Four major stages of consciousness–where’s your tent pitched?
“Being spiritual has nothing to do with what you believe and everything to do with your state of consciousness.”
― Eckhart Tolle
When first crafting the spiritual/energy principles to be tested in E-Squared, I spent many an hour pondering the wording. On several, I stated “your thoughts and your consciousness” impact….this or that.
Part of me wondered, “Isn’t that redundant?” Writers would rather poke knitting needless in their eyes than be redundant. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that thoughts and consciousness, while certainly joined at the hip, are two different animals.
Thoughts are derived from our consciousness, but it’s our consciousness that provides the framework, the meat, the juice, the final answer. It’s the level of our consciousness that shapes and molds the reality that plays out in our lives. And there are many levels of consciousness, each with different rules, principles, characteristics and attributes.
For example, if you reside in the victim consciousness (“Things happen TO me,” “Life sucks and then you die” are a few standard thoughts from this level.), you can affirm and intend all you want, but your consciousness, the driver of your reality, which believes affirmations and intentions are a bunch of hooey always gets the last word. When you spend most of your waking hours in that consciousness (and it’s a very popular consciousness), your channels are plugged up. All the good that wants to come your way can’t get through.
Because we live in a multi-dimensional universe, there are dozens of different levels of consciousness, oftentimes residing in one person. For the purpose of this discussion, I’ve broken it down into four major consciousness categories. Each of these levels has dozens of subsets, all that play out in different ways in our lives. Let’s just say that my goal is to move closer to level four.
1. “The damn, not again” consciousness. The starting gate for most of us is some manifestation of victim consciousness. It varies from person to person, but the over-arching theme is we have no control over anything that happens in our life. The best we can do is work really hard, cross our fingers and hope that all the “shit” we hear about out there will somehow escape us.
2. “The woo-hoo! This is getting cool!” consciousness. One of the next levels (again it plays out differently in each person) is where we realize we have a say. We learn there are energetic laws that are just as reliable as physical laws. We discover that our thoughts are units of mental energy that play out in the world just as powerfully as the principles of gravity or aerodynamics.
Usually we move in and out of this consciousness, mixing it up with other levels. We still feel separate and still retain some of that “poor me” consciousness. In fact, we spend nearly as much time talking about what we don’t want as what we do. We still believe the things we want are out there, in the future, something we have to strive for.
3. The “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.” consciousness. I am very happy to report that I spent nearly the entire year of 2013 in this consciousness. I got up every morning, celebrating, feeling good. I got up on the right side of the bed nearly every morning and boy, did things come to fruition for me. My book hit the New York Times bestseller list. I traveled to six different countries on four different continents. I got all kinds of new writing gigs. Editors contacted ME which, if you’re a freelance writer, you’d know never happens. I got emails from people all over the world, telling me how much they liked my book. And while all that was really cool and I’m intending it to happen again in 2014, the best part really was how blessed I felt.
And this is where the distinction should be made. People believe they will be happy when they achieve a certain level of success, when they find the perfect lover, when they heal from cancer. But that’s not how it works. All those things are byproducts of being happy.
This is one chicken vs. the egg that is not in question. Being grateful, being happy, feeling blessed ALWAYS comes first. In fact, most people say that when their “stuff” finally comes, the material things they got into this “thoughts creating reality” business in the first place they realize they’re beside the point. And that the gift, the real gift, is the joy they now see in the little things—the cute little heart the barista made into the foam on the latte, the squirrel running along the fence in glee, the softness of cashmere sweater you pull over your head.
4. “I am one with all” consciousness. In this consciousness, which I must admit is not yet a 24/7 theme for moi, there is no sense of separation from anything. This consciousness knows it is one with Source. It knows it’s an indelible part of the F.P. It knows you are an unlimited being, hooked up with all that is. In this consciousness, everything is eternal and everything else (your thoughts, your reality) is subservient to this bottom-line spiritual Truth. When we’re lucky enough to view life from this consciousness, we are totally surrendered to the “all that is” and know nothing is missing from our life. And, in fact, by yielding to that consciousness, by giving it permission to play out in our lives, we come to realize that all those little intentions and manifestations we so dutifully held in our consciousness are small potatoes compared to this. It’s so much bigger and grander and woo-hoo’er than anything we could have ever imagined.
