Power vs. Force by David R. Hawkins: Part 2
How to Identify Truth in a Confusing World
This is part 2/4 in a series about David R. Hawkins, Power vs. Force, and the hidden determinants of human behavior. If you haven’t read the first post in the series, you’ll definitely want to start there. :)
The day science begins to study non-physical phenomena, it will make more progress in one decade than in all the previous centuries of its existence. –Nikola Tesla
There is a lot of conflict in the world. It only takes the most casual of strolls through history to see that this has been part of humankind’s story for as long as we’ve been writing it. It’s not shocking when you consider that everyone is bringing their own subjective beliefs, opinions, and perspectives to the party. Person A is absolutely certain that what they’re perceiving is reality, while Person B sees something totally different. And over there is Person C who thinks they’re both crazy. With all of that subjective certainty and opinions flying around, how can anyone know what’s true?
It’s pretty easy to imagine how the world might change for the better if we had a means to identify truth objectively. What would you say if I told you we actually do have such an ability, but just haven’t widely recognized it yet?
I included that Tesla quote at the beginning of this post because “the day science begins to study non-physical phenomena” has already happened. And through it, a method has been discovered that produces an objective reading of the essence of information in a way that's similar to how a thermometer provides an objective reading of temperature. The method is called Coherence Verification.
Let’s chat about physics for a minute
If you’re not particularly excited about things like physics, just bear with me for a moment—I promise this is really relevant. We’re going to cover a lot of information in this post, and I’ve done my best to make it fun, engaging, and concise. :)
As mentioned in the first part of this series, David R. Hawkins made a remarkable discovery: thoughts and consciousness do not originate in the physical structures of our brains (as is commonly believed right now). This is really important because it begs the question, “ok, then where the heck does it originate?”
To better understand how Hawkins discovered this, let’s chat for a moment about two big players in the sciences: Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein. In the 17th century, Isaac Newton pioneered an understanding of the universe (not surprisingly known as “Newtonian” Physics) which describes the forces affecting very large things in the universe. What Newton observed has become the basis for most of our modern sciences (which have produced some truly astounding things), but this materialistic model isn’t the whole picture.
Newtonian Physics produces a view of a universe that is rather mechanical in its cause-and-effect nature—“what goes up must come down,” and all that jazz. But then in the early part of the 20th century, Albert Einstein came along and really shook things up. He showed us that there’s more to the universe than what we can see. As author and cellular biologist Bruce H. Lipton, Ph.D says in his book The Biology of Belief, Einstein’s work revealed that “energy and matter are so deeply entangled [that it’s] impossible to consider them as independent elements”. The discoveries of Einstein didn’t negate Newtonian physics, they just revealed that the universe is much more complex—and invisible—than was previously thought.
But still, more than 300 years since Newton’s discoveries, the traditional sciences (e.g., biology, chemistry, astronomy, etc.) largely ignore Einstein’s model. To quote Bruce H. Lipton again, the majority of scientists “stick to the physical world of Newton and ignore the invisible quantum world of Einstein, in which matter is actually made up of energy.”
But why does it matter (physics pun not intended) what the universe is made of? It matters because the more we understand what the universe is made of, the more we understand our place in it, what we’re made of, and what we can do with it all.
Don Lincoln, a senior experimental particle physicist at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois has this to say:
Everything—and I mean everything—is just a consequence of many infinitely-large fields vibrating. The entire universe is made of fields playing a vast, subatomic symphony. -Don Lincoln, Senior Experimental Particle Physicist at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois
So, everything is composed of vibrating fields of energy. Your body is energy, your thoughts are energy, the device you’re reading this on is energy, the potential amazement or disbelief or frustration or enjoyment you’re experiencing right now in response to reading this information is energetic in nature. It’s all energy. And what is the “thing” that’s central to your processing and experiencing all of this energy? Your astoundingly powerful and almost inconceivably amazing brain.
These Realities are what enabled David R. Hawkins to discover a method for objectively measuring the quality of all forms of energy. Inquiry into things like the nature of human consciousness were suddenly on the table in a way they’d never been before. And what he discovered and confirmed is that human consciousness is actually a field of energy that we’re all participating in and expressing aspects of. Consciousness is an energy field, and what’s more, Hawkins' research confirmed that everything in the universe is actually a unique (but quantifiable) expression of the energy field of consciousness.
Hawkins discoveries reveal that the energy field of consciousness is a substrate of everything that exists. So another way to say that “everything is energy” is “everything is consciousness.”
Whoa. -Bob from Accounting
Right?
Whooooooooa. -Bob from Accounting
I know.
In the last post, I used light to help demonstrate how the field of consciousness can be described as a spectrum. Looking at this again, let’s use the colors blue and red as examples. They look very different to us, but they’re really just different frequencies of the same energy field.
