Emotional intelligence is about identifying and understanding the core emotions that shape all human behaviour. By identifying and understanding each of the emotional states and how they relate to one another we can then cultivate emotional balance. Emotionally balanced people are less reactive and more stable. They tend to handle stress better and are generally more at peace with themselves.

The first step to understanding the emotions is to recognise that they exist within a hierarchy. Once you understand the hierarchy, you can quickly identify where you are at any time emotionally, and where you need to go if you want to feel better. Simply recognising an emotion for what it is already makes a big difference. From there you can process out the emotional state and reach for higher states. To go anywhere you’ve got to know where you are first. Start with where you are.

Definition of Emotion:

• An affective state of consciousness in which joy, sorrow, fear, hate, or the like, is experienced, as distinguished from cognitive and volitional states of consciousness.
• Any of the feelings of joy, sorrow, fear, hate, love, etc.
• Any strong agitation of the feelings actuated by experiencing love, hate, fear, etc., and usually accompanied by certain physiological changes, as increased heartbeat or respiration, and often overt manifestation, as crying or shaking.

Definition of Intelligence:

• Capacity for learning, reasoning, understanding, and similar forms of mental activity; aptitude in grasping truths, relationships, facts, meanings, etc.
• Manifestation of a high mental capacity.
• The faculty of understanding.

An Emotion is a state of consciousness. 

Everything that you experience is experienced within the field of consciousness. Only you can be aware of what you are feeling from moment to moment. Others can guess, but they cannot know. The only way for anyone to know exactly what you are feeling is to be you.

What you feel runs very deep, and every experience you have had in your life adds unique layers to the totality of who you are. Over time layers become layers on top of layers on top of even more layers until we become almost numb to what is going on at the deepest level. All thoughts and feelings are the expressions of our emotional state. Emotional states determine all experience and perception.

People get into emotional states all the time, and sometimes on purpose. You hear about actors “getting into state” and in various personal development works they teach you how to change your state by changing your physiology or by changing your thoughts. Sometimes that’s necessary. People say things like “I’m in an awful state” or “I’m in no fit state to do that”.

All emotions are experienced within the energy field of the body, but in a kind of everywhereness. Once the emotion occurs it is usually followed by some kind of mental dialogue. The thoughts which come up are of the same attractor pattern of the emotion itself. For example when you are feeling angry you have angry thoughts and angry reactions, when you are feeling fear you have thoughts of fear, anxiety, and worry. We then end up having emotional reactions to our thoughts which can create a loop of Emotion-thought-emotion-thought that endlessly feeds itself. When this happens we can feel stuck emotionally which can be pretty rough.

Learn to clearly identify your current emotional state so you can reach for the next highest state

Dr. David R Hawkins, M.D., Ph.D., an internationally renowned spiritual teacher, psychiatrist, physician, researcher, lecturer and developer of the widely-known Map of Consciousness. The map of consciousness which he developed and tested using applied kinesiology is one of the most groundbreaking and profound contributions to mankind. It is probably the single greatest tool for the determined spiritual seeker, but even for those who are not interested in enlightenment, mere exposure to the levels of consciousness already activates a new state of awareness. On the map below I want to draw your attention to the column “Level”. The various levels have a numeric log directly to the right, and you will see that the lowest emotional state of Shame has a log of 20, and by contrast the higher state of Enlightenment starts at 700 and goes to 1000. 

 

 

We are going to start at the bottom of the scale, and gradually move our way up so that we can get a sense of how these states interact with each other. 

Shame

Shame is one of the lowest emotional states and also one of the most common. It brings you face to face with non existence and sucks the life out of you. When you feel shame you feel worthless. It is the Level of Self Hatred. You say to yourself “I am bad.” “I’m a f*!king loser” “I am not good enough.” “I am not smart enough.” “I am not wise enough.” “I am not enough this or not enough that.” “I am fat”. “I am so stupid”. It is a state of self punishment where we attack ourselves over and over again. It is the feeling of Humiliation. It’s a constant feeling of not being worthy which can be debilitating. It can stop you from taking action because of the fear of being humiliated or rejected.

