Are we sabotaging our dream lives, and humanity in the process? Getting over our egos by evolving our consciousness, and saving humanity in the process. A manifesto.
Brianna D. Mann, Ph.D.
“Until we have met the monsters in ourselves, we keep trying to slay them in the outer world. And we find that we cannot. For all darkness in the world stems from darkness in the heart. And it is there that we must do our work” (Williamson, 2002, p. 13).
Are We Sabotaging Our Dream Lives, and Humanity in the Process?
In short: Yes. But, usually not purposely. Sabotage happens unconsciously because old stories, beliefs, fears and wounds are still running the show, outside of our conscious awareness. These old stories, beliefs, fears and wounds come from our individual experiences, our families (including their genes) and the outside world.
We are only consciously aware of an infinitesimal amount of what is actually happening in our minds and environment (we take in 11 million bits of information each second but only consciously process 40 of these; Zimmerman, 1986). And if we are only aware of a small fraction of what is happening, that means we only have control over a small fraction of what is happening. This is fairly disconcerting, especially for those of us who like certainty and control. The good news is that we can use various tools to begin to become consciously aware of that which was previously unconscious. Therapy or healing work, meditation, dream interpretation, inner child work, energy healing, self-reflection and introspective writing (journaling) can all help unearth these unconscious processes, so we can begin to take back control of our lives. However, as anyone who has attempted self-improvement can attest, the moment we try to make a change, we get pushback, from external forces (e.g., the culture) and internal forces (e.g., the ego). Our self-improvement is a threat to the status quo of the culture and our ego. As a result, these forces will try to step in to sabotage our efforts. It’s our job to stay strong and keep fighting for change.
Our Culture
Good lord, where do I begin? As we will discover throughout the journey of this article, humanity is in big trouble, on the brink, and a large part of this problem is the fact that, we are still very unevolved: socioculturally, psychologically, spiritually, educationally, economically, politically. Our collective consciousness level is dangerously low, evolving, but dangerously low. This is reflected in our cultural narratives (i.e., the stories that drive how we think, feel, speak and behave), the ways in which we relate to other people and our planet, the ways in which we try to solve social problems, how we write our laws, how we correct antisocial behavior, and ironically, in our attempts to evolve our consciousness (e.g., using methods like spiritual bypassing and toxic positivity). We are a culture that uses force to take what we want, shame and fear to manipulate change, and delusion to convince ourselves nothing is wrong. We are a culture that has forgotten how to love and how to dream.
Culture isn’t simply a sum of the parts, of the individual humans, it is a greater whole, an autonomous organism. It is an organism that has the same goal all organisms have, and that goal is survival. Culture seeks to maintain itself and in so doing, it seeks to eliminate any potential threats to its survival. Disruption of the cultural status quo through change, even positive change, is seen as a survival threat, so the culture acts accordingly, by attempting to eliminate the threat.
There are people among us who dream of a different world, who haven’t forgotten how to love, who seek to disrupt the status quo, but they are often overpowered by the might of the culture, their gentle voices silenced by the collective’s resounding cacophony. They try to make change but they are met with opposition at every turn. They are seen as a survival threat to the collective, so the collective will do whatever it takes to eliminate that threat. Surprisingly, these dreamers haven’t given up the fight. In fact, in the face of adversity, many of them just fight harder. And, as we’ll see when we discuss the recent increase in human consciousness, their efforts are gaining ground. But they need our help. As we go through this article, we will see that it is up to us as individuals to raise our energy levels, in order to raise the energy of the collective, so we can live in a better world and pull ourselves back from the brink of complete and utter destruction. But, in order to raise the energy of the entire collective, we must begin with our egos.
Our Egos
The ego is probably one of the most misunderstood aspects of the human psyche. It’s no wonder it has an inferiority complex, and feels the need to control every aspect of our lives. People often confuse “having an ego” with narcissism, an inflated and grandiose sense of self-importance. But, that’s not what having an ego means. That’s what having an inflated ego means. Psychiatrist Carl Jung conceptualized the ego as the conscious part of our mind, the part that represents our personal identity as a unique and separate being; the ego is the part that runs the show, makes decisions, organizes, navigates the concrete world, scans for danger and mitigates threats (Hopwood); and it is also the part that reminds us just how unique and special we are, sometimes to an inflated degree. We need our egos to stay alive and navigate this physical world. The problem is, our egos, ironically, take up too much space in our psyches, often functioning to our detriment. It is the ego that makes sure we continue to use our fear-based operating system (discussed below), even when it no longer serves us. Under the guise of protection, the ego ensures that we play it safe, small and status quo in this world. When we try to act in opposition to the ego’s wishes, the ego throws a temper tantrum and we are forced to either comply or deal with the consequences. The consequences are typically the felt senses of shame, fear, depression, self-loathing, self-doubt and self-deprecation. Most of us choose to comply in order to avoid these consequences.
Although the ego’s goal was initially preservation of the human whose body it resides in, it has, like the culture, mutated into a self-serving organism, sometimes to the detriment of the human. The ego now has one goal, self-preservation, and there is nothing it fears more than irrelevance, not surprisingly. So, the ego will do whatever it takes to ensure that it maintains employment as Supreme Ruler of the Psyche. However, as we will discuss throughout this article, relegation of the ego to a lesser role is exactly what we need at this point in our individual and collective evolutions.
Our Unconscious Operating System: Fear 1.0
What is important to understand is that for all living beings, the primary goal is survival. This goal is achieved using an operating system designed to mitigate threats and maximize conditions that facilitate survival. This system is the default operating system for all living beings, meaning it will run interminably on survival mode unless programmed to do otherwise. I like to call it, Fear 1.0. The commands Fear 1.0 can execute in humans are Fight, Flee, Freeze and Fawn. (For those of you not familiar with the Fawn command, it is the one that uses personal charm to increase rate of survival.) Although much of the functioning of this operating system is automatic and unconscious, the ego is the part makes sure it continues to run, interminably. This means that if we decide to do anything out of the ordinary, or god forbid, take a risk, the ego will step in to make sure nothing changes. The ego is like the operating system’s supervisor, one that insists upon micromanaging everything.
This operating system and these simple commands were helpful in the early stages of our evolution when resources were scarce, shelters were primitive, medicine was rudimentary, and predators roamed freely. Today, most of our challenges/threats come from within our psyches, homes and communities, from the greater sociocultural structure, and are chronic and often amorphous, rather than coming from external, acute, and tangible sources like wild animals, noxious plants, distant tribes and threatening weather conditions. Because Fear 1.0 is designed to work with the latter, it doesn’t work nearly as well to mitigate the types of threats we face in modern culture.
Modern-Day Threats to Survival
There are three primary areas from which modern-day survival threats emerge: Genetics, individual environment and the environment at large, including our communities, society, and the natural environment. Genetics can make us more prone to survival threats in and of themselves (e.g., through inheritance of a compromised immune system). Genetics can also interact with our environment to increase risks, as in the case of intergenerational trauma, where the effects of trauma repeat or otherwise impact subsequent generations, even going so far as to contribute to changes in the structure of our DNA itself. In other words, trauma experienced generations ago appears to be literally stored in the DNA of subsequent generations (Selimbasic, Sinanovic, & Avdibegovic, 2012; Snyder et al., 2016; Youssef, Lockwood, Su, Hao, & Rutten, 2018). Indeed, as described in Deuteronomy 5:9, the sins of the father will be visited upon the third and the fourth generations. This passage doesn’t simply refer to the sinful acts of the father, it refers also to intergenerational trauma; in other words, the sins inflicted upon the father (and mother) will be visited upon the third and fourth generations (Hollis, 2013; New International Version, 1978/2011). Even though these sins are not our own, it is our job to atone for them (by healing the wounds they have caused), if we wish to be free and if we wish for our children to be free.
Individual environmental threats to survival include the holy trinity of soul injury: abuse (physical, sexual and emotional-including psychological and verbal abuse), neglect (emotional and physical), and other traumas (e.g., combat trauma, car accidents, witnessing violence). Also included in the individual environmental threat category are bullying, poverty, parental addiction and mental health concerns, food scarcity, unstable or unsafe housing and social isolation (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention).
Survival threats that come from the environment at large, that come from community, societal, and natural environments, include racism and other forms of discrimination (e.g., sexism, classism, ableism, heterosexism), community violence, community-wide poverty, immigration, pollution, social and environmental disorder, easy access to drugs and alcohol, limited educational opportunities, high unemployment rates, natural disasters, and man-made disasters (e.g., chemical spills; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Felitti et al., 1998).
When Fear 1.0 tries to mitigate these modern-day threats to survival, using its original commands of Fight, Flee, Freeze and Fawn, it has limited success. This is because this system was designed to respond to acute, time-limited, external and tangible threats. Many of the threats we face in modern day are chronic; found within our bodies (e.g., our trauma wounds), families and communities; inescapable; amorphous (e.g., poverty, institutional racism, internalized misogyny); or are simply unresponsive to these commands. What we have done is to adapt our systems by developing certain behavioral patterns with governing belief systems, which are iterations of the original commands of Fight, Flee, Freeze and Fawn. These adaptations are called defense mechanisms and include options such as projection, reaction formation, denial, regression, repression, dissociation, avoidance, intellectualization, distraction, numbing, deflection, people pleasing and more. But like the original commands from which they are derived, these defense mechanisms aren’t effective solutions to the threats we face in modern-day society. In other words, our operating system, Fear 1.0, its commands and their modern-day adaptations, are no longer serving us. In fact, operating on our fear, defense, scarcity and power-based system is actually driving humanity to the brink of extinction because now, rather than fighting actual external threats, we have enlisted our defense mechanisms to inadvertently begin waging war in our own bodies and in our own backyards: We are now harming ourselves, harming the family and community systems that once protected us, and we are overtapping and overpowering (e.g., through development, deforestation, pollution, unsustainable agriculture, mining, drilling) Mother Earth’s natural ability to support us. We are now the biggest threats to our survival, our own worst enemy. It is self-evident that humanity needs a new operating system, needs to evolve in a new way, that humanity needs an evolution of consciousness.
Humanity on the Brink
When I’ve posed this problem and resultant solution to others, some say, “Hasn’t humanity always been on the brink of collapse? I feel like this has happened so many times and yet, we’ve always survived.” That is true. For having such a large and evolved cerebral cortex, we are really fucking stupid, and also, really fucking lucky. Each time we’ve been on the brink of collapse, or have experienced a small collapse, we’ve come back. But, that doesn’t mean we do nothing now. And, this time…well, this time our home planet is in jeopardy in a way that it’s never been during the Cenozoic Era. The current rate of extinction is comparable to the end of the Mesozoic (Reptilian) Era, and we all know how that turned out (Wilson, 2006). I guess we could tell ourselves that it’s going to be fine this time, but all of the experts are predicting that it most definitely is not going to be fine unless we take prompt and aggressive action, and even then, the next 30 years are going to be a complete shit show (Plumer & Fountain, 2021). I know that some people are holding out hope for the discovery of a new planet or perhaps a space station situation on Mars. But, if you watched Battlestar Galactica, 1) you’d understand how perilous that journey would be and 2), you’d understand that if we don’t learn our lessons now, we’ll just fuck up the next planet we inhabit and end up in the same predicament (Moore & Eick, 2004). In fact, this is one of the reasons why Europeans went searching for a new land. Medieval Europe’s forests, fields and streams had become so depleted and polluted, that they needed to find new ones to exploit (that, and the ruling class had begun to usurp the remaining land, resources and belief systems-sound familiar?). This quest led to some fairly significant human rights violations (e.g., genocide, enslavement, rape, pillaging, murder, torture, false imprisonment, ethnic and religious persecution) and only bought humanity about 500 years (Boissoneault, 2019; Olson-Raymer, 2014). Here we are again. So, I think it’s time we pull our collective head out of our collective ass, learn our lessons and do things differently this time around. Or, we could just give up and do nothing, which is what some people seem to have done. I mean, why bother?
So, you decide: Are you going to give up and do little to nothing as the planet becomes uninhabitable and humanity dies, or are you going to at least try to make a difference? Are you going to be complicit or are you going to rise up and do the difficult, but right thing?
It’s Time for an Evolution-Revolution.
The solution philosophers and spiritual leaders are proposing is what I mentioned before: an evolution of consciousness. There are a lot of great books explaining what an evolution of consciousness might look like. Three of my favorites are The Celestine Prophecy, The Big Leap and Power vs Force: The Hidden Determinants of Human Behavior. But let’s not stop there. My ego is inflated enough to believe that my field, the field of psychology, is going to help lead this evolution-revolution because we have what the world needs. And, what the world needs is for people to heal their wounds, let go of their need to overpower the environment and others to feel okay, and stop projecting their pain onto others and the planet. As they say, “hurt people, hurt people;” we can extend this to say, “hurt people, hurt our planet.” Basically, we all need to go to therapy.
People also need to reconnect with some form of spirituality (i.e., source consciousness/god/universe) to understand that we are not separate, that our seemingly insignificant individual actions have the power to both help and harm the collective. I think (hope) the COVID-19 pandemic has taught us this lesson, that we are not separate, that “the farmer in Wuhan impacts the stock broker in New York” (Steele, 2020), and the stock broker in New York impacts the factory worker in Shenzhen, whether we want to accept this truth or not. Connecting back into some type of spirituality also allows us to tap into unlimited unconditional love. And, love is really what the world needs to heal its massive wounds (well, love and therapy).
The Upper Limit Problem
Okay, let’s start by going back to our operating system: Fear 1.0. In this system, positive emotions, like the love we need to heal the world, can be a threat to survival, especially if we’ve experienced abuse, neglect or other traumas. Why? Well, because feeling good means we aren’t focused on potential danger. When we feel good, we let our guard down, we let ourselves get caught up in the joy, love or excitement of the moment and we forget about all of the horrible things that could happen to us. We may have even learned that love and abuse are paired together. This freaks out our operating system and its micromanaging supervisor, our ego. According to their programming, if we aren’t constantly scanning for danger or threats, we could be caught off guard, be attacked, and ultimately, we might not survive. So, when we start feeling positive emotions, there is a point at which our ego tells our fear-based operating system to kick back in, start worrying and start scanning for danger. Hendricks (2009) calls this our Upper Limit.
For those of you familiar with Jungian psychology, the Upper Limit is similar to the concept of a complex, which is a powerful and magnetic constellation of intrapsychic energy, often formed by severe emotional woundings. This unconscious energy is like an electromagnet, drawing similar energy to it in the forms of external experiences, belief systems and attentional focus. Complexes can be incredibly difficult to overcome and help explain why people who grow up in abusive homes tend to find abusive partners or become abusive themselves, despite their conscious desire to break the cycle (Singer, 1972).
At what point this system kicks in (i.e., where the Upper Limit is), depends on our several factors: our genes, personal history and the environment at large. If we’ve experienced abuse, neglect, other traumas, certain stressors and have a certain genetic makeup, this system is going to kick at a lower threshold than it would for those without these genes or experiences. If we experienced traumatic and stressful events at an early age and experienced them chronically, Fear 1.0 is going to kick in at an even lower threshold. We can think of it as a thermostat. Some of us have thermostats that are set higher and some have thermostats that are set lower; these settings are based upon our genes, experiences and the greater environment we grew up in (Hendricks, 2009).
In order to experience a greater level of positive emotion, we need to reset our thermostats and our expectations. In other words, we need to evolve our consciousness. If we don’t, we may have trouble hanging onto good things in our lives. For example, have you ever told yourself, “If I just won the lottery, then…[insert some iteration of ‘things will be better’ here]”? I’m going to let you in on a depressing secret: Things will not be better. 60% of lotto winners squander their winnings within two years (Hendricks, 2009). Why? Because they didn’t reset their thermostats. A happy, fulfilling life is, for the most part, an inside job, despite what our externally focused consumer culture would lead us to believe. The lottery winners needed to grow into that new money story in order to hang onto it. They needed to become the types of people who can have and hold that kind of money.
On the subject of money specifically, even if people are able to hang onto wealth, the research shows that after basic needs are met (food, clothing, shelter), money does not increase one’s level of happiness (Kahneman & Deaton, 2010). Indeed, when I’ve interviewed people who have been able to hold onto a great deal of wealth, they’ve told me that the most depressing part of receiving that much money, was when they woke up the next day to realize that their lives were no different than they were the day before. That golden ticket they thought would change everything, changed nothing. In fact, they say that the money has actually served as an accelerant, making smaller problems much larger. These are some of the most important lessons they’ve learned: Money doesn’t buy happiness and money often makes problems worse. And, because these lessons are so important and only a select few are given the opportunity to actually learn them, this select few has wanted to share these lessons with others, to spare them the pain and energy spent trying to find the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. But, they say that when they’ve tried to impart this wisdom upon others, others are incredulous, become upset and act as if someone’s tried to take their god away. And, I suppose someone has…
This example doesn’t just apply to money. Many of us have a strange tendency to unconsciously sabotage anything good that happens in our lives. Sometimes, the sabotage comes from forces that seem completely outside of our control. For example, things are going well at work, we just closed a big deal with a new client, then on the way home, we get into a car accident. Or, things are going surprisingly well at home with our partner, then our computer crashes and we lose three months’ work. The other shoe drops, just like we expect it to. Even if the shoe never drops, even if we are able to hang onto the good things we’ve been hoping for, those elusive golden tickets, we quickly learn that they don’t have the effect of improving our lives to the degree we hoped they would, so we go in search of the next golden ticket. This is because we are focused on a happiness that is external, unstable and often material, rather than focusing our efforts internally, learning how to self-generate a happiness that’s independent of external factors.
You may have even experienced some variation of this unconscious sabotage yourself: Things feel like they are going well, you get some money in savings, and then your furnace goes out and your car breaks down. Within minutes, all of that money is gone. And you feel like the universe hates you. You feel like you just can’t hold onto money, that you just can’t hold onto good things. Well, you are sort of right about that. You can’t. Not from the space you are in. You need to become the person who has money and other, positive experiences in their life. Not only that, as we’ve mentioned, you need to understand that the positive experiences, the so-called golden tickets we find in the outside world (e.g., money, a relationship, a promotion) aren’t the key to happiness. A happy and fulfilling life truly is an inside job. This internal, becoming process takes a great deal of time, effort and patience. Unfortunately, most human beings don’t grow very much in our lifetimes. It’s estimated that, on average, we gain only about 5 consciousness points in our lifetimes, well, actually 105, but I’ll explain that in a minute (Hawkins, 2002).
I’d like to add a caveat here. Not every trial, tribulation or tragedy in our life can be accounted for by the Upper Limit Problem. Sometimes shit just happens and it isn’t our fault, as highlighted by the Bible’s Book of Job. And, in some cases, as we’ll discuss later, we may not have the ability to make major change; uncontrollable forces may be dictating much of our lives. The Upper Limit Problem just refers to a general experience of negativity in our lives, of a certain energy we tend to attract, not unlike that described by the Law of Attraction (Hicks & Hicks, 2006). The Upper Limit Problem and the Law of Attraction can be seen as general frameworks for understanding human experience; they don’t explain all of human experience.
Measuring Human Consciousness
David Hawkins (2002) developed a scale that delineates human energy vibration. Essentially, it describes where we each of us falls on this thermostat we’ve been talking about; he called it the Map of Consciousness. Hawkins states that human consciousness is much like the concept of source consciousness/god/universe: It is all things at once. All levels of consciousness are present at all times. When we have unhealed wounds, they emit low vibrational energy, which obscures the upper vibrational energy levels like a cloud or like static causing interference on a radio. In order to access the higher vibrational levels consistently, in order to tune in more precisely, we need to clear the noise; ultimately, we need to heal the pain creating the noise. This is how drugs, alcohol and psychotropic medications work: They don’t raise our consciousness/energy level per se, they medicate/numb our pain and in so doing, they clear away the lower vibrational energy noise our pain emits. As we can logically deduce, none of these substances are sustainable solutions for raising energy vibration (i.e., improving mood), despite what the pharmaceutical companies would like us to believe. Guess what does actually provide a sustainable solution for raising energy vibration by actually healing the noise-emitting pain? Yep, you guessed it, therapy (and other types of deep healing work). Otherwise known as convenient theories for me. But, really, even the research shows that therapy is an effective and sustainable way to heal the underlying pain contributing to mental health concerns (Bradley, Greene, Russ, Dutra, & Westen, 2005; Cahill, Foa, Hembree, Marshall, & Nacash, 2006; Foa, Keane, & Friedman, 2000; Harvey, Bryant, & Tarrier, 2003; Monson et al., 2006; Resick, Monson, & Chard, 2008; Resick, Nishith, Weaver, Astin, & Feuer, 2002; Resick & Schnicke, 1992, 1993).
