Measuring & Understanding My Own Consciousness (5 of 7)
Results from quantifying my consciousness throughout my life and some interpretations
This post is part 5 of a 7 part series on my personal experience working with applied kinesiology (muscle testing) and David Hawkins Map of Consciousness.
These posts are not my prescriptions on how you should live your life or make decisions. I share these thoughts and experiences not to gloat or cast judgment, but rather to feel the joy of creatively expressing myself and to potentially help others on a similar journey.
Anyone who has walked the path of self discovery can tell you how confusing it can be.
There are so many people and teachings telling you to go in different directions and there isn’t really a concrete map that tells you where you’re at in your journey…can’t someone just invent google maps for enlightenment already!?
David Hawkins’ Map of Consciousness which I have detailed in the earlier posts in this series is the first tool I encountered that provided such a concept.
This post highlights my own experiences and interpretations of the map in order to understand my own consciousness.
Measuring My Consciousness
I’ve always attempted to gauge the progression of my spiritual evolution by my response to the world:
Am I more joyous and accepting?
Is there a growing sense of love and appreciation?
Am I growing in my equanimity?
Is life getting better!?!
I do think these qualitative questions are the ultimate barometer for spiritual progress.
But when I encountered the map, I was excited about the potential to get a more precise understanding of my level of consciousness for a few reasons:
I believed verification would provide context for where I was relative to the known arc of enlightenment. I could see this being helpful in order to understand what potentials await as well as the impediments in front of me.
I wanted to see my growth over time. I felt like more tangible evidence of my growth would serve as a strong motivator and potential learning tool.
The idea that I could also test the consciousness of any object, idea, or person also appealed to me. If improving my own state was contingent upon aligning myself to the energies that matched the levels I wanted to go to, I needed a measuring stick!
The first time I tested myself I calibrated at c. 530. I then retested myself, and again got the same number over and over in the span of a week.
Calibration between the energetic logs of c. 500-540 are the states of love. When I re-read David’s descriptions on the texture of emotions, life-view, god-view and other emergent phenomena past 500, it did in fact mirror my current experience. The congruence and repeatability provided enough intrigue to continue working with the scale.
Because the data source of collective consciousness apparently has access to all information across all of time, I was curious to chart my consciousness over time. I did this by following the process outlined here using a the calibration question listed below until arriving at a precise number for each age:
“On a scale of human consciousness from 1-1000 with enlightenment being at 600, on my (age) birthday, I calibrated at (initial guess calibration).”
Here were my results:
Mr. Successful, Impatient Man
The first thing that stood out to me was my anger. Wowzas. I don’t think many people who knew me in my teens and 20’s would have described me as an angry person. In fact, I imagine they would have said that I was quite positive and agreeable.
If I had just read off the descriptions in his book, I thought I would have likely calibrated at the level of Will (c. 310-350) or Courage (c. 200-250). During these periods in my life, it seemed like I was taking life by the horns by doing things like starting companies and having success in many areas. This doesn’t exactly sound like someone who doesn’t have a strong will or isn’t operating out of reason.
If I reflect on what the inside looked like though, the texture and motive behind it all told a different story which I alluded to in becoming a nobody. I kind of always had a chip on my shoulder. An incessant drive to prove myself to the world which made every moment a strategy to get something in my head. A simple example of this would be the ever-present compulsion to constantly be listening to some podcast or book to try to improve myself during any idle moment.
I also had a lot of covert, situational anger that often manifested in impatience. The number one person it would be directed at was myself. I was so damn hard on myself. I tried to be perfect in everything and was incredibly demanding of myself.
Otherwise, my anger would only reveal itself to the people closest to me like my family where there wasn’t the risk of losing my positionality by expressing my emotions.
To most people though, I was a fun-loving, successful guy! I guess my desire for positionality disguised my vigilance and helped me develop a good poker face.
So I can now see how these readings which are meant to charecterize your internal paradigm view vs. external success and behaviors could be accurate.
My Spiritual Unfolding
The next thing that stood out to me was how congruent my calibrations were with my spiritual unfolding. As I mentioned in Becoming No One, right before my 31st birthday I took ayahuasca for the first time and had a succession of profound experiences. These moved the pursuit of self realization (enlightenment) to the forefront of my life. Looking at the numbers, it was around the age of 31 that the calibrations start to change meaningfully which is in accordance with my experience.
As I have alluded to in other posts, the shifts in my perspective and predominant emotions have been gradual. I don’t recall the exact things I was thinking or feeling on my 32nd or 33rd birthday, but the progressive internal improvement and shifts in worldview largely tracks with my experience.
David talks about how around level c. 500+ is when the paradigm shift occurs where man no longer views dominion of the material world as his primary concern. The outward focus gets traded for the inward, not out of obligation, but rather genuine interest. This seemed to occur before level c. 500 for me, probably around the age of 33.
Birth Calibration (Soul Level of Consciousness)
The last thing I’ll call out on my personal measurements is my birth calibration. The spiritual disciplines that believe in Karma advocate that you enter the world with a baseline level of consciousness. This baseline is reflective of all past lifetimes leading up to this one. It expresses the energetic charge and propensities of the soul at its level of spiritual maturity. Apparently you can measure this using the scale by inquiring about your consciousness at birth.
Knowledge of these past lives and the dominant expression of your baseline consciousness (worldview, god view, emotions etc) are both obfuscated early in life by design so that you can learn relate to the world.
If ascended beings just showed up in the world completely enlightened without any time spent in the lower states, it’d be impossible for them to have compassion and understanding for all beings. There’d be no magical journey of self-realization because you’re already there. God would probably find this pretty boring.
Alan Watts describes this theory beautifully in this clip…“the first thing God says is man get lost!!”
I decided not to include my baseline calibration here publicly, but I can share that it is significantly higher then my most recent calibration of 530.
Interpreting this reading as an accurate reflection of my Karma would mean that I have been working on my consciousness long before this incarnation. Therefore, it’s always been my destiny to be on this path…of course I’d arrive at the conclusion that the most interesting thing life has to offer would be expanding my consciousness and aligning with the higher energy patterns of love! This path is one that I’ve always been on, and simply did not reveal itself until after 30 years on this planet.
Reflecting on my life while being open to this idea inspires so many questions.
Why did my kundalini energy emerge so spontaneously? How come I immediately got way more into spiritual pursuits than many of my peers!? Why have I been positioned in life in so many ways?
It’s impossible for me to answer these questions but it certainly is fascinating to think about in the context of such a hypothesis.
In the next post, I’ll share other personal observations of my personal growth in relation to concepts from the scale.
This Is Part 5 of a 7 Part Series
This post is part of a 7 part series on my personal experience working with applied kinesiology (muscle testing) and David Hawkins Map of Consciousness. You find all links in the series below
Thank you and congratulation for your awaking moment that changes your life meaning (and me also) ! I hope that we can continue to raise the maximum level of consciousness in this lifetime.
I remember bookmarking Hawkins’ Map of Consciousness some time ago. I have found it useful. You're the first person I've come across to have mentioned it. Gotta take some more time to dig into your post here. Thanks for writing!