What level of conciousness is this person at?

[fballer11]

I know someone that is very, I guess, interesting. She was my History teacher last year. I do'nt understand what level of consciousness she is currently occupying, so I would love some insight.

She doesn't resonate with me very well. At first glance, she seems very conscious and compassionate. She is vegan, pro-small farming sustenance, and many other traits made me believe that she is very developed.

I learned that all she does is blame people for situations, like the government, capitalism, meat-eaters and many other things. All she does is try to convert us to believe whatever new thing she heard on NPR or something, and it is quite annoying. I don't understand where she fits. I don't know if she is simply using her actions to seem cool, but i just don't get it. What level(s) of conciousness does she resonate at?

[Adam]

Pride.

Self-righteous people are firmly stuck on the level of pride, which I can tell you, is a very hard level to get out of. I constantly have a hard time working through this level because every time I think I have it beat, I take pride in it, which pushes me right back down. :P At least it is better than fear, right?

[Radical]

I don't really believe in levels of conciousness. I think it's just another attempt to categorize people. Mental states are rarely stable, and so someone could be in the state of fear one day, the state of anger the next etc. Perhaps it gives some people more direction to their PD, however I prefer not to attach myself to a particular category. I am an irrational human being, and my mental state changes invariably. Although not too invariably, I don't have a personality disorder.

[fballer11]

That's probably right Adam. Thank you. It seems to me that Pride would be the hardest to leave, because it is comfortable and there is no drive to get to any higher levels.

Radical- no one has one level of conciousness at one time, we are complex people. There can be a scale that determines the "average" level of a person, place, thing, idea. But you are right about us not being compartmentalized.

Have either of you read Power vs. Force? I'm almost done. Its given me several answers, as well as ask several such as the one above. Thanks guys.

[Megan]

Ken Wilber is not my guru or anything, but he would probably say your teacher has stalled at the "Mean Green Meme," meaning the negative expression of the Green Meme.

This would be a reference to the Spiral Dynamics model of Clare Graves which is more, well, dynamic than the David Hawkins model, but is another hierarchal model of consciousness development.

BTW, it's very Green to not like hierarchal models.

Summary of Spiral Dynamics book by Don Beck and Christopher Cowan

Moderator Snip: More than a few paragraphs is pushing the edge of "Fair Use" in copyright laws. The full text of what was here is included in the link below (though, admittedly, not as beautifully color coded).

Summary of*** Spiral Dynamics*** by Don Beck and Christopher Cowan by Steve Dinan

I like the Spiral Dynamics model because it is more flexible, less moralistic, and more realistic, I think, than David Hawkins' model, and allows that people can simultaneously be at different levels in different areas of their lives. A lot of Hawkins' stuff makes sense if you leave out the black and white fundamentalist thinking, and, of course, the pseudoscience. Hawkins seems to be hoist on his own petard, IMO, which I discussed here:

http://www.stevepavlina.com/forums/s...-vs-force.html

Ken Wilber and his Mean Green Meme have lots of critics, which you can easily Google, if you're curious. But I had a 'Green' landlady who went through my trash to make sure I recycled every last little thing, which is sorta mean-and-green, if you know what I mean.

I think Spiral Dynamics is a much more organic way of looking at consciousness development than Hawkins' model, and I'm not so green that I don't think there are levels of consciousness, though it's a pretty sticky topic of conversation, of course.

[Megan]

Here's Ken Wilber taking himself way too seriously, IMO, while assuming, of course, that he's a Turquoise (what else could The Wyatt Earp of Consciousness be but Turquoise? No, wait, they've added one: The Wyatt Earp of Consciousness has to be Coral now.):

+kenwilber.com - blog

This seems to be a vocational hazard of Consciousness Hierarchy popularizers.

Ken "Wyatt Earp" Wilber has nothing on Sir David "Einstein" Hawkins:

Just as Einstein’s Theory of Relativity was the hallmark of scientific discovery, Dr. David R. Hawkins’ discoveries are the E=mc2 of human consciousness research and spirituality.

Sir David R. Hawkins, M.D., Ph.D.

Does something seem not quite right here?

