Raising Your Level of Consciousness
It's sometimes difficult to explain to others exactly what's happened in my life over the past 8 years. Every circumstance in my life has upgraded. I have more money coming in, a super healthy and powerful relationship with my wife Angie, my children are healing from the scars of the battlefield which used to be our home, and I've dropped about 100 pounds and run and lift regularly. But none of those are the most fulfilling result of my transformation. In fact, let's call it what it is—the past 8 years have been an awakening.
How It Was
For the first 43 years of my life, I can only explain my daily experience as suffering. I was constantly stressed, angry, upset, dissatisfied, unhappy, and in many other lower states of emotional distress. Angie and I both battled addiction, our marriage was abusive in every way, and I punished my body, treating it like it didn't matter. I would turn from super fun, loving Daddy to angry and controlling instantly, and I hated my work in the world. There was nothing pleasant about my life except that I held big titles in corporate America, made plenty of money, and owned nice things. But my inner world was a combat zone. I just thought that was how normal people felt. I had been taught that it was normal by people who lived the same, but it was not normal at all.
When I felt anxious, stressed, angry, or dissatisfied, I turned to work, sex, alcohol, food, or television as a quick fix. I just wanted the pain to stop, but I spent so much effort distracting myself from the pain within me that I didn't know how much pain was present. I became good at finding unhealthy outlets to soothe the pain and make it stop temporarily, but it always resurfaced and needed to be stuffed and suppressed again. I was literally living a life of mental and emotional survival. I hated myself and everything about how I felt inside. My mind and thoughts were punishing and abusive. The voice in my head was my harshest critic. I just thought that was the plight of humankind.
How It Is Now
The war in my mind and body has, for the most part, ceased. Every once in a while, a burst of anger, frustration, and stress emerges, but that's the exception instead of the baseline. My inner world is filled with inspiration, love, joy, peace, and optimism instead of dread and self-loathing. My war with myself is over, and the inner voice that once was my harshest critic is now forgiving. I'm not saying it's perfect and always a constant state of zen in my mind and thoughts, but now when I notice the dis-ease within me, I allow it to pass and dissolve, and I return to a state of inner kindness.
The old Mike could not even imagine that the state of love and acceptance that exists within me now was even possible. Internal harmony and inspiration have replaced the always-on pain and suffering of the past, and there's nothing to escape in my inner world—just temporary flare-ups that naturally resolve themselves with patience and understanding.
The biggest blessing that came from this internal transformation and awakening is that I have more love to give others, and others feel the peace and love when they're near me. Some people actually want to be near me because of how they feel when they're near me—energized, inspired, loved—which is a drastic change from when people clamored to move away from me because they could feel my heaviness and pain. People feel energy even if they don't know what they're experiencing. The lighter someone's energy, the more people with lighter energy want to be around them. Like attracts like, so heavy energy is drawn to heavy energy, and lighter energy is drawn to lighter energy. Lighter energy runs from heavier energy. People with heavier energy just think people with lighter energy are faking it.
I'm definitely not faking the peace and love I feel in my heart.
Raising Your Level of Consciousness
The level and quality of your energy are driven by your level of consciousness. Your level of consciousness is best described as how awake and aware you are inside of yourself, and how much ownership and mastery you demonstrate over your mind and body. When you're operating from a lack of awareness and awakeness, you store poisonous beliefs, traumatic experiences, and pockets of toxic energy inside of you. When you're asleep, you think of these things as part of you, but they're not. You're unconsciously holding onto these past experiences and expired pain. Then you react to life when you're triggered into feeling their presence in your mind and body by a familiar event.
When I was in the depths of my pain, I thought that life happened and life "made me" think and feel in certain ways. I lived a life of reaction to circumstances, and the more my circumstances didn't match my preferences, the more miserable I'd feel. The epiphany came when I realized that life rarely matches all of my preferences at the same time, so I was constantly trying to rearrange the external world as a means to find some peace and comfort within. When you do this, you might find minutes of happiness in an otherwise ever-changing world.
