Power vs. Force by David R. Hawkins: Part 1

Part 1: Why Is the World so Crazy?! Finding the Hidden Determinants of Human Behavior

Preface

This is a 4-part series on the fascinating science of consciousness research, the discoveries of David R. Hawkins, and the Map of Consciousness he developed and introduced in his book, Power vs. Force.

In the first part, we’ll set the stage for what this work is, I’ll tell you how I discovered it, and what about it has been so immensely valuable to me.

In the second part, we’ll dive into some of the details of how the testing is done, how we’re able to objectively measure the quality of energy and information, and explore a few of this testing method’s potential uses.

In the third part, we’ll see the testing method applied to a real-world scenario. With the help of consciousness researcher Eric Burlingame, we do an energetic analysis of the candidates who were running for president in the 2016 election cycle — namely, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. This part of the series was originally published on October 3, 2016.

In the fourth and final part, I give some closing thoughts on the awesome potential of this discovery and how each one of us can change our world for the better.

I hope you love these. I might not know you, but I made them for you.

Wait, what's going on?

Have you ever noticed that some people seem to be totally crazy? Yeah, I’ve noticed that too. What about the way people find themselves in the same sorts of scenarios or relationships over and over again?

I became fascinated with this phenomenon when I was a teenager. I used to dread going out in public with my mother. She never left home without a huge chip on her shoulder, and she was always on the lookout for someone to share her chip with. We’d go to the mall, or to Target, or to get groceries, and if someone did anything at all that she found offensive she’d just unload a firehose of venom on them. The trigger could be the “wrong” tone of voice in how a salesperson spoke to her; or because someone was standing to close to her in line; or when a stranger looked at me sideways because I was wearing makeup and a skirt in a town where the weirdest thing people wore were t-shirts with “edgy” Looney Tunes on them.

What’s more, she didn’t always have to find them. She was like a radio tower broadcasting a signal that told all the other angry people in the area “come on, let’s fight!”, and they would find her and fulfill her silent request. Out of nowhere, someone would say something cruel to her, or intentionally block her way with their cart in a small aisle just to be rude, or they’d blatantly cut in front of her in line at checkout. It was all so unnecessary, and it would just fuel her anger and “validate” her disdain for people.

I used to just kind of step back and watch these things happen and wonder “what the hell is going on here?”

How is it that some people—regardless of where they go—can find themselves in such similar situations time after time after time? How can one person’s experience in such a dynamic and varied world basically repeat day in and day out, while the person right next to them is experiencing a completely different world? Some are clearly just cursed or born crazy-people, right?

Meh, not so much. When people talk about this sort of stuff, they frequently use the word “energy” to describe a person’s emotional state, their outlook on life, or their orientation to others. As in: “I trust him—he has great energy,” or “the energy of that room was electric,” or even “that lady’s giving off some really bad vibes.” And that language is on the right track.

About 35 years ago, a psychologist made a discovery that began to unravel the mystery of what is going on with people and their energy.

So all these people aren’t just crazy?

I experienced a life-changing bit of serendipity in 2004 because my big brother was doing laundry. This mundane chore that was happening 1,000 miles away from me changed my life.

Jeremy went to the laundry room in the huge apartment complex he lived in, and someone had left a book in there. It caught his eye. Shortly after this my phone rang. It was Jeremy, and what he said was basically “OMG, I found this crazy book in the laundry room, and it’s blowing my mind! YOU HAVE TO READ THIS!”

Uhh, ok?

This was before amazon⁣.com was amazon⁣.com, so I started calling around to find a copy. At the time, it seemed to be a relatively obscure book because none of the “big box” book stores near me had it in stock. But my brother made it sound really important, so my search continued. I called indie book store after indie book store and finally, I found a small shop that had one copy left in stock. I asked them to set it aside for me, and I made a beeline across town to acquire this apparently magical book.

The book was called ” Power vs. Force ,” and it was written by a man I’d never heard of — a man whose work was about to forever change how I understood and thought about the world.

Power vs. Force: The Hidden Determinants of Human Behavior by David R. Hawkins, M.D., Ph.D

Was the book magic? Yeah, but not like the book in The Neverending Story. It was magic in the way that a book describing the details of epigenetics or triangulating location using cell towers would’ve been magical a hundred years ago.

It’s challenging to nutshell the enormity of Hawkins’ discoveries, but the overarching theme of the book is the detailed articulation of the differences between power and force — not just in the domain of physical phenomenon, but in terms of human consciousness. One way to understand the difference between power and force is to look at the tremendous effort that’s required for a rocket to overcome the power of Earth’s gravity as it leaves our atmosphere (which requires reaching a speed of about 25,000 MPH) versus the effortlessness when the same rocket is able to “borrow” from other forms of gravity once it’s outside our atmosphere. Force is a finite “pushing against” that requires external energy that will eventually run out (e.g., fuel or a battery), whereas power is self-generating and self-sustaining as the result of its essence (e.g., the gravitational fields of the sun that keep Earth locked in its orbit).

