McGowdog

I like the way David R. Hawkins describes the thing.

He said that he started out as a devout religionist, then became a devout atheist... not a cocktail lounge atheist... but a devout atheist .

He claims that the states of consciousness that we experience from low to high;

Here Is The Map of Consciousness :

Level Log/Calibration Emotion

Enlightenment 700 - 1,000 Pure Consciousness

Peace 600 Illumination

Joy 540 Serenity

Love 500 Reverence

Reason 400 Understanding

Acceptance 350 Forgiveness

Willingness 310 Optimism

Neutrality 250 Trust

Courage 200 Affirmation

The above are levels of Truth

The below are levels of falsehood

Pride 175 Scorn

Antagonistic 150 Hate

Desire 125 Lust

Fear 100 Anxiety

Grief 75 Regret

Apathy/Hatred 50 Despair

Guilt 30 Blame

Shame 20 Humiliation

... and according to David, A.A. calibrates at about 540... right up there with the bible or Big Big Book. So, of course, many hate him and are out to debunk him. He must be some kind of a spook. I think he is.

Anyways, we are achieving this feeling of bliss which is at about 600. We can do it falsely, or we can do it the right way... by transversing all the states in between.

By drinking booze or taking certain drugs, that's like merely removing the clouds that are in the way of us achieving a state of consciousness which is always there... or our "true Self" or what some may call "God" or Truth.

Now... he said that some... under very careful settings, induced this feeling just to affirm that which they seek is there and they can get there immediately by inducing it, but then they agreed to never do it again... or cheat.

The problem with drugs and alcohol is that we can get there... to 600 from the lower negative states of 50, 100, 200, etc., and immediately go to mellow and even bliss, but then that's a one time shot... so to speak. It's not the drug or the booze that we're "addicted" to, it's that state of consciousness. But we cheated to get there. We cheated the actual states of consciousness that we should have traversed to get there; shame, guilt, apathy, grief, fear, desire, pride, etc. ... and that's a lie. when we came from the state of fear or grief or whatever, a lie on top of that is nothing drastic. It's like a drop in the bucket. But when we shoot up to bliss or 600 and it's a lie, the lie is much more drastic to us and we pay all the consequences of those states we cheated to get there.

But isn't that what the drunk or the addict does? Suffer much for a long time just to get that few seconds of bliss. Or as Boleo mentioned, the preempting of them due to the blackouts. I blacked out too and seemingly missed a lot. But I think I reached bliss just the split second prior to the blackout. There was a moment there where I felt mellow... and anything but irritable and discontented.

Now the trick is to do it the right way... via the steps. Hawkins says that once we take step 1 or admission of powerlessness, aka admission of the Truth... we change the energy field from - to + because that's truth. Step 2, something greater than myself, small (s)elf, ego is needed to turn this energy around, something with a great enough power to overcome that attraction to the energy field of 600...

Step 2 return me to sanity... where insanity is those destructive energy states. Something outside of the "box" needs to do this... our intuitive awareness.

3rd step, the willingness to surrender to something greater than the self, opens the space for "the Grace of God", or something outside of the ego... if you will. For David, the "arrogance of the intellect" broke down... as he didn't think there was anything bigger than the intellect. He worshipped the intellect. It got him to thoughts of suicide... which is -50... hell. Grace, he says, can take the place of that which we were. How do we get it? It is only by asking for it that we create the space (to possibilities) to receive it.

A.A. is the language of the heart (chakra)... which is much higher than can be achieved by the self, even one with all the material wealth at his disposal (about an energy of 200).

4th step says we look "in the box"... and the 5th step or admitting it to ourself, God, and another human being, enables us to let it be healed. That which is "held" has the power to corrode. But now it's been shared, healed, and removed. Now our self-hatred, is but a mild regret. Now look back to the person who was drinking or drugging, with that energy pointed the way it was, they were seeking thier own destruction because that was the only way they knew to go... willingly.

Now the 6th through 9th steps, we've asked God's forgiveness and help with it, and we try to mend the fences and repair the damaged we caused... pay back debts, give our employer a good day's work, put the best we can into our relationships...

10th Step, we make a habit of this. Self-purification or a "way of life" as we became aware or conscience.

11th step, sought through prayer and meditation to improve... or increase that which has already happened. You reconnect with that which is Rock-like, that which is Love, that which is Divine... So our sobriety is something we would guard with our life... that which we would go to any length to get. Step 11 says there is a desire and that brings us to the 12 step.

Step 12, having had a spiritual awakening... addiction is a one way street. We have choosed addiction to get there, our path, and on our path, there is no backing up. We are now committed to a one way street. So we must become more conscious in order to live.

