An Encounter with Consciousness Itself (Part 2)

Imagine coming across a map that feels like finding a key to a door you never knew existed, but always knew you needed.

Thank you for being here with me, it means a lot 🙏

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I’ve been intensely seeking my entire life without realising my mind was the overlord of my reality. Everything was always about what’s next rather than what’s now, and I couldn’t see past the deathgrip of its rigidity.

I came from a position of placing little value on feelings, emotion or intuition, and placing all value on data, cold hard facts and science.

Lately though, that’s all changed.

This is Part 2 in a series I call Mind Is The Enemy.

• Part 1: A Bug In The Deployed Code (My Backstory)

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The “truth”. 

That thing everyone claims to know, loves to argue about and yet no one can seem to agree on.

At the start of last year, I got into a huge disagreement with my partner’s family which resulted in both my partner and I not speaking to them for over a year. It’s still somewhat unresolved to this day, so it’s a little raw to speak about. 

It was that typical clash of ideals centred around religious views and expectations of which I’m sure many have experienced either directly or indirectly at some point.

While this experience completely rattled my world as I spent a good chunk of last year living in fear, stress and anxiety, it brought something special into my awareness - I’ve seen this same pattern play out over and over again in my life.

Why is that special?

I was able to realise anytime it came to discussions of belief systems, ideals or the nature of reality, my experience with those around me was always turbulent which led to many disagreements, arguments and frictional relationships.

That realisation launched me into a year of deep introspection, self-inquiry and therapy as I stood to face my own shadow (protector parts) as well as my internal belief systems and fabricated structures of mind (child and lower ego-self states).

But before I get into that in later parts of this series, I’d be remiss if I didn’t intentionally call out an encounter with a book by a certain philosopher which served to accelerate my ongoing quest for understanding.

Hi, I’m Consciousness… Nice To Meet You

On a winter’s Sunday in June 2023 (🇦🇺) a random dude I’d never seen before at a Stoicism Meetup caught my interest. The way he was talking seemed transcendent, so I decide to ask him for a book recommendation.

He rambled a bit and gave me a couple recommendations but I only remember hearing one sentence… “… so yeah, but I’d recommend starting off with Transcending the Levels of Consciousness by Dr. David Hawkins and seeing where things go from there”.

I don’t know why, but the title captured me. It sounded really important, so I went home and downloaded it to my Kindle straight away.

”The pervasive universal energy field called consciousness is of infinite power and dimension beyond time and is compositionally nonlinear. It is the ‘light of the world’ as it emanates from the Unmanifest to the Manifest, from the nonlinear, infinite potentiality to its linear expression as the unfolding of Creation. The power of the infinite field of consciousness and its infinite potentiality manifests as matter. Later, the interface of the Light of Divinity as the field of consciousness in its encounter with matter results in the emergence of the unique quality and energy of life itself.” - David R. Hawkins, Transcending the Levels of Consciousness.

What the f**k did I just read?

I remember thinking that while opening this book for the first time later that night in bed while simultaneously jumping up and yelling to my partner “this is it!” 😂

My Experience After Encountering Consciousness Research

David is best known for his research and work into the research and understanding of human consciousness, and he’d be even better known these days for the development of a framework which quantifies all the different levels of human consciousness on an energetic logarithmic scale ranging from 1–1000, which he calls “The Map of Consciousness”. This was the first time I’d come across anyone that had combined knowledge from fields like physics, psychiatry, psychology, and medicine, and then fused them with spirituality… I was very excited. 

The core tenet behind the map is that all existence is energy (both matter and non-matter), hence the spectrum and extent of the human emotional experience could be charted based on it’s energetic level which is also correspondent to overall attitude on life, perception of reality and therefore current operational level of truth.

There’s something about this damned map that makes you want to run around and show everyone. I made a couple additions to it (everything in grey) that I enjoyed about some other representations that exist around the web.

Simply looking at the map for the first time is a profound experience in itself. It’s like coming across a key to a door you didn’t know existed, but always knew you needed. Lower levels correspond to the survival paradigm (lower ego-self and victim mentality) whereas higher levels correspond to the spiritual paradigm (higher Self).