People who lack self worth often project it onto others. They humiliate others and shame them. It’s very common among teenagers who shame one another but it often continues into adulthood and many people will continue to shame others well into old age. Looking down on others as having a lack of value is a symptom of shame. I was shamed and humiliated often as a teenager when I was at school, and I later learned to use shame against others as a defense mechanism. People would be less inclined to shame or embarrass me for fear I would humiliate them more. This is not a healthy long term strategy however as sooner or later what you send out comes back as negative karma. Law of attraction 101 – what goes around comes around.

The way out of shame is to recognize that in reality you are not the problem. Instead of making yourself the problem as in “I am Bad” or “I am Useless” make your behavior the problem as in “that was a bad decision” or “that behaviour wasn’t helpful”. Create a separation between yourself and the behavior. Whatever you are feeling shame about link it back to your behavior. When you focus on behaviour then you cease to become the problem. It’s not you, but what you do, that is the problem. This is a critical distinction because you can’t change “you”. You will always be you. But you can change your behaviour. You can choose to do things differently. When you recognise that your behaviour is the problem you move from feeling Shame into a state of Guilt.

Guilt

While guilt is no picnic energetically it is a step above shame. Instead of focussing on yourself you realise that your behaviour is in need of correction. Guilt is rampant in our society and has probably been around since man walked the earth. You know you are feeling guilty when your self talk sounds like “I shouldn’t have done that” or “that was wrong” or “You should do this” or “You should do that”. Guilt is about right and wrong, good and bad, and assigning blame. Self Blame is common, also blaming of others, blaming institutions. Feeling like one has failed in some way they might blame society for their problems. Projecting the guilt away from ourselves we say things like “that’s not like me.” We deny and disassociate from our behaviour when we feel guilty about it. We choose to play victim and relinquish responsibility. Without getting lost in the detail though, the main sign of guilt is identifying something as wrong in some way. A mistake. Sin. Error.

The good news about guilt is that you are suppose to make mistakes and mess up from time to time. Guilt is a good sign of having a conscience. You know what right action is and so when you don’t take right action you feel bad. You let yourself down. There is nothing wrong with realising that you made a mistake. This is the nature of being human. Everybody makes mistakes. Everybody has done things they are not proud of. Everybody poops their pants when they’re a baby. 

People can feel guilt about something for days, months, and even years. When I was struggling with guilt a number of years ago my father gave me the best advice anyone could give. He said “Colin, you did the best you could at that time, and If you could have made a better choice, you would have – the next time you have a choice to make, you can do things differently.” The moral here is learn from your mistakes, and move on. Don’t beat yourself up again and again. There is nothing to be learned by continually punishing yourself for your mistakes.

Another key to dealing with guilt is responsibility. Owning up for your mistake and being accountable clears the way for a fresh start. When you don’t own your mistakes you enter into denial. You justify your behaviour in some way. You may fool others but you can’t fool yourself. You know either consciously or unconsciously when you have messed up, and the sooner you own your mistakes, the sooner you can accept them and move on. In some situations you might feel the need to share your mistake with someone, apologise, make amends, but if that is not appropriate to the situation, at least be honest with yourself.

To sum it up, everyone makes mistakes. This is human nature. Don’t torture yourself indefinitely for making a mistake. Learn to accept your mistakes and move on from it. The next level above guilt is Apathy.

Apathy

Apathy is characterised by hopelessness, helplessness, and despair. Lack of caring about self or others. Lack of concern or interest. Numbness. Emptiness. Might as well not even bother. What’s the point. We become passive. Accident proneness is common. Passive suicide can be a possibility. In apathy people often stop eating.

