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

 

You recommend that we shift attention away from the negative feeling. How is this different from repressing the feeling?

Repression is an unconscious process by which unaccepted feelings are put out of awareness and not dealt with. In shifting attention, you make a choice not to indulge the negative emotion. You have already acknowledged and accepted the feeling within yourself as part of being human, but you are choosing to let it go because you want something higher, like peacefulness, harmony, and getting the job done. People will sometimes shift their attention by way of actions such as rearranging the furniture a little bit, opening and closing the window shades, making a quick trip to the bathroom, or going for a short coffee break.

These actions allow for a moment to shift from the negative to the positive.

Letting Go: The Pathway of Surrender, Ch. 21, pg. 313

…it does seem to the ego to sacrifice all of that glory and fame and justification and revenge and all,  is a big sacrifice. Don’t kid yourself. To the ego, it is a big sacrifice. It is a big sacrifice to let go “being right,” to let go . .  not nurturing that wrong, to let go of that hatred. It is a big sacrifice—don’t pretend it’s a small sacrifice. There’s a lot of pseudo, nongenuine spiritual work that people attempt, and it doesn’t work. Why? Because they are unwilling to face the nitty-gritty, the nitty-gritty facts.

Radical truth means you’ve got to take the mask off everything and be willing to see it for what it is, and now handle it from the viewpoint of emotional honesty. There is a big, massive payoff in ego positions, or you wouldn’t be sitting here in a body today. You would have karmically gone off into the mists of the higher realms. And therefore, the fact that one is back here in a body again means that one has sold out spiritual truth for the gratifications of the ego over and over again. But in this lifetime, it’s coming up to be questioned. In this lifetime, you say, “Was it worth it?

Is the experience of the Presence of God worth sacrificing all that I get out of my ego?” The answer can only be gotten by faith, actually. Experientially, no. Experientially, you’ve got nothing upon which to say that giving it up would be a better deal. Anything in your experience telling you that giving up the pleasure, resentments, and hatreds and satisfactions of winning is worth it? Not experientially, no. Faith, yes. Based on the faith.

the experience of God, is so incredible, beyond all description—so beyond the totality of all the values of all of mankind throughout all of history. All the pleasures and all the values and all the acquisitions, emotionally and materially of all of mankind throughout all of history, are like a speck compared to the Presence of God. Nothing is even in the same domain. 

The Path to Spiritual Advancement, Ch. 8, pgs. 171-172  (new book)

If consciousness is not personal, what does it mean we earn the chance for better opportunities or for better choices? It’s like consciousness is the field, the field; karma is still content. One has not escaped content yet. To go beyond karma means to have escaped the limitation of content. Consciousness is infinite context. It has no form, like the sky. Karma would be like a cloud. It still has form; it hangs loose within the sky; it’s within the sky. So, karma then would be the consequence of one’s spiritual decisions have an influence on the shape of the cloud, but consciousness is like the sky. The field of consciousness which is impersonal is unaffected by the cloud. Where the cloud goes in the sky will depend on its shape, size, consistency, humidity, barometric pressure, and many things, yes? You see, in the meditative technique to realize the Presence of God, one
goes back from identifying with the content of consciousness to the field itself to realize that I am not the content of the mind; I am that upon which the mind is playing, see? It’s like I am the receiver and not the notes of the music. The receiver remains the same no matter what music is
playing on it.  You all of a sudden jump from identifying with the content—I am those thoughts, words, images and memories—to I am That which empowers them to become known. So, you become the knower of the field. You become the witness. You become, at a certain level, the experiencer.

The Path to Spiritual Advancement: Ch. 9, pg. 199-200 – this is a newly released book available through Amazon and Hay House, Inc.

If you’re caught in an emotional emergency, the best way to do is to breathe the energy up from – usually, it’s your solar plexus that’s in a panic.  Breathe the energy of your solar plexus up to the crown chakra, and while you do that, go, “hahaha, hahaha,” while thumping the thymus, and the sound of “mm.” As you breathe the energy up, you’re out of the panic right away; you’re out of the upset.  …You thump over the thymus gland.  The thymus gland is the controller of the acupuncture system and the immune system.  It’s right behind the breastbone.  The sound “ah” makes you go strong with kinesiology, as does Love.  So if you want to come out of a bad energy state, you think of somebody you love and you go, “hahaha, hahaha, hahaha,” as you thump the chest.  Now, if I test you with kinesiology, you’ll go strong.

New! 

 The Path to Spiritual Advancement: How to Transcend the Ego and Experience the Presence of God, Ch. 4, pg. 83

What I usually emphasize is both meditation and aligning your life so that you make your life the prayer. You try to live and become that which you are studying and learning. You become forgiving. In the beginning, forgivingness seems like an artificial practice. Jesus Christ said, “Forgive them, for they know not what they do.” That’s a mentalization, and when you’re angry at somebody, it may cross your mind, and you think, Well, I should probably be seeing it differently, but I don’t. But as you get deeper in it, then you think, Well, how can I see this through different eyes? How can I alter my experience of this? Then that requires a deeper study. You’re trying to go from the familiarity of the intellectual to the experiential. You’re trying to become that which was formerly mental and is now incorporated into your personality and your way of actually being in the world.

…You meditate on some specific truth that you’ve picked up until you really become the awareness of the truth and the reality of that. Then you don’t need to tell yourself, “Well, I should be forgiving that person.” You start to see, eventually, that everybody is only being what they are, what they can be at the moment. Everybody is just being what they could be at the moment, and if not, it’s because they can’t be. If they were able to be different, they would be. You have a certain sympathy for everyone, that everyone is pretty much stuck with the human condition. And the human condition is, frankly, extremely difficult, for the individual as well as for whole societies and civilizations.

…A contemplative lifestyle is more effective. It’s a way of being in the world, because now you’re trying to become that which you have studied. You can do it continuously. A person can be contemplative no matter what they’re doing. My own lifestyle was contemplative for many years, and I was aware of exactly how I was being with each specific incident. That way, you become more aware of the reality of other people, as well. You become aware of their reality, and get out of the solipsistic view that reality is how you see it. You become aware that there’s a reality, and this is just the way you are seeing it. This is not the way the world is—it’s the way you’re seeing the world.

The Wisdom of Dr. David R. Hawkins: Classic Teachings on Spiritual Truth and Enlightenment, Ch. 8, pg. 133-135