Levels of Consciousness

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dqyr6IANKNg

Video Blog Transcription:

(00:00):

When relating to or connecting with other human beings, it can be very useful to understand levels of consciousness. Your level of consciousness is the way you see the world. In one sense, it's how much of the world you're able to see.

Your level of consciousness determines your reality and your beliefs about the world. So as you grow spiritually, your level of consciousness expands. The world can look totally different from one level of consciousness to another. And I think we forget this.

We tend to think that everybody sees the world the same way that we do, and that’s not necessarily true. It can be very different. So sometimes when we think someone's not intelligent or they're being stubborn. They're not necessarily unintelligent, stubborn or whatever else. It's that they are seeing the world differently than you are.

(01:09):

The psychologist, Piaget, actually did some ground-level work on levels of consciousness. He called them stages of cognitive development. And these are developmental stages that he mapped out how kids develop through childhood. And actually, some of us are still in some of those stages, so these stages extend to adulthood as well.

You may remember he called pre-operational is kind of that magical, seeing the fairies in the forest, level of consciousness, I guess you could say. And you see this in little kids and how they play, and everything is just like, wow, it's spiritual, and everything's connected.

(01:57):

And then as we mature, we go into concrete operational, or con-op as it's often called, that's where things are more like black and white and more concrete. And there are more rules, and you don't break the rules, which is a useful level of development.

And then after that, we go into formal operational, and this is a more rational and scientific, maybe a little more intellectual way of seeing the world.

Then, beyond that, there are other levels of consciousness, too, that we develop when we grow spiritually. And I'm not going to get into all of those, but there are people like Ken Wilber and Don Beck who have studied these. And then also some of the spiritual traditions, like Tibetan Buddhism, really studied higher levels of consciousness.

(03:05):

So the intention of this video isn't to explain the different levels of consciousness, but rather to give some pointers on how to connect with people at a level of consciousness that's different from yours. So, a few rules of thumb:

A lower level of consciousness cannot comprehend a higher level of consciousness. Anything beyond your level of consciousness, you just don't even know that it exists.

So if you're trying to connect with someone at a lower level of consciousness than you are, they're going to be trying to take what you're saying and plug it into their reality, or they'll discount it altogether, thinking that you're full of crap, or too woo-woo, or too whatever. But they're not going to be able to comprehend it the same way that you do.

(04:00):

Now the other way is true too. A higher level of consciousness can comprehend a lower level of consciousness, because you used to be there; if you remember it, it may be too painful to remember, but you used to be there.

But the tendency is for a higher level of consciousness not to really understand why a lower level of consciousness doesn't just see the world in a different way. We wonder, “Why are you seeing the world so black and white? Why don't you just see it grayer? As if they're able to do that. If they were able to do that, they probably would.

The second rule of thumb is that there is a strong tendency to try to change other people's level of consciousness, usually to make it more like ours, in the context of a conversation or interaction. The reality is, it takes time, a lot of energy, and a lot of growth to change someone's level of consciousness.

(05:03):

When you changed your level of consciousness from one to another, it might've taken therapy, a spiritual practice, some painful lessons, or confronting belief systems or fears. And yet we arrogantly think that we can just change someone's level of consciousness in the context of a conversation, which is just not very realistic.