Whereas the feeling of guilt is a form of self punishment and torturing ourselves, Apathy is less intense, but miserable nonetheless. It is not caring about anything or anyone to any measurable degree. To move out of apathy we need to start caring again. I remember being in a state of apathy many times in my life. When you have great disappointment it can feel like you have been stripped away of all happiness. You start to “not give a fuck” about anything or anyone. To come out of apathy one needs to care about life once more. We have to move into state of mourning whatever it is that we lost that sent us spiralling into a negative fuzz. 

When people are humiliated they tend to go into shame, then later they will blame themselves for their actions and/or behaviour, and maybe blame others for putting them in the position in the first place, and after they’ve felt guilty and perhaps blamed a little, they usually stop caring in some way. They get tired of blaming themselves and feeling like crap. They stop punishing themselves and start to not give a damn anymore. It feels better not caring than it does punishing and hating yourself. Apathy is the logical move towards self healing, but it is not a good place to hang out.

Grief

With Grief we move from not caring back into caring. In grief we Mourn what is lost. Feelings of sadness and regret accompany grief. We are sad because we care. Wishing you had done things differently. Wasted time, wasted opportunity, wasted life energy. Feeling like there is an empty hole inside. Grief has been described as “the graveyard of life.” Feeling sorry for yourself. Feeling Heart broken. We’ve all been through this before many times. It’s not pleasant. The dominant feeling is regret.

To transcend regret we reach for acceptance. Whatever happened, happened, and the way things are are the way things are. We cannot change the past. There is no point crying over spilt milk.

The heaviest of all grief occurs in relation to the loss of loved ones. The death of a friend or family member, the loss of a pet, or the end of a relationship. There’s no easy way to reframe a loss like this, but the best advice I can suggest is to appreciate what you have now. Be grateful that you had positive experiences, and remember that the feelings of joy you experienced in the past, came from within you, not from something outside of you. 

We move out of grief when we accept the past as the past and begin to look to the future. Looking into the future sometimes brings up fear. Grief and fear are very closely related, as you will know from your own experience. When the loss is great we fear that we will never be happy again. We see a future without that loved one and we feel fear. What is very common here, and a pitfall to avoid, is to be careful not to return to a state of guilt. It is very easy when we have lost something to blame ourselves somehow, to think we “should have done more”, we “should have been more…”. It is very easy to slip into guilt from regret, and the cycle repeats itself. Don’t let that be you. Accept that things are as they are and they cannot be any other way. To feel guilty is of no use to anyone, especially you. It only slows you down.

Fear

Fear is all too familiar. Anxiety. Worrying, doubt., angst. It is a focus on a future in which one is suffering. It is using the imagination, and not in a positive way. “What if this happens or that happens?” “What if I lose something or someone?” There is fear of loss, fear of rejection, fear of being seen, fear of pain, fear of suffering, fear of making a mistake, fear of not being enough, fear about things you must do, fear about things you are not comfortable doing, and so on. All fear is based in the future, which is a creation of the imagination. The greatest fear of all is the fear of death, of non existence. People don’t realise this consciously but it’s right there all the time, feeding all other fears.

You can imagine a future of positive possibilities as easy as you can imagine a future of suffering. It comes down to your willingness to see things as they could be for the better instead of seeing things as they could be for the worse. At the end of the day whatever will be, will be. You can worry all the way to the actual event only to find that you worried needlessly. This is all too common.

Fear is the mind attempting to see all possible outcomes and prepare for danger well in advance. The problem with this is that the mind goes way too far, seeing and imagining futures that are not realistic or not based on logical conclusions. The mind gets over creative and we choose to see the worst possibilities instead of seeing the best possibilities. Thank your mind for keeping you safe, but don’t let it be the dj.

The best way to transcend fear is to become laser focused on what you really, really want. Focus on what you want to happen, not on what you don’t want to happen. Focus on what you desire instead of the lack of what you desire. Once you know what you want, believe you can get it. Be willing to believe that what you want is possible for you.