I won’t be going into the understanding or mechanics of David’s work or consciousness research in this post, instead I’ll be reflecting on how this encounter stood to alter my worldview forever…

💡 If you feel called to go deeper on the topic of consciousness, I highly recommend checking out

Scott Britton

’s phenomenal work:

Consciousness ∞ The Doorway to Human Evolution

¹.

There’s no single, verifiable version of the truth

At least one that everyone can come to terms with and agree upon.

Assuming we take it at face value that Enlightenment is the absolute pinnacle of the human experience when it comes to our capacity of consciousness (likely at least for now since consciousness is currently constrained by our biology), and all the other levels are in perfect order:

Would you expect someone who is viewing reality from the consciousness level of Peace to have the same reality (and therefore truth) as someone viewing reality from the consciousness level of Guilt level? Probably not considering the one viewing reality from a Guilt lense has an ‘Evil’ view of life and self, while the one viewing reality from a Peace lense has a ‘Perfect’ view of life and self.

Our perception and understanding of reality (and therefore truth) is constrained by our level of consciousness or awareness. What’s true for a duck isn’t true for a human, and vice versa.

Okay, so if we want to reach greater levels of truth, why don’t we just raise our consciousness levels then? It’s not that simple. A human’s level of consciousness is constrained by a whole bunch of limiting factors, the biggest and most immediate ones that stand out to me are:

1. Our biology. The reason why a duck isn’t self-aware like a human is², is because we’re far more advanced biologically (we have the physiological equipment for heightened states of awareness).

2. The level of intensity of identification between someone and objects of their experience (thoughts, feelings and perceptions).

Point 1 seems self-explanatory, but what do I mean by point 2? Essentially structures of mind which is anything that might arise in your everyday experience of thoughts, feelings and perceptions (including your 5 senses).

This is all the ‘stuff’ within your inner and outer world - ideals, belief systems, traumas, subconscious patterns, preferences, needs, desires, job titles, money… language. Literally anything prescribed a name, assigned meaning or constructed by mankind. 

Identification with an object of experience is the merging of one’s identity (the true Self) with something outside of itself (aka over-identification - losing yourself in something that’s not actually you).

The more that takes place within your reality and the more you lose yourself in that ‘stuff’, the less capacity you have for higher levels of consciousness - hence “level of intensity of identification”.

In practical discussion it’s not as clear cut when the discussion continues to move away from the metaphysical/spiritual realm and into the material world, especially when emotions, ideals and beliefs are involved. After all, who can dispute what we can see, feel, smell, touch and taste? We can all agree that water feels wet, the sky looks blue and sewage smells like shit right? All seems pretty legit and verifiable to me.

Interestingly though, more and more scientists and physicists are coming out and saying that space-time (how matter and energy interact over time) is not fundamental to reality, rather it’s subordinate which means there’s a higher-order substrate that we can’t interact with or know through our 5 senses which actually governs reality (consciousness… is that you?)³.

This idea is even more exciting when you find out science as a practice calibrates at consciousness level 465 (per David Hawkins). Regardless if that number itself is precisely “right” or “true”, most people can understand the idea that science can only go so far - it’s (unintentionally) constrained by its own self-imposed limitations and is therefore capped at a certain level of truth relative to the current-known full potential of consciousness, derived (and constrained) around the human experience. And yes practically anything can be calibrated on the map of consciousness (omg!), not just human experience.

The same is true for any human-being - we’re constrained by our own (unintentional) self-imposed limitations (limiting beliefs and other structures of mind) and therefore capped at a certain level of truth.

I say unintentional because structures like society, science, religion or frameworks in which we grew up in are extremely useful to rapidly and effectively package up knowledge and understanding so that it may be accessed and utilised effectively, but then we have a tendency to over-identify with those structures which then keeps us in states of resignation, pessimism and constriction.

But structures are meant to be used as a platform for transcendence rather than constriction. That’s exactly what the greatest thinkers and innovators do and have done ever since self-aware humans walked the earth. If they didn’t and instead chose to treat these structures as absolute truth of which no higher truth could exist or would be possible, we wouldn’t be anywhere near where we are today, evolutionarily speaking.

To sum this up, regardless of the true nature of reality itself, each person is looking at reality through their own unique lens (made up of entirely unique objects of experience).

