This post is part 3 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.
Can you measure your level of consciousness?
This question always fascinated me.
Before encountering this scale, the only methods of measuring one’s consciousness and level of spiritual growth I knew of were:
Monitoring your personal response to life
Verification from a highly evolved teacher or enlightened being
Calibrating your experiences with the ones described in ancient texts
What you identify as moment to moment (later stages of spiritual growth)
Apparently there are also some machines that measure aura’s or energies, but I’m not sure this is quite the same as consciousness.
I still think these can all be valuable methods, but they aren’t exactly easy and leave lots of ambiguity. For most people, the entire experience of trying to feel good all the time and grow spiritually is a winding and at times disorienting path.
If we could treat consciousness and well-being like fitness, then people would have some barometer for how they’re doing and what they can do to improve.
David Hawkins Map of Consciousness was the first thing I’d seen that attempted to provide a concrete map of the different stages of evolution. The notion that you’d be able to measure your personal vibration and accordant level of where you are on the scale of enlightenment is very compelling. I could think of countless ways to apply this information.
I will do my best to interpret his ideas through the context of my own study and application.
**I originally posted the scale here, but David’s wife did not like me doing that and spreading his work as you will see in the comments of this post. You can find it by buying one of his books I guess or go to his website**
Principles Behind the Map
Fundamental to the map of consciousness is the idea that all things are energy. You, as consciousness with a human body, are energy. The computer or phone you are on is energy. Substack as a company is energy. The emotion of intrigue you might be feeling right now is energy. Everything is energy!!!
Each of these energies have a signature or frequency associated with it. The frequency refers to the shape and relative power of whatever you are measuring.
You may have seen things on youtube like “love frequency 528 hz” or heard people say, “this person has good vibes”. What these are really referring to is the measure of energy characterized by vibrational frequency.
The most common thing we associate frequency with is sound waves and electricity which again are just expressions of energy, like everything else. Rarely do we discuss the energetic calibrations of certain emotions, ideas, or inanimate objects.
I have researched energy measurement intensely and this limited scope of what is commonly measured, is more a function of current technologies' ability to measure things versus the reality of energy existing in everything. Physicists acknowledge this and I trust this will change.
Interpreting the Map of Consciousness
What David created was a relative, logarithmic scale that was able to chart the energy of different predominant states that he believed corresponded with someone’s level of consciousness.
The numbers on the scale 1-1000 are arbitrary like any initial scale creation. Their utility is to provide the energetic context of one state relative to another. This is how any scale works. The celsius temperature scale of 0 degrees corresponding with freezing and 100 with boiling is only because someone decided that is how those numbers should be interpreted in relation to each other. The same principle applies here.
This is an important point because I don’t think we should misconstrue energetic log calibrations as a direct 1:1 readoffs of energetic wave properties. They should only be evaluated in the context of this scale. Interestingly enough though, there are some thresholds where his ranges match that of commonly associated frequencies i.e. (Love c. 500-540).
I provided a summary in his words of the background of the scale creation in the last post.
When he began using the scale in his own practice, he recognized that there were actually consistent predominant attitudes, thoughts, feelings, situations, and relationships in the human experience associated with different scale calibrations. Consistent paradigms of how we feel (emotions), view the world (life view), view God, and what the process that consciousness undergoes feels like also emerged.
Thus, someone’s energetic calibration was indicative of that person's paradigm of existence or the context for experiencing everything. It is this context that creates meaning, rather than the content itself. It’s why two people can experience the same thing and interpret it completely differently. Therefore understanding one’s consciousness calibration could help understand the broad paradigm of any person or thing.
For example, someone who calibrates at level 100 lives predominantly in fear. They are generally anxious and find engaging with the outside world to be frightening. God seems like an entity that intends to punish them and the behavioral response to most situations is to withdraw from the world. This very much corresponds with victimhood or life happening “to you.”
As you move from the low energies to higher ones, you can see the predominant emotions generally take on more enjoyable characteristics and your views on everything evolve.