Hawkins’ (2002) consciousness scale ranges from 0-1000 with the lower numbers representing lower vibrational (lower frequency) negative emotions and the higher numbers representing higher vibrational (higher frequency) positive emotions. The scale is logarithmic, so 100 and 200 are at exponentially different levels on the scale rather than incrementally different levels on the scale (i.e., the difference between 100 and 200 isn’t 100 points, it’s 10100points). Now that I’ve demonstrated I understand math, let’s talk about the scale. The lowest level described on the scale is shame, which is given a numerical value of 20, the next is guilt with a value of 30. We’re going to talk more about shame in a little while, but for now, just remember that it is the lowest measurable point on the scale. Level 200, courage, is very important because it is the tipping point from a negative, destructive, disempowered, weak, ego- and victim-based worldview to a more positive, constructive, empowered, strength, soul- and creator-based worldview. In other words, this is where the magic starts to happen. Levels 500, love, and 540, joy, are also important because they represent turning points in energy vibrational levels, where the magic really begins to happen. The highest level described by the scale is enlightenment, with a value of 700-1000 (See Table 1). Enlightenment represents yet another turning point in energy vibrational level, albeit a rarely achieved one, but when it is achieved, those achieving it become magical AF, transcending the laws of ordinary space-time.
Courage: Level 200
The level of courage is important because is the point at which we begin to understand that we have creative power and some control over the reality we live in. Here we begin to see that things don’t just happen to us, we see that we play a role in creating our reality, including creating those events that we had previously believed were due to outside forces, coincidence or bad luck. We also develop a willingness to face our fears and overcome challenges. Our ego begins to loosen its grip on our psyches and soul steps in. We are able to cope with change and hardship without continually collapsing into despair and helplessness. Courage is the point at which we develop a drive, the energy to learn new skills, solve problems, and overcome the challenges and fears we are now willing to face. There is a newfound sense of possibility where there was once hopelessness. This is the point at which many folks decide to work with a therapist or another type of healing practitioner to do some deep, introspective work, to face their fears and traumas (Hawkins, 2002). Further, I would argue that, although someone at this level is not yet vibrating at 500, the level of unconditional love, love is often what gives someone the courage to face fears, overcome challenges, try new things, cope with change and hardship, and ultimately, begin to affect positive change in their life. So, when someone reaches the level of courage, I believe they have found a way to tap into the energy vibration of love (i.e., source consciousness) effectively enough to draw upon it for strength. We’ll talk more about the power of love throughout this article.
The tipping point at level 200, courage, is also important because this is the point at which we stop draining energy from the collective and planet, and begin to give back what we take out; that is, we break even. This happens at both an energetic and material level (e.g., consumption of resources). The more we raise our consciousness, the more we give back. One person at level 300 is able to counterbalance 90,000 people below level 200; one person at level 600 is able to counterbalance 10 million people below level 200 (see Table 2). So, if we think our individual actions don’t matter, I hope this makes it clear that they do. And, even if you don’t buy this whole consciousness scale, energy vibration thing, I want you to consider something: How do you feel after you’ve spent time with a negative person or in an unhealthy environment, where people are yelling and fighting? Do you feel joyous and energized? I doubt it. I bet you feel terrible and drained. How do you feel when you spend time with a positive person, or in a positive environment where people are kind and loving? I bet you feel uplifted, happy and restored. I rest my case.
Love: Level 500
When the magic really starts to happen is at level 500: unconditional love. At level 500, we achieve the ability to tap into source consciousness/god/universe. Even if we haven’t reached a consistent energy vibration of 500, if we are able to connect with our soul’s essence, love, using methods like meditation and dream interpretation, we can tap into source consciousness. Source consciousness is not only a source of unconditional love, it is an unlimited knowledge base (i.e., the Akashic Records).
The love we experience at this level is an expansive love that comes from within and not from external sources, from a deep connection with our heart and soul, and by extension, source consciousness. The love here provides us with compassion, understanding, and the awareness that we are all interconnected, one. This, in turn, gives us the ability to truly see others, to see them as part of us, as whole, lovable and deserving. This has the power to provide healing, deep connection, and soothe loneliness. Love is the catalyst for heroic action; it is the power that drives courage.
With love, the impossible becomes possible. This is because love gives us the courage to tackle the impossible and also, at love’s energy vibration level, we can connect to source consciousness’ unlimited knowledge base (i.e., the Akashic Records; Hawkins, 2002). Throughout history, inventors, scientists, revolutionaries and healers have used meditative and dream states to tap into source consciousness to make important discoveries, develop theories, see the future and provide healing (Moss, 2009a). You’ve probably even had some experiences with this yourself: There’s a problem that has been thwarting you for weeks (or years) and then, in the shower, doing the dishes, driving your car, falling asleep…Eureka! The solution just comes to you. This is because you’ve accidentally found a way to tap into the source consciousness knowledge base. Turns out, you can actually learn how to do this purposely, so you can tap in pretty much whenever you need an answer to a problem. How? Well, one way is through dream work. Your dreams aren’t simply random neural firings or a way for your brain to entertain itself at night, despite what modern Western culture may lead you to believe. Pretty much every other culture in the world, and even Western culture in antiquity, believe(d) that dreams serve a very useful purpose. They allow us to tap into the source consciousness knowledge base, facilitate healing and provide visions of the future (Moss, 2009a, 2009b). If I’ve piqued your curiosity and you’d like to learn more, I offer an online dream interpretation course that teaches you how to work with your dreams and access this knowledge base.
Another option for tapping into source consciousness is to begin a meditation practice. Meditation provides a basic way to momentarily clear your ego out of your mind and let source consciousness (and its infinite knowledge base) in. To begin a meditation practice, you needn’t look any further than the World Wide Web. There you will find a plethora of information about starting a meditation practice as well as some easy guided meditations to follow. As it turns out, I offer a 10-minute guided energy clearing meditation that you can download for free right here. Regular meditation also provides a number of mental and physical health benefits (e.g., improved immune functioning, lowered blood pressure, decreased cortisol levels, emotional resiliency, improved memory, better sleep), so it’s really worth giving it a shot (Bluth, Gaylord, Nguyen, Bunevicius, & Girdler, 2015; Davidson et al., 2003; Hülsheger, Feinholdt, & Nübold, 2015; Newberg, Wintering, Khalsa, Roggenkamp, & Waldman, 2010; Razon, Pickard, McCown, & Reed, 2017; Turakitwanakan, Mekseepralard, & Busarakumtragul, 2013).
The bottom line is, if more of us evolved our consciousnesses or engaged in some of these purposeful practices (e.g., dream interpretation and meditation) to tap into source consciousness, not only would more of us help humanity by raising the collective energy vibration level, we could also access the infinite knowledge base to find solutions to the major problems we are facing in our individual lives, sociopolitical systems and our natural environment. There is actually an entire group of individuals, incarnated on this planet right now, whose sole/soul mission is to raise their individual consciousness levels to 500 and above in order to raise the consciousness level of the entire collective. These individuals are called Twin Flames and you can learn more about them here.
What Love Isn’t
The world we are currently living in has an erroneous perception of love. The world confuses love with possession, dependency, and lust, which is one reason why the loss of love often turns to jealousy, anger, hate, violence and sometimes, death. In our world, love is conditional, and often transactional. If you love, honor, obey, never leave me, do what I want and make me proud, I’ll “love” you back. That’s not love, yet it’s the only love many of us ever know, from our families, lovers, friends, colleagues, bosses, mentors and leaders. The truth is, true love, unconditional love, has a lot of trouble surviving in this world, as evidenced by our sadistic affliction with killing its messengers (e.g., Jesus, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., John Lennon).
As we’ll learn later on, 85% of the collective favors a negative, destructive, disempowered, weak, forceful, abusive, fearful, perpetratory (yes, I made up that word), ego- and victim-based worldview (Hawkins, 2002). From this place, love, strong as it is, can be overpowered and temporarily squelched because the collective isn’t evolved enough to hold the vibration of love. Further, as the Upper Limit Problem highlights, many of us are not well equipped to tolerate high vibration emotions like love, we just aren’t evolved enough to hold those vibrations, so we unconsciously suppress and sabotage them. The good news is that love is our soul’s essence, it’s the stuff our soul is made of. And, because we all have this love within us, we all have the capacity to tap into this love, to draw upon it for power, strength, compassion, courage and infinite knowledge. The trouble is, we are often disconnected from our souls (and this love energy) and we don’t always know how to reconnect. But, fear not, there are lots of ways to reconnect, like through meditation, dream work, energy healing work and, of course, therapy. Don’t worry, I’ll give you a comprehensive list at the end.
In addition to this unhealthy societal view of love that’s based in possession, dependency and lust, there is another unhealthy view of unconditional love, of love as something without boundaries. To love someone unconditionally means, no matter what: “No matter how much they harm or hurt me, I won’t give up on them. I’ll be here, right next to them, loving them even more.” Embracing unconditional love does NOT mean becoming a doormat. Love is fierce. Love is protective. Love is love for oneself balanced with love for others. We can have love, understanding and compassion for others while setting firm boundaries with them, loving limits. We do this because we understand that to love ourselves means to keep ourselves out of harm’s way (and out of the way of harmful others). “Turn the other cheek,” does not mean, “Put up and shut up” or “Thank you, can I have another?” These phrases only allow for and perpetuate abusive behavior and are nothing more than convenient idioms for perpetrators of these behaviors. The phrase, “Turn the other cheek,” simply means that we shouldn’t seek revenge or perpetuate abusive behavior (Wikipedia-Turning…Cheek). This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t practice assertiveness and set boundaries, that we shouldn’t tell the other person to stop their abusive behavior, that we shouldn’t walk away. In fact, if we consider the self-love facet of unconditional love in this context, using a, “Thank you, can I have another?” interpretation of “Turn the other cheek,” is actually allowing someone to perpetuate abuse (abuse of you), which is exactly what, “Turn the other cheek” says NOT to do. It says not to seek revenge or perpetuate abusive behavior, which also means that you should not allow someone to perpetuate the abuse of YOU. In summary, you can love everyone on the planet, but some of those people are going to need castle walls and a moat to stay out.
Joy: Level 540
As unconditional love grows, it turns to joy. And, at this level, level 540, is when the magic really, REALLY starts to happen. Literally. At this level, spontaneous healing happens and miracles occur. Scholars suspect that this is how Jesus was able to perform miracles. His consciousness was evolved to such a high level that he had the ability to spontaneously heal the sick and perform other miracles that defied conventional wisdom. There are accounts of modern-day healers performing spontaneous healing as well (Hawkins, 2002). And, there is a great deal of evidence suggesting that sending positive energy through blessings and positive messages can promote healing and growth (Radin, 2013, 2018). Interestingly, the frequency of certain sounds (i.e., energy vibration) have been shown to be effective in healing tissue and regenerating bone. As it turns out, these sound frequencies fall in the same range as a cat’s purr, which ranges from 25-150 hertz. Cats purr not only when they are happy but also when they are under duress, injured or hungry. Scientists believe that purring serves the purpose of raising their energy vibration, which in turn facilitates physical healing and emotional soothing (Claes & Willie, 2007; Dowling, 2018; He et al., 2017; Lau et al., 2010; Omar et al., 2008; Scientific American, 2006; von Muggenthaler, 2001). This information provides a basis for understanding how an elevated consciousness level, or a higher energy vibration level, might truly produce miraculous healing effects.
As I will mention later on, when picking a therapist or other healer, it is important to find someone who has evolved their consciousness to a higher energy level, like love or joy. Unfortunately, only 4% of the population operates at level 500 (love) or above. And, only 0.4% operates at joy (540) or above, so this could be a tall order (Hawkins, 2002). But, it’s worth looking for because these folks will have special, almost magical (or actually magical) healing abilities. They might not be able to heal you in a single session like Jesus, but they will be able to find and heal things others can’t.
Enlightenment: Levels 700-1000
This brings us to the highest level on the consciousness scale: enlightenment. Enlighted consciousness is represented on the scale by the numerical values 700-1000. Enlightenment is extremely rare, with only .0000002% of the world’s population reaching level 700 or above. Spiritual greats like Jesus Christ, Lord Krishna and Mahatma Gandhi exhibited this rare, enlightened consciousness. Basically, when someone reaches this level, a religion or major spiritual movement is created around them (Hawkins, 2002). Unfortunately, many cult leaders throughout history have masqueraded as these ascended masters, only to be unveiled after their followers have thoroughly proven their undying devotion through, well, their deaths (e.g., Jim Jones).
The true ascended masters, the Enlightened Ones, don’t require their followers to prove their devotion through martyrdom. Rather, they impact all of humanity with the power of their love, grace and peace; this is how powerful their energy fields become (Hawkins, 2002). One enlightened master has the ability to counterbalance 70 million people below level 200. These individuals are so tapped into source consciousness that they develop the ability to transcend physical reality by manipulating the laws of classical physics (Radin, 2018). In other words, they become magical AF. Unbelievable as this might seem, many magical, supernatural abilities like telekinesis, telepathy, precognition, spontaneous healing and astral projection have been supported in laboratory studies and are well-accepted in the Eastern world among those engaged in advanced yogic practice; these abilities are called the Siddhis (Radin, 2013, 2018). These abilities are also described in the Bible in the context of miracles, although they are often dismissed in modern day as exaggerations or myths. So, not only is source consciousness a wellspring of unconditional love and a source of unlimited knowledge, it is the source of supernatural abilities.
Enlightenment results in a transcendence of ego consciousness and even transcendence of the physical human body. There is complete oneness with source consciousness/god/universe, such that there is no separation between the individual self and the divine source. At this level, there is little concern for the fate of the human body in an egoic sense. It is seen as merely a vehicle for navigating the Earthly plane and as a way to communicate with source consciousness/god/universe (Hawkins, 2002). This is likely why Jesus was okay with being martyred for his faith, but the rest of us view this act with horror, as the ultimate sacrifice. Unlike most of us mere mortals, Jesus fully believed that his existence transcended his physical body. Indeed, the Apostles’ Creed details the fulfillment of his belief and the Christian holiday, Easter, commemorates his enlightened ability to transcend the corporeal body: “[He] was crucified, died and was buried; He descended to the dead; on the third day He rose again; He ascended into heaven” (Apostles’ Creed, 500 AD/2012).
The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is not the only example of this phenomenon in history. As you may recall, the Mayans were a highly advanced culture, with a societal structure, belief systems and technological advances that rivaled those of the ancient Egyptians (Shneiderman, Sanders, & March, 2017). But they vanished without a trace. Some hypothesize that they didn’t simply vanish. Some believe that enlightenment and its resultant superhuman abilities may explain the fate of the Mayans: The ancient Mayans were so spiritually advanced and their consciousnesses so evolved, that they were able to transcend their physical bodies and leave the Earthly plane without a trace 💥 (Redfield, 1993).
Shame, Shame Know Your Name: Level 20
I want to backtrack to talk about shame, which is the emotion associated with the lowest level on the consciousness scale. I hate to talk about emotions as good, bad, right or wrong, but I feel like this is an exception. Shame is an incredibly dangerous emotion. It is usually something that is given to us by another person who was experiencing their own shame, which they found intolerable, so they projected it onto an external source (us) in order to deal with it there, in a more removed and less emotionally charged manner (less emotionally charged for them anyway). Shame is marked by the feeling of complete humiliation and the behavioral urges to hide and disconnect from others. When we feel this emotion, we feel less than human, completely unworthy of love and belonging. Acts that the culture considers shameful can result in ostracism; losing your place in society. Earlier in our evolution, banishment most assuredly meant death. Even today, it is nearly impossible to survive without the support of at least a few others. For these reasons, shame remains tantamount to death. And, it is when people are feeling an enveloping level of shame, that they will actively attempt to die by suicide, will make passive attempts at suicide (e.g., driving recklessly, not taking necessary medications, abusing drugs or alcohol), will have avoidable accidents, or will become serial killers. This is because, in the throes of shame, the line between life and death has essentially evaporated for them. They take the shame-inducing cruelty that was inflicted upon them by others and they project it inwardly to create potentially deadly self-loathing, or project it outwardly, making others feel the shame they can’t bear to feel themselves, sometimes with sadistic results, as seen in serial killings. Shame is like a disease, transmitted from human to human through the defense mechanism of projection.
When people do harmful things to others because of their own shame and woundings (i.e., hurt people, hurt people), they are often haunted more by these events than by the awful things that happened to them (unless, of course, they are sociopaths). They can find the compassion to forgive their perpetrators but they can’t find the compassion to forgive themselves. They have trouble seeing themselves as anything other than terrible, soulless monsters. They fail to recognize that their regrettable actions didn’t occur in a vacuum, that there were likely survival-based reasons for those actions, and that the shame, regret and remorse they currently feel indicate that they do still actually have a soul. In some cases, they experience their actions as so horrific that they go on to develop what’s called perpetration-induced trauma, a type of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) that results from perpetrating harmful acts upon others, animals or the environment.
We live in a world that has no shortage of shame-inducing events, with sexual abuse as one of the nastiest culprits, triggering its victims into the depths of a shame hell, decades after it occurs. And, the use of shame to punish children and adults is rampant, dangerous, and cruel, found in our individual family systems, educational institutions and in our sociopolitical structure (e.g., the criminal “justice” system; Hawkins, 2002). We use shame to cut young boys off from their tenderness, vulnerability and empathy, and to cut girls off from their anger, power and ambition. These processes have disastrous personal and cultural consequences (e.g., substance abuse, heart disease, depression, antisocial behavior and relational problems in men and dependency, anxiety, depression, victimization and powerlessness in women).
Shame as an Ineffectual Tool for Social Change
Our culture also uses shame combined with forceful power to address social problems at the symptom level rather than at the root. If this actually worked, it might be worth examining further. But it doesn’t. Not even close. For example, drunk driving is a large societal problem that we’ve tried to solve through force and shame induction, using the power of the criminal justice system. But, drunk driving isn’t the actual problem. Drunk driving is usually a symptom of a larger, substance use problem. Substance use isn’t even the actual problem. Substance use is actually a solution to a problem (Klott, 2011), a mental health problem, such as depression, anxiety or PTSD. That mental health problem is the result of yet another problem still: unhealed emotional wounds that come from abuse, neglect and other traumas, from soul injuries. The substance use provides a temporary solution by numbing and distracting from the pain and other symptoms that arise from the soul injury. When we understand the complexity of the problem, we understand that our societal “solution” of imposing criminal consequences for drunk driving, punishes, rather than helps people with traumatic woundings, serving as an indirect form of victim blaming. (And, yes, I know that the “justice” system mandates some type of substance use education for drunk driving “offenders,” but respectfully, those courses are basically useless. We need to do better.)
With this example, we can see how we try to force social change by using shame and power (e.g., political, legal) to fix the symptom of a problem (e.g., drunk driving) when we should be trying to promote change by using compassion and empowerment to heal the root of the problem (e.g., abuse, neglect or other traumas; Hawkins, 2002). Convicting someone of a crime, imposing astronomical fines, revoking mobility privileges, imprisoning them, and requiring special license plates that all but say, “I’m a drunk,” only serve to make a large, shame-filled problem much worse for people. Not only that, these are completely ineffectual solutions.
What might actually solve the problem is to devote more money to mental healthcare in this country, good mental healthcare. Promoting good mental healthcare means graduating more highly trained practitioners and providing high-quality continuing education, both of which currently come at a major cost to the practitioner. These practitioners are already poorly compensated for the work they do, which is very difficult, emotionally deleterious and sometimes, even dangerous work. The high training costs, the great emotional burden of the work itself, the significant amount of recovery time and self-care required to perform the work competently (which are currently impossible to achieve due to the significant demands of the job and low rates of pay) and the relatively low compensation rates, lead highly trained practitioners to leave the field due to burnout, moral injury and financial instability, and de-incentivize potential practitioners from ever entering it to begin with. You can read more about that here. If we want to fix the mental health crisis in America, we can start by doing a much better job supporting mental health providers, both emotionally and financially. Fun fact: Did you know that we pay commercial truck drivers more than we pay most of our highly educated therapists? (PayScale). This data point highlights the values system in our country: We value the people who transport our consumer goods across the country more than we value the people who care for our mental health; and by extension, we value our consumer goods more than we value our mental health.
Another helpful solution would be to develop additional public service movements designed to destigmatize mental health problems, so more people would feel comfortable, rather than ashamed, to admit they have a problem and subsequently receive help. For the issue of drunk driving specifically, what might actually help, is rather than investing money in law enforcement to arrest drunk drivers, investing this money in alternative transportation resources, not only in public transportation but in subsidization of cab and car services, especially for those in rural communities.
So, rather than utilizing a shame- and power-based societal response that says, “If you drink and drive, you are a criminal. Go sit in jail and think about what you’ve done!” We could utilize a compassion- and empowerment-based societal response that says, “We know you are struggling with some really painful issues right now, but you still can’t drink and drive. We’re going to provide you with the resources you need to heal as well as some safe transportation alternatives.” What a revolution that would be.
If you’re wondering where all of this money might come from given the multitrillion-dollar budget deficit our government is currently running at, I have an idea: Maybe stop investing so much money in the GD defense budget. Do we really need to possess the ability to blow up the Earth 4 times? Like, is that even necessary? It’s just one gigantic, and very dangerous, pissing contest. And, proof positive that many of us haven’t evolved beyond our time on the playground. And, maybe, if some of us didn’t act like such power-hungry, land-snatching assholes, we wouldn’t need to worry about the threat of nuclear war. Guess what could reduce that threat? Healing our wounds and evolving our collective consciousness by getting some mental health treatment. But, then again, defense contracting is big business and eliminating the threat of warfare would cut into profit margins, as well as disrupt the corporate-congressional circle jerk that’s maintaining those profit margins. So…what to do? What to do?
