Levels of Consciousness
April 7th, 2026
Today is April 7th, 2026. I am 25 years old. I've been recently reading a book called "Power vs. Force" by Hawkins. I believe I'm not typically someone who reads this kind of new age science mumbo jumbo but I found it particularly enlightening and I found that it's true to an extent.
I think what I want to tell the reader, tell you, the listener especially, is that this levels of consciousness model, this kind of framework, actually kind of makes sense in a way. I left my hometown about two to three years ago for the first time in my life.
In doing so I actually found that the people I'd met back then, before I had lived here and gone to therapy here, I noticed that they had not changed in a way. I found that the way that I essentially learned and understood them can change.
I asked Claude AI essentially to grade me on my levels of consciousness and I'm doing this in a sense of pride, I would say. I'm feeling prideful and judgmental and that's okay. Not that it's okay; I just hold the feeling of it, of the pride and the judgmentalness, and I want to be writing something of importance here.
Just hold this experience and hold that feeling. Not even saying if it's okay or right or wrong, just hold it. Understand it. Accept it for what it is. That's how I enter "higher" states of consciousness.
I think the word "higher" kinda evokes a sense of pride in me. I feel more prideful that I'm higher than most average or higher than before and that makes me feel excited. I'm going to hold that feeling of pride, going to hold the feelings of fear. I'm going to hold feelings that are too small.
Something else I want to note is that I read that the beliefs and identity you form about yourself come from the level of consciousness you're able to maintain. That you can't or that your level of your identity is determined by your level of consciousness, essentially.
Your level of consciousness determines your identity. Your identity determines your beliefs. Your beliefs determine your thoughts and emotions and your thoughts and emotions influence the actions that you take and the goals that you're essentially able to achieve.
I'm beginning to realize that at the base of this all, it is about self-understanding of the world, not just of your beliefs but of the world essentially. How you see the world. The idea of the objective world.
I also want to go on a tangent. I found that philosophy isn't the most particularly useful field. It's good for what it is. I see it as it is and I feel the way that I do and I hold these feelings inside me regarding philosophy but I realized too that the endless abstractions over and over again in their own respect and argument.
Every philosophical argument is true but it still misses that deeper level that needs to come from beyond reason. I believe it comes at that level of consciousness that Hawkins talks about. He talks about that chart of where you are in the level of consciousness. I can attach myself to philosophers and hit that reason but to truly transcend and get to a higher state of being, higher state of enlightenment, it has to come from love.
I remember getting dinner with my friend Jay and we went to this Burmese restaurant and I was observing these very high-class folks eating at the restaurant. Their conversation just had something more intelligent about it or more considerate or some ineffable element that I couldn't put my finger on.
I tried to explain this to my friend Jay and I told him they're just on a higher social level. That was my explanation for why they were able to have this conversation, connect with people in such a way. It was like a higher level of consciousness, essentially.
I found a good model here from Hawkins that explains this in such a way that it's like, "Wow, this is what I was looking for, this is what I get when I talk to people in sales, I talk to people in business, I talk to people who have succeeded in their lives and built great lives."
It's that they've understood these levels of consciousness, these energy levels essentially and I really hope one day I'll be able to synthesize this information.
Courage
I want to talk about another portion. It's going to be about my life direction. I watched a YouTube video by Mark Builds Brands and he talked about a couple of key points or some strategies you can do to find out the direction and goals you want to take your life. A couple of key questions you can ask yourself are: one, about transforming identity, and two, about asking yourself what kind of life you want to lead.
I think the more powerful one is going to be the first one. It's going to be about your identity as a person and how that can basically influence your beliefs. We have this chart of:
- Your actions come from your thoughts and emotions
- Your thoughts and emotions come from your beliefs
- Your beliefs come from your identity
- Your identity comes from your levels of consciousness that you're born into
I've been doing some work to try to change levels of consciousness but there's also work that could be done to just try and pull every lever that I can in every section, right?
One of them is to change your goals. The exercise here is to imagine, start from the end of your life. What do you want the end of your life to look like? What do you want your funeral to look like? Who do you want to show up at your funeral? What do you want to be remembered for? What changes do you want to make for people in this life?
You know you're there, right? I'll do that exercise after I enumerate this other exercise, which is going to be: you have your goals now. What are the beliefs of someone who would achieve these goals, right? If I want to get jacked, then I tell myself I am the type of person that gives their all at the gym. I'm the type of person that's in the gym consistently, either every day or six times a week at the same time every time.
I'm the type of person who's consistent about the amount of food they eat and the amount of sleep that they get and I'm the type of person that believes that they are going to get jacked. I'm the type of person that's going to build that muscle and get that macho muscle and I'm the type of person that really believes in taking care of his health. See those are beliefs, essentially.
Moving back to the identity portion, that's how to change your beliefs and eventually change you. You say, "I'm the type of person to do this."
Going back to the goals thing about what kind of person I want to be remembered as during my funeral, Mark Builds Brands says that you want to start from the goal and then invert. Say, "What are the things that I should never do if I don't want to achieve this goal?" What should I do, right? I should treat people poorly. I should not remember anybody. I should not check up on people. I should not organize people together. I should not love people unconditionally. I should not build community and care for people. I should not believe in God, right?
These things are essentially a part of building your identity and changing your identity. It's a bit of a forceful way to change your identity. I think there are more powerful ways to change identity.
Knowledge is one. Acceptance, love. My experiences with my girlfriend as of this year have changed my beliefs dramatically about the world, by beginning to believe that the world is a good place and it's a very nice place, right. It's about those levels of consciousness and I just get drawn back to that diagram. It's about those levels of consciousness and ascending up the pyramid, essentially. That's the growth; that's where the real growth is, in that level of consciousness. It's about that attraction force, not that push force.
I'm going to keep doing the Hawkins book. I'm going to finish it up. I'm going to discover more about this level of consciousness deal so that I can better understand what human psychology is like, what we are like, how to interact with one another, and essentially kind of build that repertoire of knowledge regarding what humanity is about.
Hawkins, there are a couple of other books I want to mention here. I'm going to list them out:
- Neville Goddard, who wrote a couple of books in the forties: "Feeling is the Secret", "The Power of Awareness", "Imagination Creates Reality"
- David Hawkins himself has about ten books: "Power vs. Force", "The Eye of the I", "Truth vs. Falsehood", "Healing and Recovery", "Letting Go"
- Frederick Dodson, "Levels of Energy" — about energy levels, essentially. It's a bit voodoo but I think it makes sense.
- Godel Escher Bach — I have read this book or tried to read it but I didn't quite understand it then, but in this context of spirituality, transcendence, consciousness, cognitive science, I want to give it a shot.