Sometimes we fear for others, in fact it’s quite common. Parents fear for their children, friends fear for friends, and so on. You must eventually realise that everyone is on their own journey and your worrying is wasted on them. Nobody benefits from your worrying, least of all the person you are worried for. In actuality you are not really worried about them but rather you are worried about the potential grief and anguish you would feel if something bad were to happen to them. This “what if something bad happens” way of living is not healthy. You can care for others and pray for their wellbeing but worrying is not going to do any good. Learn to send out a positive intention instead of a negative one. Obviously when it comes to young children you need to be on the lookout for dangers that they are not aware of and guide them towards healthy choices in life, but over-interference in the lives of others is out of balance.

To transcend fear you must desire something better. You must learn to accept that all fear is a creation of the mind, and nothing more. It is a projection into the future in which someone or something is suffering, and as such it only exists in the mind of its creator, which is you. You must learn to be more optimistic about the future in order to conquer fear. At the end of the day you don’t know what will actually happen. Nobody does.  

Desire

Fear points us in the direction of the future, but desire is the rocket fuel that gets us moving in the right direction. You might be surprised to learn that desire can be a negative state. The reason desire can be a negative state is because desire leads to craving, craving leads to addiction/attachment, and it is ultimately inevitable that we will become separated from the things we become attached to. The process goes like this: I want > I need > I must have >  I can’t live without = addition. The greater the level of attachment to any object the greater the suffering will be when the object is lost, and eventually all objects will be lost. Either they will leave before us or we will leave before them. The nature of the universe is that everything is changing all the time. Nothing is permanent.

Desire is a state of wanting. Still a focus on future but not in a negative way like when we are in fear. You become interested in self and others again. You search for things that you believe will make your life better, make you happier, fulfill you, satisfy you, etc. “What do I want to do”, “what should I do”, “What do need to do?”. These types of questions awaken our inner light. When we begin to ask “what do I really want” it’s not just the ego who answers, but our higher self is activated.

The problem with desire is that it can lead to craving and addiction like we just mentioned. First I want coffee, then I realise I like coffee, then I want more coffee, and more coffee, and so begins the process of craving. As I crave and then satisfy the craving again and again, very soon I feel like I need a coffee or my day will be incomplete somehow. Excessive wanting creates neediness which results in enslavement. We become a slave to our desire. The state of desire is a state of incompleteness, which is why we need to transcend it. To say “I want” is to say “I don’t have”. Why do we need anything? It’s a good question to ask.

Most of us want many things. We want more things than we could ever possibly have or need. In addition to wanting things, we also want to become something other than what we are. We want to be more popular, or more interesting, or skinnier, or smarter, or better looking. You can see how desire links back to shame and feelings of not being enough. One of the big issues with desire is that we never become fulfilled. As soon as we get what we want, we start to think about what we want next. This is especially true when we desire material things. We don’t need most of the things we buy. We can only drive one car at a time and eat one meal at a time.

When it comes to desire – the less you want the more abundant you will feel. If you don’t need much then you will feel abundant with very little. If you want for nothing then you already have everything you need.

Anger

I don’t like this. I don’t want this. This is not what I expected. This is not what I wanted to happen. This is not going to plan. I am not happy.

Anger can lead to constructive or destructive action. When you get angry enough with yourself or others it can lead to major life changes which can be for better or worse. People with weight issues can get so angry with their situation that they take radical action and get powerful results. Other times getting angry can lead to self pity and guilt, and before you know it your back in a negative emotional spiral. Desires unfulfilled become frustrations which lead to anger. What happens when You don’t get what you want?