Another great idea would be for the government to stop giving our tax dollars to the fossil fuel companies, who are destroying our planet, and start giving our tax dollars to mental health services and organizations, who are actually improving the state of humanity, and by extension, the planet itself. In 2019, the U.S. government’s fossil fuel subsidies totaled around 555 billion dollars (Timperley, 2021). In contrast, the government’s 2019 budget allocated only 10.6 billion dollars to mental health and substance use research, treatment, and training. In other words, the government decided that the tax payers’ money would be better spent helping the oil and gas industry become more profitable, rather than spent creating services to help suffering Americans and ultimately, improving the state of humanity (American Psychiatric Association, 2019). This is another data point that illustrates what we value in this country, and it’s clearly not our mental health.
Further, the fossil fuel industry is a huge part of the reason why we are experiencing catastrophic climate change. Reports have begun emerging that the fossil fuel industry has known for decades that it is contributing to “dramatic environmental effects.” Indeed, their own scientists documented the widespread deleterious effects of fossil fuel emissions pollution as early as 1951—70 years ago! But, the fossil fuel industry 1) has not curtailed its behavior and 2) in fact, has actually hidden this data from the public, going so far as to actively repudiate the scientific evidence substantiating climate change, because admitting this would not only mean incrimination, it would mean loss of revenue (Jones, 1958; McGreal, 2021; Supran; Supran & Oreskes, 2017, 2020). It sounds a lot like what happened with the tobacco industry a few years back. And, just because this is the way things areright now and have been for some time, doesn’t mean that this is the way things need to continue. Each of you has the power to change this. If you are mad as hell about this, like I am, at the end of this article, I provide a list of environmental organizations you can join, where you can sign petitions, create your own petitions, donate money and send letters to Congress, demanding change, accountability and restitution. You can also view an expert’s presentation on the fossil fuel industry’s climate change coverup here.
Oh, and before I forget, let me address the ever-popular counterargument that the fossil fuel industry likes to use: But, we create jobs! Yes, you do create jobs. But at what cost? The tobacco industry also created jobs but we had to get past that argument and phase those jobs out. Turns out, clean energy creates jobs too. Maybe, we should give that a try. We could even allocate some funding to retrain fossil fuel industry workers to work in clean energy, or we could help them find new jobs. I’m pretty sure there’s a solution here that doesn’t involve continuing to destroy the planet so nothing has to change. And, let’s be honest, this argument isn’t really about the fossil fuel industry workers, it’s about profit margins and stock portfolios. But, I digress. What were we talking about? Oh, yes, shame. Never mind. We are right on topic.
What to do About Shame
Alright, so shame is clearly a big problem. What can we do about it? I’m going to give you some methods at the end that will help raise your energy vibration in general. These methods will, by extension, also help with shame. But I want to take a moment now to address how to heal shame specifically. The most important fact to understand about shame is that it dies when it’s exposed to light. So, the best way to heal shame is to confess your shameful secrets, to bring them into the light. There are many ways to do this. One relatively safe and easy way to bring them to light is by writing them down in a secret place where no one will find them. When you are done, burn or delete them. After you’ve tried this exercise, decide if you’d like to take it a step further by actually confessing your shameful secrets to a person. This will serve several purposes, 1) like writing them down, a verbal confession will bring the shameful secrets to light, effectively burning them away, 2) if the person responds compassionately, this will provide you with evidence that your shameful secrets don’t make you a terrible person who is deserving of humiliation and scorn, also helping to burn the shame away, and, 3) shame compels us to hide and disconnect from others, resulting in self-imposed ostracism, so confessing shameful secrets brings you out of hiding, reconnects you with others and ameliorates ostracism.
Before you take this step, I caution you to only tell your secrets to a trusted person, someone who has a history of being loving, nonjudgmental and compassionate. If you tell someone you don’t trust completely, who can be unloving, judgmental or lack compassion, you run the risk of adding additional shame to your shame pile, rather than reducing it. Not good for healing. If you’ve done something illegal, it might be worth telling someone who is bound by confidentiality, like a therapist, lawyer or priest. Generally speaking, therapy can be a good place to confess your shameful secrets. Many therapists are loving and nonjudgmental, and frankly, they’ve pretty much heard it all. So, it is unlikely that what you say will shock them or produce a judgmental response. Of course, there are no guarantees, but generally speaking, therapists are one of the safer bets for shame confessions.
Where Do You Fall on the Consciousness Scale?
I bet you are wondering how you can find out where you fall on the consciousness scale, wondering if you are a secretly an ascended master who will establish the world’s next major religion. Unfortunately, I don’t have a great answer for you. The consciousness scale was creating using a muscle testing technique, which came out of the field of kinesiology. Researchers discovered that muscles go weak when exposed to harmful physical or mental stimuli (e.g., artificial sweetener, cruel words) and demonstrate strength when exposed to beneficial physical or mental stimuli (e.g., nutritious foods, kind words). Although relatively foreign to Western medicine, this technique is widely used in holistic medicine. You may have even heard of the use of this muscle testing technique to diagnose certain allergies (Hawkins, 2002). I’ve never used this muscle testing technique to measure consciousness levels, so I don’t feel confident in attempting to instruct you on how to use it. Instead, I’d recommend taking a look at the descriptions of the different levels on the consciousness scale, using the link here (Huseyin, 2016). Next, consider how you typically respond when under stress, and then determine which emotion description (e.g., pride, shame, courage, love) most accurately describes your response. Most of us can hold it together when things are going well, but when stress is applied, our masks fall and our true character is revealed, so this exercise should give you a fairly decent estimate of where your consciousness level lies.
When making your guestimates, keep in mind the base rates for the levels on the scale. As we’ll learn in a minute, 85% of the population scores below 200; 4% scores above 500; 0.4% scores above 540 and .0000002% scores above 700. In other words, I doubt anyone reading this has reached 700, enlightenment (including the person writing this), so you can go ahead and rule that option out. Scores above 500 are also pretty unlikely but not impossible. Because you are reading an article on the evolution of consciousness, that tells me you have at least some interest in self-improvement and may have done some work on this, so you are more likely than the other 85% of the population to score above 200, but you can take a look at the scale descriptions and decide for yourself. And, if you do score above 200, please don’t use that as a free pass to stop growing as a human. As we’ve discussed and will continue to discuss, we all have work to do, even the ascended masters.
How Are We Doing as a Whole? Humanity’s Consciousness Score
Now that you’ve figured out where you fall on the consciousness scale, let’s discuss how human beings are doing as a whole. In the mid-1980s, the energy vibration of humanity as a whole was estimated at 207 (Hawkins, 2002). (It might be higher now, but I wasn’t able to track down that exact statistic.) This is actually good news considering that the level had remained at a stagnant 190 for centuries prior to the mid-1980s. I say this is good news because it means humanity as a whole has crossed over the tipping point, to courage, which means that we may actually have a prayer of unfucking the Earth and our social systems before our home planet becomes uninhabitable.
However, before we get too excited about this and think that our work here is done, let me point out a couple pieces of disconcerting information. First piece of disconcerting information: Our beloved friend, Koko the Gorilla, had an estimated energy vibration of 250. For you math wizards out there, this means that a primate outscored her supposedly more evolved human counterparts by 1043. Second piece of disconcerting information: The number 207, humanity’s average, is actually misleading. Let’s talk about the statistical distribution of that number. Averages are tricky little buggers, and are easily influenced by what’s called a skewed distribution. Statistics assume that when a scale ranges from 0-1000, the scores are distributed in a bell shape, with the bulk of the scores falling in the middle, representing the average of the population. So, when we hear the number 207, we may be inclined to think, “Oh, great; most of the population is functioning at the courage level.” No such luck. Averages can pulled up or down by that skewed distribution I just mentioned. So, rather than falling in that perfect, bell-shaped curve, the scores fall more heavily on one end or another, or both. Humanity’s consciousness has a skewed distribution problem: 85% of the population functions below 200, and 15% functions above 200, with 4% functioning above 500. That 4% of the population scores so high on the logarithmic consciousness scale that they pull the average up for the entire population, making it appear as if humans are doing pretty well as individuals (Hawkins, 2002). We aren’t. We have some serious work to do. But, don’t lose hope. We’ll discuss some interesting supernatural, statistical, behavioral and quantum physics’ phenomena that could help humanity speed up this process. And, we’ll also discuss what you can do individually to help with the process.
What do the Law of Diffusion of Innovations, Morphic Resonance, String Theory (M-Theory), Quantum Entanglement and Synchronicity Have in Common? Source Consciousness.
The Law of Diffusion of Innovations, Morphic Resonance, String Theory (M-theory), quantum entanglement and synchronicity all help explain how certain information spreads in an unusual, nonlinear and sometimes, instantaneous manner. With the exception of String Theory (M-theory)*, I’d even go so far as to hypothesize that they are simply different terms describing the same underlying phenomenon: extrasensory perception arising from source consciousness (also called group consciousness in some circles). What? Yeah. ESP. Remember how we discussed earlier that individuals with an enlightened consciousness were so tapped into source consciousness that they developed supernatural abilities? Well, it appears that all of us are able to tap into source consciousness to some degree, which allows all of us to utilize some of these abilities at various times to varying degrees.
*(As discussed below, String Theory postulates additional dimensions, like a source consciousness dimension, that could enable extrasensory perception, but it doesn’t speculate about extrasensory perception itself.)
Physicist Max Planck (1931) believed that consciousness (analogous to the concept of source consciousness that we’ve been discussing), including our individual consciousness, underlies everything—everything—in the known universe, and is therefore capable of interacting with everything in the known universe. In other words, a change in the consciousness of someone on Earth can cause a change in the consciousness (or even the physical structure) of a rock on Mars, strange as that may sound. Indeed, as physics has advanced, concepts such as quantum entanglement and String Theory (M-theory) have been developed, suggesting that the universe is interconnected, interactive and multidimensional. Research into these theories has provided an empirically supported basis for the concept of source consciousness at both the macro and subatomic levels (Greene, 2004; Moss, 2009a; Radin, 2018).
We could think of source consciousness as another dimension existing outside of the three dimensions we currently experience on Earth; this would be a dimension that we cannot see because we are currently trapped by the physical limitations of our three dimensions. This conceptualization may seem difficult to grasp, but it’s not as difficult when we consider what our three-dimensional world, which we know fully exists, would look like from the perspective of someone who lives in two dimensions (e.g., a flat person on a flat piece of paper). That person would only be able to experience a three-dimensional existence in flat slices (planes) of that 3rd dimension (Sagan, 1980). (If you’d like further explanation, I’d recommend watching Carl Sagan’s Cosmos episode, “The Edge of Forever,” discussing the Tesseract and Flatlanders.) Indeed, physicists postulate that the universe is made up of many more dimensions than the three we are capable of experiencing as humans on Earth, as elucidated by String Theory (M-theory). These extra dimensions are made up of subatomic particles, called strings, and these strings have different energy vibrations (Greene, 2004), just like human consciousness has different energy vibrations. Taking these theories together, if source consciousness does exist in another dimension, we would be able to access it (and it could access us) when we raise our consciousness to the vibrational level of the strings in source consciousness’ particular dimension (i.e., 500, unconditional love and above), and could subsequently unlock a variety of superhuman abilities, unconditional love and an unlimited knowledge base.
This idea is even more plausible when we consider how other energy frequencies work, like the classes of electromagnetic radiation within the electromagnetic spectrum; these different classes represent different frequencies of energy. Within the electromagnetic spectrum, we can only detect with our physical senses, those energy frequencies within the class of visible light; we are only able to see the sights (i.e., energy frequencies) our eyes can detect. However, many other types of energy frequencies exist, such as radio waves, X-rays, gamma rays, infrared light, and ultraviolet light. Our five physical senses cannot detect these, but they most assuredly do exist. We know these exist because we have invented machines that are able to detect these, are able to tune into these energy frequencies by using a corresponding frequency, and can utilize these energy frequencies to communicate information across space-time (e.g., radio waves are a form of mechanical telepathy), and detect what our ordinary senses cannot (e.g., X-rays can see broken bones through opaque skin and muscle). If we were able to tune our bodies to different frequencies (e.g., that of source consciousness), just like we can these machines, we could ostensibly unlock the special powers of these frequencies, in the same way we can tune an X-ray machine to tap into the special powers of the X-ray energy frequency.
Relevant to our current discussion are the source consciousness supernatural abilities of telepathy (i.e., the ability to communicate without known sensory organs, through source consciousness) and telekinesis (i.e., the ability to manipulate physical matter with one’s mind/consciousness); these abilities demonstrate source consciousness at the macro level. At the subatomic level, the abilities to communicate telepathically and affect physical change across space and time telekinetically are what Einstein referred to as, “spooky action at a distance,” and later physicists labeled, quantum entanglement (Greene, 2004; Wikipedia-Quantum Enganglement). Under quantum entanglement, a change in the state of one entangled particle will produce a parallel change in its entangled counterpart, unbound by space-time and conventional communication methods, such that an entangled particle on Earth will change at the same time and in the same way as its entangled counterpart on Mars. The concept of quantum entanglement may very well substantiate the subatomic underpinnings of macro-level phenomena like telepathy and telekinesis.
Psychiatrist Carl Jung and physicist Wolfgang Pauli collaborated extensively on the phenomenon of source consciousness, and how it manifests in the physical world as mystical communication (i.e., telepathy) and changes to physical matter (i.e., telekinesis). They, like Planck (1931), believed that consciousness was the base “substance” of everything in the known universe and that a phenomenon they called, synchronicity, provided evidence for this omnipresent, spiritual (source) consciousness in the physical world (Cambray, 2009). In other words, synchronicity provided evidence of this additional dimension of source consciousness “breaking through” into our three-dimensional reality. Synchronicity is defined as “a unique moment ‘falling together in time,’” (Cambray, 2009, p. xi), where inner and outer worlds meet; and meaning is the component that holds them together. “That which is above, is like that which is below” (Trismegistus, p. 12). Synchronicity can be thought of as the intersection of the unseen, spiritual world (i.e., source consciousness) with the seen, physical world we currently live in. And, as specified by Jung and Pauli, meaning needs to be involved; there needs to be a relevance, an intention, an emotional charge, a soul-aligned connection to source consciousness in order to bring synchronicity into the physical world. Synchronicities are often what many of us refer to as signs; those weird, supposedly coincidental communications that feel too meaningful to simply be dismissed as mere coincidence (i.e., a form of telepathic communication). Miraculous events also fall into the synchronicity category—help that arrives just when we need it, the new opportunity that seems to be an answer to our prayers, the unexplainable recovery from a serious illness (i.e., forms of telekinesis). These experiences all leave us with a strange feeling, they stop us in our tracks and make us question the conventional nature of reality; or as Jung put it, they give us the sense that there’s been a “rupture in time,” as if the fabric of the known universe has opened and let something otherworldly in (Moss, 2015). And, indeed, this may be what is happening: Another dimension is breaking through into our three-dimensional reality.
The concept of source consciousness has also been studied in the business world and in the behavioral and biological sciences, but not many are calling it this, especially not in the business world. In business, there’s a concept called, the Law of Diffusion of Innovations. It states that when a product or service achieves a 15-18% market buy-in rate, the product or service “takes off” at an exponential rate and then achieves market-wide success (Rogers, 1962; Sinek, 2009). In other words, it becomes popular, a household name. The same is true of new ideas. Of course, those in the marketing sector have been keen to deconstruct and harness this phenomenon, in order to artificially induce mass market product adoption. In his groundbreaking book, Start with Why, Simon Sinek (2009) postulates that ideas and products take off faster when the product or idea has a clearly articulated why that aligns with the values of the consumers. He says, “People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it” (p. 41). This is similar to the most essential component of synchronicity: meaning. There needs to be meaningful, soul-aligned connection with source consciousness in order to spur the phenomenon of synchronicity. And, there needs to be a meaningful, soul-aligned why in marketing to more quickly spur mass market adoption of a product or service under the Law of Diffusion of Innovations. Despite this deep understanding of the Law of Diffusion of Innovations, no one seems to have recognized and acknowledged that there is a larger force underlying the phenomenon: source consciousness. That’s probably because concepts such as source consciousness, although gaining some traction in quantum physics and parapsychology, are still regarded as pseudoscientific hocus pocus across much of the scientific community and are all but dismissed by the rational, Western business world.
The behavioral and biological sciences have also documented group consciousness in their research and theories, though the majority of scientists do not use this term nor do they acknowledge that supernatural phenomena like group consciousness or extrasensory perception exist, which is unfortunate, because it impedes scientific advancement and interdisciplinary collaboration. A pioneer, by the name of Rupert Sheldrake is challenging conventional wisdom in the behavioral and biological sciences. He has devoted much of his career to studying a phenomenon he calls, Morphic Resonance. Morphic Resonance describes how certain behaviors “build up” in a species over time. When the behaviors reach a critical mass (i.e., a high enough level of adoption among members of the species), this behavioral information is automatically transmitted throughout the species, seemingly unbound by space and time, and without the use of known sensory organs, such that a member of the species on one side of planet will adopt the same behaviors as their counterparts on another side of the planet. In effect, it seems that members of the species are able to transmit and absorb this new information telepathically via group (source) consciousness. As unbelievable as this may sound, Morphic Resonance, telepathy and group consciousness have all been supported in laboratory and observational studies (Radin, 2018; Sheldrake; Talbot, 1988).
In case you missed it the first few times I brought it up, let me state it very clearly now: Supernatural phenomena have been empirically studied and supported by scientists, using rigorous methodology (Radin, 2013, 2018). Does this seem unbelievable? Are you wondering why you don’t know about this yet? I’ll tell you why: Because research findings on spooky phenomena such as group consciousness and telepathy are usually dismissed, labeled pseudoscience and essentially hidden from the public by the scientific community. Why? Because, just like the rest of society, the scientific community contains the full spectrum of human consciousness, including those with evolved consciousnesses and those with less evolved consciousnesses. And, like the rest of society, the preponderance of the scientific community is made up of those with consciousness levels below 200, which means they are driven primarily by their egos and fear. These individuals have egos that can’t bear the possibility that what they’ve believed their entire lives, what they have based their entire life’s work upon, could be completely wrong, resulting in their personal irrelevance, a fate worse than death in the scientific community. So, they enlist one of their trusted defense mechanisms (e.g., denial, repression) to make sure that these new, “preposterous” research findings never reach the masses (Radin, 2018), thus ensuring their continued relevance and thwarting scientific advancement in the process. Fear 1.0 strikes again.
Okay, so how are the concepts of source consciousness, the Law of Diffusion of Innovations and Morphic Resonance relevant for evolving human consciousness and ultimately saving our species from complete and total destruction? Good question. These concepts suggest that we don’t need to evolve the minds of everyone on the planet, we just need to evolve the minds of a critical mass. When that happens, the evolution of consciousness and its corresponding humanity-saving ideals will take off; they will be spread via source consciousness; they will become popular, household names; consciousness evolution will be all the rage. And, according to Hawkins’ (2002) consciousness data and the tipping point identified by the Law of Diffusion of Innovations (Rogers, 1962; Sinek, 2009), we’re already in the home stretch: 15% of the population has reached the consciousness tipping point of courage, at which point our energy flips from depleting the collective to replenishing the collective. This corresponds to the Law of Diffusion of Innovations, which states that a 15-18% mass market adoption rate is the required tipping point for an idea to take off. When we consider these data, we can see that if just a few more of us took up the torch of consciousness evolution, we could use it to light the way for the rest, saving humanity in the process. Alternatively, that critical few of us could simply choose to watch the torch drop to the ground, hoping someone else will pick it up and do the work for us, while we simply bear witness to the world burning down around us. Which option will you choose: action or apathy?
How We Can Evolve Our Consciousness
So, how do we move up the consciousness scale? How do we ultimately change the world? Do your GD work! Option 1: Go to therapy. Or, do another type of healing work (e.g., energy healing) that directly address your wounds. Experiencing abuse, neglect, other traumas and stressors lowers our energy vibration. This is because these events/experiences cause us to feel lower vibration emotions like shame, guilt, fear, apathy, grief and anger, which in turn emit noise that drowns out the upper level vibrations, ultimately keeping us at a lower vibrational level. If we aren’t able to address and process these events right away (and most of us aren’t because of our circumstances), these events stick with us, causing us to re-experience the negative emotions we originally felt at the time of the event as well as re-experience the memories of the event itself. Over time, these events begin to shape how we view ourselves, the world around us (including other people) and our future; they change our entire belief system. Aaron Beck called this the negative cognitive triad (Beck, Rush, Shaw, & Emery, 1987) and he believed it played a central role in the development and maintenance of depressive disorders. He believed that by changing our beliefs about ourselves, others, the world around us and our future, we could change how we felt and ultimately, improve our quality of life. Thus, these became the central tenets of his Cognitive Therapy (and later Cognitive Behavioral Therapy). Others have expanded his theory to include other disorders such as PTSD, using his conceptualization in treatment to directly address the formative role of traumatic experiences on how we view ourselves, others and the world around us (Resick et al., 2008).