Maybe there is no fruitful way to talk about things like this? Maybe we need to give up the whole enterprise? Maybe it's just too prone to projection and megalomania?

I leave you with this, to cleanse the palate:

If you don't find God in the next person you meet, it's a waste of time looking for him further.
--Mahatma Gandhi

[fballer11]

wow megan thank you. I believe in Hawkin's levels of awareness, but most other things he says are quite questionable. One was that all you have to do is ask "is this thing x over level 300" and test it. As if his scale is universal and explanatory. He does use several very wierd references to math and physics. This book would be great if it was just on levels of conciousness and also the ABC theory, without kinesiology, testing of his own book, wrong phisics assumptions with no explanation, and others. THe explanation of consciousness theory is great.

I guess we cant accept 100% of any book. I believe he has a great theory, but just wanted to explain it and jumped to flawed arguments and pseudoscience. I will check out this other view on consciousness. Thanks Megan

[Megan]

Yeah, fballer11, you're welcome. I feel like I'm kind of raining on some people's parade about Hawkins, but people are just surrendering their minds to his assessment of, well, just about everything, and, as they say, if it walks like a cult and quacks like a cult....

Anyone who questions him gets the retributive calibration, so people are sort of afraid to question him, maybe like the journalists are with, say, Rush Limbaugh? They don't want him writing them off because he's so darned influential.

I can see why people go for it. I went for it myself the whole time I was reading the book. After that, I sort of sat with it for awhile, and then I'm going, hey, I've been in a cult before, I know what it feels like to be in a cult, and this is exactly what it feels like--turning over your mind lock, stock and barrel to someone else, so I burned the book and never looked back.

People don't want to have to think, that's why they get hooked into personality cults, it seems to me. It's a form of returning to the womb.

Hawkins offers what everyone's looking for: absolute certainty. It's just another form of fundamentalism, and a dangerous one, I believe, in my rotten little below-200 heart. That kind of certainty doesn't exist.

I do believe in spiritual evolution, and I do believe in some sort of Omega Point, such as Teilhard referred to:

Omega point is a term invented by French Jesuit Pierre Teilhard de Chardin to describe the ultimate maximum level of complexity-consciousness, considered by him the aim towards which consciousness evolves.

Rather than divinity being found "in the heavens" he held that evolution was a process converging toward a "final unity", identical with the Eschaton and with God.

According to Teilhard and the Russian scholar and biologist Vladimir Vernadsky (author of The Geosphere 1924 and The Biosphere 1926), the planet is in a transformative process, metamorphosing from the biosphere into the noosphere.

Omega point - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Think of the political ramifications of an elitist system like Hawkins'! Do you think that the 85% of the population who are poor schmucks that calibrate below 200 should be allowed to vote? More to the point, do you think Sir David does? This is going no good place, IMO.

It's one thing to have a theory that there are levels of consciousness. I believe there are levels of consciousness--no problem there.

What I have a problem with is one man setting himself up as the arbiter of the value of everything in human culture, and who feels empowered to write off his detractors as low-calibration nincompoops. The "karmically qualified" Hawkins' demagoguery is getting close to the Divine Right of Kings flapdoodle of old, it seems to me:

The Divine Right of Kings is a European political and religious doctrine of political absolutism. Such doctrines are largely, though not exclusively, associated with the mediæval and ancien régime eras.

It states that a monarch owes his rule to the will of God, not to the will of his subjects, parliament, the aristocracy or any other competing authority. This doctrine continued with the claim that any attempt to depose a monarch or to restrict his powers ran contrary to the will of God.

Divine Right of Kings - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Emperor has no clothes.

[fballer11]

So obviously I haven't read your book, but what about it gives you a different feeling than Hawkin's? For me, I know a lot about math and science, and I think that conventional physics is just a measuring stick, no acual truth about the universe, but Hawkin's still uses lots of cool words/theories to prove an urelated point. And that didn't resonate with me. But the ida of a collective dealie turning into a process turning into a thing (the ABC thing) had some potential, along with th elevels of conciousness.

We sure make our own truths

[Megan]

I posted the link to Ken Wilber's rather amazing article because I wanted to demonstrate that the Spiral Dynamics scheme isn't any more immune to being seized by people for their own ends than the Power vs. Force scheme.