Endless wanting leads to endless upsets as you cannot possibly get everything you want in life, unless you want very little. Anger starts simply as “I don’t like this” or “I’m not happy about this or that”. After a while you “really don’t like” things and eventually you will start to say “I hate this” and “I hate that”. For many years I casually threw around phrases such as “I hate when people do xyz” or “I hate it when this happens or that happens”. The phrase “I hate” came out all too easy. I don’t even remember if I really hated the things or not, but the habit was in my vocabulary and I had to learn to undo the habit over time.

Pride

Look how great I am. Look at what I have achieved. Did you see how well I handled that? I did that well didn’t I? Nobody likes arrogance, and for good reasons. This type of false Pride is positioning yourself as “better than.” “My kids are better than your kids.” for example is a sign of pride. Wanting to appear superior over others in some way.  Wanting to be right is important. Prideful people are prone to exaggeration, I know this because I had a lot of pride and wanted to appear to “never be wrong”. Pride wants to look good and strut around. The prideful may choose to bend the truth to avoid losing face. I remember years ago I would casually drop into conversations personal success stories or famous people I worked with or met in person. This was an unconscious desire to appear more special in some way. It’s like a type of camouflage. Putting on a show. Highlighting connections between myself and those who others might consider special which might in some way reflect well on me. Me, me, me. Pride wants to be center stage.

The problem with pride is that it is vulnerable to attack. When we puff ourselves up and make ourselves out to be special in some way, we are setting ourselves up for an inevitable fall. Deep inside we know we are faking it and thus we become vulnerable that we may one day be discovered and fall from our pedestal.

Stubbornness is one the key challenges to break through when it comes to transcending pride. People can hold strongly to a position whether it is right or wrong. In their mind they are right, in the other persons mind they are wrong. The impasse is a contradiction of belief, and our beliefs make us who we are, or at least that’s what we believe about our beliefs.

Higher Emotional States

Higher emotional states are of the heart and they resonate with truth. The lower states of shame, guilt, apathy, grief, fear, desire, anger and pride, are all rooted in belief. They are rooted in thoughts. As you will soon see, the higher emotional states have a very different quality.

Courage

With courage we begin to enter into higher states of consciousness. We affirm to ourselves that we have the power to change and take action. It takes courage face our demons and take responsibility for our mistakes and transgressions. Without courage we make excuses and dodge responsibility.

The states below courage are all based in falsehood. They are essentially not Real as they are created in the imagination and based on false perception. If you dig deep enough into the mechanisms of shame, guilt, apathy, grief, fear, anger, desire, and pride, you will discover that they are all in some way linked back to various fears, and all fear as we have learned above is based on future imaginations which have no foundation in present reality. With courage we become empowered, without courage we become weak.

In the book Power vs Force by Dr. David R Hawkins he refers to courage as the level of truth and integrity. It certainly takes courage to speak your truth. It also takes courage to have integrity and be true to your highest self. If someone gives you the wrong change at the shop that’s an opportunity for you to demonstrate integrity to yourself and others by telling them they made a mistake and giving the money back, instead of taking some small profit that you don’t really need.

The word courage comes from the French word “coeur” for heart. People who have courage can be said to have heart. People who “wear their heart on their sleeve” are described in this way because they speak what is in their heart. They are transparent. They say what they are feeling. The heart is the home of our feelings.

Many people avoid speaking their truth out of fear of offending others, but in doing so they are doing themselves and others a disservice. By not being honest with others they are not truly being themselves. This doesn’t mean we should go around insulting people if we feel like it, because that is not speaking truth. Any insult would be coming out of fear. No, speaking your truth is speaking from your heart, not from your head.

Speaking the truth is hard. Admitting your wrongs and taking responsibility takes courage. It takes heart. Facing the challenges of the world instead of avoiding them is a sign of courage. The energy of courage is itself powerfully transformative. It is where we must all start if we want to raise our level of consciousness. 

Neutrality

When we become neutral we stop creating problems for ourselves. We release ourselves from the desire to take sides and get involved in make wrongs and thus we can easily transcend guilt and shame. Life becomes more balanced and harmonious. We become less judgemental towards ourselves and others as we begin to understand that things are not always what they appear to be.

