The German word for compassion is Mitgefefühl (to feel with) or Mitleid (to suffer with) but this could be a catastrophe for us or the world in general unless we do it consciously.
Read more about this in Living Now Magazine – December 2015. (If you only have time for one short piece, read this one.)
The original article posted on this blog is now rewritten and on OM Times community blog. Read it here (1200 words). This article goes beyond the usual advice of active support. It is about something additional we can each do, equally important, to change things no matter where we are in the world.
As the days passed, I felt something crucial was missing from my perspective in both articles, particularly related to compassion. Friends came forth and filled in some of the blanks, giving me learning experiences related to “deep listening” and also our need to be able to embrace multiple perspectives in order for us all to move forward or evolve as a species. I’ve subsequently added lots more additional notes below, they are really just notes to myself, posted here for anyone else who wants them.
Below you will find wise words from both Thich Nhat Hanh and Thomas Huebl, plus detailed notes, gathered all over, on how to shift energetically to higher levels of being.
Re Paris, here’s an additional article written by Omid Safi – where does it hurt oh city of light? worth reading because it offers so much insight, compassion and wisdom about current affairs. (Thanks to a friend who posted it on Facebook .)
Reference material and additional notes on deep listening, co-creating and shifting levels of frequency
These notes are for anyone wanting to dive deeper into this topic.
Main points:
1. The most important thing you can do for yourself and everyone around you is constantly move yourself from feeling contracted to expansive. (Find ways to shift your own frequency above 200 and beyond.) Every tiny shift each of us makes is not just for us but also for everyone. We are bringing energy into the collective field rather than taking from it. Thereby bringing in the new.
2. practice compassion and deep listening to help others shift likewise.
3. learn to make space for more than one perspective on any topic. Says Hübl, when people are contracted they cannot do anything new. They can only behave they way they have in the past (make war). As soon as one can hold more than one perspective simultaneously, (I see your view and mine) evolution is possible for both.
Levels of frequency and attractor fields
Hawkins’ map of consciousness identifies levels of mind (or attractor fields.)
Hawkins map illustrates the journey each of us is making, and all of us collectively. The map shows various “fields” or levels; a scale of ascending energy states that Hawkins calibrated from 1 to 1000 using Kinesiology. Each emotion represents a different frequency, or field of energy, that is measurable. As we shift frequency, we shift our perception. This determines what we think: our view of the world, our view of “God”, our view of ourselves and our situation. It also determines how we feel, what we sense and how we behave or act…(as shown in each column in the diagram.)
According to Hawkins, the level shame is at the bottom of the scale, measuring the lowest frequency (20), and the level of full enlightenment/non-duality (1000) is at the top. +600 is extremely rare and already enlightened. The levels refer to where we live or spend most of our time.
Each level of energy, or consciousness, has a different “attractor pattern.” “Like goes to like.” Yet on some level we are all one. One collective ocean of consciousness. Each of us weighs in, tipping the scales for the collective, one way or the other.
200 is the tipping point between expansion (giving energy) vs contraction (taking energy).
The good news is the more you work on yourself the more you help others.
One individual resonating at 400 counterbalances 400 000 individuals below 200.
Therefore, the higher the vibration you personally can hold, the more contraction you counterbalance in the entire collective field. You raise the level not just for yourself but for everyone, and the difference you can make is exponential.
This seems to be what all the spiritual teachers are saying:
“The greatest service you can do for this planet is learn to manage your own thoughts and emotions.” Richard Moss
Thomas Hübl adds another dimension to this. He says the higher we go, the more we tap into the future, embody innovation and bring in new ideas and new ways of relating to each other and the world. This is how we evolve humanity. “We download the future.” The higher you are willing to explore, the more you personally can help the whole of humanity evolve.
He sees the lower states as humanity’s past and the higher states as the future. Each of us is engaged in either helping to let go of the past or to bring in the future by downloading higher sources of information.
How does one reach higher states or levels of frequency?
Ways to shift your frequency
Some of these points were condensed to bullet points in the first article due to length restrictions. You will get more on each point below plus I’ve also added a few more points here that I never thought of earlier.