But with the field of consciousness, instead of blue and red, we get things like grief or love (depending on the vibrational quality of whatever we’re considering).
Ok, you might be wondering how the level of consciousness of something determined? Well, let’s dig into that.
The testing method used to calibrate energy
The primary tool for discovery in consciousness research is an advanced form of muscle testing similar to what’s traditionally called “Applied Kinesiology.” If you’re not familiar with that term you may be familiar with “kinesiology,” which is the study of body movements in clinical practices like orthopedics and physical therapy. “Applied Kinesiology” is a slightly less common method used to identify a patient’s response to various stimuli, or to locate the source of a breakdown in a physical system in the body.
This method is commonly used by practitioners like naturopathic doctors, chiropractors, and nutritionists. A practitioner using Applied Kinesiology is able to directly “ask” the body of a patient how it responds to various things like potential allergens or supplements, and determine what might be of assistance or potentially harmful to that specific person.
A very simplified description of what happens during a test is that a muscle group stays strong and is able to resist pressure, or momentarily loses strength and can't resist even minimal pressure.
When performing Applied Kinesiology, a strong group of muscles are targeted for testing. The most common involve the deltoid and trapezius muscles in the shoulder. Not only are these generally rather strong muscles, when they’re flexed to hold the arm out (as seen in the picture below), they have something of a “locking” quality to them. This helps the moment they weaken to be particularly noticeable.
The tester has the test subject hold their arm parallel to the ground, and then applies pressure to the test subject’s wrist at the appropriate moment.
Wait, what?! Why the heck are you checking a muscle to understand the universe? -Bob from Accounting
Oh! Great question. Let’s take a moment to give greater clarity and even address some of the understandable skepticism that can arise when considering new information like this.
Alright, Bob, what’s up? Sounds like you have some doubts.
I googled this ’applied kinesiology’ stuff and found a bunch of links saying it’s pseudoscience. -Bob from Accounting
Oh boy. There are a lot of people on the internet saying that Applied Kinesiology is “pseudoscience,” but those people fundamentally misunderstand what they’re criticizing. This common sort of misunderstanding is why I mentioned the difference between Newtonian and quantum physics. The “that’s pseudoscience!” camp are really hung up on the linear Newtonian idea of particle-based “things,” and through that lens, they’re right—the testing makes absolutely no sense. Neither do things like homeopathy or acupuncture, but what’s happening is they’re inadvertently trying to jam a square peg through a round hole.
It’s like trying to listen to music with your nose.
Music isn’t mumbo-jumbo, you just can’t hear with your nose. Likewise, if you’re trying to understand the non-physical by applying what you’ve observed about the physical, you’re going to wind up confused (and angry, judging by a lot of the Pseudoscience Camp’s online commentary).
There is a healthy form of skepticism that leads to open and curious questioning (aka, actual science), and then there’s the variety of intellectually lazy dogmatic doubting that limits the potential for learning to the things one is already aware of and familiar with.
Hmm. Ok, but couldn’t one person just shove the other’s arm down? -Bob from Accounting
Absolutely, but that wouldn’t be an accurate test. The testing has nothing to do with overpowering the other person’s muscles, and in fact, very little pressure is needed. What’s happening when the muscle goes weak is that there is a momentary break in the electrical system of the test subject’s nervous system, which results in the muscle reacting as if it was momentarily “unplugged” from its power source. So the testing method is just a way to make that natural (and frequent) break in continuity explicitly visible.
Let’s look at an example of how Applied Kinesiology might be used clinically. Let’s say a doctor wants to determine if a certain patient responds well to a packet of vitamin C powder. They can use the muscle test to see if the patient’s nervous system remains uninterrupted when encountering the substance, or experiences a momentary break in its coherency. Similarly, the doctor could do another test using an organic carrot and then a bottle of rat poison. While holding the rat poison, the patient’s arm would weaken dramatically because it’s a harmful substance, but with the organic carrot (as long as the patient isn’t allergic to carrots), the musculature will stay strong.
This isn’t surprising when you recognize that one of the most basic functions of biological survival is the ability to determine what is harmful or beneficial in one’s environment. As Dr. Lipton says, “all organisms, including humans, communicate and read their environment by evaluating energy fields.”
Okay, I guess I can see how my muscle would go weak if a doctor had me hold a bottle of rat poison. I mean, it’s full of poison! But how does any of this relate to human consciousness? -Bob from Accounting
Well, while it might appear that what’s happening with the rat poison is your physical body responding to the physical liquid in the bottle, what’s actually happening is that the energetic “thing” you know as your body is reacting to the energetic “thing” we call rat poison. And remember what all those people with impressive credentials were saying about everything being energy? That includes your thoughts.