To summarize, when bad things happen to us, they change what we believe, how we feel and how we perceive and experience our reality. A hypothesized universal law, called the Law of Attraction, asserts that what we believe and how we feel (our overall energy vibration) governs our perceptions of the world and even our literal physical reality. It says that we see (perceive) things and attract experiences we believe and feel we’ll see and attract, and we do so telekinetically and usually unconsciously. As discussed, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy’s central tenets are that our negative beliefs affect how we see (perceive) ourselves, others, the world, and our future, and by changing these beliefs, we have the power to change how we feel, what we perceive and how we experience life. Indeed, the research has shown that by changing our negative beliefs through Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, we can relieve symptoms of mental health disorders and improve our quality of life; that is, changing our beliefs changes our reality (DeRubeis et al., 2005; Hofmann, Moscovitch, Kim, & Taylor, 2004). As you can see, the Law of Attraction and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy operate from very similar theoretical bases, though no one seems to have tied them together before, probably because very few people in the field of psychology would ever subscribe to a theory as esoteric as the Law of Attraction, or endorse telekinesis. But, I would, and I propose that the Law of Attraction (and by extension, telekinesis) is the mechanism of action through which Cognitive Behavioral Therapy works. In other words, the reason why changing beliefs through Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is an effective method for changing the experience of reality is because the Law of Attraction exists as a type of universal law, governing our experiences.
In addition to producing a global effect of negativity, impacting our entire belief system and changing our realities, negative events and experiences can lead to acute reactions when we experience a triggering event (e.g., thought, emotion, smell, sound, situation, person); that is, an event or cue that reminds of us of the original painful event. When we experience a triggering event, we are effectively pulled back down into that original painful experience, whether we are consciously aware of this or not. It’s almost as if we leave our current reality behind and momentarily return to the old reality (and in the case of flashbacks, the legitimacy of this shift in realities feels undeniable). We are pulled back into the same emotions we felt at the time of the traumatic event (e.g., shame, fear, guilt), the physiological sensations, and also, the memories, if we have access to them. Although we may develop elaborate defense mechanisms (e.g., projection, reaction formation, denial, dissociation, repression, intellectualization, distraction, numbing, deflection, people pleasing) to protect ourselves from fully remembering and re-experiencing these painful events in conscious awareness, the wounds remain, albeit well-hidden and protected.
Emotional pain works much like physical pain: It doesn’t go away, unless properly acknowledged and healed at the source. That is, it doesn’t simply stay inside us, safely walled off in a lead container. We project it out onto the world unconsciously and we interact with it there. We do this because we cannot tolerate interacting with our pain internally. It feels like too much to bear. Why do you think the world looks the way it does, why we have war, hatred, abuse, neglect, genocide, racism, misogyny, oppression, rape, murder, sex trafficking, forced labor, dictatorships, pollution, deforestation, mass extinction, climate change, overdevelopment, consumerism, martyrdom, codependency and victimhood? These are examples of us projecting our unhealed wounds onto external sources. We are operating in survival mode, where self-interest is paramount and the energy is destructive (to others and ourselves). Even a prosocial behavior like helping others can be harmful when it is projected from a place of wounding, because from this place, it’s not about helping the other person, it’s about trying to help ourselves. This “helping” behavior can turn into caretaking, effectively robbing the other person of their autonomy, enabling bad behavior and still never getting us what we are seeking—to be taken care of. The behaviors I’ve described above are all the result of our operating system, Fear 1.0 and its defense mechanisms. These destructive behaviors are the reasons why we need to evolve that operating system, why we need to have an evolution of consciousness.
Despite our best defense mechanisms, our unhealed pain is always impacting our lives and the lives of those around us, regardless of whether we see this or not, and regardless of whether we try our damnedest to prevent this from happening. Sheer willpower and awareness do help, but they aren’t very accurate strategies. This is because, as you may recall, most information processing happens outside of conscious awareness. So, we can make a conscious effort to become aware of our wounds and the impact they have, and we can try to make sure they don’t have an impact, but at the end of the day, we don’t have very much control over them, because we simply don’t have the ability to consciously process all of that information. The real solution, the way we can regain control, is to heal the pain, so it’s not running under the surface, being projected onto the world, consciously or unconsciously.
Carl Jung said that we have an ethical responsibility to become aware of our wounds and heal them so we aren’t projecting them onto the world, harming others and also, so we aren’t a target for perpetration, because having unhealed wounds makes us vulnerable to exploitation by others (Aron, 2016). He said that when we don’t do our work, the collective has to carry us. His assertions are in line with our earlier discussion on the tipping point of the consciousness scale. When our energy vibration dips below 200, below the courage level, we are operating in survival mode and draining energy from the collective. When our vibration is at 200, we maintain equilibrium, neither supplying nor draining the collective. And, when our energy moves above 200, we are adding to the healing energy of the collective, helping to uplift others.
Now, this doesn’t mean that when we hit 200, we are cool and our work here is done. Level 200 is just an average of our overall energy vibration, sometimes our energy might be at a higher level and sometimes it might be at lower level. This means that we can still dip down below 200 and enter a place where we harm others or where others can harm us. Even if we’ve managed to move ourselves up into enlightenment, we can still dip back down into the lower levels because of situational influences. Grief, for example, can pull us back down to a 75 temporarily (Hawkins, 2002). Experiencing a trauma trigger in our environment can pull us down to a 100 (fear) and potentially even lower, into guilt (30) and shame (20). And, we can stay rooted there for some time, especially if we aren’t consciously aware of what has occurred. So, this is why it’s imperative that we heal our wounds. The more we heal, the higher our overall energy vibration and the lower our chances of being triggered by trauma (because there’s nothing left to trigger us) and subsequently dropping back into those incredibly low energy vibrations where we can fall into perpetration and victimhood.
Healing our wounds doesn’t mean that we will no longer experience lower vibration emotions. We actually need to be able to experience the full range of human emotion, no matter how low the vibration. Emotions are useful. Their job is to give us information about our environment, just like our five physical senses give us information about our environment. In a perfect world, one in which we haven’t been traumatized, this emotion-based informational system works well. So, when we feel fear, we know danger is nearby; when we feel anger, we know we have been violated; when we feel joy, we know something is making our soul happy. And, when the environmental stimulus is no longer present, the emotion dissipates relatively quickly. When we have been wounded, however, the system does not work like this. When we have been wounded, the emotion we felt at the time of the wounding and all aspects of that experience are stored deep within us, like in a pocket or a root. Later, when we experience something closely resembling that wounding experience or even a small aspect of it (e.g., smell, sound, memory flash), that entire pocket or root becomes activated. When the new experience has passed, the emotion doesn’t dissipate like it is designed to, because it has become grounded or rooted in something much deeper. This is when we can become stuck in a lower vibrational state. When we heal the wound, we still feel the full range of emotions, but, because we’ve healed the place the emotion was rooted, the emotions are able to dissipate as they are designed to, and we don’t spend a lot of time rooted in a lower vibrational state.
The trauma that is stored in the root or pocket doesn’t just have the ability to root us in lower vibrational emotions when activated by something in the present, it also serves as a generator for negative emotions, memories, thoughts and experiences, spontaneously producing these, even when outside circumstances are relatively benign. We can do our best to catch these when they arise, and attempt to move ourselves into higher vibrational energy and positive thought reframes, but this requires constant vigilance and because of the automatic and unconscious nature of this generator (and our inability to consciously process all of the information we take in), it is impossible to catch and positively reframe everything it produces. The more reliable, effective and sustainable approach is to heal the underlying trauma at the roots, so it can no longer serve as a generator for negative emotions, memories, thoughts and experiences. In conclusion, we need to do the hard work.
Option 2 for consciousness evolution: Read some self-help books, work with various healers (e.g., Reiki practitioners, acupuncturists, mediums), do yoga, listen to podcasts, meditate, journal…basically choose your own personal-growth adventure. These options will help raise energy vibration, and I think they are an essential part of any personal growth and healing journey, but at the end of the day, you really need to work with someone who’s going to help examine and process all of the painful shit that has happened to you. You need someone to bear witness to your pain. If you find an energy healer who can do this, fantastic. But, oftentimes, this means going to therapy. And, if you’ve experienced trauma, this often involves doing some intensive trauma work (i.e., going back to revisit and heal what happened to you). If there was another way, I’d tell you about it. Trust me. I’ve tried everything. And, not only do I have access to all of the cutting-edge treatments and tools, I am adept at administering many of them. But, I couldn’t do it myself. I tried for decades to no avail. I finally had to hire a trauma therapist to help me, to bear witness to what I’d experienced. And, thank god I did, because that’s when the real healing began.
The Problems with Spiritual Bypassing, Toxic Positivity and Ableism
I’m not the only one who’s tried to take the personal-growth shortcut. There is actually a term for this; it’s called spiritual bypassing. Spiritual bypassing describes an attempt raise our individual consciousness level without doing the painful heavy lifting to directly address our wounds. So, rather than going to therapy to process our trauma wounds, we begin a rigorous meditation practice, we throw ourselves into a religious practice, we hire a business coach to help with motivation or we try to DIY it with podcasts and self-help books. We may experience some success with these methods, but it’s often unsustainable. Toxic positivity is a very similar concept; it involves ignoring or dismissing negative emotions by jumping right over them and into a positive reframe (e.g., “But look at everything you have to be grateful for!”). The heart of toxic positivity is often in the right place, wanting to bring cheer and make some proverbial lemonade out of lemons, but doesn’t consider the reality of the experience, which is its fatal flaw. Ableism is yet another concept in this family, describing a type of discrimination that favors non-disabled individuals. Ableism is ingrained in our cultural and personal narratives and extends beyond physical disability to include cognitive and mental health disorders. It includes narratives such as, “Just get over it and move on” and “Pull yourself up by your bootstraps” (Wikipedia-Ableism).
Spiritual bypassing, toxic positivity and ableism all bypass the reality of what someone experienced or is currently experiencing, completely missing the opportunity for true empathy; that is, missing the experience of meeting another in the space they are currently occupying. This can leave the other person feeling something therapists like to call, invalidated. The other person feels unseen and unheard, which can lead them to feel even more alone and disconnected than they did before someone attempted to “help” them. And, we don’t just do this to others, we do this to ourselves, completely missing the opportunity to fully be with ourselves in our pain. At the roots of spiritual bypassing, toxic positivity and ableism are often a discomfort with negative emotions and disabilities, an unwillingness to experience them, and/or a fear of contagion, which explain why these experiences are skipped right over and supplanted with more positive emotions or experiences.
Not only do these tactics result in invalidation, they don’t work, at least not sustainably. It’s very difficult to hold a high energy vibration when the pain from our woundings is emitting noise at the lower energy vibrations. We may be able to hold a higher vibration temporarily but it’s unstable and ungrounded, like trying to balance on a tightrope; the slightest breeze can send us careening back down to the lower energy vibrations. In order for a higher energy vibration to stick, it needs to be grounded, it needs to become rooted in us, like our woundings once were. And in order for it to be grounded, we need to heal the wounds that contribute to an unstable foundation.
Spiritual bypassing, toxic positivity and ableism also prevent true healing. In order for true healing to occur, we need to accept our past and present realities, as unpleasant as they may be, and allow ourselves to exist in them for as long as is necessary for change and healing to transpire, for as long as it takes to create a stable foundation. We need to bear witness to our own suffering.
These concepts violate what many of us would assume from a logical perspective; that is, that optimism should be a completely positive influence. As we’ve discussed, however, we can see that optimism can actually be quite harmful when it ignores reality. Concepts such as the Stockdale Paradox and radical acceptance further highlight the potentially damaging role of unbridled optimism; they also underscore the importance of accepting reality, painful as it might be, for both survival purposes and emotional healing.
The Problems with Unbridled Optimism and the Stockdale Paradox Solution
On September 9, 1965, Admiral James Stockdale was shot down over North Vietnam. He was subsequently captured and spent the next 7 ½ years in a Vietnamese prison camp, where he was repeatedly tortured and locked in solitary confinement. He was finally released on February 12, 1973 and went on to receive the Congressional Medal of Honor for his distinguished service and acts of valor (Wikipedia-Stockdale). Experiences such as his, tragic as they may be, provide us with a unique opportunity to understand and harness the power of human resiliency. It is a power of the mind, not of the physical body. In Jim Collins’ (2001) book, Good to Great, Admiral Stockdale related his experiences, observations and mindset during his imprisonment. His mindset utilized what’s called a dialectic. It was a mindset that allowed two seemingly disparate truths to coexist: He never lost hope that he would one day be released and this imprisonment would be the defining moment of his life; and at the same time, he fully accepted and faced the painful reality he was forced to live in. In theory, it sounds simple enough, in practice, it’s nearly impossible to master, a life’s work. This is because as humans, we struggle with ambiguity, we need certainty, for things to be black-and-white, and we especially struggle with feeling two contradictory emotions at once, like optimism and despair. So, when it comes to applying the Stockdale Paradox, most of us vacillate from one pole to the next: from optimism to despair and back again. We have difficulty holding the optimism and despair at the same time. But, Stockdale figured out how to master it, which means that it is not impossible; rather, it means that he has an invaluable lesson to teach us, if we are willing to learn. And, according to the Law of Diffusion of Innovations and Morphic Resonance, as more of us apply and master Stockdale’s paradoxical mindset, the easier it will become for the rest of the population to apply and master.
Stockdale’s observations of the attitudes of his fellow prisoners are also crucial to our discussion. When asked who didn’t make it out of the camp, he succinctly related how toxic positivity played a major role in casualty rates: “Oh, that’s easy, the optimists” (Collins, 2001, p. 85). He went on to explain that these were the individuals who would pin all of their hopes on getting out by Thanksgiving, then Christmas, then Easter, and when they weren’t released as expected on these arbitrarily determined release dates, they’d be crushed, over and over again. These individuals didn’t allow themselves to accept the reality they were currently residing in, they dissociated themselves from it, as a way to cope, by focusing only on their point of escape from the pain. They kept searching for the golden ticket, that one thing that was going to change everything, that was going to save them from their horrific reality. All of their energy went to this, went to living for the golden ticket moment they’d be released. They didn’t focus enough of their energy on how to manage day-to-day survival in a horrible situation, how to live in the present moment. They didn’t ask themselves, “What is this trying to teach me? What can I gain from this experience? What is my purpose here?” These are questions which can turn a hopeless experience into one of empowerment. The optimists just focused on desperately trying to escape their reality. And, when their optimism failed them, repeatedly, they gave up. Rather than focusing his energy in one place, Stockdale divided his energy between optimism and coping with his painful reality, seeing adversity as a test, teacher and vehicle of empowerment; this is likely why he survived. Of the optimists, and his contrasting mindset, he said,
“…they died of a broken heart. This is a very important lesson. You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose—with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be” (Collins, 2001, p. 85).
Stockdale’s wisdom is especial timely during our current state of world affairs. The optimistic mindset that failed his fellow POWs can be seen in the collective’s behavioral response to and attitude towards the COVID-19 pandemic: Eradicate the virus and return to normal life as quickly as possible. We aren’t truly living in the reality of what we are facing. We are simply living for the moment the virus will be eradicated and we can return to life “as normal.” As soon as infection rates begin to decline, we think we’re home free, that we’ve been handed the golden ticket. We remove our masks, stop social distancing and lift restrictions. What the continued infection rates, new coronavirus variants and reinfection rates are showing us is that our current approach is ineffectual and harmful from a survival perspective, especially when we consider the Stockdale Paradox. We will fare much better as individuals and as a culture if we simply accept the fact that the coronavirus isn’t going anywhere anytime soon, realize that we need to adjust our behaviors (and expectations) accordingly, and at the same time, hold hope for a better future, whatever that might look like (Groysberg & Abrahams, 2020). If we don’t, we will have more than a pandemic to deal with, we will have a mental health epidemic on our hands. Unfortunately, we are already experiencing the beginnings of one. Experts in Italy and France are reporting that rates of depression and anxiety have doubled since the pandemic began, and in the United States, the surgeon general has expressed concerns over the adverse effects of the pandemic on mental health (Cohen, 2021).
The Problems with Unbridled Optimism and the Radical Acceptance Solution
Marsha Linehan, the creator of Dialectal Behavior Therapy (DBT), describes a mindset similar to Stockdale’s, required for healing trauma and other emotional wounds. This mindset also underscores the problems with toxic positivity, spiritual bypassing and our response to the pandemic. She called this mindset, radical acceptance. It is exactly what it sounds like, a radical acceptance of our current and past realities, just as they are, like them or not, not as we wish them to be. And, like Stockdale, she elucidates the importance of striving for a better future alongside this acceptance, rather than falling into complete denial, despair and inaction.
“Radical acceptance doesn’t mean you don’t try to change things ... You can’t change anything if you don’t accept it, because if you don’t accept it, you’ll try to change something else that you think is reality” (Linehan, 2017).
The “something else that you think is reality” she’s referring to is the same type of reality the optimistic POWs and COVID-19 optimists were/are seeking, an anything but here, reality. When terrible things happen, we often engage in a sophisticated form of the denial defense, an if only mindset. We don’t necessarily deny that the event happened, we just try to re-write our lives with a better ending (or better current reality), “If only I wasn’t abused, then my life would be better in x, y, z ways,” “If only this virus were eradicated, then…,” and we proceed to live in some variation of this hypothetical reality. Interestingly, this mindset only considers an idealistic future; it fails to acknowledge the possibility that our lives could have actually turned out much worse. Many science fiction writers have depicted these dismal alternate realities in books and movies: Someone goes back in time to change one element of history, and upon their return to the present, they arrive to find a dystopian reality or a world in which they were never born. These stories portray literal changes to historical events, but they also serve as a metaphor to illustrate how we all engage in this revisionist history mindset in our everyday lives but fail to consider dystopian alternatives. The problem with this mindset, is that rather than utilizing our energy to process and heal the pain from the painful event, this mindset directs us to spend our energy trapped in a victim role, wishing the event had never happened, being angry that the event happened, blaming the perpetrator or event (or ourselves) for ruining our lives and in so doing, effectively missing the opportunity to take ownership of our lives moving forward. The event that happened continues to drain our power and controls our lives. This unhelpful mindset is exactly what Linehan is describing in her quote above.
When we don’t face and process the reality of what has happened or is happening to us; that is, when we deny it, we are implicitly sending ourselves the message that we can’t handle it: It’s too shameful; it’s too terrifying; it’s too ugly; it’s too much to bear. Our denial defense is completely disempowering, much like the original wounding experience itself. With our denial, we perpetuate the disempowerment of the wounding experience, perpetuate the narrative that we can’t handle it, and we let the experience continue to have power over us. And, as discussed above, we end up living in an alternate reality of sorts where the experience didn’t really take place. Ultimately, from this place, we can do little to affect positive change in our lives moving forward. Pretending the terrible event didn’t happen or isn’t currently happening can be a useful defense against a short-term stressor and can sometimes be useful for those in positions of complete powerlessness (e.g., children living in abusive homes, people living in institutional settings), but is not a useful long-term strategy (e.g., as a response to a pandemic, as the continued response of an adult who survived childhood trauma) because it requires denying, dissociating, metaphorically cutting off a part of ourselves to maintain the charade. It requires living in a false, alternate reality; and as Stockdale points out, doing so can lower our chances of survival.
Another drawback of utilizing the if only mindset variant of the denial defense is that we end up wishing our lives away. We spend so much of our energy focusing on the time when things will be better, or the version of reality in which this bad thing never happened, that we miss our present reality. Yes, we may have been dealt a shitty hand, and facing the truth of what happened in the past or is happening in the present is painful, uncomfortable and not preferable. But, we just get this one life. Painful or not. There are many people who don’t get to keep on living, whose lives are cut short. We have to make a choice about whether we want to check out mentally (i.e., dissociate) before our time is actually up, effectively leaving us to lead a half-life, or if we want to be fully present in the life we have been given, living it to the fullest. For better or worse. When there’s a lot of pain, this is a tough call. But, when many of us make the choice to check out mentally, we do so unconsciously, and in so doing, we lose our free will, we lose the opportunity to consciously choose whether we truly want to check out or not. The problem with dissociating to escape pain is that we don’t just escape the pain, other negative emotions and negative experiences, we escape all of the positive emotions and experiences too, like love, joy, excitement and miracles. That’s the tradeoff. It is possible to have a miraculous, joy-filled life following painful, traumatic events, but we have to decide to be present and fully accept the pain first. It’s a real mother fucker of a process, but it is worth it.