With neutrality it is ok if I get the job and ok if I don’t get the job. There is no strong attachment to either/or. This is not the same as passivity which is a symptom of apathy, but a more engaged way of relating to the world around us. We develop an attitude that “it’s not good or bad it just is what it is” which results in greater levels of self confidence. Without the ability to be neutral we feel like we must take a side in whatever drama is going on and this can result in guilt or disappointment, especially if we pick a side that turns out to be less favourable.

Neutrality has at its core the philosophy of Yin and Yang which puts forth the idea that nothing is absolutely good or absolutely bad, and that both goodness and badness cannot exist without each other, nor can anything else for that matter. There cannot be an up without a down, a left without a right, or a right without a wrong, so in essence both are required. That which appears to be bad has a seed of goodness within it, and that which appears to be good has a seed of badness within it. Neutrality recognises that good and bad, right and wrong, or any position for that matter, are all equally valid.

In stark contrast to the lower level emotions neutrality is very live and let live. It is more of a non-doing and more balanced. When you learn to look at life through a neutral lens very soon it becomes automatic. You don’t see anything as right and wrong anymore, so you don’t really feel guilt, and of course you also won’t feel shame, because you are not good or bad you simply are what you are. Even when it comes to grief and loss, you being to view a loss not as a good thing or a bad thing, It simply is what it is. Can you see how being more neutral cancels out a whole bunch of negative emotional states?

Willingness

At the level of willingness we have much more energy for life. This is the level of optimism, which results from the willingness to look on the bright side of life. Only you can choose the way you see the world. Once you escape the gravity of the negative emotional states and reach the state of neutrality, where you recognize that nothing is inherently good or bad, it simply is what it is, to go one step further and see things as being better than they appear to be is not hard at all. And here’s why.

As you recognise more and more that there is no right or wrong, you realise that everything you do is ok. I lost my job, it’s ok. I got robbed, it ok. I lost my entire life savings? I’m probably not too happy about that, but it is what it is, and sooner or later, I’ll be ok. Over time this habit of seeing life as “okay” builds an underlying layer of confidence that no matter what happens, you will be ok. You begin to see life itself as okay, and you enjoy it more, because there are less ups and downs, or more accurately, there are less downs, and when you do feel down you bounce back quickly. This releases a new zest for life, because now when you imagine the future, you know everything is going to be okay. Very soon okay becomes great. I hope you get there.

Being optimistic is a leap for many people because it requires faith. Now you know how to build faith by practicing neutrality. Willingness implies that one has overcome inner resistance to life and and is committed to participation. People become more open minded and tend to bounce back from adversity and learn from experience. They are willing to look at their defects and learn from others.The level of willingness is the level of “do unto others as you would have them do unto you”. People are helpful and supportive rather than competitive. To contribute to the welfare of others becomes a pleasure.

Acceptance

Acceptance is one of the most powerful ways to transform your life. When you truly accept something you acknowledge its existence and it’s right to be whatever it is right now. It is a state of allowing things to be as they are, instead of wanting them to be different than they are. I learned a lot about acceptance from the practice of tai chi. For me tai chi was the ultimate modality for learning to release, and let go, which is one of the key aspects of acceptance.

Acceptance is a moment to moment recognising and releasing. Acceptance is not the same as passivity which is a symptom of apathy but rather an active state of non-resistance and flow. Acceptance as a level of consciousness is also the level of forgiveness and letting go of the past. No more holding onto grievances, grudges, hurts, pains, judgements. Life become harmonious. In the beginning acceptance comes slow, because there are many things we don’t want to accept, but after a while it becomes a way of life. We develop the attitude of acceptance and forgiveness and apply this attitude to every thought, action, and deed. With acceptance one understands that they are the creator of the experience of their life. This understanding alone is in itself powerfully transformational.

