Levels of Consciousness revisited
 

Levels of Consciousness

I used to write stuff like this in the past, but later on realized that reality is infinitely subtle and no word filter could be used to describe it. This post makes me want to go back and dig through all that old stuff and maybe post some of it here.

It's eerie how much clarity seeing this post, right now, has given me. I always wondered at how different I seemed to be from everyone else. This post put all of that into sharp relief. I would like to say that I wish I had come across this sooner, but the reality is, I wouldn't have understood it before today. At least, not at the level I do now.

Living with my father as I have been for the last five years has been a trying and enlightening experience. He flits between anger and pride. I moved to live with him when I was stuck in neutrality. He couldn't comprehend anything I did or said, we spoke completely different languages. His rooted in fear, shame, anger and desire, mine rooted in all of the spiritual mumbo-jumbo I had run into over the last few years. At first I let his lower level of consciousness bring me down, I lived briefly in the desire level, I had a girlfriend whom I'd unload all my crap on to which would bring be back to neutrality. Unfortunately, she didn't fare as well, and ended up dumping me. I think it was her therapist that made her do it.

Sooner or later, I realized the pattern and stopped paying the crappier parts of his personality attention. The tensions between us I had morphed into a kind of nervous energy. I started expanding my social circle and making new friends, some of whom were instrumental in helping me reach Willingness. The added social attention was really getting me out of my moods. Around that time, I found the techniques I documented in Mastering Mood and this unpinned me from needing other people to make me feel good. I could start giving pleasure now. Willingness became my default state. I started doing odd technical jobs for people and ended up getting a job with an old friend and mentor of mine.

Nowadays I've been feeling my consciousness expand further, and I have no idea why. Perhaps my personality makeup is naturally geared for a rapid transition from Willingness to Acceptance to Reason. Maybe I've been working on Reason this whole time unconsciously, and there were just a few stumbling blocks I had to work through. Whatever it is, it's been maybe a year since I passed into having Willingness be my default state and already I'm recognizing a shift into Acceptance, whereas my reasoning abilities have been getting better and better, in ways that a year ago never would have thought possible.

I can see parts of my life being in one area where others are in other places. I'm finally able to orchestrate the whole process without losing energy. It's really an amazing feeling, and it's making me think differently about a few sacred concepts I've had over the years. I'm suddenly understanding why people like to go clubbing now. I had always thought that clubs were shallow, boring places, and that the people that hanged out in them couldn't possibly be cool. Now I understand that flash and surface are but things to play with, adult, social toys. I had always had an aversion to status, I thought that anyone who was at the top of a pecking order, in this case Steve, had to have been courting it for their own base desires. I couldn't even see the level of consciousness that could bring about Steve Pavlina, this strange hurricane of a man.

I'm noticing all of my subconscious limiting emotions now. In the past I thought it was only the conscious limiting emotions that held you back, everything else was just luck. Now I'm on the warpath, looking for all the subconscious clues that indicate wrong headed thinking. I'm reading crazy things like seduction journals and watching my dad's cable news channels with a different focus now. I'm looking at the emotions it dredges up inside of me. I'll go to a bar just to sit and soak in the feelings that being in that bar elicits. Everything's just so alive to me right now.

It's just so wonderfully odd how well the idea of consciousness works. That someone's consciousness could expand to the point to where their mere presence changes other people, is just simply amazing to me. It's almost enough to make me reconsider my staunch materialistic atheism. I know though that I'll be able to reconcile the phenomenon with my beliefs. But it does work. Men, women, respond to me in the bar in ways they never have before. I'm noticed. Guys who used to be ambivalent about me now friendily approach me. Girls get a little googly-eyed around me. I'm trying to get used to it, it's so strange and completely different from how I'm used to living.

No way am I going fully SR. But at this point, I'm almost ready to make some real, drastic changes in my way of life. Steve's consciousness seems to be getting bigger too. It sure drew me in.