I think we have to be very aware of the pitfalls inherent in treading on this ground--the projection and megalomania, the personality cult tendencies, the elitist thinking, the marginalizing of whole groups of people--as I mentioned, in short, human nature rearing its universal head.

I posted the Omega Point reference because I agree with you that "the idea of a collective dealie turning into a process turning into a thing (the ABC thing) had some potential, along with the levels of conciousness."

But I don't think we make our own truths. I believe in an Ultimate Reality, towards which we all strive, but I think that, at best, we make approximations of truth, which need to be continually upgraded. It's called evolution. Collective evolution.

Any one person claiming to possess THE TRUTH is delusional, and potentially dangerous, depending on how charismatic he or she is, in my opinion.

David Hawkins is pretty charismatic.

[Megan]

Thanks for the feedback about "fair use." I'll watch that in the future!

Moderator Edit: While this matter has been sorted out already and there are no issues, unfortunately we weren't able to send you a PM just yet, Megan (due to a setting on vBulletin), however I'll explain a bit about fair use for you and anyone else who is interested:

Basically fair use states that if you wish to quote or include material from a Copyrighted document, you must only use a small percentage of the original document. The exact amount isn't specifically defined and this law has a lot of "grey area" in terms of what's considered 'right' and 'wrong', but generally you can be safe by including no more then a few paragraphs from a long article (such as one approx. 2000 words), and no more then a few sentences from anything shorter then approx. 2000 words. Additionally, as you did, you must always include a link or reference to the original source, crediting the author/copyright holder.

Try to think of quoting text from an article as a way to give a short "snippet" of information about a link you include in a post -- a preview, if you will. It gives people a sample of what to expect when they click on the link. I'm not an expert on copyright law, so if you'd like more information, I linked to an article on Wikipedia about fair use in your above post (post #5) -- you can also find the Wikipedia link here.

From what you've said in this post, Megan, I don't expect you'll have any issues in the future. I hope you found this information helpful. If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to send me a private message -- you can click here to do so.

Anyway, please continue the discussion. It's been a good read so far!

- Bruce Achterberg

[SuperBeaver]

Ideas are just ideas at the end of the day. Only real thing that matters is what you can do.

[Megan]

Ideas are just ideas at the end of the day. Only real thing that matters is what you can do.

I agree with you in substance, SuperBeaver, and I think that is a good point to bring up.

For most of us, most of the time (and especially for those afflicted with "Lightworker Syndrome," perhaps), all this speculating on ideas is an exercise in wool gathering, at best, and an addictive escape from demonstrably more important matters close at hand, at worst.

Ideas in the hands of an ambitious and charismatic ideologue, however, are another thing altogether, I believe. For examples, please see, ahem, history.

History, it can be argued, is peopled with those who a) devised hierarchal schemes, and b) placed themselves at the top of said schemes.

Two of my three examples above see themselves as sui generis, it seems: Ken Wilber, the "Wyatt Earp" of consciousness, and David Hawkins, the "Einstein" of consciousness, self-designated. Well, I beg to differ.

My third example, Teilhard de Chardin, takes a far more realistic (if mysticism can be said to be realistic), far more inclusive, not to mention mature, not to mention sane, position, I think.

(Teilhard is not my guru either. All the gurus have feet of clay, it seems. Follow any person at your own risk. Stephen Jay Gould accused Teilhard of being complicit with the "Piltdown Hoax." Who knows? Not I.

Teilhard and the Pildown "Hoax")

That said, learn from anyone, also at your own risk, I would say--Hawkins, Wilber, Teilhard--anyone who says something that makes sense to you, and bears deeper scrutiny.

But own the responsibility for what you believe, and don't give your power away to ideologues.

Megan

PS: Bruce, thanks for the information on "fair use." You can join in the discussion too, you know! But the thread topic has deviated far afield, at my hands, alas. Sorry :-(

In general, I prefer to keep my discussion on top the board, mostly because I can keep some kind of reasonable grip on what kind of time I spend that way (ha!), but I have enabled moderator e-mails, I think, so you have access to that, if needed.