One area that people really struggle with acceptance is when it comes to accepting others as they are. This stems from our inability to accept ourselves for who we are. The way to accept others as they are is to accept yourself as you are. If you are comfortable with who you are, and you realise that you are perfect as you are, then you will see others as being perfectly who they are meant to be. The more you want to change others the less you accept yourself. Acceptance = Acceptance.

Can we be accepting of genocide? Of poverty? Of war? Can we be neutral about the pain and suffering of the helpless and the innocent? A word of advice; learn to walk before you try to run. It takes a very saintly person to have compassion for those who have lost their way, and an extremely deep level of understanding to recognise that ignorance is the only real sin. But can you be a more accepting and forgiving person? Absolutely? Will forgiving someone for their transgression leave you feeling lighter? Absolutely. Forgiveness benefits the forgiver much more than it benefits the forgiven. You can carry around a grievance or thoughts of revenge for decades or even a lifetime! Long after that person has forgotten about you, you could still be juicing off the thoughts of getting your own back. Just let it go. The things we hold onto become our attachments, and we are bound to them as they are bound to us. Learn to let go of things quickly, like a child.  

Reason

What does it all mean? What is the significance of that? With reason we able to work with increasingly difficult and abstract concepts and symbols, and make informed decisions with the mind by comparing, analysing, understanding, conceptualising, comprehending, questioning, and organising.

Intelligence and rationality come to the forefront when the emotionalism of the lower levels is transcended. Reason is capable of handling incredible amounts of complex information and making rapid correct decisions. Disciplined by logic reason comes back to the linear reality of what is provable and measurable. “This means that” brings us face to face with  cause and effect, the backbone of all science.

The more we understand the more we begin to look beyond the surface level of everything. We seek deeper meaning. The more we reason the more we are able to understand. Life becomes meaningful. We seek to understand ourselves and others. More understanding leads to compassion which open the doors to love.

Love

Love is gentle, kind, and considerate, but also powerful. It is also a milestone in the levels of consciousness. Just as courage was a milestone for transcending the negative emotional states, love is the beginning of the end of the ego. It is a very special level of consciousness because it represent a paradigm change. While understanding is powerful and leads to compassion, love is beyond understanding and it can exist without reason. You don’t need a reason to love something, you just love it, but when you dislike something, there is always a reason. Love exists in a category all by itself, which is why it is so precious, and also rare. Most people don’t feel love all day long. 

Love is benign. It has no enemies. It has no desire to win, to be number one, or to compete. Love does not require anything. It is self sufficient.

To be loving is to be respectful, compassionate, friendly, good hearted, merciful, affectionate, appreciative, understanding, empathetic, and much more, but you get the idea. Love is the expression of all of the positive qualities that we value in life. The more you see yourself giving and receiving these qualities, the more in-love you are. 

Love is our natural state of being when we are without fear, It is an expression of inner joy, contentment, happiness, wonder and awe. When we are in love we see the specialness and the sacredness of life. We cherish that which we love and hold it dear. Love is connection. When we have a new relationship or discover a new hobby it we can experience a state of extacy at times as we become overwhelmed with waves of joy.

So why do we not experience love more often? Why is it only in the honeymoon period of a relationship that we experience the blissful states of love and joy and ecstasy? How is it that one day we are full of passion for the things we do and the next day we are flat and disinterested?

The problem is one of behaviour, also known as conditioning. We are not conditioned to experience the world in a loving way, we are conditioned for fear. We are ruled by conditions, and in some instances we even have conditions for love. We just learned that to be loving is to be merciful, affectionate, and appreciate. Have you ever withhold affection, mercy, or appreciation for any reason? “I don’t appreciate when you do…” “I don’t respect you when you….” “I don’t like people who….” “I don’t like it when…” “I hate when people…”. The real truth is that we have many reasons and conditions not to be loving. This is why love and reason exist in different paradigms. They are like oil and water.