"Aaaaand, what does any of this have to do with human behavior?" –Bob from Accounting

Well, one of the most mind-bending things that Hawkins’ work revealed is that our consciousness is not just the result of the chemicals or electrical impulses in our brains. And what’s more, the quality of consciousness can be objectively measured.

The relationship between our brains and thinking is more akin to a transistor radio and the radio frequencies it picks up and converts into audio signals that we can hear. Our brains “pick up” energies in the field of consciousness and “convert” it into what we experience as thinking. Whoa, right? And those thoughts have distinctive energetic signatures that are not only quantifiable, they have beneficial or counterproductive effects on those who are participating in them.

Maybe you just had one of two reactions to that paragraph. If you’re like Bob (he’s from accounting), maybe you thought something like “Yeah, whatever, hippy. Why don’t you go ‘manifest’ something?” Or if you’re a little more in touch with your intuitive capacities, maybe you thought something more like “Whooooooooooooooooooa.”

If your reaction was the former, all I can say is that new information and understanding can’t get into a closed mind that thinks it already understands everything. That is the antithesis of the scientific method, so open that mind up, buddy! (Also, I clarify some additional skeptical concerns that Bob has in part 2 of this series.) But, if your reaction was the latter . . . I KNOW, RIGHT?!?!

The activity in your consciousness definitely has corresponding physical events (e.g., neurons fire, chemicals are released), but those physical events are not the source of the thoughts you experience. They’re a physical effect and corollary of an energetic event that’s happening within the field of consciousness.

Oh yeah, did I mention that consciousness is actually a field of energy? What’s more, the energy of our thoughts exist on a quantifiable spectrum where each point on the spectrum has distinctive qualities. It's similar to the way different frequencies of light appear to us as different colors. The emotional states that we call “courage” or “shame” or “love” exist on a spectrum in much the same way that we see various frequencies of light as the colors red or blue or green.

For reference, here’s a super quick overview of how the light spectrum is structured (the physics of light are amazing, but that’s a topic for another conversation).

Saying that “thought energy” exists on a spectrum can sound nuts at first, but so does the idea that we can suck ancient sun-energy from the ground where prehistoric plants and sea creatures transformed over millions of years into an ocean of black sludge that we then convert into a plastic material that we stamp wiggly grooves into and then scrape a diamond across so that vibrations can come out of my speakers and agitate the air in a way that my ears and brain interpret as LCD Soundsystem. I mean, WHAT?!?! EXISTENCE IS WEIRD!

So, who was David R. Hawkins?

From a certain perspective, this is some fairly far-out stuff. So let’s take a moment to look at who David R. Hawkins was. Was he some crackpot spiritual “guru” who lived in a cave and talked to pet rocks? Quite the contrary, actually.

David R. Hawkins (M.D., Ph.D.) was an honored physician whose work was pioneering. Among many other impressive accomplishments, in 1973 he co-authored the groundbreaking work Orthomolecular Psychiatry with Nobel Laureate chemist Linus Pauling, initiating a new field within psychiatry. He also oversaw the largest clinical practice in the United States while he was the Medical Director of the North Nassau Mental Health Center (1956–1980) and the Director of Research at Brunswick Hospital (1968–1979).

So, yeah, the guy was no fool. And with his discoveries and through extremely rigorous scientific experimentation and research, he developed the Map of Consciousness, where he delineated the entire spectrum of expressions of consciousness possible within the human experience.

For instance, he discovered that if someone is participating in the energy within the field of consciousness at level 150, their experience will be dominated by anger; hate is the general emotional filter their experiences are passing through, and they generally view life as antagonistic.

So, there are identifiable factors behind the behavior of people like my mom. There are actual energetic states behind my own experiences and subjective perceptions of the world. And, samesies for all of the other thoughts, opinions, beliefs, and behaviors that we see expressed in the world around us.

It’s the level of consciousness that a person is participating in that determines whether they see the world through glasses with clear lenses, or lenses that are covered with poop.

Coming up next…

What this first post has touched on is just the teeny-tiny, itty-bitty tip of the massive iceberg that is what Hawkins discovered. I’ve spent over 15-years studying this work, and I’ve found that the ability to become aware of the energetic reality behind people’s behavior allows a level of clarity that is invaluable, and otherwise not possible.

The next posts in this series will take you on a journey through the mind-bending physics behind this work and the testing method at the heart of consciousness research. We’ll also be looking at an illuminating real-world example of how the Map of Consciousness can be used.

The 2016 Presidential race is a very important one because of the nature of Donald Trump and his rhetoric. We’ll be looking at an in-depth breakdown that takes things out of the domain of subjective interpretation and guessing what he “really meant.” We’ll be looking at the energetic reality behind this man.

Donald Trump is a very dangerous person. This is a type of analysis you’re not going to see anywhere else—at least not until more people are aware of this work and start utilizing it. But first, let’s better understand how this is all accomplished.

Question for you...

What first interested you in Hawkins' work? Have you read any of his books yet? I'd love to hear about it in a comment below. 👇🏻