Book review: "Power vs Force" (Dr. D.R. Hawkins)

A review of:
Dr. David R. Hawkins: "Power vs Force"

by: C.N., October 2007
---------------------------
Power versus Force is about modern research into consciousness. It builds upon scientific muscle testing such as you may have experienced with practitioners of any of a variety of holistic medicines. In repeatable and double blind studies, it establishes a scale of consciousness. This (non-linear) scale extends from 0 to 1000. Here is a sample of the levels and their associated measures:

20 Shame:

This is close to death. It corresponds with the emotion of humiliation. It can arise form childhood abuse such as sexual molestation.

30 Guilt:

This corresponds with the emotion of blame and associates with a process of destruction. At this level, people are victims. This is merely a function of low consciousness. At this level, one does not see sufficiently to be in control. Cruelty is common.
50 Apathy:

This corresponds with abdication and despair. Poverty and hopelessness often accompany it. The apathetic are felt as "heavy" and are often a burden on those around them.

75 Grief:

Regret, despondency are found here
100 Fear, anxiety and withdrawal.
125 Desire:

This is where Buddha thought all suffering began. It corresponds with cravings and with the enslavement that results.
150 Anger:

Hate and aggression are found here, but anger can also be good when it is not violent and makes one take a "I'm not taking it anymore" attitude. Interestingly, it may be the best way up from shame and guilt (and this insight helps us understand the value of a scale like this!)
175 Pride:

Usually considered a positive thing, it is still below the dividing line (more about this later) of 200, which separates the generally negative from the generally positive. Pride runs the US Marines very well. But the downside of price is the potential for the fall. Pride must therefore be defensive and is always vulnerable. Pride can also scorn.

-----------------

200 Courage:

All before this level concerns primarily the self. Here begins selflessness. One must have courage to gain entrance to the higher states of consciousness. Courage begins empowerment. Here we begin to understand the book's title: force is what emanates from lower energy states, but from courage up there exists real power. Power puts more into the world than it takes out, unlike force which sucks (in a literal sense.)
250 Neutrality:

This corresponds with trust and a certain kind of release. We see a radically different way of perceiving the world evolving here.
310 Willingness:

Here we find commitment to live life as it comes at us. Willingness brings optimism.

350 Acceptance:

Here a major transformation occurs. We are forgiving and find ourselves the source and creator of our life experience. Our energy is sufficiently positive that healing may occur.
400 Reason:

Picture Einstien. Non-surface Understanding and abstraction come here. But all is not rosy. This level contains a deadly trap. In our success, we may analyse the parts but forget the whole. Beware forgetting the heart.
500 Love:

Both reverence and revelation come here. This is not low level love that is really need and masks anger, should our need go unmet (a 150-level state.) Rather, this is the level of discernment of the essence of things. We have the beginning of intuition transcending reason. 540 Joy:

Serenity and completeness are here. One runs the risk of becoming a hermit.
600-1000:

This is the level of saints and great teachers. At this level there is always some constructive work which benefits the whole of mankind. It may be done anonymously.
---
Power, as Hawkins explains it, is a fractal factor of creation. Specifically, it is an effect of a strong attractor.
The book then goes on to explain success, happiness, spiritual insight, health, and many more things as simple consequences of alignment with strong attractors while the opposites, failure, misery, spiritual blindness, disease and many more things as just as simple consequences of alignment with weak attractors (energy fields.)

Alignment is a matter of attitude and of what is REALLY important to us.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

...an old birthday card........

~ chinese proverb~.........dedicated to my best friend.

No indifference [pas l'indifférence]

No Indifference --- [Jean-Jacques Goldman 1981]

I'll accept the pain,
I'll accept the fear,
I know the consequences,
and bear the tears.

I accept whatever the cost
all the worst of the best
I'll take the tears and the doubts,
and risk all harm.

[chorus] All, but no indifference
all, but no elapsing time
with days all alike
colorless days without zest.

And I'll learn the pain
And I'll learn the hurt
For the pleasure of a presence,
For a whispering.

I'll learn the meaning of phrases
The warmth of words,
I swear I won't be a "good child" anymore,
I promise to be foolish.

