Category: Thoughts & quotes from Sir David R. Hawkins, M.D., Ph.D. & Susan Hawkins

Hello, we want to share thoughts and quotes from Dr. David R. Hawkins and his wife, Susan Hawkins. We will keep you informed of upcoming events, as well. For available books, CDs, DVDs, and the Map of Consciousness, visit the Dr. David R. Hawkins product page.  Find a Dr. Hawkins Study Group in your area.

And then what?

I thought all you folks would enjoy this great technique from one of Dave’s lectures on how to eliminate fears:

“In surrendering a stack of fears, you can use the technique of “And then what?” You take a fear and say “And then what?”:

I lost my car. And then what?

I won’t have transportation. And then what?

I will lose my job. And then what?

I will have to walk to work. And then what?

There aren’t any jobs like that and I won’t have any money. And then what?

Then I’ll be poor. And then what?

Then I will starve to death.

So at the bottom of every stack of fears is the fear of death, physical death. So once you’ve accepted physical death, then, most of the fears that we have which are focused on the body and loss of possessions and things disappear. You do that by acceptance.”

from “Serenity”, August 2005 lecture, disc 2 and “Book of Slides”

“It seemed like a good idea at the time”

Choosing the Positive
We can ask ourselves: “When was I ever trained in the techniques of emotional self-healing?  When I went to school, did they teach me courses on consciousness? Did anybody ever tell me that I had the freedom to choose what went into my mind? Was I ever taught that I could refuse all of the negative programming?  Did anybody ever tell me the laws of consciousness?  If not, why beat ourselves up about having innocently believed certain things? Why not stop beating ourselves up right now?

We all did what we thought was best in the moment.  “It seemed like a good idea at the time” is what we can say about our past actions and those of others. We’ve all been unwittingly programmed without our conscious assent.  Out of our confusion, ignorance, and naiveté, we bought into the negative programs.  We let them run us.  But now we can choose to stop.  We can choose a different direction.  We can choose to become more aware, more conscious, more responsible, and more discerning.

from Letting Go: The Pathway of Surrender, ch. 4, pg. 66-67

Give Up Guilt

Guilt is an attempt to purchase salvation, manipulate God, and purchase forgiveness by suffering.  These attitudes stem from the misinterpretation of God as a great punisher. We think we will assuage His righteous wrath by our pain, suffering, and penance.  There is actually only one appropriate ‘penance’ for wrongdoing, and that is change.  Instead of condemning the negative, we choose the positive.

To make progress and to change takes more effort than feeling guilty, but, it is a more appropriate response.  We note from the Scale of Consciousness that Guilt is way down at the bottom, whereas God is way up at the top.  Consequently, wallowing around in guilt at the bottom of the field of consciousness does not get us to the top.

Humility means that we see our own life as the evolution of spiritual consciousness. We learn from mistakes.  Maybe the most useful of all quotes to revise whatever the past behavior is, ‘It seemed like a good idea at the time’. Later, of course, in retrospect, it becomes recontextualized and seems to be in error.  However, if other people are intrinsically innocent because of the nature of consciousness, then so is the self of the spiritual seeker.      The Eye of the I, ch. 9, pg. 193-194.

What you’re looking for the world cannot provide…

Dave was so right on with this passage and his humor came out with every lesson he taught, allowing us to laugh at ourselves in the smallest detail.

Susan: I don’t know, I look at people and I see that so many of them, their wants are so large. Their wants are more than what their earnings are. “I have to have that car and I’ll be happy”. “I have to have this house and then I’ll be happy” and then “I have to have this pool for the house and then I’ll be happy”, but then when they get all that, it’s always another thing that they’re not happy with.

Dr. Hawkins: Yes, that’s the error of seeing happiness as something outside of yourself, something to be gained. The value of things is purely a projection, each and every thing of its own, you know. If you were starving to death in the middle of the desert, the Hope Diamond wouldn’t do you much good. So it’s desirability, then, and it’s called glamour or the energy of glamour is projected onto things. We think the attractiveness is out there. There’s no attractiveness out there. All attractiveness is in here. It’s because you desire that, want it and value it that it looks desirable and attractive to you. Pickled beets look very good to you, if you like pickled beets and if you don’t they aren’t attractive, you know.

So that’s the projection of value onto the external world and that of course is the basis of materialism and the whole economy is based on wanting this and wanting that and wanting something else and to instill such wants if you don’t want something then you’ll get programmed to wanting it. Better burial benefits! They’re out to sell you something. Prepaid funerals, I mean they are right down to the very last thing. Better coffins, you know what I mean. So, there’s no end to programming people to wantingness. So wantingness is the backbone of our economy, the backbone of our economy is wantingness. And when people stop wanting things, it all comes to a halt. But when you let go wanting the physical, then you want the emotional and you want the spiritual. What you’re looking for the world cannot provide. What you’re looking for is the return of love. A glance of love is all that you really wanted that entire day.

—from the “What is the World?” Feb 2009 lecture

 

All Fear is Fallacious

In serious spiritual work, it is necessary to have a few simple basic tools that are absolutely dependable and safe to rely on in order to walk through fear and uncertainty.  One basic truth that is of inestimable value and usefulness is the dictum that all fear is fallacious and not based on truth.  Fear is overcome by walking directly into it until one breaks through to the joy that the fear is blocking.  The joy that follows facing any spiritual fear comes from the discovery that it was merely an illusion without basis  or  reality.
The ego/mind is limited to the Newtonian paradigm of reality and is not capable of really understanding the nature of life itself.  In reality, everything occurs of its own, with no exterior cause.  Every thing and every event is a manifestation of the totality of All that Is, just as it is at any given moment.  Once seen in its totality, everything is perfect at all times and nothing needs an external cause to change it in any way.  From the viewpoint of the ego’s positionality and limited scope, the world seems to need endless fixing and correction. This illusion collapses as a vanity.
The Eye of the “I”, ch. 7, pg. 151