The mindset required for this process is a dialectical one. This involves both accepting the painful truth of the event, which includes the feelings that come with it (e.g., anger, blame, shame, guilt, grief, pride, fear), while at the same time holding hope for a brighter future and taking steps to change, heal and move toward that brighter future. This future is not a future in which the event never happened, this is a future in which this event no longer has power over us, a future in which we may even find some meaningful lessons in this event, as impossible and perverse as that may seem. When we practice radical acceptance of our painful realities and take practical steps toward change (e.g., ask for help, learn to set boundaries, take better care of ourselves, work on changing our unhealthy behaviors), not only do we see direct change resulting from these steps, we often see change that is indirect, mysterious. In some cases, this change could even be called miraculous. This is change that results from us finding a way to tap into source consciousness, the place from which miracles truly can arise. If we go back to Hawkins’ (2002) conceptualization of consciousness, this possibility makes sense. When we move into acceptance, we raise our energy vibration well above the tipping point of courage (200); we raise it to 350, and with that, we develop a heightened ability to tap into source consciousness, where miracles occur. When we stay in our if only mindset, we are operating from one of the ego’s defense mechanisms (i.e., denial), driven by emotions below the level of courage, which makes it very difficult to access source consciousness and the miracles that arise from it.
The example of miraculous change I’m going to share requires me to be really vulnerable with you. Vulnerability feels dangerous because sometimes people use our vulnerabilities against us, as weapons to harm us. I’m going to trust that you won’t do that to me and trust that even if you do, I’ll be able to handle it. Here goes. Clinical psychology Ph.D. programs are incredibly competitive and difficult to get into, more difficult to get into than medical school (8% vs 45% acceptance rate, respectively; Association of American Medical Colleges, 2008; Norcross & Kuhle, 2011). Many people do not get in on their first try. I am one of those people. I still carry some shame around this because part of me fears this means that I’m not good enough, smart enough, or competent enough to be in this field. Will people respect what I have to say? Will clients trust me to help them? This is classic imposter syndrome. The first time I applied and was rejected, I was devasted. The second time I applied and was rejected, I was beyond devasted. I went to a very dark place. Some loved ones tried to pull me out using toxic positivity, “Don’t worry, something better will come along.” This made me feel worse, as toxic positivity usually does, because they completely missed the gravity and pain of my experience. Some even told me to just give up and try something easier, “Why don’t you just get a Ph.D. in counseling psychology?” This also made me feel worse, like they didn’t think I was good enough either, but it also made me even more determined to prove them wrong.
I allowed myself to fully accept the painful reality of the situation I was in, that I had been rejected yet again, that the odds were against me, and that it would be another year before I could reapply and even then, there was no guarantee I’d get in (radical acceptance). This was incredibly painful because it required me to confront the demons (i.e., traumas) that had erroneously taught me that I was worthless and stupid. Luckily, through the yells of these self-deprecating voices, I heard a different truth. That truth said that I had what it took, that I was good enough. And there was also something in me that wanted this degree so badly that I refused to give up (holding hope for a better future).
This truth was a truth I could feel deep within the fabric of my being, in my bones. It was a resonant feeling, a feeling that made me feel hopeful, nauseated and tearful, whereas the negative “truth,” that I wasn’t good enough and should just give up, produced a dissonant feeling; it made me feel incredibly angry, like I wanted to punch someone in the face. Now that I know more about how my intuition/soul/source consciousness speaks to me, I know that this was my soul saying “yes” to a Ph.D. in clinical psychology and “no” to giving up and settling for something else. I call the resonant “yes” feeling my puke cry, and I get it whenever I know something is true for me. And, whenever I feel like punching someone in the face, I know I’ve gotten a “no,” that I’m hearing an untruth or have experienced a violation (e.g., of my autonomy, of my boundaries, of my values). The voice of truth varies for different people, but here are some common examples in case you are curious about what this might look like for you. Your truth might come in the form of a resonant feeling or it might “ring true” for you; you might feel goosebumps, a chill/cool sensation, a hot flash, a flash/jolt of energy, a feeling of joy/excitement, a funny feeling in your stomach, nausea, tears; your ears might ring; you might laugh when you hear a piece of wisdom or a message; you might hear a small, quiet voice; or you might hear a message in an accent or different language (Ogren, 2019). The voice of untruth or a violation (of autonomy, boundaries, values, etc.) often show up as anger, a violent urge, a gut-punch feeling, or a “fuck no” attitude. Start paying attention to these feelings and experiences when they show up; collect some data about what’s going on at that time, about what you ultimately chose to do, and about how things turned out afterwards. With some practice, you’ll begin to fine tune your intuitive antenna.
When I realized which truth I should listen to, I got to work. I figured out what I needed to do to strengthen my Ph.D. application, and took aligned action: I applied for competitive research jobs and began aggressively studying to re-take the GRE (taking practical steps to make a direct change from the place of radical acceptance). After a few weeks had passed, I got a call from a friend about an opening for a research position in Philadelphia, with one of the most famous psychiatrists in the world, Aaron T. Beck, the founder of Cognitive Therapy. Excuse me? What did you say? Aaron Beck? I couldn’t believe the opportunity that had been presented to me. Just a few weeks earlier, I was a Ph.D. program reject, now this? Oh, how the tides had turned. This was a job most psychologists would give their right arm for, the chance to work with one of the most influential people in the field, THE Aaron T. Beck. I knew the odds were against me, but I applied anyway, because at this point, I recognized that events weren’t transpiring on the rational, third dimensional plane any longer. And, by the power of forces I don’t fully understand and against all odds, I got the job, and began packing up my small town, Midwestern life to move to the big city. I couldn’t believe it, and frankly, I still have a hard time comprehending the entire experience. No Ph.D. program wanted me, but Aaron Beck did. Maybe I wasn’t a complete moron after all. In that moment, I knew that I’d just been handed a golden ticket, that not only would I get into graduate school, that I’d have my pick of career options after I graduated. The miracle didn’t stop there. Shortly after I made it out to Philadelphia, I was selected to work directly with Dr. Beck as an editor on his latest book. And after that, he promoted me to a highly coveted position, to the role of his personal assistant. These were experiences I could have never imagined in my wildest dreams, let alone in my time of despair and rejection from graduate school. I have revisited this story many times over the years, especially when I feel like all hope is lost. It reminds me that even in our darkest hour, miracles can happen.
Now, I know I’ve been talking about how finding the golden ticket turned my life around in my darkest hour, but earlier, I said that searching for the golden ticket was what sealed the tragic fate of the optimists in the POW camp. So, are you supposed to search for a golden ticket or not? Okay, the key distinction here is the word, search. The golden ticket can be what saves us, but we can’t go looking for it. We have to radically accept our current reality, take steps to change it and then let go and let the ticket come to us (but without expecting it to come to us). It’s a complete mindfuck, I know, but it is what is required for the golden ticket to actually show up, if it wants to. We need to be in that higher vibrational energy mindset of radical acceptance. Sometimes we get a golden ticket, sometimes we don’t. If we don’t get one, it doesn’t mean the universe hates us, it’s just means we didn’t get a golden ticket this time. We work to radically accept this fact and we move on. But, when we do get this golden ticket, it is clear to us that something very special has happened, that a rupture in the fabric of space-time has occurred and has allowed something otherworldly to come into the conventional world. This story is a great example what Jung and Pauli called synchronicity and provides evidence for the phenomenon of source consciousness, breaking through into the third dimension (Cambray, 2009).
We also need to understand that although the golden ticket may deliver us from our suffering, if we do not learn our lessons and heal our wounds, we will not be able to anchor into the golden ticket experience or the life we want. So, in my example, my golden ticket was exactly what was needed to pull me out of the darkness I was in and it was what I needed to finally get into graduate school. It even made me feel better about myself: smarter, confident, competent, valuable. But it wasn’t enough. I was plagued with feelings of inadequacy for years after that and suffered greatly in my graduate program because every setback and piece of abusive or negative feedback pulled me back into a dark place. I had not fully healed my wounds and developed a confident, stable sense of self, independent from my external environment. When things were going well and I was in healthy environments, around healthy people, I was fine, but when faced with disappointments, toxic environments (e.g., academia, an abusive marriage) and toxic people, I absorbed those experiences, believed the messages, felt responsible and saw all of this as further evidence that I was a piece of shit, destined to be mistreated and tossed about by the whims of fate. It wasn’t until I did some intensive healing work that I was able to extricate myself from these environments and people, and develop a positive sense of self, independent of experiences, feedback, messages and validation from the external environment.
Ableism and Victim-Perpetration
The Stockdale Paradox and Linehan’s radical acceptance outline a helpful mindset and corresponding actions we can utilize when confronting our painful current and past realities, and they offer a solution to spiritual bypassing and toxic positivity. Unfortunately, spiritual bypassing, toxic positivity and ableism are rampant in the self-help and spiritual communities, and even in the field of mental health, with its managed care (insurance)-driven manualized treatments designed to efficiently relieve surface-level symptoms in 12 sessions. Ableism in particular is so ingrained in our cultural and personal narratives that it pervades even the solutions to spiritual bypassing and toxic positivity I’ve discussed above (i.e., the Stockdale Paradox and radical acceptance). Ableism and its “pull yourself up by your bootstraps mentality” are so ingrained in me that they pervade this entire article, despite my awareness of them. I even provided a couple of examples, Stockdale’s survival of a POW camp and my personal example of overcoming graduate school rejection, that highlight this bootstrap mentality. These examples may perpetuate the belief that if you just try hard enough, your life will be better, which may also imply that when things aren’t good, it’s because you didn’t try hard enough (or are otherwise to blame). This mindset also assumes some level of autonomy and capacity for major change. These are not present in every person and in every situation, so it is inappropriate to apply this mindset universally. Some people are constrained by physical, cognitive and mental health limitations as well as situational limitations, so choice and changemaking may be elusive, if not impossible options.
At the same time, many of us give up too quickly, don’t try at all or use victimhood to avoid doing hard and painful things. It’s a delicate dance between completely collapsing into the experience, jumping over the experience and into something positive, and just being there in the experience. I know on my own journey, ableism and its bootstrap mentality got in the way of me asking for help and didn’t allow me to fully feel the weight of the painful things that had happened to me, which impacted my ability to heal. At the same time, many in our culture use victimhood as an excuse, and also as a weapon, as in the case of victim-perpetration. Victim-perpetration is a term used to describe using a wounded or disadvantaged status to manipulate or control other people, to use this power over them, in order to get personal needs met (e.g., guilting someone into helping). And, this is never okay, to abuse our power or victim status, no matter how much we’ve been victimized. There is definitely a time and place for experiencing victimhood on the journey (not victim-perpetration) and also a time and place to stop letting it have power over us. Where this line falls for each person and in each scenario is not for me to decide.
What Happens When We Don’t Evolve Our Consciousness?
Let’s talk about what happens when we don’t reset our thermostats, when we don’t evolve our consciousness, aside from total world destruction. What does this all have to do with YOU? Well, what this has to do with you is that if you don’t do your work to heal your wounds and ultimately raise your energy vibration, the life of your dreams will have a really difficult time making its way to you. And, if it does make its way to you, it will probably spontaneously combust. Bummer, huh? Remember the lottery winners? Yeah. Double bummer. Not only that, as we’ve discussed, when we don’t do our work, we can harm others, are vulnerable to exploitation and drain energy from the collective in the process. Triple bummer.
In The Big Leap, Gay Hendricks (2009) explains our tendency to unconsciously self-sabotage. When we experience too much positive emotion, we hit what he calls the Upper Limit, which is that set point on our respective thermostats. At this Upper Limit, strange things begin to happen: We get sick before the big date, we get in a car accident on the way to a job interview, we “accidentally” get drunk before our final exam, we close a big deal at work and then go home to have a nasty fight with our spouse, we begin to feel joy and then we start telling ourselves how much we suck and how nothing will ever work out. Back down to “reality” we fall, back down to the devil we know. Let me be clear. We don’t usually do these things on purpose and sometimes these experiences appear completely out of our control, but these experiences are too highly correlated with our potential for happiness to be dismissed as mere coincidence. I know you know what I’m talking about. The Law of Attraction also describes this phenomenon, that we attract what we put out into the world, that our dominant energy vibration predicts the type of reality we experience (Hicks & Hicks, 2006). As discussed earlier, this doesn’t mean that we are to blame for every misfortune in our lives. These concepts are meant as general frameworks for understanding human experience; they do not explain everything.
One way we can reset our thermostats is by healing our wounds and overcoming our fears with the help of therapy. In other words, by addressing the roots of our Upper Limit Problem, or complex, as Jung called it (Singer, 1972). Another thing we can do is to practice tolerating positive emotions. Essentially, we need to do exposure therapy for positive events and emotions the same way we would do exposure therapy for feared events and emotions. Crazy, I know, but humans are funny creatures. As you’ll recall from the discussion of our operating system, Fear 1.0, most of our systems are programmed to see good things and feelings as threatening, so we need to reprogram our systems to see them as safe. We also need to work on changing the old beliefs we have about positive emotions and experiences, those beliefs that show up to sabotage us, talking us back down into the dismal old reality of scarcity and victimhood. In so doing, we begin to see positive emotions and experiences as life giving, rather than life threatening. Guess where you can learn how to tolerate positive emotions and change your beliefs about them? That’s right, therapy! You can also try some of the other options I list at the end.
So, why do we want to reset our thermostats, to overcome our Upper Limit Problem? What’s the end game? The end game is our Zone of Genius: the soul-led, life of our dreams. Our Upper Limit Problem is what keeps us from it (Hendricks, 2009). If we apply Hawkins’ (2002) consciousness model to Hendricks’ concepts of the Zone of Genius and the Upper Limit Problem, we see that the Zone of Genius is akin to tapping into source consciousness at level 500, love, and is soul directed. The Upper Limit Problem is akin to the noise emitted by the lower levels of consciousness (below level 200, courage), which obscures the higher levels of consciousness (Zone of Genius), and is ego directed.
And, although Henrick’s book is written from a career perspective, his concepts can apply to any aspect of life. There are four different zones we can operate in at a particular time, in a particular area of our lives. The titles are fairly self-explanatory but I’ll provide some explanation anyway.
Zone of Incompetence
Tasks in this zone are things you suck at. Or, things you really dislike. Hendricks (2009) says that we should never spend our time in these activities. They elicit negative (lower vibration) emotions, drain our energy, and take time away from doing things we enjoy. In other words, they keep us out of our Zone of Genius and lower our consciousness level. Mowing the lawn falls into this category for me. I hate everything about mowing the lawn: handling the gas, smelling the exhaust fumes, having the sun beat down on me, getting sweaty, getting dirty, experiencing physical exertion, listening to the noise. Hate it. Hate it. Hate it. For years I have mowed my own lawn, dreading it so much that I generally go at least a month between mowings, which as you can imagine, makes my lawn mower very angry and makes the task worse. Frustrating the task further, my lawnmower is a 40-year-old model that my dad found at the local dump and fixed up for me, so it is especially temperamental, prone to overheating, flooding and not starting at all.
Why do I continue to mow? Because I was taught that it’s lazy and extravagant to pay someone to do something you can do yourself; it’s a sign of weakness and incompetence. And, my lawnmower? It runs 75% of the time, so it would be “wasteful” to spend money on a new one. Unhelpful beliefs and behavioral patterns such as these are primarily what keep us locked in the Zone of Incompetence. The last time I mowed my lawn it was 90 degrees out, my lawnmower quit several times, the pull cord didn’t want to work, I ran over a yellow jacket nest, and the lawnmower completely quit working when I had only a 10’x15’ section left. So, I had to get out the hedge trimmers and cut the rest of the grass by hand, on my hands and knees. When I was finished, I was pissed off, collapsed onto the ground melodramatically, cried and proceeded to feel cranky for the rest of the day. Luckily for me, I was reading Hendricks’ (2009) book at the time and saw clearly what had just transpired. I vowed to never mow my lawn again. I would hire someone to do it for me. Mowing the lawn is the worst waste of my time and emotional energy, and it is completely worth it for me to pay someone to do it for me.
Let me take a moment to provide a caveat: Hendricks (2009) says that if a task isn’t in our Zone of Genius, but we really love it, it’s still okay to do it. So, if we love to sing but have a dreadful voice, we should sing anyway, because it’s not draining our energy or eliciting negative emotions (in us anyway). In fact, I’d even go so far as to argue that if we really love something, even if we aren’t great at it (or aren’t great at it yet), it actually has the potential to put us in our Zone of Genius. Using the singing example, I’m sure all of us can think of some examples of terrible singers throughout history who have managed to become famous, who have managed to reach their Zone of Genius, simply because they loved what they were doing so much (e.g., William Hung).
Zone of Competence
Our Zone of Competence includes tasks we perform at a level of mediocrity or tasks from which we derive a moderate amount of enjoyment. Other people can do these tasks much better than we can and these tasks don’t light us up inside. Marketing is one such task for me. For years I’d neglected it, then tried to do it on my own, but just muddled through, never making much progress, with my business suffering in the process. Turns out, marketing is kind of a big deal when you run a business. But, some of the same unhelpful beliefs that kept me mowing my lawn in my Zone of Incompetence also kept me from asking for help with my marketing. I was also taught throughout college and graduate school that marketing is the evil, illegitimate progeny of psychology, who uses the gifts psychology has bestowed upon them to manipulate and control people. So, people in the field of psychology hate marketing. This is fine if you live in academia, but if you live in the business world, this belief is a huge block to success. So, I had some major internal work to do before I could move out of my Zone of Competence with marketing. But, move I did. I went to therapy and took classes to change my unhelpful beliefs, then I hired a marketing person who taught me how to market in ways that were in line with my values (which don’t include manipulating and controlling people). And, you know what? I’ve learned that I actually really love marketing. It’s like cracking a code for me, which puts me into my mad-scientist, Zone of Genius.
But, I spent a lot of time in my Zone of Competence before I got the help I needed to get out. As a result, my business and I paid the price. Indeed, Hendricks (2009) cautions against spending too much time in the Zone of Competence. This is the place where dreams go to die. He observes that people who spend the bulk of their time in the Zone of Competence tend to develop mysterious physical ailments and mental health problems. He suspects that this is because, when operating in the sub-Genius Zones, we are not able to tap into our soul’s energy (i.e., source consciousness), which is what gives us strength and vitality. And, for some reason, these mental health problems and mystery ailments seem especially pronounced in the Zone of Competence. There is a series of science fiction books called The Shadow and Bone Trilogy, which chronicle a group of people with superhuman abilities: the Grisha (Bardugo, 2017). When the Grisha don’t use their powers, they fall ill and begin to languish; when they use their superpowers, they become strong and revitalized. This phenomenon, although science fiction, accurately describes what happens to all of us when we don’t live from our soul’s purpose. This also maps onto what we know about the levels of consciousness. When we operate at the lower levels of consciousness, we feel bad, lacking energy, drive and vitality (we lose our mojo). When we tap into source consciousness, and operate at the higher levels, we feel better, gaining energy, motivation and vitality. And, if we are able to move high enough on the consciousness scale, with a better ability to tap into source consciousness, we develop superhuman abilities, just like the Grisha.
Zone of Excellence
This is where most of us live. Our Zone of Excellence includes tasks at which we excel and may even feel contented performing. We are comfortable here, we’re good at what we do, life is predictable, we are dependable, and others generally want us to stay here because we bring value and stability from this place. However, as much as we may excel, we are not tapping into our soul’s wellspring, into source consciousness. And, ultimately, we will languish in this place of contented excellence. The deterioration will be less pronounced and rapid than the deterioration in the lower two zones, but deteriorate we will. Put plainly, this is the place where dreams go to die, slowly. Because there is such a gradual decline, most of us don’t realize what’s happening until we wake up one day and realize that much of our life has passed us by. This is often when we have the proverbial midlife crisis. We will most definitely get nudges from the universe along the way, urging us to make the leap into our Zone of Genius, but we are usually so comfortable and content in our Zone of Excellence that we rarely listen. Sometimes, when we don’t listen to the nudges, the universe will drop kick us into our Zone of Genius with some really painful life events or mistakes (Hendricks, 2009). If this happens, I strongly urge you to heed the warning. The universe was kind enough to do this for me. I talk more about my personal journey into my Zone of Genius here.
For my neighbor, John, being a medical doctor is in his Zone of Excellence. He likes his work, he’s good at what he does and he brings stability and value to his family from this place. From the outside looking in, you’d assume that he’s functioning in his Zone of Genius; after all, who wouldn’t love to be a medical doctor? He has the career so many of us only dream of. Not only that, he’d have to be really passionate about his job to devote so much time, money and energy to it. But, if you asked John, you’d learn that practicing as a medical doctor is not in his Zone of Genius. He’d tell you that “being a troll" is actually what lights him up inside, is actually the role that puts him in his Zone of Genius. (If you are unfamiliar with the term, troll, it’s what the kids are calling someone who intentionally incites others for their own amusement, using “inflammatory, insincere, digressive, extraneous, or off-topic” messaging; Wikipedia-Internet Troll). He loves to be a disrupter, to say and do things that shock and shake up the status quo. But, being a troll isn’t really “a thing,” well, at least not a thing you can get paid for, so has John quit his day job to skulk about the shadows of the internet? Or, is he slowly fading away, languishing in a hospital job somewhere? No, he’s actually found a way to get paid to be a troll at his hospital day job. Seriously. He’s taken on an HR role at the hospital, where it’s his job to give other medical professionals really blunt and unpleasant feedback. Most people would hate this job. But, he’s completely in his element. And, surprisingly, the medical professionals on the receiving end are actually able to accept and respect the feedback he gives them, which is not a typical response. He’s happy and they’re happy (well, as happy as you can be receiving blunt, negative feedback). It seems almost miraculous, but that’s what the Zone of Genius is all about.