[chorus]

I'll give ten years for a look
I'll give castles and palaces for a rail track
A piece of life for all comfort,
A lot of certainties for still being able to desire.

I'll trade dead years for a bit of life,
I'll be searching for the key to any freakiness
I'll take all tickets to all possible journeys,
Go anywhere changing environment.

Erasing all absent hours,
Painting all in new colors
All those lying souls
And who are smiling with tears in their eyes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8ER1olb0_s

The Secret and Universal Teacher seated in the hearts

Sri Aurobindo on the "Inner Teacher" and the "word within"

Nothing can be taught to the mind which is not already concealed as potential knowledge in the unfolding soul of the creature. So also all perfection of which the outer man is capable, is only a realising of the eternal perfection of the Spirit within him. We know the Divine and become the Divine, because we are That already in our secret nature. All teaching is a revealing, all becoming is an unfolding. Self-attainment is the secret; self-knowledge and an increasing consciousness are the means and the process.

The usual agency of this revealing is the Word, the thing heard (śruta). The Word may come to us from within; it may come to us from without. But in either case, it is only an agency for setting the hidden knowledge to work. The word within may be the utterance of the inmost soul in us which is always open to the Divine; or it may be the word of the secret and universal Teacher who is seated in the hearts of all. There are rare cases in which none other is needed, for all the rest of the Yoga is an unfolding under that constant touch and guidance; the lotus of the knowledge discloses itself from within by the power of irradiating effulgence which proceeds from the Dweller in the lotus of the heart. Great indeed, but few are those to whom self-knowledge from within is thus sufficient and who do not need to pass under the dominant influence of a written book or a living teacher. (The Synthesis of Yoga, Page: 54)

Our Inner Teacher

-Getting things right-

All human beings are drawn to reexperience spiritual mistakes so that they might correct the error and become spiritually perfect. This is why conversations replay in our head, sometimes. We have the opportunity to look at ourselves, most often to the hatred we participated in. Too often though, we look at the others and then find ourselves physically repeating the experience as well. We are driven to get things right.

Listening to oneself is a very healing thing. Something enters us from the spiritual realm - often experienced as "aha!" This is the basic agent of personal transformation. It is said, "You shall know the truth and the truth will set you free."

It is really a voluntary process. A person gets to choose. We either respond to truth or to lies (or, for a while, to a mix.) Response to truth loosens us from compulsions. Response to lies tightens our bondage. Truth will deliver us simply by the love (and love of truth itself) it instills.

Man is intended to be a natural being, and ultimately, God is in control, not us. We need to work with that and not work around it. Patience is merely a divine tool to refine ourselves (and by example to hold up a light for those around to follow, if they will.)

* * * *

Our Inner teacher

We have an internal guide and there is no inherent barrier to character improvement after adulthood. So obtain a little internal quietness in some chance moment of solitude and observe what lies within. Images and concepts (not words - forget the words if they are present, they are byproducts of memories of interactions with mankind and not the stuff of spirit) will present themselves. This is your Internal Teacher at work. It coordinates the experiences of a lifetime and presents them in the best order to peel back the onion of your life's wrong growth. What will be left will be golden. It will be you in your purest form, with the pollution of past trauma securely removed.

Do you know how to be still? This may also help. It is both a source of better observation as well as a wellspring of patience/love. Perhaps I should also mention that while in an inner state of stillness, Revelation happens. Observe in a state of inner stillness.

How do we approach problems?

Let me use my experience as a computer trouble-shooter to illustrate. Many will look at a cursor that no longer moves on the screen and they will say, "The mouse no longer works." But this is a subtle lack of objectivity. Really, what we see is, "The cursor no longer moves." To jump from this observation to the conclusion that it is the mouse is to mix up observational discernment with judgment -- something that crosses a fine line we should not cross. And when we jump to this conclusion, we act as if we could know (like God knows) just by seeing. But we cannot. And when we overreach like this, we create a little dream world where reality does not touch. It really might not be a mouse problem. But we are focused on the mouse and completely helpless to solve the problem because of our fixation.

All problems that we cannot solve are like this. We know too much (much that we don't really know at all.) It makes us lack humility. It separates us from the possibility of really knowing. We lack inner stillness as we are moved to fiddle with the computer mouse.