Gratitude. How when something terrible has happened? Feel gratitude for anything. It doesn’t matter what. Gratitude for the miracle of being here walking on planet Earth. Gratitude for all you have. Gratitude even for what is, even though you don’t know why: “I trust that this is a supportive universe.” As Steve Jobs said in his famous Stanford speech, “You can’t connect the dots looking forward, you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.”
The real purpose of prayer. Gregg Braden offers startling revelations from the dead sea scrolls. They reveal that the real purpose of prayer is to shift your feeling state or frequency so that you then attract different levels of experience. This backs up what a monk in Tibet once told him: “A prayer cannot be seen. The words are not the prayer. The feeling created is the prayer…”
Genuine prayer versus begging. Here is the crunch. Are you using your prayer to raise your frequency or to drop it? As Gregg Braden says, don’t pray for rain, pray rain. (Give thanks for what you know is already coming.)
For more on this, see Gregg Braden. Speaking the Lost Language of God.
or his latest book, Resilience from the Heart, revised edition Oct 2015
Gregg says the same thing as Hawkins but from a different perspective. From an inner, experiential, rather than an objective perspective. He says “The feeling is the prayer. In every moment we are having a feeling we are engaged in a prayer. Do we realize what we are praying for? We must feel the feelings in our body of what we want to experience, not that which we don’t want to experience.” “The field reflects what we have become in our hearts.”
“If energy and matter are exchangeable then feeling and experience are interchangeable too.” If we can feel the possibility then we can breathe life into it and make it real.” (Believe it then see it, but belief is a feeling state.)
After the Paris attacks, the Dalai Lama made an appeal for people to stop praying to God for help and start taking positive action through reconciliation and dialogue. This was a compassionate way to ask people to shift direction, away from begging God for help (contracting one’s light) towards being expansive and start engaging in reconciliation.
Or Neale Donald Walsch’s words: “It is when you see in yourself that which caused the crime that you begin, at last, to heal the condition from which it sprang.” (Conversations 1. p. 51)
Alternatives to uplifting prayer?
Use whatever other practice helps you shift your mood. Music, nature, dance, play, joy …
Flow states
Popular at the moment, “being in the zone” is the cutting edge of how to merge with the universal mind. In recent years, extreme sports, such as surfing, canyoning, rock climbing, biking (and anything that demands great skill and puts your life at risk) have really pushed the envelope between what is possible vs impossible. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who started off by exploring the roots of happiness, is the pioneer researcher in this field who named this state “flow”. He says, “ecstasy is a stepping into a different reality….your identity is temporarily suspended…you feel like you no longer exist.” How to reach flow states? The Rise of Superman, by Steven Kotler, is a great exploration of this topic. Ted talk by Csikszentmihalyi How to spend more time in flow? When you are doing what you really like to do; when both your challenges are high and your skills are high. How to move from stress to flow? Improve your skills. More on this.
Perhaps practicing extreme sports in nature is the new prayer form of our younger generations? Judging by numbers, this means that we have more holy men on the planet right now than we ever imagined.
Reading and contemplating sacred texts.
We raise our vibration by contemplating sacred texts from any of the great teachers.
Says Hübl, “the letters become fiery, activating our energy field, and we melt into a more expanded state of consciousness.”
eg Tao te Ching by Lao Tzu. The first time I read this text, as a teenager, I was attracted and repelled at the same time. I thought his advice was radical verging on insane. 🙂
Deep listening
The best advice I’ve heard comes from Thich Nhat Hanh. This advice could end all wars and conflict.
Transcript: “Deep listening – you listen with only one purpose: to help him or her to empty his heart, to suffer less even if he says things full of wrong perception, or bitterness, you are helping them suffer less. ..you wait for another time to correct wrong perceptions…..fear anger and despair is borne on the ground of wrong perception…
“Dear friend I know that you suffer a lot. I have not understood all of your difficulties, it is not our intention to make you suffer more so please tell us how you have suffered. I’m eager to learn to understand…”
Some people call this “defenseless listening” or compassionate listening.
“Defense is the first act of war” Byron Katie.