Why do people stay in their Zone of Excellence? For the same reasons we stay in the other zones: our unhelpful beliefs, our egos, a variety of sociocultural factors, and a social psychology phenomenon called, the sunk cost fallacy. The sunk costs fallacy states that when we put a significant amount of time, energy, or money into something, we are more likely to stick with it, even when the costs outweigh the benefits. This is part of the reason why people stay in abusive relationships (part of the reason, there are many complicated reasons). They’ve put so much time and energy into making the relationship work and have endured so much pain and suffering that it’s difficult to walk away. Their brain tells them, “It must really be worth it if you are willing to go through all of this,” and so they stay. Careers in our Zone of Excellence generally involve a high level of temporal, energetic and/or monetary investment: We’ve spent 20 years in the field, perfecting our craft; we’ve put our blood, sweat and tears into our work; we have a mountain of student loan debt. Plus, we feel relatively satisfied here (and, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it). For these reasons, the sunk cost fallacy says we will have a difficult time leaving our Zone of Excellence. There are, of course, other reasons why we have difficulty making the leap to our Zone of Genius. We will discuss those later.
Zone of Genius
This is your calling. Your soul’s desire. The tasks in this zone energize you and bring you joy. If you are working in your Zone of Genius, it won’t feel like work, it will feel like fun. This is what you would do with your time if your bills were paid in perpetuity and you had no obligations. We’ve already talked about John, and his Zone of Genius position as an HR troll. What’s mine? Being a mad scientist wizard. It’s okay if you don’t think that’s a thing. In fact, that’s kind of the point. The Zone of Genius is all about moving outside of the box prescribed by polite society and into the undefined creative space that makes your soul happy. A few years back, when I was drop kicked into my Zone of Genius, I stopped practicing as a traditional therapist and went rogue, forgoing licensure and pursuing esoteric practices, like dream interpretation and the use of extrasensory perception. I also started to spend a good portion of my time researching, writing and inventing. I’ve never been happier and my clients are seeing better results. Want to know the other wild thing about living on your Zone of Genius? You can actually change how time moves. What? Yeah, it’s called Einstein Time and it basically means that we become masters of the universe (Hendricks, 2009). While on Einstein Time, we begin to experience space-time as it truly is, not fixed and bound by gravity, as it’s typically experienced on Earth. Time begins to expand for us. As cool as this topic is, it is a rabbit hole I’m going to have to save for another time, perhaps another article (or a book?). Stay tuned.
You’ve probably heard of the Great Resignation, which is the term used to describe the phenomenon of increased rates of voluntary resignation despite increased rates of unemployment that began in the spring of 2021. The Great Resignation is a function of people taking stock of their lives, recognizing that the drawbacks and risks of their jobs (e.g., wage stagnation, time commitment, poor and unfair working conditions) outweighed the benefits, realizing that their current jobs weren’t fulfilling them, and that there were other aspects of life that were more important (e.g., health, family, enjoyment; Wikipedia-Great Resignation). The Great Resignation is also a great example of people clearing their paths so they might make their way into their Zone of Genius, whether they are fully conscious of this fact or not. In other words, the Great Resignation has provided a unique opportunity for more people to move into their Zone of Genius, tap into source consciousness, and in so doing, help themselves and humanity in the process.
Are You Living in Your Zone of Genius?
Now for the million-dollar question: Are you living in your Zone of Genius? Here’s the deal. Very, very few people in America are living in their Zone of Genius. It is the antithesis of our cultural narrative. So, even if you think you are, I challenge you to get really honest with yourself. Begin by asking yourself the following questions and pay attention to your immediate answers. By “immediate answers,” I mean the answers that show up within 500 milliseconds. Anything that shows up after that is your conscious, ego mind, trying to rationalize your current life choices in order to keep you playing it safe, small and status quo. Here are the questions:
Are you excited to get out of bed in the morning?
Do you love your life?
Do you look forward to your workday?
If you answered with an enthusiastic, “Yes!” Or said, “Yes, that’s true about 90% of the time.” Then, you are likely already living in your Zone of Genius. If you answered with, “No,” “Meh,” “I don’t know,” “I’m happy enough,” “I’m better off than most people I know,” “I’d be happy if…,” “No, but I just can’t make the change right now,” then you are most definitely not living in your Zone of Genius. And, it’s time for you to decide if you want to continue playing it safe, small and status quo (and slowly fade away), or if you want to make the leap into your Zone of Genius. “Do you want to be delighted with your life or contented with it?” (Kretchmer, 2018). (Or, dreading it? Or, numb?) It’s up to you.
Identifying Your Zone of Genius and Barriers to Its Identification
If you are ready to make the leap, contemplating making the leap or if you are simply curious about what your Zone of Genius might be, you can ask yourself the following questions:
“If you could wave a magic wand and do anything with your life, what would it be?”
“If your bills were paid in perpetuity and you had no obligations, how would you spend your time?”
If you answered, “I’d do nothing,” this is a sign that you are exhausted from living in your current (sub-Genius) zone and from navigating the toxic culture we live in. You need some downtime to rest and restore your energy. You may need to voluntarily take some time off from work and other obligations, or at least scale back your responsibilities before your body gives out by getting sick, before your mind breaks down, or before other mysterious circumstances show up that force you to stop, rest and restore. There may also be some internal work that needs to be done in order to clear away the blocks that are standing in the way of your Zone of Genius. After you’ve taken the time you need, come back to these questions. Who knows, maybe you’ll still get the same answer, “Nothing.” And, if that’s the case, I’m sure you can lead a full, invigorating life of doing absolutely nothing.
I remember a time, a few years back, when I was living in my Zone of Excellence, when my primary goal was to retire in 3-5 years. I couldn’t conceive of another 30 years in the workforce. There was no way I’d make it that long without having a nervous breakdown or dropping dead. And, because I have extraordinary skills of deduction, I was able to devise a plan to make this early retirement goal possible. Seriously. Maybe I’ll write an article on it at some point for those of you who are curious. Anyway. Before I could retire, the universe burnt my Zone of Excellence to the ground and I had no choice but to cut back my hours, do a major overhaul of my mental health and completely change the way I worked. Could I afford to cut back my hours? Umm, not even close. I was destitute and had no safety net. Did I want to do intensive PTSD treatment? Fuck no. It was excruciating, exhausting and expensive. Did I want to change the way I worked? Not a chance. I’d spent almost two decades studying the traditional methodology and career practices of psychotherapy, and I didn’t have the bandwidth to start over and learn something completely new (the sunk cost fallacy). But, I was lucid enough to know that when the universe sends a sign that says, “Wake the fuck up and get your shit together,” I needed to wake the fuck up and get my shit together because the next “sign” was going to be much worse. It’s been four years since then (2018), and although I certainly don’t have it all figured out yet, I’m happier, healthier and freer than I was in my previous life. And, I have absolutely no interest in retiring. I love the work I do and know that the world needs my unique gifts. I wouldn’t feel fulfilled and energized if I quit and sat on a beach for the rest of my life.
If you answered the Zone of Genius questions with, “I don’t want to do anything. I just want someone else to take care of me or rescue me.” We’ve all been here. The idea of someone else taking care of us and our lives sounds pretty nice. But, in actuality, it’s not very satisfying and it can be pretty disempowering, stunting our growth. Sometimes, we really are dependent upon others to take care of us, at least in part: when we are children, when we have certain physical, cognitive or mental health issues, when we don’t have the financial ability to support ourselves, when we are trapped in abusive or oppressive environments, when we are institutionalized, when we are imprisoned or enslaved. These circumstances make it incredibly difficult, if not impossible to act autonomously and make change.
But, in many cases, when we are in a perpetual state of wanting to be rescued or taken care of, what has happened is that we’ve experienced abuse and neglect. We come from a family and/or cultural system that didn’t meet our physical and emotional needs; we didn’t have adequate caretaking when we were helpless and in need of caretaking. As a result, not only did our needs go unmet, we also didn’t learn how to meet our own needs adequately because we didn’t see that behavior role modeled to us. So, as adults, we might not know how to complete basic tasks like cooking and cleaning, we might forget to eat, might have trouble budgeting money, might become disorganized easily, we might become easily overwhelmed and emotionally dysregulated, we might not take care of problems until there’s an emergency, and so on. When we grow up in these environments, as adults, we also have trouble trusting that our needs will be met in the future, even if we have lots of evidence stating that they will. This can lead to feelings of panic and anxiety, especially during periods of uncertainty. So, as adults, when we find ourselves falling into a desire to be taken care of or rescued, what is likely happening is that we’ve fallen into an old programming loop, created in an abusive or neglectful childhood, where we are constantly searching for a caregiver in the outside world to meet our needs but are unable to find one.
The trouble is, when we become adults, no one wants to take care of us anymore. People in our culture assume we should be able to take care of ourselves, even if that’s not the case. We should have a culture that feels compassion for the needs of adults and has adequate social programming in place to help, but we don’t. That’s just the truth of it, unattractive as it may be. So, unfortunately, in our current system, we can have compassion for the helpless place we are in, but we also have to be realistic and radically accept the current state of the culture. We have to understand that no one is coming to rescue us, no one is going to take care of us (at least it’s very unlikely that they will). The best we are going to get is help, but we will need to ask for it and we will need to pay for some of it. We’ll need to heal our wounds, face our fears, change our old belief systems and learn the skills we need to take care of ourselves. Most importantly, we are going to have to make a commitment to not give up on ourselves, to not repeat the abuse and neglect that happened to us as children, when the adults in our lives gave up on us and didn’t take care of us. As we do this, the collective needs to work to develop a sociocultural system that cares about and adequately addresses the needs of both children and adults, who need extra help. It’s the collective’s responsibility to stand up and speak for those who don’t have power and who can’t speak for themselves, including Mother Earth (although I’d argue that she’s actually speaking to us pretty loudly with her fires, plagues and floods; we just aren’t listening).
Further Identifying Your Unique Gifts and Zone of Genius
If you answered the Zone of Genius questions with an action word or job title, even a fictitious one, fantastic. Proceed to the following questions. They will help you further identify your unique gifts and ultimately, will delineate your Zone of Genius. Ask yourself:
“What’s my superpower?”
“What do I excel at?”
If you come up with something general like “problem solving,” dig deeper and ask:
“What is it about me specifically that makes me so good at that?”
“What’s a good example of me using this superpower?”
“How do I uniquely display this skill?”
“If the apocalypse arrived, what would I bring to the table? What skills would help me and others survive?”
When I was first trying to figure this out, the general concepts I came up with were problem solving and reading situations, events and people. After digging deeper, I discovered that what it is about me that makes me so good at reading situations, events and people is this: I just get these knowings about them, certain feelings, thoughts, images or memories pop into my mind, or I have dreams about them that provide me with additional information. When I explored this further, I realized it fell under the category of extrasensory perception, so I included this on my list of superpowers along with MI6-level deductive abilities (the type of problem-solving skills I possess). So, spend a little time figuring out what your unique and specialized skills might be. If you get stuck, you can ask friends, family members or coworkers to help you answer these questions.
What If My Zone of Genius Dreams Are Impossible?
So, what if you said that your soul’s desire is to become an Olympic athlete, but you’re middle aged and you’ve never trained a day in your life? Huh? Good question. All I have to say to you is this, “🎵Some people say they know they can’t believe...Jamaica, we have a bobsled team 🎵” (Worl-A-Girl, 1993). Good luck getting that song out of your head today. In case you missed the point: Where there’s a will, there’s a way. If you really want to become an Olympic athlete, I bet you can find a way to make that or an iteration of that, happen. Yes, I know what I’m saying is ableist but I’m also not sure where the line is between pushing you to remove the stubborn egoic and societal blocks in your way and which blocks may prove impossible to remove. In other words, it’s possible that your dreams are impossible and it’s also possible that they aren’t impossible. You’re welcome for that riddle of a non-answer.
I want to come back to what I said about finding a way to make your dream or an iteration of it come true. This brings up an interesting point about how source consciousness/god/universe answers our prayers and requests. We often get what we ask for but what we get might look a lot different than our human minds were originally able to conceive, so we can miss it. For example, when my niece and I were practicing our manifesting magic last summer, she said that she wanted to manifest a flower garden down by the lake. When she said that, I thought, “This isn’t going to turn out well because I know for damn sure there’s no flower garden down by the lake.” When we walked down to the lake, not surprisingly, there was no flower garden there and my niece was visibly disappointed. Because I was motivated to alleviate her disappointment, I tried looking again, racking my brain for a way to find her a flower garden, and here’s what I saw: A huge patch of waterlilies blooming right near the water’s edge, a floating flower garden. Feeling relieved, I said to my niece, “I know it doesn’t look like what we expected, but there’s actually a flower garden right there. Do you see it?” She thought about it for a second, nodded in recognition and then got really excited that her manifesting magic had worked. I’m sure all of you can think of some examples like this from your own lives. I hope you can keep those in mind when you are practicing this whole spiritual, soul-living, Zone-of-Genius thing. The things we ask for may look different (and even better) than we imagined.
What About People Who Don’t Have the Luxury of Moving Into Their Zone of Genius?
I bet you’re wondering how Hendricks’ (2009) Zone of Genius concept applies to children trapped in abusive homes; people with certain physical, cognitive or mental health issues; individuals living in poverty or without the financial ability to support themselves; people trapped in abusive, oppressive or otherwise toxic environments; individuals who are institutionalized, imprisoned or enslaved; etc. Good question. I can’t speak for Hendricks but it was my impression that the book was written for people who had some level of autonomy and for whom change was a viable option. For the folks mentioned above, these conditions may not be met. This doesn’t mean change is impossible. Sometimes, it is in our darkest hour, when we are at our most helpless, that we are able to reach deep within, connect with our soul’s truth and find the strength we need to keep going or build a new life for ourselves. That said, it is still incredibly unfair and ignorant to say that all people’s problems would be solved by simply making the leap into their Zone of Genius. In many cases, a complete overhaul of our sociopolitical, educational, economic, medical, mental health and cultural systems is necessary for these individuals to live better lives and even if that happens, their lives still may not improve.
I would also argue that it’s incumbent upon those of us who do have some level of autonomy and for whom change is a viable option to do the work necessary to heal our wounds, raise our consciousness level, move into our Zone of Genius, and ultimately make the world a better place for others. If you are reading this, there is a good chance you are one of these people. That is because, to read this, you would need to be safe, healthy and financially secure enough to have the luxury of free time, you would need the resources necessary to obtain internet access, and would need a nervous system that’s not so focused on survival that it can free up energy to consider topics like personal growth. Even if you can't make large changes, there are definitely some small things you can do, which we’ll talk about more when we discuss Jupiter Time, therapy, therapy alternatives and complimentary practices.
How the Societal Organism Keeps Us Trapped in the Lower Zones
The Eagles sang, “We are all just prisoners here of our own device,” but that’s not entirely true (The Eagles, 1977). Certainly, we play a role in our imprisonment, but larger factors are at work here. We are a nation founded on slavery and indentured servitude. Between 50-67% of the people who arrived in Colonial America were indentured servants (PBS) and 24% of the population were enslaved (Bourne, 2008).
These numbers, of course, do not take into account the subjugated position of women in our culture, which is likely because this is not a well-acknowledged fact, even today. So, I’m going to take a moment to acknowledge this. Consider these facts: Women didn’t receive the right to vote until 50 years after male slaves. Women weren’t allowed to manage marital property or obtain a line of credit without their spouse’s consent until 1970—1970!? (Crittenden, 2006). Unmarried women weren’t allowed to legally obtain birth control until 1972 (Eisenstadt v. Baird, 1972). And, until 1988, it was completely legal to deny housing to unmarried women with children; such housing discrimination continues even today, albeit illegally, with women of color being the most significantly impacted (U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, 2016). These laws are just the tip of the subjugation iceberg; there are many more laws like these and many more discriminatory and oppressive cultural practices that continue to affect women and especially women of color, at present day. The critical thinking points I want to highlight are these: What do these facts tell us about how women are perceived in this culture? What do they tell us about how women of color are perceived in this culture? And how do they continue to influence the mindset and drive the behaviors of this culture?
These facts are disturbing, the statistics are staggering, and their continued influence on our culture’s mindset and behavior is insidious. Unfortunately, I was unable to find a statistic that reflected the proportion of the population under indenture during the same time frame as the statistic that documented the proportion of population that was enslaved, so I can’t say, “In 1790, 74-91% of the population were either enslaved or under indenture, and of the remaining ‘free’ population, 50% were women, so actually, 87-95.5% of the population were enslaved, under indenture or were the property of a man.” But, what I can say is that in 1790, 24% of the population were enslaved and a very large portion initially entered the workforce as indentured servants (Bourne, 2008; PBS). And, the entire female population, roughly 50% of the total population, were either enslaved by plantation owners or were enslaved by a sociopolitical system that considered them to be the property of their husbands or fathers. This means that an astronomical proportion of the population were enslaved, under indenture, were the property of a man, or were descendent from ancestors who were not free.
Today, although most of us have been released from those legal bonds, I would argue that the master-slave and master-servant narrative still pervades our culture, sociopolitical structure, economic system, educational system, medical system and our workplaces. It’s a narrative that says, “Your employer (or husband or father) owns you; your value comes only from the work you do,” “work requires sacrifice,” and, "women's work has no financial value." It’s a narrative that produces terms such as “mandatory” in reference to employment tasks, one that effectively utilizes force and fear to manipulate employee behavior with the implicit message, “If you don’t do exactly what we want, when we want it, there will be some very unpleasant consequences.” This may seem like the definition of a “job” to many of us, but it’s a pretty fucked up definition, if you really consider it. It completely eliminates autonomy. It discourages pleasure and encourages hard work and sacrifice, and it’s used as a method of control, draining the energy of workers and fueling the larger societal organism, especially benefiting those in positions of power (Hawkins, 2002). In addition to these cultural narratives, if we consider the research suggesting that trauma in one generation can change the DNA structure of those in future generations (Hollis, 2013; Selimbasic et al., 2012; Snyder et al., 2016; Youssef et al., 2018), we could even argue that we still carry the enslavement and servitude trauma of our ancestors in our DNA, in every cell of our body, further compounding the impact of this cultural narrative.
Take a moment to consider how free many of us really are. How free do any of us feel to pursue work or activities we truly enjoy? How many of us feel free to take time off, even just a few hours for a doctor’s appointment? How many hours a week do we work, compared to other developed countries? How much vacation time do we get (or take) each year, compared to other countries? How many times have we gone into work when we are sick (pre-COVID), because we didn’t want to appear uncommitted or let work pile up on our desks? How often is the word mandatory used by our employers? If you lost your job or wanted to quit today, how long would you be able to pay your bills?
Europeans work 19% fewer hours than Americans (Bick, Brüggemann, & Fuchs-Schündeln, 2016). The United States is one of the only countries in the world that doesn’t guarantee paid vacation time, and has no yearly vacation requirement (even China requires workers to take 1-5 days of vacation each year; Wikipedia-List of Minimum Annual Leave…). Americans are also one of the least likely groups to use their vacation days, completely forfeiting 768 million vacation days in 2018, for a loss of 65.5 billion dollars in benefits, and taking fewer overall vacation days than pretty much any other country in the world: 10 days versus 25 in the UK, by comparison (Baran, 2018; Kim, 2019). Further, 45% percent of Americans have absolutely no savings, and 69% have less than $1000 in savings (Huddleston, 2019). It’s no wonder we spend the majority of our waking life at work. We can’t afford not to. We are afraid not to, because if we lost our jobs tomorrow, we understand that many of us are just a month or two away from foreclosure, bankruptcy and even homelessness. We feel trapped and many of our employers know this. We may not be under the same type of indenture or enslavement as early colonists, but we are under indenture to the banks, credit card companies, student loan lenders, utilities companies, our landlords and automobile lenders. Even if we are among the lucky few who do have the luxury of financial stability, our cultural narratives discourage us from living a life of joy and pleasure, and instead, encourage a Puritanical work ethic, with its resultant life of duty and obligation (hence why we forfeit vacation time rather than use it). Indeed, even the employers, who are in positions of power, report that they don’t feel they can leave their work behind to take a vacation, take a few hours off on a Friday, take sick leave or early retirement. These narratives have transcended the original players in the game (i.e., master-slave/servant, employer-employee) and now pervade the entire, autonomous sociocultural organism.
So…if you wanted to quit your job tomorrow and live the life of your dreams, as discovered by your answers to the Zone of Genius questions above, could you? If you wanted to give up your responsibilities, your obligations, so that you could start living from a place that made you happy, could you do it? Would you do it? Why or why not? Take some time to answer these questions.