So for us, there is a price to life. We either become more conscience or we die... go out the bottom of the box. Once you become addicted, you cannot remove that experience from you memory.

What it is we sought we don't have to be ashamed of. It's the same stuff that all the saints sought. The presence within.

The problem with drugs/alcohol is that they do not work. But to seek this enlightenment to our true Self, we don't have to change our direction, we only have to change our means of getting there.

Does that make sense to you, Mark?

jimhere

Where did you get that stuff dog?

I'd like a copy of it.

Mark75

Absolutely!! Thanx for that... I read it a few times.

The journey is as important as the destination.

It's a pleasure discussing these important ideas and concepts here with all of you. Spiritual experiences that I have had in the past, were perhaps... happy accidents, signal grace, planetary alignment, IDK... I still hold on to those experiences and will not invalidate them....

But with the 12 steps and the directions to God, these experiences are the result of meaningful work, meditation and prayer. They become more reliable, and perhaps as such can be trusted...

As usual, Patrick, there's not whole lot I can add to your excellent post.



Mark

24hrsAday

for myself.. i have had a Lot of drug and Alcohol induced spiritual experiences.. none of them compare to Clean and Sober real Spiritual ones.. IMHO!

McGowdog

Thx for enjoying it or even better, making use of it.

I went to the library yesterday and rented Consciousness and Addiction workshop with Dr. David R. Hawkins (vhs tape 1 and 2) and it's so badly recorded that I couldn't read what he had on the chalkboard so I googled hawkins and "states of consciousness" and sorted through all the David R. Hawkins is a fraud posts and got to where they had the list and cut and pasted it. I actually spend about an hour on that post as I rewinded and fastforwarded some key parts of his talk as he related the workshop to our 12 Steps. He loves A.A. and I think that's why many are attacking his credentials as a fraud.

I own his books Power vs. Force and I-Reality and Subjectivity and there's a third one which came before "I", The Eye of the I...

I thought you might get a kick out his relation to the steps and if I was an atheist, I'd be eating this stuff up. I truly believe that this guy was touched by his booze experience, had some kind of near death experience, and came to find God in the steps... but that's just my take on it.

*** the old schmon (my dad) used to sing me a song when I was a wee lad...

Patrick McGentee, an irishman of note...
fell into a fortune and bought himself a goat...
"Now goatsmilk" says Paddy, "I mean to have me fill..."
But when he brought the nanny home... he found he was a bill... ***

Mark75

Well, Patrick...

I think that way he ties the journey to enlightenment into the journey through the steps is fantastic. I also liked what you said...

Emphasis mine... You know there is a lot of meaning there in those few words. We've been on this journey all along??

Mark

EuroDrunk

What a great thread. Thank you all!

Tommyh

more like misplaced emotional sentiment....
I had some wonderful and life changing spiritual experiences that pre-date my entry to AA.


Mark,get honest with yourself...you had a bunch of " misplaced emotional sentiments " before you hit AA too

so it ain`t all BS

Mark75

I did, I had a bunch of misplaced emotional sentiments before I hit AA, you are darn right. But I had some spiritual experiences too, ones that were very important. They occurred while not drunk.

Rigorous Honesty, Not wanting to close the door on our past. As I grow in the program I find myself able to reconcile many things. When I left rehab I left in shame and a feeling that all I had experienced and done was a fraud. But that was the shame talking.

So yea, some was, but some wasn't. And stuff that I read in the 12 and 12 and some other "recovery" material left me confused. This was a topic that did. This thread has brought some clarity to my journey.

If I've left the impression that I've been dishonest, I don't feel I have.

Thanx All

Mark

jimhere

Bill does make a valid point in that essay. He says that a lot of people mistake emotionalism for a true religious experience.

I work with a guy like that. What he believes and what he says and does doesn't line up. If I were to ask him why he believes what he does or says what he says, he couldn't give me an answer.

Mark75

How so, Jim?

Boleo

See:

A.A. History -- Dr. Carl Jung's Letter To Bill Wilson, Jan 30, 1961

Note the phrase "Spiritum Contra Spiritus"

jimhere

Oh, if you ask him, he'll give you the whole story of how we are miserable sinners and how God sent his son to die for us and how that is only one and true way, but that's about as far as he can get. He can tell me why I am going to a place of wailing and gnashing of teeth and lakes fire to spend my eternity, but other than the fact that he says that he is "saved," he can't really tell me why he believes that. It's called shallow, emotional, superstition.