“Give evil nothing to oppose and it will disappear by itself.” says Lao Tzu and also “You underestimate your enemy if you think he is evil.”
Embracing multiple perspectives
This idea comes from Thomas Huebl and holding multiple perspectives in order for both parties to evolve.
South Africa is the 90’s, under Nelson Mandela, was a living example of this in practice. (The truth and reconciliation trials.)
Arnold Mindell and other advanced conflict management thought leaders are the people we need to turn to on a global scale.
Mindful presence and Meditation. Meditation is similar to prayer. The purpose is to dis-identify with your thoughts and shift your feeling state by tuning into a higher level of the universal mind. Focus on your breath. As soon as you focus on your breath you are in the present moment. Keep coming back to your breath throughout the day no matter what you are doing. The empty window Spiritual teacher, Thomas Huebl recommends an “empty window” approach. Imagine your mind as being like a computer screen with lots of windows open (all the things you have going on) at the same time. Huebl advises, no matter how many other windows are running, always keep one empty window open. This enables us to access the quiet whisper of the purest highest broadcast, what he calls “Divine FM”, no matter what frequency we are currently tuned into.
Huebl uses the metaphor of climbing a mountain to explain levels of consciousness and how we meet different people who think differently at each level or altitude. I love his idea of one “empty window.” A way to hear pure source irrespective of whatever level where you are currently being flooded by thoughts belonging to that particular level.
Building an antenna Hübl says that the purpose of meditation is twofold. 1. to practice emptiness and 2. to grow an antenna or receiver to be able to pick up the more subtle energy fields. “If we can’t perceive it, it doesn’t exist for us.” Our body is our antenna, particularly the channel running down through our spine. We can grow this in both directions.
Normally we think of withdrawing from the world, but according to Huebl we need to be more present in it. He says people are only responsible for what they can already perceive. Therefore, the more you move to higher states of perception, the greater your personal responsibility.
Localize Without judging it good or bad, locate where you are right now on the levels of consciousness chart. Just by identifying where you are (which attractor field you are currently visiting) and being honest with yourself is already freeing. Don’t kid yourself over this. We are all guilty of this to some extent. Are you disguising apathy, despair and hopelessness or some other emotion with a mask of enlightenment or piety? Hawkins says sometimes we keep ourselves stuck at a level because ”we have a fantasy that it will have some effect on some other person and change their behavior or attitudes towards us. If we let go of that we become willing to let go of the feeling.” ( Hawkins, Feel the feeling, page 328)
(scroll down for more on telling the truth to ourselves and each other).
Self Compassion. Being kind to yourself is the first step towards being kind to others. Can you be kind and patient with yourself no matter where you are on the map above.
How?
Stop believing your thoughts! Surprising as this may seem, your thoughts and ideas do not belong to you. They emanate from the universal mind related to each level of consciousness. Each feeling state generates thousands of thoughts on that frequency. As soon as you let go of a particular feeling state the corresponding thoughts disappear. Use your thoughts as a compassion aid. Your thoughts pinpoint where you are right now and therefore which feeling state to surrender. Likewise with other people, their thoughts are not their thoughts. They simply reflect where they are right now on their journey. Feeling deep compassion for another is perhaps the fastest way to help another deal with any contacting emotion. (see deep listening above)
A video of Dr David R Hawkins on this topic. See from 2.30 into the video. Transcript below.
‘To be hypnotized by the mind is to think, “These are MY thoughts.” The thoughts emanate from the field of consciousness impersonally. Whenever you connect with a certain level of consciousness, you are connected to an “attractor field”. That attractor field has the same thoughts and has always has had them for thousands of years. There is nothing novel about it. “It’s mine and I’ll kill you.” Do you think that is your thought? Ha ha. Did you invent that thought? Ha ha. Is there something new in man’s history? That prevailing thought field thinks that way. Those thoughts belong to the field. They are not yours. So don’t claim ownership over that which you have no ownership. Nothing belongs to anyone. Everything belongs to Divinity. You have temporary custody, temporary stewardship. ”
Evidence of this? Byron Katie, author of “Loving what is” went from the lowest level on the chart, deep shame, right up to the top of the charts in a flash. When anyone asks how she did it, she says, “I simply stopped believing my thoughts!” This sounds hard to believe without Hawkins’s map.