Which means there is 8 billion plus slightly different variations of the truth walking around on the planet right now, with each person’s level of awareness acting as the CEO of their experience.

Now I don’t need to walk around in complete self-doubt feeling like a total dreamer… takes a real load off 😛

Understanding and compassion stems from space and meta-awareness

Spending time with David’s material and the map pushed me to take a much deeper look at myself and those around me.

I had been exposed to the concept of ‘your thoughts, feelings and perceptions are fleeting, therefore you are not your thoughts’ but it never truly integrated beyond a pure conceptual and logical understanding.

All humans innately have self-awareness, but meta-awareness (being aware of being aware) - which is just a heightened state of consciousness marked by distance or detachment from the mind-based ego self - goes beyond, and doesn’t come pre-installed on the human operating system.

“Meta-awareness.app” can’t be opened because it is from an unidentified developer. Do you wish to proceed anyway?

It seems like (in my experience anyway) it emerges from deep self-inquiry into your true nature, which is only possible when there’s enough space between ourselves and the objects of our experience (thoughts, feelings and perceptions - both within inner and outer worlds).

“Enough space” only emerges at a certain amount of disidentification from those objects of our experience. I’m sure there’s probably some type of threshold, but there’d be no way to quantify that since each person’s would be entirely unique to them.

Once that experience is had though, it’s unforgettable because there’s this distinct moment of recognition that there are no boundaries or limits to awareness. You can be aware of being aware of being aware of being aware… and it never ends. This experience alone opens up a bunch of doors you never knew existed.

But for me last year, it seemed to lead to two important things:

1. The beginning of a deeper disidentification process.

2. A greater capacity for understanding and compassion.

This topic probably deserves a post of it’s own in the future to do it justice, but let’s say someone says something deeply upsetting to you. You probably don’t know it consciously, but what was said to you has triggered a deep trauma which has remained with you in your subconscious since you were a child.

What happens then is objects of experience arise to protect you, and these might be quite intense feelings of guilt, fear, shame etc. and because they are so intense (and you’ve probably been experiencing them all your life) you kind of have no other choice but to identify with them. For a moment you literally become your experience (thoughts, feelings and perceptions), so there’s no space for you to remember you aren’t actually that.

In other words, you’re unable to see the forest from the trees.

One of my deep childhood wounds was around not feeling accepted for who I was inside (rejection) and so any situation that involved the nature of who I am and the truth I had inside, like the situation with my partner’s family, would trigger this.

But just like the idea that the more we can disidentify with objects of our experience, the greater the capacity we then have for higher levels of consciousness… the same is true for greater capacities for understanding and compassion.

This was big for me because it allowed me to realise and understand that my over-identification with objects of my inner world mostly took place during interactions with others (when I was alone with myself I was pretty okay). Instead of reacting instantly, feeling crappy about it later, staying upset and not knowing why something is happening, there can be more space in awareness (and therefore understanding).

With meta-awareness it’s more like being able to watch a really sad movie that still moves you and triggers feelings in you (you might even cry), but you can still watch in complete detachment.

Without meta-awareness, you become a slave to your subconscious programming whether from childhood or otherwise, so reactions have more of a survival instinct type flavour to them.

If you’re sitting there watching a movie thinking you are the movie, how can you have enough space for understanding or feel compassion toward the characters in the movie?

Connectedness, oneness and finally… a way to relate spiritually

“The unbridled ego is insatiable, does not care about the rights of others or even the lives of others, and thus views Divinity as the ultimate opposition to its drive for absolute sovereignty. Cleverly, however, it solves this impasse by claiming to have God’s authorization for barbarism done in the name of “God,”“Allah,” for the “good of the faith,” “for Christ,” for the Sun God Quetzalcoatl (cal. level 85), or the God of Attila the Hun. (Even Hitler claimed God’s approval.) To the animal nature of the ego, religion is merely another tool in its arsenal by which to control others, thereby revealing the paradoxical truth that its inherent weakness is its dependence on others for survival, whereas true power is independent, self-sufficient, and devoid of neediness.” - David Hawkins, Truth vs. Falsehood

Whenever I’d question anything to do with religion when I was younger, I’d always be met with a “because I said so” type attitude. Don’t question! Bit hard for a guy who’s only ever been full of questions 😅

I wanted to see and know the practical understanding and rationality behind what I was being told I must believe in, but I’d see responses in frustration and intolerance, or I’d just observe unusual behaviour which always felt incongruous and disconnected from the material or core essence of the teachings.