To me, it (God if you will) has to be a little more than an imaginary friend or an abstract idea. It has to be a little bigger than my Little Buddy HP that's over there or out there or that I'll meet in the future and who goes to bat for me and bails me out of a jam now and then. In other words, it's not an idea, it is an experience, a direct experience that I can only experience right here, right now.

He hasn't taken the time to explore of even investigate what he believes, the how and why of the doctrine so to speak. He just believes it because the preacher and the Bible tells him to. He is no different than the A.A. lemmings who can recite the steps off the wall, but can't really tell you what taking The Third Step means. Everybody just blindly throws slogans and clinches around without knowing what they mean. Stuff like 90 in 90 that came to us from N.A. via the treatment centers, everyone just assumes has always been "A.A." I should stop here, this is coming dangerously close to a rant.

I'm not quite sure how this is connected to all of this, but this came to me: Some years back, a guy I sponsor approached me and asked me about what I thought about him going to a Native American sweat lodge. I asked him if he knew anything about it, did he know that it was a ceremony of prayer and cleansing? I told him to go sit with an elder and learn about it before went and did it. I asked him how he would feel if I came to his church (Catholic) and took communion, even though I don't buy the doctrine.

The spiritual life isn't parlor tricks and you don't approach something sacred in a frivolous manner.

Boleo

Good point. Bill had at least 3 Spiritual Experiences;

1. "We landed in England. I visited Winchester Cathedral. Much moved, I wandered outside." (p 1)

2. " Scales of pride and prejudice fell from my eyes. A new world came into view." (p 12)

3. "There was a sense of victory, followed by such a peace and serenity as I had never known. There was utter confidence. I felt lifted up, as though the great clean wind of a mountain top blew through and through." (p 14)

Plus "Pass It On" suggested he may have had some more as a boy when gazing at the stars and wilderness.

Also it is noteworthy that Bill's grandfather had a Spiritual Experience on Mount Aeolus in Vermont that caused him to stop drinking.

Coincidence or more Synchronicity?

jimhere

What is really amazing to me is that the experience Bill describes on page 12 in "Bill's Story" occurred while he was still in a drunken fog.

That says to me that you don't have to be sober to start to wake up.

Boleo

Nirvana 700 - 1,000 Pure Consciousness

Nirodha 540 Serenity

Satori 400 Understanding

The above are levels of Dharma

Mark75

Jim... You talk of people who have not taken, are not willing to take or don't even understand the existence of,.... the journey. For them, those unfortunates... It's all about the end result, which of course is meaningless without the process, the journey. You don't have it just because someone tells you a story or tells you it so, you must know it to be so.... as Patrick so often says (and so appropriately)... "what's your experience with this?"

So yea, I see how your comments tie into this thread.

The experiences I have had involved some type of work/effort/loss... grief, as with the un-timely death of my father, and the subsequent sense of the presence of his spirit while praying and climbing a steep hill.... physical labor as when I cleared a pond of a foot of snow in the blowing storm only to awaken to a still winter morning in time to watch my daughter secretly from a window... skating round and round in the sunrise.

Now, in recovery from addiction to alcohol, I am on the toughest journey of my life... Thank God there are so many that have taken it before me and that there are specific instructions in the Big Book. I couldn't do it myself. I don't have to. And the most important experience I have had is the realization that my higher power is a loving God, to whom I, and everyone else, is precious in His sight. He will give me what I need, but only if I seek Him and align my will with His...

Mark

TGFS

Carol,

You are soooo right. I am an alchoholic but the 12x12 and even the Big Book are not my Bible, they are a guide. I am a good person deep inside with a disease.

jimhere

And you are so right.

The whole point of the process is to get rid of what you are not and then what you are shows up. It says that deep within us is the fundamental idea of God, that it is as a much a fact as you are. The Great Reality is deep within.

As you reveal yourself to you, God will be revealed to you. Get rid of what is in the way and wake up to what has always been there.

Chuck Chamberlain put it this way:

"What you came here looking for you came here looking with."
What you came here to be, you already are."
"What you you came to get, you already have."

Ribeye

When you think abou it, the BB was actually written after that fact. A bunch of people had already had the profound spiritual experiences and Bill wanted to give directions to others on how they could get their own.

Many of the original AA's drank again, although they had profound spiritual experiences and stayed sober on them for a long time. That's why Bill was clear that we need to remain in 'fit spiritual condition'. Just a spiritual experience isn't enough.

And I think that may tie in with the 'emotionalism' being discussed here. A person who is truely converted is willing to put his faith to work after the pink cloud experience wears off. That's our challenge as we grow in sobriety too.

That doesn't meant the 'pink cloud' experience isn't real. It just means that it isn't 'permanent'.