Today, Byron Katie is a teacher helping millions of people worldwide to stop believing one’s thoughts. She was guided to develop a 4 Question process called “The Work” to help anyone achieve this.
Proof of universal broadcasts broadcasting to each level?
Byron Katie has no knowledge of sacred texts but her now husband, Stephen Mitchell, does and he is constantly surprised and delighted to hear words of wisdom from coming out of Katie’s mouth that he knows to be virtually straight out of the ancient texts he spent years exploring. It seems Katie is tuning in to the universal broadcast of the field at the high altitudes at which these sacred texts were written (or simply transcribed).
The good news about this is that even if every sacred text in the world were lost or destroyed it wouldn’t actually matter. This information exists, and has always existed, as a universal broadcast in the higher states of consciousness.
Surrendering to your feelings. This sounds like the exact opposite of what we should be doing but actually the way to shift from a lower level to a higher level of consciousness is through surrendering to the feeling.
Says Hawkins, “As we let go of negative feelings, there is a progressive movement up the scale to Courage and then beyond, with increasing effectiveness, success and more effortless abundance…..” (32)
How to put this into action regarding anything going on in the world?
Feel your sadness deeply without re-igniting this feeling state with your thoughts. Then rise back up immediately to the level you previously worked so hard to get to. The whole world depends on it. If this is too hard to imagine, then just shift to the next level. If you are despairing or fearful, then shift to anger. It is actually a higher frequency! If you are angry then shift from anger to courage or beyond. Step by step.
How?
Feel your sadness or anger deeply. This will only last a few seconds or a few minutes at most provided you do not fuel the flames with a story. Where is this feeling in your body? In your chest? Throat? Behind your eyes? What does it feel like? Allow it to vibrate and even increase. Don’t attach any story to why you are feeling this feeling because as soon as you do you are breathing your life force into more of that. Instead feel the power coming back into your body. Then hold a clear intention for peace and love. What kind of future are you busy dreaming up for our children? It really is in your hands.
Hawkins on the mechanism of letting go
“Letting go involves being aware of a feeling, letting it come up, staying with it, and letting it run its course without wanting to make it different or do anything about it. It means simply to let the feeling be there and to focus on letting out the energy behind it. The first step is to allow yourself to have the feeling without resisting it, venting it, fearing it, condemning it, or moralizing about it. It means to drop judgement and to see that it is just a feeling…It is resistance that keeps the feeling going. A feeling that is not resisted will disappear as the energy behind it dissipates.” (p. 20)
To work more with this technique see David R Hawkin’s book Letting Go, The pathway of Surrender.
Enhancing Positive Emotions
This is an interesting point from Hawkins, often overlooked. Everything in the world has an opposite. Another way of letting go of negative feelings is to stop resisting the positive ones. (Hand analysis can help us explore what joy we might be resisting.)
Owning our light and co-creating with light
Neale Donald Walsch says we are already complete when we incarnate (we are pure light). We are not here to grow or evolve, we are here to demonstrate who we really are (being pure light). In doing so we evolve humanity as a species.
This seems to be similar to what Huebl teaches, that the lower levels of consciousness are the past, and the higher levels are the future. We participate and co-create in evolution by “downloading the future” by raising our level of consciousness and going into flow states/ merging with “pure essence” This is how all innovation and new ideas come in. We help manifest a higher version of the divine, says Huebl.
Stop trying so hard
This is advice is to me, in particular, regarding this article 😉
Probably it should all be deleted and its author read Lao Tzu instead, who seems to have all the answers we are looking for.
eg. 18 “When the great Tao is forgotten, goodness and piety appear…”
“….Stop thinking and end your problems.”