It’s all energy reacting to energy
Because of the energetic nature of everything and how it’s all connected in the field of consciousness, we can use the weakening of the physical musculature of our bodies to identify the quality of any information we’re encountering and processing with our brains. We can use this physical response to “locate” information we aren’t currently aware of or discover if there’s any Reality to what we’re already thinking.
As an example, let's say Stacy’s food keeps vanishing out of the office fridge and no one’s stepping forward as the snack snagger. We could use the testing to get a better idea of what’s going on.
We could use a declarative test statement like:
Test Statement: Bob is telling the truth when he says he didn’t eat Stacy’s peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
Test Result: Not yes (i.e., a weak muscle response)
Uh oh.
So in this hypothetical example, the muscle of the test-subject went weak, indicating that the information in that test statement did not match with any Reality. But why did I write “Not yes”? If the muscle had stayed strong it would have demonstrated “Yes, that information is resonant with something that exists in the field of consciousness,” but since it went weak, what it demonstrated was “Nope, there’s nothing there.” So it’s showing an absence of a “yes,” not the opposite of a “yes” (i.e., “no”).
One way to conceptualize this is shown in the animation below. The moving horizontal line represents the flow of information passing through Bob’s awareness — the green 1s represent a part of the field where information exists, and the red 0s represent a moment where Bob’s trying to access something that isn’t actually there (i.e., it’s something that is perceived or imagined but that isn’t objectively Real).
Using light as an analogy again, this is similar to darkness. Darkness isn’t a “thing” that stands in opposition to light — it’s just the absence of light. In the same way, “no” isn’t a “thing” that exists in Reality—it only “exists” conceptually as an invented linguistic convention (i.e., a word).
The universe is binary, just like the code a computer uses to function. Accurate information either exists, or it doesn’t. That is the binary “yes” or “not yes” nature of what’s seen through the muscle testing. And this is the reason that the test results are objective. Something existing or not existing has nothing to do with what anyone knows about it, thinks about it, feels about it, or recognizes about it. The testing doesn’t produce an opinion any more than a thermometer produces an opinion when it reads 96˚.
Learning to do the testing
At this point, maybe you’re itching to try this interesting ability you didn’t realize you had. Like anything, it requires practice to do well. So in much the same way that you wouldn’t pick up a cello if you’ve never played before and expect to sound like Yo-Yo Ma, please understand that instruction and practice are required with the muscle testing, too.
One of the challenging parts of learning to do the testing well is cultivating an internal state of objectivity, which is not what we’re generally encouraged to practice. Simon Cowell (who is an expert in not being objective) said “If you've got a big mouth and you're controversial, you're going to get attention.”
See the challenge? We live in a culture where “having an opinion” is generally valued way above observing what’s actual, so it’s not a skill most of us have practice with, let alone mastery of.
Teaching the testing isn’t my area of expertise, so this post doesn’t get into the specifics of that. But, if you decide to learn, Power vs. Force is a great place to start. It’s not specifically a training manual, but it does give a general overview of the testing process and provides radical insight into what is possible through the testing. It also goes into great detail of the Map of Consciousness which forever changed the way I see and think about life and the world.
Also, I know a brilliant consciousness researcher named Eric Burlingame. He is nearing the completion of several books about the testing, his mind-bending research, and creating other resources for learning and understanding the testing. (You'll hear more from Eric in the next post about Donald Trump).
Wrapping up
Since everything is energy in the field of consciousness and we’re all essentially connected to that field, this means that virtually anyone in any location can calibrate information and get the same test result as someone else performing the same test in another place.
I can test the Level of Consciousness of actor Will Smith from my home in Portland, OR while someone else performs the same test from Hawaii, and we’d get the exact same result. I’ve seen this happen in real-time over Skype with Eric. We identified the test statement, performed individual tests, wrote down the result on a piece of paper the other couldn’t see, and then showed one another our result at the same time. They were exactly the same. Using Hawkins’ Map of Consciousness (which spans numerically from 1–1,000), we both got the exact same number.
The objectivity of this phenomenon means that humanity no longer has to be trapped in an endless debate about whose opinion or belief is the “right” one. Virtually anyone can calibrate the energetic state of books, beliefs, belief systems, people, and even their own level of consciousness.
What areas of life can you think of where humanity would benefit from having more clarity? Business? Politics? Human rights? Well, let’s look at a real-world example of how the testing can be applied to exactly those sorts of things. There has been a lot of crazy stuff coming out of Donald Trump during his 2016 Presidential campaign. Wouldn’t it be amazing if there was a way to get an objective perspective on the energetic quality of what’s behind this man and his rhetoric? 😉
Question for you…
Have you ever experienced this sort of muscle testing before? Is the idea of everything being energy strange to you? I’d love to hear your thoughts in a comment below. 👇🏻
