This 5 ton Buddha was built about 700 years ago. At one point in its history, warriors invaded the town in which it stood. The Buddhists, fearing it would be destroyed for its gold, covered it with a thick stucco to disguise it. Unfortunately all those Buddhists were killed in the fighting, the conquerors took over, and assumed possession of the huge stucco Buddha. Hundreds of years passed. Then, in the 1950’s, while moving it to a new site, one of the moving cranes chipped away a part of the stucco. A worker spotted something shiny. Investigating, of course, he was stunned to find that underneath the stucco was solid gold! Quite an exciting discovery, I am sure.
You are this story, of course. And, the process of discovering that you are really solid gold is also exciting. The stucco that covers up your gold is just unresolved family of origin issues and past traumas. True, some large traumas like being raised with alcoholism, addiction, sexual abuse, abandonment, or in an emotionally incestuous home are hard to wash away. And true, we tend to recreate these pains in our current relationships. But still, underneath it all, you are golden: a beautiful, amazing human being.
Recently I’ve been studying David Hawkins’ work, and in particular his consciousness spectrum as outlined in his book, "Power vs. Force." It’s really an emotional/spiritual developmental model. It’s done as a scale from 20-1000, and the progression from low levels to high is divided more or less into 3 categories: low negative consciousness, positive growth consciousness, and high awakened consciousness.
The lower levels proceed in this order: shame, guilt, apathy, grief, fear, desire, anger, pride, and finally into the first positive level at 200, courage. 200 is a critical marker. We must get into this level to be able to move into the levels of positive power. I personally think this is where we begin to take responsibility for our life and begin to understand we are in charge of our life – influenced by the decisions we make, and responsible for cleaning off the stucco from our past.
This means having the courage to take a good honest look at what happened to us as a child. Take off the rose-colored glasses. Where did our shame come from? Guilt? Fear? Anger? We also have to have the courage to feel our feelings around our history and grieve our losses. Courage is the key. Courage allows us to move into the possibilities of living our goldenness.
The middle positive growth consciousness levels go from 200 – 499. These begin with courage and go on to neutrality, willingness, acceptance, and reason. Exponential growth happens here as a person "claims his/her life," is freer and freer from leftover childhood baggage and traumas, and begins to flow with life instead of fighting it. Success in many areas is achieved. The higher up on the scale, the easier success becomes. Our gold is revealed to us.
This grouping of consciousness ends with reason. Education is at a premium here – very highly valued. Learning and understanding even of abstract, complex concepts is possible here. But there is a limit to reason. Hawkins states, "Reason does not of itself provide a guide to truth…Although Reason is highly effective in a technical world where the methodologies of logic dominate, Reason itself, paradoxically, is the major block to reaching higher levels of consciousness." In other words, people too often get stuck in their heads and can’t get to their hearts.
Which brings us to the next critical marker on the scale: 500, Love. Opening our hearts to love -- of self, of others, of life – is the only way into the highest levels of consciousness. These are joy (540), peace (600), and enlightenment (700-1000). This love is unconditional, unchanging, and permanent. Here a person’s goldenness shines. There is no fear, all is well, life is safe at a very deep level.
Admittedly, not very many people ever get to these levels. I think part of the reason for this is people try to skip steps. But the reality is, there is no skipping steps. We must resolve each level to move onto a higher one. If we pretend to go to a higher level and have not dealt with, let’s say our shame, we will sabotage our progress over and over again, regressing to the shame level repeatedly. In other words, you can’t cheat the system. You have to do the emotional work to find your gold.
In 1987, when "Power vs. Force," was published, Hawkins suggested that 85% of the world lives below the critical 200 level. I think in the last 20 years that has shifted dramatically. The shift seems to have coincided with the proliferation and availability of the Internet. We are now global. These are exciting times to be alive indeed for it seems the entire consciousness of the world is increasing. I also believe we need a critical mass of people to get beyond the gateway 200 mark for the healing of the world to truly be possible.
You can do your part in healing the world simply by doing your own emotional work: cleaning off the stucco that blocks your goldenness. Your gold is there, I promise you.
