, science Olympiad... then college, bout the only thing I felt like was just studying really hard, and only doing mediocre, only because everyone was brilliant so you just became average again, and then all the work became so tedious...

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.

Okay here's my explanation why I think that I'm at love.
But first why I'm at least at reason.
"You now have the discipline and the proactivity to fully exploit your natural abilities."

I am creative. I've defined an awesome way to be systematically creative. I know what it feels like to be creative. I've done ai projects when I was in high school, just for the fun of it and made robots out of pencils that have won state competitions. Maybe I don't have the mathematical abilities of Einstein yet, but only because I've not taken Phd physics level classes. I will start those next semester. But I know that if I concentrated on it for 10 years I could reach that level (okay, maybe just possibly).

“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?”

Okay, so I'd rather apply my abilities to engineer something for global warming. But perhaps maybe we are too stupid right now, and that computers would be much better at figure that stuff out. So I'm apply my ideas to AI.

"You take a look around the world and start making meaningful contributions."
Did an open source project with my best friend that took a year's worth of programming to make it easier for students to schedule classes (sounds easy at first... but harder than you might think...) just for the fun of it, and I hated registering for classes as a freshman. 5000 downloads... I guess I could do more marketing... its kinda meaningful... general AI might be more meaningful...

" a permanent understanding of your connectedness with all that exists. Think compassion."
Okay read my response here:

yea I think I fit in with organizing the conciousness of the universe and no matter what anyone does, everybody works towards that. Its my strange belief but that's my understanding of my "connectedness with all that exists."

" At the level of reason, you live in service to your head."
This what I did in high school. I was constantly mapping out my internal state with all situations on how I felt physically in my mind and body. Read my introduction here

" You see that you need a bigger context than just thinking for its own sake." That's why I wrote that really big post here. And why I'm always saying you need to make sure you have your life purpose really really figured out.

But I suppose I'm still working on this one:
" You now have the discipline and the proactivity to fully exploit your natural abilities."
But I know what it is in terms of the model I'm working on, and what it feels like and improving my system with my life outline. But perhaps this one is always on going.


from Love:
"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"
That's why I'm building my model/framework here:

I am putting all my thoughts and creative abilities into figuring out how to describe how to be concious, and actually know it. Hopefully I'll have that written out by next month and be able to explain it fairly well.

"Your motives at this level are pure and uncorrupted by the desires of the ego."
Yea, I admit, I'm feeling a bit arrogant right now.... and big headed... but I dont really care. If I can figure this stuff out then that means I'll help people and that well... I'll help with the convergence of conciousness.

"It’s a feeling of letting go."
Ok, so this summer I'm going to plan out how to make the leap, so I dont have to go to work, and then devote everything to this.

"Your intuition becomes extremely strong. "
If you define intuition as thinking with your feelings, then I'll explain how to do this, and I'm writing up my definition of intuition, in terms of my favorite Invariant Representations

I might even go so far as to edging into this one:
"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."

I know how to be happy when I want to. Just walking down the street listening to some music... everything flowing...
Well I know how to induce it, because I've spent so long learning about my inner state. But sometimes, its just not very useful to be happy. Because happy only happens when you've stabilized your Invariant Representations in your mind, [ok, I realize this only makes sense to me right now and to every one else totally nuts... but I', getting around to that...] but that means you're you've reached a stable state and means you do not wish to grow... because you are happy with your life the way it is. So yes, its nice sometimes just to sit back and enjoy the happiness that you've earned, but then sometimes its just not useful and you push yourself, but you realize you can be happy again when you feel like it.

but I'm not quite there yet:
"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."
cause I need to plan what I'm going to do next summer how to get to this level. But I know exactly what I need to do to get there. And then I'll just be able to plan everything else out in my mind. But I dont know, maybe this just means that you're already finished making out your upper level goals/plans/life purpose/ and that you've internalized it so much that you don't need to think about it anymore... you just do it automatically through your subconscious.

And again, hopefully I'll be able to explain this soon. Just need to get through my finals and settle down back home first.

[Dilman]

I put down Willingness, but I feel like I'm at Willingness and Courage, it doesn't seem like Neutrality should be above Courage...

[Brutha]

it doesn't seem like Neutrality should be above Courage...

Courage is self focused, everything after isn't self focused.
Neurality is the first that isn't self focused.

[llong]

Another bimodal poll.

Odd.