I’m guessing that some of you are having trouble believing that a life lived in your Zone of Genius is possible. Understandably so. Even though slavery, indentured servitude and female subjugation are no longer legal, there are still a plethora of sociocultural, political, economic, educational, medical and psychological factors that continue to restrict our freedoms and lead to the complete loss of freedom for some (e.g., incarceration): a toxic sociopolitical structure, unstable and unsafe housing, major barriers to employment, illiteracy and lack of education, wealth inequality, institutional racism, internalized misogyny, financial slavery, lack of access to adequate medical care, a mental health crisis, lack of effective social welfare programs, cultural narratives that promote scarcity, cultural narratives that discourage rehabilitation, a “justice system” that’s punitive rather than redemptive, ineffectual rehabilitation programs, and lack of adequate funding for social welfare, mental health and rehabilitation (Benecchi, 2021; English, 2020; Smith, 2017). Although most of us are never actually incarcerated, we can still feel the force of these imprisoning sociocultural factors and still they drive many of our behaviors, usually without our conscious awareness. This culture we live in has contributed to our woundings, our fears, our beliefs about self, others and the world, and ultimately, has shaped how we show up in the world. It’s no wonder few of us ever feel free enough to pursue the life of our dreams, why we never feel free to enter our Zone of Genius.
The Hamster Wheel: How Our Fear of Freedom and Our Exhaustion Keep Us Trapped
The fact is, many of us are living in a prison without ever seeing prison walls. When it comes to complete sovereignty and living the soul-led, life our dreams, the societal odds and cultural narratives are against us. Not only that, we are terrified. When we see that glimmer of freedom, we also see its shadow, the devil we don’t know, and many of us don’t want to dance with that devil, the devil of uncertainty. Remember our operating system and its micromanaging supervisor, our ego? Uncertainty is a huge survival risk, there are too many unknown pitfalls and unpredictable pathways for the ego to compute, so it just goes into lockdown mode, ensuring that nothing other than status quo programming can run. A prison might be a prison but it’s also a container, a locked secure place, with structure and predictability. We might not be able get out but nothing unexpected can get in to harm us either (at least that’s what we tell ourselves). So, we stay there, in the life we know, seemingly safe and secure, in our comfortable, structured place of certainty.
Many of us also understand that freedom requires a great deal of work and even if we do want it, most of us simply don’t have the energy. Our culture’s impossible-to-meet financial, societal and familial obligations have drained us. All we can do is keep repeating our well-established routines, punching the clock and living for the weekend. Our lack of energy is compounded by the sunk cost fallacy, discussed earlier. We’ve already put so much time, effort and money into living in our sub-Genius Zones that we can’t justify the cost of abandoning them, only to incur additional costs—time, effort and money—to try something new, even if it holds the promise of a utopian future. As Sheldon Kopp put it, “Everything good is costly, and the development of the personality is one of the most costly of all things. It will cost you your innocence, your illusions, your certainty” (Kopp, 1972, p. 10).
So, when it comes to overcoming our Upper Limit Problem and making the leap of faith into our Zone of Genius, that promise of freedom isn’t enough to wake most of us up and affect major change. In fact, as we’ve discussed, that taste of freedom can actually be so terrifying that it sends us racing back to the relative comfort of prison walls. Further, even if we desperately desire freedom and gather the requisite courage, the sociocultural, political, economic, educational, and psychological factors and societal narratives we have discussed fight us every step of the way.
The Force That Will Set Us Free
So, what’s it going to take? What is powerful enough to catalyze extraordinary change and fight the forces attempting to sabotage it? What could give us the energy and the ingenuity we need to make these changes? What could give us the courage we need to heal our wounds, make major changes and venture into the terrifying land of uncertainty?
By far, the most powerful force I’ve ever seen is, LOVE. This is where the magic happens, and Hawkins’ (2002)consciousness scale would agree. Love has the power to give us energy, joy, courage, compassion; provide us with ingenious solutions; and even give us superhuman powers. And, If I’m being completely honest, the primary reason I got my shit together, dealt with my trauma, changed my life and moved into my Zone of Genius wasn’t because I was afraid of the universe burning my life down again or because I wanted freedom (although these were pretty powerful motivators), it was for the chance at love. When my prison walls came crashing down, I saw the glimmer of something I’d given up on many times in the 20 years prior: true love. I’d had so many disappointments that I just didn’t think it was possible for me, so I’d settled into the Zones of Incompetence and Competence in that area of my life. But, when I saw that glimmer again, it gave me hope. And, I knew I needed to make some major changes or it would evade me yet again. Like the lottery winner example, I knew I needed to grow into a new story with love, which involved doing some deep healing work, if I wanted to hang onto it and stop attracting abusive partners.
I’ve seen a similar phenomenon with clients. They’ve been trapped and in pain pretty much their entire lives but they don’t call me until they see that their pain is harming those (or what) they love most: their kids, grandkids, partners, friends, siblings, parents, themselves, their life’s work or their cause. They use the power of love to amass the courage they need to face their fears, heal their wounds, make major changes and venture into uncertainty.
I think it’s clear to all of us that we have a massive problem on our hands and if we don’t address it promptly and aggressively, the inconveniences we’ve experienced as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic will seem like a beach vacation compared to what will come next. Typically, this is the point at which most folks get overwhelmed, say, “We’re fucked,” and proceed to do nothing. I am encouraging you to do better than that. We need to do better than that.
“We have an opportunity for greatness which has never been offered to any civilization, any generation in human history, to act as a generation to do the right thing. If we fail to act on it, we will become the most vilified generation in human history.” (Payne, 2006)
So, What Can We Do to Affect Change in Ourselves and Ultimately, the World?
Start Living on Jupiter Time.
I know it’s a huge cliché, but start small, start by making a commitment to make a small change each day, to move toward your Zone of Genius, to heal yourself and help the collective (including the planet). If you make small, manageable goals, you are much more likely to actually reach them. And, if you want to do it one better, you can write your goals down. Research shows that people who wrote down their goals were more like to achieve them than those who didn’t (Matthews, 2007).
There’s a concept my mentor, Dr. Marilyn Steele, taught me about called, Jupiter Time. Jupiter is the planet of expansion and miracles, so when you enlist Jupiter’s help, he helps to expand the energy and resources you’ve already contributed to your goal (and then he adds a little magic). To live on Jupiter time, you start with a small goal, something seemingly infinitesimal, then you let Jupiter work his magic. For example, you could set a goal to meditate for 5 minutes a day, to devote 10 minutes each day to study your passion of astrology, to spend 5 minutes each day signing petitions and sending letters to Congress advocating for social justice, to spend 10 minutes each day being a fully present parent. It may not seem like much initially, but 10 minutes each day adds up to 61 hours each year! You can accomplish a lot in 61 hours. And, that’s before Jupiter has worked his magic. With Jupiter’s help, you’ll find that the 10 minutes each day grows into 30 minutes, into an hour, into eight hours, and before you know it, you are living out your biggest goals and desires on Jupiter Time; you have officially made the leap into your Zone of Genius.
How does Jupiter Time work? I have a few hypotheses. One is that making small commitments to change allows us to circumvent our ego. If you recall, the ego is the micromanaging supervisor of our operating system, Fear 1.0. Whenever change is detected, it is ego’s job to step in to ensure that change doesn’t happen, because big changes are seen as big threats. Ego wants us to keep playing it safe, small and status quo. Small changes are dismissed by the ego as trivial (and your ego may say as much when you try to live on Jupiter Time), and therefore, you should be able to implement these small changes without too much ego resistance. Another hypothesis is that this exercise works as an exposure therapy of sorts. The reasons you aren’t currently making changes likely has to do with old stories, fears, beliefs and wounds that are standing in the way of making the changes. This exercise requires you to engage with these old stories, fears, beliefs and wounds, in small doses, each day, until they start to disintegrate. As you are exposed to them, your body and mind learn that the old stories, fears, beliefs and wounds aren’t as threatening as your ego made them seem, and soon you begin to feel safe making the changes. My final hypothesis is that magic, like actual magic, is responsible for making “Jupiter Time” work. In actuality, it’s likely a combination of all three factors that contributes to the success of Jupiter Time.
Go to Therapy
Go to therapy: Heal your wounds, fears and rewrite those old stories and beliefs. Hopefully, at this point, I’ve sufficiently underscored the importance of addressing your pain with therapy and other types of deep healing work. So, what are you waiting for? Get online, and start researching therapists! Psychology Today is a good place to start, Therapy Den also has a good directory. I could write an entire article on what to look for in a therapist and maybe I will. For now, I’d recommend finding someone whose words resonate with you, trust your gut and if you don’t connect with the person you find initially, keep looking. Don’t get too hung up on their training (e.g., EMDR, CBT, ACT). Ultimately, you want a therapist who has a high energy vibration, who has done their own therapeutic healing work; this will help ensure that they won’t project their unresolved issues onto you (called “countertransference”) and that they have the capacity to help you raise your own energy vibration. If they’re really evolved, they may even have spontaneous healing abilities. Research has shown that type of therapy (e.g., EMDR, CBT, ACT) doesn’t matter as much as what are called nonspecific factors, which are factors that are not specific to a certain type of therapy (e.g., cognitive restructuring is a factor specific to a type of therapy, CBT; empathy is a factor that’s not specific to a particular type of therapy). Instead, these nonspecific factors are dependent upon the individual therapist and include warmth, respect, unconditional positive regard, a good therapeutic relationship and a belief in client success (Luborsky et al., 2002; Wampold, Minami, Baskin, & Tierney, 2002; Wikipedia-Dodo Bird Verdict).
So, again, pay attention to your intuitive gut when reading therapist bios and when meeting with the therapist you choose: How do they make you feel? What do you notice showing up in you when you are interacting with them? What do you think this is about? You can also use the truth/intuition testing information I gave you above to determine if this person is a “yes” or a “no” for you. Best of luck!
If I’ve been speaking your language and you’d like to learn more about working with me, you can visit my website or schedule an appointment here. My healing practice is dedicated to finding and freeing executives and intuitives who feel lost and trapped in their normal lives, so they can reconnect with their true north, feel joy and experience magic in their lives. I am located in Minnesota and offer online appointments to clients nationwide.
I’m also going to include a list of therapists/mentors I’d recommend, people who have done their internal healing work and who have higher energy vibrations. Many of them offer online services, but state licensing regulations require clients to be located in the therapist’s state of licensure. I’ll include each therapist’s geographic availability.
Dr. Marilyn Steele: located in California, can see clients located nationwide.
Dr. Nika George: located in Nebraska, can see clients located in Nebraska.
Dr. Jason Drwal: located in Iowa, can see clients located in Iowa.
Donna Corbett: located in New York, can see clients located in New York and New Jersey.
Dr. Emily Strang: located in North Carolina, can see clients located in North Carolina: dr.emilystrang@outlook.com
Try Some Therapy Alternatives and Complimentary practices
I know that I keep joking-not-joking that therapists are going to help heal the world, but it’s not just therapists who are going to help. There are a lot of people in other professions working to heal the world and they deserve to be mentioned: energy healers, shamans, psychics, mediums, social workers, yogis, physical therapists, massage therapists, Reiki practitioners, acupuncturists, teachers, chiropractors, pharmacists, medical doctors, nurses, midwives, mothers, fathers, artists, lawyers and environmental advocates. I know I’m forgetting some, so please let me know if I should add your profession to the list.
If you aren’t willing, able or ready for therapy, do something, anything, to raise your energy vibration. Please. We need everyone to do their part. Even if you think you’re totally good, you’re all better, there’s nothing to see here, you’ve done your work, even if you are totally terrified…I’m sure you are great the way you are and I know you are scared but there is always room for growth and there are some less terrifying options to choose from, so think of something you can do, and apply Jupiter time. Even if you don’t want to do your internal healing work to raise your energy vibration, you can still take part in the shift. Remember, tapping into source consciousness through methods like meditation and dream work allows you to access the unlimited knowledge base. From here, you can help humanity by finding answers to the problems we are currently facing. Even if you don’t really care about raising your energy vibration to make the world a better place, I bet the idea of tapping into an unlimited knowledge base to solve problems, make discoveries and see the future is at least somewhat appealing to you. In order to do this, you need to raise your energy vibration, at least temporarily. Do I have everyone’s attention now? Good. I’m going to give you lots of ideas so you can’t say that you don’t know what to do.
Nutrition.
Did you know that by simply choosing healthier, unprocessed organic food options, you can raise your energy vibration? Yep. If you don’t believe me, think about how you feel when you’ve been eating garbage food (e.g., after the holidays) versus how you feel after you eat nutrient-dense meals made with lots of fruits and vegetables. You are what you eat, right? Literally (Hawkins, 2002; McGinley, 2019).
Listen to music.
Listening to certain music can also raise (or lower) your energy vibration. Sound is a vibration, so it makes sense that it would interact with the energy vibration of your body. Remember our discussion on vibrational therapy and cats purring? Certain vibrations have the power to heal. I bet you already have some songs you like to listen to because they make you feel better. Now, that you know they are raising your energy vibration, you can listen to them deliberately with this intent. The Solfeggio frequencies have become popular recently for their use in raising energy vibration, balancing chakras, and physical and mental wellness. There are also some Hindu mantras you can listen to and chant with to raise your energy vibration. My favorite is the Gayatri Mantra, which is a dedication to the sun god. There are free versions online, or you can download this version on iTunes.
Confess your sins/shame.
We talked about this earlier under “What do to about shame.” Write down your shameful secrets or confess them to a trusted person. Doing so will reduce your shame and raise your energy vibration.
Visit an energy healer, Reiki practitioner, acupuncturist or chiropractor.
Energy healing and therapy are nice complimentary services, each serving to release different aspects of the pain and traumas we’ve experienced. For those of you who are unable or unwilling to go to therapy, I’d highly recommend working with an energy healer to alleviate some of your symptoms and move some of the trauma energy out of your body. I’ve included links for several healers I highly recommend, some even offer online services.
Renée Vidal: offers online services.
Shelby Rose: offers online services.
Dana Aschoff: offers primarily in-person services. Located in the Minneapolis, Minnesota area.
Begin a meditation practice.
There are a lot of meditation resources on the internet. Try a few out and see what works for you.
I offer a free, 10-minute energy clearing meditation here.
Begin a journaling or introspective writing practice.
This will help you process how you are thinking, feeling and acting. It will also help you become consciously aware of how your old stories, beliefs, fears and wounds are currently impacting your life, often unconsciously.
Start by taking a few notes each time you feel lots of emotion, get stuck in a thought loop or do something that you wish you wouldn’t have done.
What was happening? What did you feel in your body? What emotions did you feel? What went through your mind? What memories popped in? What did you do? What might all this be about? Where does it come from? How can you use this knowledge to help you?
Do some inner child healing work.
The inner child and teen aspects of us are often responsible for causing issues in our lives because they are holding onto unconscious wounds, fears, beliefs and stories. These wounds, fears, beliefs and stories can be very difficult to find using traditional methods (e.g., Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, introspective writing) because these primarily access the conscious parts of the mind. If you are able to access these younger aspects of yourself in your unconscious mind, using special methodology designed to tap into the unconscious, it becomes easier to uncover and heal the wounds, fears, beliefs and stories hiding in the shadows.
I have an excellent inner child and teen healing meditation journey here.
Begin a self-care practice.
Make time for yourself to do enjoyable, nurturing and restorative activities.
Some ideas: Read a novel, take a bath, get a massage, spend time with your friends, buy or make your favorite foods, call a good friend, do an art or craft project, go for a walk, spend time in nature, take a nap, sit in a sauna, float in the water, do absolutely nothing.
Work with crystals.
Crystals have a variety of properties, including the ability to raise energy vibration and promote physical and emotional healing. Each type of crystal has a unique set of properties. For example, selenite is a high vibrational crystal used to raise energy vibration, clear negative energy and clear the mind (Stokes, 2021). Agate is associated with Asclepius, the god of medicine, and is used for emotional and physical healing (Cunningham, 2004). If you are interested in learning more, I’ve included a couple of reference books below.
You can also buy agate jewelry, made by yours truly, here.
The Encyclopedia of Crystals by Judy Hall
The Ultimate Guide to Crystals & Stones: A Practical Path to Personal Power, Self-Development, and Healing by Uma Sibley
Learn to work with your dreams.
As we discussed, inventors, scientists, revolutionaries and healers throughout history have used dreams and dream-like states to tap into source consciousness in order to make important discoveries, develop theories, see the future and provide healing. Dreams are a largely untapped source of wisdom, advice and healing.
I offer a “Basics & Beyond” dream interpretation course, where you’ll learn how to access the source consciousness knowledge base through dreams to find healing, wisdom, advice, novel solutions and even get glimpses of the future. You can access this self-paced online dream interpretation course here.
Take an online course.
Shelby Rose offers some great classes that can help raise your energy vibration.
The Institute of Noetic Sciences has some wonderful offerings designed to raise your consciousness and develop extrasensory abilities.
The Aslan Institute offers online courses on shame, inner child healing, archetypes, death and aging that incorporate the evolution of consciousness framework.
Lean In, Make Bank is an excellent course by Tiffany McLain, designed to help therapists recognize their worth and begin charging accordingly. At its heart, it’s a course that teaches people to change their mindset and evolve their consciousness.
Money Mentality Makeover and Turning Shit Into Gold are advanced-level manifesting courses taught by Amanda Frances, designed to evolve consciousness and manifest money, relationships and pretty much anything else you’d like in life.
Listen to a personal growth podcast.
Podcasts are great because they allow you to multitask. You could even complete two, energy-raising activities at once: Listening to a personal growth podcast while making a nutritious meal!
Raise Your Vibration: Shelby Rose
Unlocking Us and Dare to Lead: Brené Brown
Read a book on personal growth or consciousness evolution.
Good books have the power to change us, and raise our energy vibration. Hawkins (2002) says that reading his book, Power vs Force, can raise someone’s energy vibration by 10 to the power of 35 points. That may sound like a convenient theory for him, but I think we’ve all had the experience of being different, better, as a result of what we’ve read in a book. For those who don’t like to read or don’t have the time, almost all books are available in audio format now. So, just like with podcasts, you can multitask your personal growth journey. Here are a few of my recommendations.
The Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield
The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks
Power vs Force: The Hidden Determinants of Human Behavior by David Hawkins
Destiny of Souls by Michael Newton
Women Who Run with the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes
Iron John by Robert Bly
Care of the Soul by Thomas Moore
Descent to the Goddess: A Way of Initiation for Women by Sylvia Brinton Perera
Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl
The Book of Job: When Bad Things Happened to a Good Person by Harold S. Kushner
Living Beautifully with Uncertainty and Change by Pema Chödrön
The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity and Love by bell hooks
All About Love by bell hooks
Wired for Love: How Understanding Your Partner’s Brain and Attachment Style Can Help You Defuse Conflict and Build a Secure
Relationship by Stan Tatkin
The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You by Elaine Aron
Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents by Lindsay Gibson
The Verbally Abusive Relationship by Patricia Evans
Toxic Parents: Overcoming Their Hurtful Legacy and Reclaiming Your Life by Susan Forward
Psychopath Free: Recovering From Emotionally Abusive Relationships with Narcissists, Sociopaths and Other Toxic People by Jackson MacKenzie
You Are the One You’ve Been Waiting for: Bringing Courageous Love to Intimate Relationships by Richard Schwartz
The Soul of Money by Lynne Twist
Mystical Dogs: Animals as Guides to Our Inner Life by Jean Houston
Supernormal: Science, Yoga, and the Evidence for Extraordinary Psychic Abilities by Dean Radin
Real Magic: Ancient Wisdom, Modern Science and a Guide to the Secret
Power of the Universe by Dean Radin
Sidewalk Oracles: Playing with Signs, Symbols, and Synchronicity in Everyday Life by Robert Moss
My Life with the Spirits: The Adventures of a Modern Magician by Lon Milo DuQuette
Join an environmental or social justice group and/or sign some petitions.
Don’t like what’s going on in this country? Want to see some changes? Join an environmental or social justice group and/or sign some petitions. It’s often free to do so. Even if you don’t have a lot of time to be involved with a group, by joining, you will have the opportunity to become apprised of important social and environmental issues. And, you’ll have the opportunity to make change simply by signing petitions, sending letters to Congress or donating small amounts of money to these causes, which usually only takes a few seconds. These groups use templates that make it really easy for you to simply type in your name and send a petition or letter along to the intended party. I’ll include some organizations I’d recommend checking out. Most are environmental advocacy groups because that’s one of my biggest passions, but you can do some searches online to find causes you are passionate about.
Stop your complicity in the exploitation of other human beings and the environment by choosing not to support the companies (and industries) that violate their rights.
If I had to guess, I’d say that about 99% of the products in our closets, cupboards, living rooms, refrigerators and garages are made (at least in part) by companies (and industries) that fall in this category. It’s nearly impossible to escape. We are dependent upon the continuation of slave and child labor as well as environmental exploitation and destruction, even though they’ve been outlawed or supposedly regulated in this country. But, we don’t have to be dependent and complicit participants. Each day, we make choices to support these companies and their exploitative practices by buying their products.
Choose differently. Find companies that are trying to do better and buy your products from them.
Stop participating in the continuation of forced obsolesce by continuing to upgrade your products, especially electronics.
Pay the extra money to have products repaired, rather than replacing them with brand-new products.
Buy used items to promote the practice of re-use and save money in the process.