With an expanded understanding in awareness, I could now see that people were simply identified with external objects of their experience whereas for me, in these situations where it came to stuff like religion or the nature of reality, I didn’t have the tendency to do that. Here I was, thinking I was different or feeling like an alien, and sometimes even being smug about it (pride is an ego-driven survival mechanism)… but little did I know these are just two sides of the same coin!

Either way, this left me in a bit of a spiritual disconnect for quite some time - particularly with those that branched from Christianity (my Italian background & culture). I never ended up subscribing to any one religious structure (I doubt I ever will, it’s not in my nature) but I did thoroughly enjoy learning about cultures and religions like Buddhism, Hinduism and Taoism through friends, family and philosophers like Alan Watts⁴.

Over the past few years I simply resorted to saying “I’m spiritual” or “I believe in the universe”, but David’s work expanded my view on ‘God’, also known as Divinity, Source, Life, The Infinite, Pure Consciousness, Allness, Oneness, All That There Is, and countless others. 

David talks about ‘God’ a fair bit in his work and this was again the first time I found material around the subject that resonated well and served to open me up⁵.

Around September last year, I start to notice and really feel how everything is so connected and how everything is derived from the same source. In the past I’d only have slithers of this but then the feeling would be gone almost as fast as it came.

I’d be out in nature walking and listening to music like I always do, and then outta nowhere I’d be overcome with feelings of gratitude, joy and love before I start bursting out in tears.

At first, I was a little weirded out because I probably cried like once every half-decade or something like that, but it’s been happening semi-regularly to this day and it’s now one of my absolute favourite experiences, hands down.

For just a brief moment I completely forget who I am while overwhelmed with immense love and gratitude acknowledging the sheer absurdity of what it is to be apart of this meaningless, yet so meaningful and beautiful dance we call life that’s suspended in this fleeting speck of an event within the infiniteness that is the universe.

Your truth is the only truth that truly matters

Although David refers to there being only one ultimate and supreme reality (Divinity), I realised the only reality that truly matters is my own.

I’m not talking about any type of reality that was fabricated by stories, narratives, naming conventions, thoughts, feelings, perceptions or any structure created in the entirety of human-existence.

I’m talking about the one that lies deep within my heart.

The one that lies deep within all of our hearts.

The one that transcends all form, all structure and all limitations.

The one that we can only reach and know in surrender to stillness and silence, because it’s only when you are quiet enough that you are able to hear it.

The one that is boundless.

Because this truth is the one that’s infinitely more important than getting into disagreements, arguments or violent situations with others about who’s version of subjective reality is “right”.

The mind-based ego is the one that prevents us, because it lives in perpetual fear. It always needs to know, and it’s existence depends on it. It lies.

Every single one of us is a completely perfect, completely unique and ineffable expression of consciousness.

It would be a dishonour to Creation if we are unable to remember who we truly are and just be what we were meant to be.

But I am getting a little bit ahead of myself here, because I didn’t quite know all this last year.

Plus, it’s not exactly all smooth sailing either.

In the next part I’ll be reflecting on the journey through the battle with my shadow and my experience with therapists, coaches and different modalities for processing trauma or subconscious programs and patterns.

Can’t wait to see you there 💜

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Further Exploration

1. A great place to start:

My Unexpected Journey in Muscle Testing (1 of 7)

2. I found this hilarious article ‘why ducks have cool life’ while I quickly and cheekily made sure ducks definitely don’t have self-awareness 🤣 Profound words from the article: “Paradoxically, ducks are fully realized, peaceful, and in harmony precisely because they know nothing about those things, including being aware that they are ducks.”

3. “Spacetime is doomed”

4. It's Time To Wake Up - Alan Watts on Religion

5. Someone put together a summary of their favourite quotes on God from David Hawkins in this post ‘the nature of God’.

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