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

It will be helpful if one can accept the fact that one does not have to do anything about external events or even figure them out. A person cannot make any progress by looking at the thoughts because they are endless. One is not going to make much headway in handling the problem by looking at the specific emotion, but there will be a very profound effect if one allows oneself to focus on the energy below the upset. As one catches the experience earlier and earlier, one will notice that the energy is diffuse and almost nameless. It is like a container of pressurized gas that is seeking release. Its energy has been accumulating for a lifetime, and now it has a way out. The event that has happened in life has opened the sluices, the gates, the doorway, and now this container of compressed, suppressed emotional energy is using this opportunity to escape. Once the barn door is open, all the animals run out.

How can one get out of the way of the running animals? One cannot; however, the experience can be cut through quickly by accepting the fact that one cannot escape it. To try to escape will only prolong it. The mind will try to figure out ways to escape the emotional energy as though that will reduce the pain; however, the pain actually comes from resisting the experience. To handle this, one just sits down and lets go of resisting it, choosing instead to be with it. The faster one opens it up, the faster the energy is let out, and the quicker the experience will be over. The whole thing can be released instead of allowing it to drag out endlessly, agonizingly, through hours, days, weeks, months, years, or even a whole lifetime.

from “Healing and Recovery”  Handling Major Crises pg 238-239

Affairs of the world are perceived and interpreted in accordance with one’s level of consciousness. Therefore, the world may appear to be tragic, sad, miserable, or fearful, or it may, on the contrary, seem tempting, exciting, and challenging. In the high 500s, it is viewed with compassion and seen as beauty. In the 600s, it is seen as peaceful, and then, in the 700s, as Ramana Maharshi said, “The world you see (i.e. perception) does not even exist; therefore, surrender it to God.”

Human life is a major spiritual opportunity for consciousness to evolve and even reach Enlightenment. It is an expression of the gift of life, through which one can eventually realize the Self. Worldly temporal life is transitory and brief, but its consequences are very long term. It is therefore best to treasure the opportunity with gratitude. Spiritual endeavor is, in and of itself, an expression of appreciation for that gift of life.

Q: But what about the vicissitudes of life?

A: Each has a hidden gift. Sometimes it is an opportunity to undo past suffering brought to others. Sometimes the suffering is due to resistance and is a consequence of the ego’s personal will and therefore needful of surrender. An overall attitude of humility is very helpful, and by surrender, the hidden gift is revealed. How a specific situation is handled depends on how it is conceptualized and contextualized, and therefore, what it seems to ‘mean’.

from Discovery of the Presence, ch. 10, pg. 161-162

The world pretty much runs people with fear because their personal lives are also predominantly run by fear. But once we have learned a way to avoid getting cornered by fear, we begin to transcend the world as well as transcend being a victim because the world can threaten us only by fear. If they cut off our bank account, conduct an audit, run away from us, leave us, or fire us, the gun at our head is always the same gun-the gun of fear. There can be the fear of losing a part of the body-there is no end to the number of fears, but there is an end to fearfulness and of being a victim of fear.

from Healing and Recovery pg. 270

Fear is a level of consciousness to be addressed where it is, not in its expression and extension into the world-fear of this, fear of that-and not trying to handle it on the level of the particular but handling it instead as a level of consciousness. This is done by becoming aware of that which we are, which is greater than the fear, and learning to disidentify with the emotion so we are not that. We are an overall field in which fear is being experienced. It becomes a small thing occurring within the greater context in which we become aware of ourselves as that which we really are.

from Healing and Recovery pg 267

Q: What is the ultimate truth of one’s reality?

A: One’s absolute reality is beyond consciousness itself. It is the substrate of consciousness; it is beyond Allness or Voidness. It is prior to Creation, beyond the manifest and the unmanifest. It is prior to existence, beingness, or is-ness. It is beyond identity, yet out of it arises the Self. It is neither transcendent nor imminent, yet both. It is the infinite potentiality out of which the All and the One arise. The Self is the Presence expressed as existence, and out of that consciousness arises the sense of Existence.

from The Eye of the I, ch. 19, pg. 372