Dear Spiritual Family,
Dr. David Hawkins divides the levels of consciousness into three major states: inert, energetic and peaceful. As we conclude next Sunday, April 14, the multi-week focus on his central teaching of letting go, we felt it would be helpful to offer his insights into these levels. As our growth in consciousness is essential to greater peace and happiness, let’s briefly explore some aspects in each of these areas and how we might learn from them.
He writes in The Letting Go – Guided Journal, “The first state – inertia – is reflective of the emotional levels of apathy, grief and fear.” One of the biggest blocks to overcome in getting out of depression and apathy is that of blame.”
As a practical exercise, try taking some time to complete this sentence…. “When I blame this person, I become …” (and fill in the blanks.) Now, “If I choose to forgive them, I now feel …” (and write what you feel.) Releasing blame is, indeed, a choice.
Dr. Hawkins taught that “the psychological basis of all grief and mourning is attachment. Attachment and dependence occur because we feel incomplete within ourselves; therefore, we seek objects, people, relationships, places and concepts to fulfill inner needs.” As you know, the thrust of our ministry is on the wholeness and the holiness that is each of us.
After using the technique of letting go – a gentle separation of the thoughts of attachment from the feelings of attachments, sit for a few minutes and feel your wholeness.
Hawkins writes, “The more loving we are, the less vulnerable we are to grief and loss and the less we need to seek attachments.” And the Essence of this wholeness, of the Christ indwelling, is love.
As to the element of fear – “In the world of consciousness, like goes to like, so that fear attracts fear just as its corollary is true that love attracts love. The more fear we hold, the more fearful situations we attract to our life.” Thus as we focus on love, fear has to take a back seat. And eventually, we’ll say, “just get out of the car!” 😊
We’ll just spend a few lines speaking about the energetic level that concerns the emotions of desire, anger and pride with personal self-gain as the motivating factor. “Now desire itself may range from a mild wanting to an excessive craving for something or someone. The underlying quality of this emotion is its drivenness. The essential point of freedom is whether we have chosen consciously to fulfill a certain want, or whether we are just being blindly run by unconscious programs and belief systems. When we are in a higher state of consciousness in which we have acknowledged and let go of desire, we are in a freer state altogether, and what is chosen manifests in our life effortlessly.”
(We will cover this in more detail in next Sunday’s video message along with anger and pride.) Up to this point, in these first two “levels” we have addressed issues below the level of Courage which measures 200 on Dr. Hawkins Map of Consciousness.
The state of peace is the third and highest level of consciousness. “This is based,” Dr. Hawkins teaches, “upon the feelings of courage, acceptance and love. The hallmark of courage is the knowledge and feeling, ‘I can.’ It is a positive state in which we feel assured, skillful, adequate, capable, alive, loving and giving, with an overall zest for life.”
Today’s text is offered as a primer for next week’s text and video message. We will work (or play) with these ideas with the goal of deepening our practice of the letting go technique and enjoying more of life in our true state of peace and love.
In That Love,
Rev. Steve and Mary