Losing one’s sense of self importance
This comes from Carlos Castaneda, The Fire Within
‘What weakens us is feeling offended by the deeds and misdeeds of our fellow men. Our self-importance requires that we spend most of our lives offended by someone…Without self-importance we are invulnerable.’ (pg. 12. The fire within)
“Self-importance is the motivating force for every attack of melancholy. Warriors are entitled to have profound states of sadness, but that sadness is there only to make them laugh.” (129, ibid)
“Lose some of this importance and we would provide ourselves with enough energy to achieve anything. ” (Ibid)
Hübl on humility: “Mindfulness is just the beginning. The light comes in when I learn not to be so involved with myself. I become “a stranger to myself” as they say in the Kabbalah…I’m participating but have a space that is free.”
Richard Moss on this: if you aren’t in the present there are only 4 places you can be: fixated on yourself, on another, on the past or the future. See his Mandala of Being. (plus interviews on this in Earth School archives.)
Telling the truth
Hawkins says that the quickest way to shift from one level to the next is to always tell the truth.
Neale Donald Walsch teaches four levels of truth telling in numerous of his online and in person workshops:
Tell the truth about yourself to yourself, tell the truth about another to yourself, tell the truth to another, tell the truth to everyone. (Apparently this is covered in detail in his book, Friends with God.)
This is equivalent to
Ruiz – The Four Agreements: be impeccable with your word.
Actually the 4 agreements pretty much sums up all the above ways to change frequency.
What are the four agreements?
– Be impeccable with your word
– Don’t make assumptions
– Always do your best
– Don’t take anything personally.
Probably all sacred texts, Buddha’s 8 fold path and Moses’s 10 commandments plus all others from all corners of the world
are various voices of the same thing – simple rules to help us raise our level of consciousness/frequency.
This is not a new idea, Carolyn Myss related the Chakra system, the 7 Christian sacraments and the Tree of life (Kabbalah)
to all teaching identical principles related to managing the energy in our bodies. See her audio course Energy Anatomy or her book on Anatomy of the Spirit.
My summary notes on this.
Completion
Neale Donald Walsch is a teacher of this and offers a great course online. Here are some notes and an introductory call.
Related to this,Decluttering
Physical clutter represents mental clutter. See interview on this in Earth School archives.
Non-judgement
We never have the full picture and perhaps no level is better or worse than another. Instead they are all experiential.
Perhaps sometimes our friends descend to great depths simply to serve us – to help us figure out how to “be” compassion,
rather than show it? Or vice versa.
Here’s a wonderful poem by Rumi to remind us of non-judgement of our own feelings
The Guest House
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
~ Rumi ~
Related to non-judgement of others, here is a wonderful practice from Richo:
“Mindful presence means that one person enters the interior garden of the other and walks through it without trampling any of the flowers, without blaming anyone for the presence of weeds, with great appreciation for all the time, pain, and growth it took to be the way it is.”
David Richo in The Five Things We Cannot Change …and the Happiness We Find by Embracing Them
Shadow work
Each time we go higher, we also need to go lower says Hübl. Just like a tree needs to grow deeper roots.
Perhaps each time we descend we create/free more chi, through feeling deeply.
and this gives us the impetus to reach higher states of consciousness.
Arnold Patent author of The Journey reminds us, there is only one energy in the universe and that is pure love, everything else is love disguised. His prayer: “I release the joy disguised as ….. add my joy to it and send it to everyone in the universe….”
Similar to Hübl’s mountain metaphor, one could also use an ocean depths analogy. This helps include the dynamics of expansion and contraction through a compressed air analogy. This can be understand from a fingerprint perspective. (Richard Unger’s thesis that life purpose/life lesson is encoded in your fingerprints. ) Our fingerprints help us see our own duality game. What makes us feel expansive and what contracts us. Plus what our life looks like when we are most contracted or most expansive (living our life purpose or not.) Knowing this, we can remind each other of the game we are playing. More about this ocean depth analogy here.
Who is playing anyway?
Perhaps we are all just avatars, there is only One here. “God” is playing at being us and what that feels like when we are either expanded or contracted? Good topic for a future post.
After writing all of the above, I’m very tempted to just delete this entire post. Instead, I’m going to leave it up as a good example of someone trying too hard to find answers: over-searching and over-grasping for something that can’t be grasped but only lived. I think I’ll just switch off my computer and go outside.
Or as Lao Tzu says,
“Can you step back from your own mind
and thus understand all things?”
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