In consciousness calibration research it is stated that only 4% of people reach the level of love, meaning that being loving is their dominant state.

We all have the capacity for love, and in fact we yearn for it. We are all loved by someone or we have all been loved by someone at one time or another. If you picture someone you really care about and focus on why you care about them, soon you will remember the things you appreciate about them, and as you appreciate them, you will start to feel love emanate from within you. This is why love is everywhere present now. Somewhere, someone is appreciating somebody else, or they are being appreciated and don’t even know about it. There is is, Love exists.

Love is one of those rare things in life that can be experienced but not proven to exist. Only the experiencer can know what love is.

Joy

“Gentleness and kindness to all of life in all it’s expressions.”

The state of joy is one of unconditional love. You see the sacredness of all life in all expressions. It is extremely rare for anyone to be in this state continuously, but everyone has experienced unconditional love at some point in their life, if only for a moment.

It’s more common in young children who have not yet seen the suffering of the world. It is closer to our prime state of ultimate peace than any other. When you see nothing but love everywhere it strikes out all fear for there is nothing to be feared. Everything Is Love. Fear does not exist. Peace ensues.

Unconditional love means love no matter what. In a state of unconditional love you would love the tiger even as it kills you. You would know with all your being that the tiger is only killing you because that is its nature. It is impossible to imagine this level of love, but it is there. A parent who loves their child would gladly sacrifice their life to save their child from danger. They wouldn’t think twice about it.

Peace

The state of peace is said to be the beginning of the states of enlightenment. It is incredibly rare and not a goal for most people, therefore not much is known about it. Any attempt to write or talk while maintaining this state of awareness would in theory be physically impossible. You cannot have peace and motion at the same time, and thought is motion. Ultimate peace is silence and stillness.

It is the quality of divinity which is everywhere present, unlimited, all knowing, beyond all time and space. 

There have been teachers throughout time in every culture who have walked the path of enlightenment and passed on the way so that others could follow. These become the sacred texts that exist in every culture, and which often represent the earliest written scriptures. These teachers are known as Avatars or Mystics.

Christ, Buddha, Krishna, and Zoroaster are some of the well known enlightened beings that had a significant impact on the world, and their teachings continue to inspire and teach us today, but it is important to remember that they did not write their own scripture. They reached the state of enlightenment so that others could follow, but it was their followers who wrote down the way, sometimes years later. 

Very few people are interested in enlightenment. Spiritual truth is the highest of all truth, and it’s core message is Peace and Love, but peace and love is not what most people are looking for. As we learned when we discussed the state of love, we are deeply conditioned to live life in various states of fear. Most of us are ruled by our thoughts, and the silence and stillness of meditation drives us stir crazy. This doesn’t mean we should not meditate. The best thing we can do for our overall health and wellbeing is take back the silence and stillness of our inner world, and recognise the mind for what it is; a servant. 

Most of us have let the servant take over the house and locked the master in the basement. The only time we even know there is a master is when there is a crisis and the servant becomes mute – lost for words – silent. And there, in the silence, when all thought stops, there is the realisation. I still exist.

Beyond all thoughts, ideas, and imaginations, there is the witness. Watching, Observing, Aware. In the peace, silence, and stillness, when it seems like there is absolutely nothing going on, there is still something ongoing, ever present, always on, and unchanging.

Conclusion

If you become familiar with the map of consciousness there is no doubt you will improve your emotional wellbeing. By simply being aware of each state and level, and by understanding what is above and below each state, you will find it easier to transcend negative states and develop and more positive and vibrant emotional energetic state. 

If you found this helpful and you would like to learn more I highly recommend that you read some of Dr. Hawkins Books. A good book to start with is Transcending the Levels of Consciousness. This book lays out the above levels in an easy to understand format, and it is the first Dr. Hawkins book that I read. You won’t be disappointed.