I started my awakening because I got fired from two executive-level corporate positions in 20 months, my family was tearing apart at the seams, and I was a physically toxic mess. I swear nothing would have changed in my life unless I literally hit rock bottom and almost committed suicide. I paused life to try to make sense of why I felt so empty and broken and was constantly unhappy and stressed in my mind and body. I was working with a consciousness teacher at the time, and he had me eliminate all distractions, sit with myself in silence and stillness for a few minutes, and journal about what I was really thinking and feeling in that moment. That's probably the first time I ever really faced myself, and it wasn't easy or pretty. He also had me look myself in the eyes in a mirror and say, "I love you," and I couldn't spit out the words.
Over the coming months, I took notice of all of the painful beliefs, stories, thoughts, and emotions I had run from and distracted myself from during my life, and I began to face them and let them go. They began to resolve and dissolve as I recognized them and made a constant decision to drop them. As I practiced letting go, I could literally feel the painful beliefs and emotions leaving my mind and body. As they left my awareness, higher levels took their place without force. We increase our level of consciousness by letting go of lower states, not forcing in higher states. When we let go of shame, guilt, anger, and fear, they are replaced with love, joy, and peace. This takes daily intentional effort and focus and is a marathon, not a sprint.
Even today, when I feel uneasy, stressed, dissatisfied, angry, etc., I still go within, identify the present state of what I'm thinking and feeling, and let it go. By letting go, it evaporates from my mind and body, and there's less lower-level energy within me. The spiritual journey is a lifelong process, not a quick fix. You can, however, make rapid progress by becoming committed and beginning to let go of the pain of the past starting today—and for the rest of your life.
States of Consciousness
There are many books about consciousness and raising the level of your consciousness. Two of the most notable are Power Vs. Force and Letting Go by Dr. David Hawkins. In these books, Dr. Hawkins lays out the Emotional Scale of Consciousness, which has been super useful and helpful in my own journey. In his scale, Dr. Hawkins details the scale from the lowest levels of shame, guilt, and apathy to the highest states of joy, peace, and enlightenment. At each level, he describes the state of being that an individual experiences at this level. As you become aware of the state of consciousness and begin to let go, you rise on the scale as your energy becomes lighter and your frequency and vibration faster. Then when you change your inner world, your external world literally rearranges itself around your new level of consciousness. Your circumstances are a mirror for who you are. When you change, everything changes.
For the purposes of this article, I'm going to present a simpler format. I like to call out three primary states of consciousness that people experience, and the Hawkins Scale is the micro-scale of these three states:
Survival Mode
Survival mode is states from the lowest level of shame up to pride. In this mode, it feels like you're at war with life, needing to fight for your circumstances and what you need to survive, you're focused mostly on your own needs, and your choices are based on trying to overcome stories of insecurity, inadequacy, and insignificance in your mind and body. Most people are repelled by your desperation. Inside of survival mode, people hold painful beliefs, false stories about themselves, their life, and their circumstances, and think lower-level thoughts and feel lower-level emotions. There's not much peace, love, and joy within this level—just bouncing from one opportunity to "get" to another.
Creation Mode
Creation mode includes states from courage to reason. In creation mode, your energy is lighter, cleaner, and healthier. People are attracted to you, and because of this, you move into making a difference in the world to help others as well as yourself. Circumstances in your life begin to expand and improve simply because you are operating at a higher level because like attracts like. You are still driven to accomplish, accumulate, and achieve, but it's not to solve internal conflicts that lie buried inside of you. You create for the sake of creation.
Freedom
At the level of freedom, you no longer fight for survival or need to create. These are the states of the mystics and sages—love, joy, peace, and enlightenment. In the level of this energy, Beingness overtakes any desire for outcomes or doingness. This is the state of total surrender of the personality and personal preferences. At this level, there are no unfulfilled needs, but there are also no wants or urges to live in any way that detracts from living as the divine awareness within.
Putting It All Together
You hold the keys to increasing your state of consciousness. But that requires you to identify any internal dis-ease and let it go. You can do this by naming the state, feeling the existing state, taking a deep breath, and slowly exhaling and releasing the energy of the emotion and feeling. If you do this over time, your energy will become lighter, your consciousness will increase, and your resistance in life will lessen. You will awaken and transform from the inside out. Most people are trapped in the physical world—just trying to get and take what they think they need to survive. That's typical, but that's operating at the lower levels of consciousness. Practice letting go and elevating your consciousness, and you'll see how chaotic that way of operating is. It only takes a choice to begin letting go of the pain within you instead of rearranging the world to protect it. You are the chooser of whether you evolve or stay the same. What's your choice?