Instead, we need to come empty to the problem. Empty is the truth. We do not know. We may see partial truths - it could be the mouse, or the bios, mouse drive, the OS or the application program. But we do not jump on possibilities without testing it. In this way, we test truth.

So we come back to the need to observe from a state of inner stillness. In this state, you might also gain direct divine insight into how to resolve this problem. -- you go directly to The Source of all Understanding, instead.

Understanding is Under Standing, where we find our proper relationship of nothingness in relation to God's All. (Remembering the truth that we do not know.) There we Stand Under His influence - His will being our goal, trusting in His Goodness that our problem has a solution within His Will. In seeking the stillness within us, we connect with the Infinite Axle around which all things turn. We approach Him who sits at the still center of everything. And He will bless this approach with an influx of wisdom. We literally feel energy flowing within us (and by this hallmark, we know for certain that we have found inner stillness - a tree of life no longer denied us and a Source that makes a tree of knowledge unnecessary because we become inspired. We connect with the fallacy of Adam's choice of knowledge instead of insight and we experience why knowledge can never substitute for Him in our lives.)

No doubt this sounds deep. But it is a simple, personal thing that may easily be found in humility. It is the natural state of man. It releases you from worldly authorities. Less and less do you look outside. More and more will you look inwardly. We become childlike--for surly children are not looking outside!!

* * * * *

- Do you think we lose the Inner Teacher we had as children? I think of Inner Teacher as being a sort of intuitive process, not something based on education. In fact, I think education may encourage us to not listen to our Inner Teacher. We spend too much time reasoning about things instead of trusting the Inner Voice that guides us. ++

- Yes, I definitely think we may lose touch with our inner teacher (but we never actually lose the Inner Teacher.) The Inner Teacher has many names. It can be called knowing, as in when we know something, not in words, and with great confidence. It can take the form of what immediately precedes an "aha" experience. The confidence, with which we know, is key to understanding various spiritual words describing this same phenomena. "Confidence" comes from Latin prefix "con" meaning with and the Latin root fidelias meaning faith. So confidence is a thing with (inner) faith. Some refer to this inner knowing as conscience or the holy spirit. If you are Christian, you know that it is said that Christ sent a teacher in the form of the Holy Spirit at the Pentecost. And it is further said that in His children, God writes His laws in their (our) hearts. The faith that accompanies the confidence in our inner knowing is spiritual faith of the sort spoken of when people say we must have faith.

As children, we become exposed to stress and stress alone gives us post traumatic responses to stress. These make us externally motivated (instead of our natural, inner motivated) creatures. This also tends to insert into our inner being a component that is foreign in nature to us. We perceive this as an identity. If we are very lost, we may think this identity is us. Instead, we simply have lost touch with our real being. It happens to everyone in a stronger or milder form. All must find their way on this narrow path.

But because of the Inner Teacher, it is also an easy path. So easy, sometimes, that it is hard. We look everywhere for answers and fail to notice them right under our noses (in our heart.) It is a beautiful thing.

And as we regain some contact with this Inner Teacher, now with some consciousness, we become the culmination of little children that we still are.

[C.N., May and June 2006 + February 2007 / ++ anonymous]
Posted: April 15, 2009

---------------------

"dust"

[anonymous]
posted: Feb 24, 2009

Love

[anonymous, posted 02/10/2009]

"Lord, I want to know..."

       "Lord, I wanna know...
if I put my trust in you, Lord,
would you tell me which way to go, Lord,
would you show me which way to go.

Lord, I wanna believe...
if I give my soul to you, Lord,
would you tell me how to believe, Lord,
would you show me how to believe.

Lord, I never could see...
but if I look up to you, Lord,
would you open my eyes for me, Lord,
would you open my eyes for me."

[In order to listen to that song, recorded on an audio-cassette from a radio-program in a very bad quality way back in the year 1972 .. click on the title above.]

"To observe his uninhibited play
In stillness total and quiet stay
Utter no word nor breathe a sound
For he hides himself with you around"

anonymous
Posted on: 2009/1/26 4:48 EST
[January 27, 2009]