Remember the law of supply and demand from economics class? We can extend that beyond product pricing to say that if there is no longer a demand for products that exploit people and the environment, companies will no longer produce them. If there is a demand for products and practices that support people and the environment, companies will begin to produce them.
The first step is to REDUCE your consumption and footprint. If you must consume and leave a footprint, then REUSE everything you can. And, if you can’t do either of those, as a last resort, RECYCLE. Recycling is better than using the landfill but it still requires additional energy and produces pollution, so always try to reduce and reuse first.
You can also help by sharing this manifesto on social media and with anyone you think it could help or would be interested in reading it.
We Have to Look
I know that no one wants to look at what’s lurking in the shadows within themselves and our culture, to face our painful pasts, to face the painful things we’ve done to others, to change our comfortable and convenient ways. And, I know that societal narratives; sociopolitical, cultural, economic and educational forces; our egos and even our own DNA, may be fighting growth and change with every step we take. We hate the idea of being vulnerable, addressing our problems, asking for help. We are terrified, so we don’t do it. Here’s the deal. We are ALL afraid of the dark. No one wants to go a therapist; no one wants to introspect; no one wants to peer into the shadows. Having courage means being afraid and doing things anyway. Take it from this hypocrite. It took me 34 years to face my ego fears, admit I needed help and finally start therapy—34 years! Then it took another two years before I was willing to do the really hard, painful, trauma-processing work. And, I know better. I know better than anyone how important therapy is, how well it works, how it has the power to change not only us as individuals but the world around us. Not only that, I know all about the ego’s defenses and how to overcome them. And, it still took a major act of courage for me to face my fears. It took the power of love. I hope the rest of you can draw upon the power of love, the love you have for other people, for animals, for the planet, for a cause, for yourself, to gain the courage you need to heal yourself and ultimately heal the world.
I Will Leave You with an Excerpt From the Great, Carl Sagan, and Pale Blue Dot (1994).
"Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one
another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known."
Expand the minds of others: Share this manifesto (social share links at the bottom).
References
American Psychiatric Association. (2019). APA Applauds Mental Health Funding in Federal Spending Bill [Press release]. Retrieved from https://www.psychiatry.org/newsroom/news-releases/apa-applauds-mental-health-funding-in-federal-spending-bill
Apostles’ Creed. (500 AD/2012). The Apostles’ Creed. In: Eternal Word Television Network.
Aron, E. N. (2016). The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You. New York: Harmony Books.
Association of American Medical Colleges. (2008). Diversity in Medical Education: Facts & Figures 2008. Retrieved from Washington, D.C.: https://www.aamc.org/system/files/reports/1/diversityinmedicaleducation-factsandfigures2008.pdf
Baran, M. (2018, October 18). Why U.S. Workers Need to Step Up Their Vacation Game. Afar. Retrieved from https://www.afar.com/magazine/why-us-workers-need-to-step-up-their-vacation-game
Bardugo, L. (2017). The Shadow and Bone Trilogy Boxed Set: Shadow and Bone, Siege and Storm, Ruin and Rising New York: Square Fish.
Beck, A., T., Rush, A. J., Shaw, B. F., & Emery, G. (1987). Cognitive Therapy of Depression. New York: Guilford Press.
Benecchi, L. (2021). Recidivism Imprisons American Progress. harvard Political Review. Retrieved fromhttps://harvardpolitics.com/recidivism-american-progress/
Bick, A., Brüggemann, B., & Fuchs-Schündeln, N. (2016). Hours worked in Europe and the US: New data, new answers. Institute for the Study of Labor, 10179, 1-44.
Bluth, K., Gaylord, S., Nguyen, K., Bunevicius, A., & Girdler, S. (2015). Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction as a Promising Intervention for Amelioration of Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder Symptoms. Mindfulness, 6, 1292-1302. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4651211/
Boissoneault, L. (2019, May 21, 2019). The Medieval Practices That Reshamed Europe’s Fish. The Atlantic. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/05/medieval-people-were-already-ruining-fish/589837/
Bourne, J. (2008). Slavery in the United States. In R. Whaples (Ed.), (March 26 ed.). Retrieved from http://eh.net/encyclopedia/slavery-in-the-united-states/
Bradley, R., Greene, J., Russ, E., Dutra, L., & Westen, D. (2005). A multidimensional meta-analysis of psychotherapy for PTSD. American Journal of Psychiatry, 162(2), 214–227. Retrieved from https://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/pdf/10.1176/appi.ajp.162.2.214
Cahill, S. P., Foa, E. B., Hembree, E. A., Marshall, R. D., & Nacash, N. (2006). Dissemination of exposure therapy in the treatment of PTSD. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 19(5), 597-610. Retrieved from https://www.med.upenn.edu/ctsa/assets/user-content/documents/CahillFoa_Dissemination_2006.pdf
Cambray, J. (2009). Synchronicity: Nature and Psyche in an Interconnected Universe. College Station: Texas A&M University Press.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Violence Prevention: Risk and Protective Factors. Adverse Childhood Experiences. Retrieved from https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/aces/riskprotectivefactors.html
Claes, L., & Willie, B. (2007). The enhancement of bone regeneration by ultrasound. Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology, 93(1-3), 384-398. Retrieved from https://reader.elsevier.com/reader/sd/pii/S0079610706001027?token=83F8A3230020D10B180E644968B21821E29D775B1E35D99945D779D9AA8EECA59AA99379277CFEA3595AFB8079F3085A&originRegion=us-east-1&originCreation=20220101174354
Cohen, R. (2021, December 13). Across the World, COVID Anxiety and Depression Take Hold. New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/13/world/europe/covid-anxiety-depression-omicron.html
Collins, J. (2001). Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don’t. New York: HarperBusiness.
Crittenden, A. (2006). How Mothers’ Work Was “Disappeared”: The Invention of the Unproductive Housewife. In A. S. Wharton (Ed.), Working in America: Continuity, Conflict, and Change (3rd ed., pp. 18-31). New York: McGraw-Hill.
Cunningham, S. (2004). Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner. Woodbury, Minnesota: Llewellyn Publications.
Davidson, R. J., Kabat-Zinn, J., Schumacher, J., Rosenkranz, M., Muller, D., Santorelli, S. F., . . . Sheridan, J. F. (2003). Alterations in Brain and Immune Function Produced by Mindfulness Meditation. Psychosomatic Medicine, 65(4), 564-570. Retrieved from https://journals.lww.com/psychosomaticmedicine/Abstract/2003/07000/Alterations_in_Brain_and_Immune_Function_Produced.14.aspx
DeRubeis, R. J., Hollon, S. D., Amsterdam, J. D., Shelton, R. C., Young, P. R., Salomon, R. M., & Gallop, R. (2005). Cognitive therapy vs medications in the treatment of moderate to severe depression. Archives of General Psychiatry, 62(4), 409-416. Retrieved from https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/208460
Dowling, S. (2018, July 25, 2018). The complicated truth about a cat’s purr. BBC Future. Retrieved from https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20180724-the-complicated-truth-about-a-cats-purr
Eisenstadt v. Baird. (1972). Unmarried Couples have the right to use contraception, based on the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and the more nebulous constitutional right to privacy. U.S. Supreme Court, 405(U.S. 438).
English, J. (2020). Why Do Habitual Offenders Keep Reoffending? (Pt 1). The Kronzek Firm, PLC. Retrieved from https://aggressivecriminaldefense.com/why-do-habitual-offenders-keep-reoffending-pt-1.html
Felitti, V. J., Anda, R. F., Nordenberg, D., Williamson, D. F., Spitz, A. M., Edwards, V., . . . Marks, J. S. (1998). Relationship of Childhood Abuse and Household Dysfunction to Many of the Leading Causes of Death in Adults: The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study. American Journal of Preventative Medicine, 14(4), 245-258. Retrieved from https://www.ajpmonline.org/action/showPdf?pii=S0749-3797%2898%2900017-8
Foa, E. B., Keane, T. J., & Friedman, M. J. (2000). Effective treatments for PTSD: Practice guidelines from the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies. New York: Guilford Press.
Greene, B. (2004). The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time and the Texture of Reality. New York, New York: Vintage Books.
Groysberg, B., & Abrahams, R. (2020). What the Stockdale Paradox Tells Us About Crisis Leadership. Harvard Business School: Working Knowledge. Retrieved from https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/what-the-stockdale-paradox-tells-us-about-crisis-leadership
Harvey, A. G., Bryant, R. A., & Tarrier, N. (2003). Cognitive behaviour therapy for posttraumatic stress disorder. Clinical Psychology Review, 23(3). Retrieved from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0272735803000357?via%3Dihub
Hawkins, D. R. (2002). Power Vs. Force: The Hidden Determinants of Human Behavior. Carlsbad, California: Hay House Inc.
He, S., Zhao, W., Zhang, L., Mi, L., Du, G., Sun, C., & X., S. (2017). Low-frequency vibration treatment of bone marrow stromal cells induces bone repair in vivo. Iranian Journal of Basic Medical Sciences, 20(1), 23-28. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5243970/pdf/IJBMS-20-23.pdf
Hendricks, G. (2009). The Big Leap: Conquer Your Hidden Fear and Take Life to the Next Level. New York: HarperOne.
Hicks, E., & Hicks, J. (2006). The Law of Attraction: The Basics of the Teachings of Abraham. Carlsbad, CA: Hay House, Inc.
Hofmann, S. G., Moscovitch, D. A., Kim, H.-J., & Taylor, A. N. (2004). Changes in self-perception during treatment of social phobia. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 72, 588–596. Retrieved from https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2004-16970-004
Hollis, J. (2013). Hauntings: Dispelling the Ghosts Who Run Our Lives. Asheville, North Carolina: Chiron Publications.
Hopwood, A. Jung’s Model of the Psyche. Retrieved from https://www.thesap.org.uk/articles-on-jungian-psychology-2/carl-gustav-jung/jungs-model-psyche/
Huddleston, C. (2019). Survey: 69% of Americans Have Less Than $1,000 in Savings. Retrieved from https://www.gobankingrates.com/banking/savings-account/americans-have-less-than-1000-in-savings/
Hülsheger, U. R., Feinholdt, A., & Nübold, A. (2015). A low-dose mindfulness intervention and recovery from work: Effects on psychological detachment, sleep quality, and sleep duration. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 88(3). Retrieved from https://bpspsychub.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/joop.12115
Hung, W. (2004, January 15). [American Idol Song]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RrLQUN8UJg
Huseyin, R. (2016). David Hawkins’ Map of Consciousness – Crazy, or Crazy Insightful? Retrieved from https://www.artofwellbeing.com/2016/11/08/mapofconsciousness/
Jefferson Airplane. (1966). White Rabbit. On Surrealistic Pillow. Hollywood, California: RCA Victor.
Jones, C. (1958). A Review of the Air Pollution Research Program of the Smoke and Fumes Committee of the American Petroleum Institute. Journal of the Air Pollution Control Association, 8(3), 268-272. Retrieved from https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2827789-1958-Charles-Jones-Smoke-and-Fumes-Committee-of.html#document/p1/a366549
Kahneman, D., & Deaton, A. (2010). High income improves evaluation of life but not emotional well-being. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 107(38), 16489-16493. Retrieved from https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/107/38/16489.full.pdf
Kim, A. (2019, August 19). A record 768 million US vacation days went to waste last year, a study says. CNN Travel. Retrieved from https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/unused-vacation-days-trnd/index.html
Klott, J. (2011). Motivational Interviewing for Mental Health Disorders. Training CD. Honolulu, HI: PESI: Premier Education Solutions.
Kopp, S. B. (1972). If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him: The Pilgrimage of Psychotherapy Patients. Palo Alto, California: Science and Behavior Books, Inc.
Kretchmer, Z. A. (2018, December 6). [Personal Communication: Delighted or Contented?].
Lau, E., Al-Dujaili, S., Guenther, A., D., L., L., W., & You, L. (2010). Effect of low-magnitude, high-frequency vibration on osteocytes in the regulation of osteoclasts. Bone, 46(6), 1508-1515. Retrieved from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S8756328210004928?via%3Dihub
Linehan, M. (2017). Marsha Linehan: How She Learned Radical Acceptance [YouTube]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTG7YEWkJFI&feature=youtu.be
Luborsky, L., Rosenthal, R., Diguer, L., Andrusyna, T. P., Berman, J. S., Levitt, J. T., . . . Krause, E. D. (2002). The dodo bird verdict is alive and well--mostly. Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice, 9(1), 2-12. Retrieved from https://doi.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1093%2Fclipsy.9.1.2
Matthews, G. (2007). The Impact of Commitment, Accountability, and Written Goals on Goal Achievement. Paper presented at the 87th Convention of the Western Psychological Association, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
McGinley, K. (2019). How to Raise Your Emotional & Spiritual Vibration. Chopra. Retrieved from https://chopra.com/articles/a-complete-guide-to-raise-your-vibration
McGreal, C. (2021, June 30). Big oil and gas kept a dirty secret for decades. Now they may pay the price. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jun/30/climate-crimes-oil-and-gas-environment
Monson, C. M., Schnurr, P. P., Resick, P. A., Friedman, M. J., Young-Xu, Y., & Stevens, S. P. (2006). Cognitive processing therapy for veterans with military-related posttraumatic stress disorder. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 74(5), 898–907. Retrieved from https://cptforptsd.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Monson_JCCP_2006_898.pdf
Moore, R. D., & Eick, D. (Producer). (2004). Battlestar Galactica.
Moss, R. (2009a). The Secret History of Dreaming. Novato, California: New World Library.
(2009b, March 13, 2009). The Secret History of Dreaming with Robert Moss [Retrieved from https://shrinkrapradio.com/199-the-secret-history-of-dreaming-with-robert-moss/
Moss, R. (2015). Sidewalk Oracles: Playing with Signs, Symbols, and Synchronicity in Everyday Life. Novato, CA: New World Library.
New International Version. (1978/2011). Deuteronomy 5:9. Retrieved from https://www.biblegateway.com/verse/en/Deuteronomy%205%3A9
Newberg, A. B., Wintering, N., Khalsa, D. S., Roggenkamp, H., & Waldman, M. R. (2010). Meditation effects on cognitive function and cerebral blood flow in subjects with memory loss: A preliminary study. Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, 20, 517–526. Retrieved from https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20164557/
Norcross, J. C., & Kuhle, B. X. (2011, Summer). New Probabilities of Admission Into Graduate Psychology Programs.Eye on Psi Chi, pp. 21-22. Retrieved from https://psychology.oglethorpe.edu/files/2015/07/Psi_Chi_magazine_2011_gradadmissions.pdf
Ogren, J. (2019). Psychological Shamanism. In: Institute of Noetic Sciences.
Olson-Raymer, G. (2014). The Europeans: Why They Left and Why It Matters. Retrieved from http://gorhistory.com/hist110/expl.html
Omar, H., Shen, G., Jones, A. S., Zoellner, H., Petocz, P., & Darendeliler, M. A. (2008). Effect of low magnitude and high frequency mechanical stimuli on defects healing in cranial bones. Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, 66(6), 1104-1111. Retrieved from https://www.joms.org/article/S0278-2391(08)00112-2/fulltext
Payne, R. (2006). Planet Earth: The Future. Great Britain: British Broadcasting Company.
PayScale. Salary Data & Career Research Center (United States). Retrieved from https://www.payscale.com/research/US/
PBS (Producer). Indentured Servants In The U.S. History Detectives Retrieved from https://www.pbs.org/opb/historydetectives/feature/indentured-servants-in-the-us/
Planck, M. (1931, January 25). The Observer.
Plumer, B., & Fountain, H. (2021, August 9, 2021). A Hotter Future Is Certain, Climate Panel Warns. but How Hot Is Up to Us. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/09/climate/climate-change-report-ipcc-un.html
Radin, D. (2013). Supernormal: Science, Yoga, and the Evidence for Extraordinary Psychic Abilities. New York: Deepak Chopra Books.
Radin, D. (2018). Real Magic: Ancient Wisdom, Modern Science, and a Guide to the Secret Power of the Universe. New York: Harmony Books.
Razon, S., Pickard, K. B., McCown, D. A., & Reed, M. A. (2017). Effects of Meditation on Heart Rate and Blood Pressure: A Mindfulness-based Study. Internationa Journal of Exercise Science, 9(6).
Redfield, J. (1993). The Celestine Prophecy: An Adventure. New York: Time Warner Books.
Resick, P. A., Monson, C. M., & Chard, K. M. (2008). Cognitive Processing Therapy: Veteran/military version. Washington, D.C.: Department of Veterans’ Affairs.
Resick, P. A., Nishith, P., Weaver, T. L., Astin, M. C., & Feuer, C. A. (2002). A comparison of cognitive processing therapy, prolonged exposure and a waiting condition for the treatment of posttraumatic stress disorder in female rape victims. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 70(4), 867–879. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2977927/pdf/nihms247366.pdf
Resick, P. A., & Schnicke, M. K. (1992). Cognitive processing therapy for sexual assault victims. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 60(5), 748–756.
Resick, P. A., & Schnicke, M. K. (1993). Cognitive processing therapy for rape victims: A treatment manual. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications.
Resignation, W.-G. Great Resignation. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Resignation. Retrieved December 17, 2021, from Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Resignation
Rogers, E. M. (1962). Diffusion of innovations (1st ed.). New York: Free Press of Glencoe.
A. Malone (Director). (1980, November 30, 1980). The Edge of Forever [Television series episode]. In Sagan, C. (Executive producer), Cosmos: PBS.
Sagan, C. (1994). Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space. New York: Random House.
Scientific American. (2006, April 3). Why do cats purr? Scientific American. Retrieved from https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-do-cats-purr/
Selimbasic, Z., Sinanovic, O., & Avdibegovic, E. (2012). Psychosocial Problems Among Children of Parents with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder. Medical Archives, 66(5), 304-308. Retrieved from https://www.bibliomed.org/mnsfulltext/10/10-1348126424.pdf?1640906255
Sheldrake, R. Morphic Resonance and Morphic Fields: An Introduction. Retrieved from https://www.sheldrake.org/research/morphic-resonance/introduction
Shneiderman, D., Sanders, D., & March, K. (2017). Ancient Egyptian vs. Mayan Culture. Classroom. Retrieved from https://classroom.synonym.com/tools-used-artists-ancient-egypt-15484.html
Sinek, S. (2009). Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action. New York: Portfolio.
Singer, J. (1972). Boundaries of the Soul: The Practice of Jung’s Psychology. Garden City, New York: Anchor Press-Doubleday.
Smith, P. (2017). The Hidden Prison Crisis: How Homelessness Causes A Cycle Of Reoffending. BuzzFeed News. Retrieved from https://www.buzzfeed.com/patricksmith/the-hidden-prison-crisis-how-homelessness-causes-a-cycle-of
Snyder, J., Gewirtz, A., Schrepferman, L., Gird, S. R., Quattlebaum, J., Pauldine, M. R., . . . Hayes, C. (2016). Parent-Child Relationship Quality and Family Transmission of Parent Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Symptoms and Child Externalizing and Internalizing Symptoms Following Fathers’ Combat-Trauma Exposure. Developmental Psychopathology, 28(4 Pt 1), 947-969. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5113136/pdf/nihms826555.pdf
Steele, M. (2020, April 20). [Mentoring Session: COVID-19 Dicussion].
Stokes, V. (2021). Selenite Crystal: Healing Properties, Lore, And How to Use This High Vibration Stone. Healthline. Retrieved from https://www.healthline.com/health/mind-body/selenite-properties
Supran, G. Presentation: Assessing ExxonMobil’s Climate Change Communications: Have communications about climate change by ExxonMobil and other fossil fuel companies misled customers, shareholders, or the public?https://www.europarl.europa.eu/cmsdata/162144/Presentation%20Geoffrey%20Supran.pdf
Supran, G., & Oreskes, N. (2017). Assessing ExxonMobil’s climate change communications (1977–2014). Environmental Research Letters, 12, 1-18. Retrieved from https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa815f/pdf
Supran, G., & Oreskes, N. (2020). Addendum to ‘Assessing ExxonMobil’s climate change communications (1977–2014)’ Supran and Oreskes (2017 Environ. Res. Lett. 12 084019). Environmental Research Letters, 15, 1-18. Retrieved from https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa815f/pdf
Talbot, M. (1988). Beyond the Quantum. New York, New York: Bantam Books.
The Eagles. (1977). Hotel California. On Hotel California. Los Angeles, CA: Asylum.
Timperley, J. (2021, October 21). The fight to end fossil-fuel subsudies: Why is it so hard to stop governments propping up of the coal, oil and gas industries? Nature, 598, 403-405. Retrieved from https://media.nature.com/original/magazine-assets/d41586-021-02847-2/d41586-021-02847-2.pdf
Trismegistus, H. The Emerald Tablet of Hermes. In.
Turakitwanakan, W., Mekseepralard, C., & Busarakumtragul, P. (2013). Effects of Mindfulness Meditation on Serum Cortisol of Medical Students. JOurnal of the Medical Association of Thailand, 96. Retrieved from https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23724462/
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. (2016). Discrimination Against Families with Children in Rental Housing Markets: Findings of the Pilot Study. Retrieved from https://www.huduser.gov/portal/sites/default/files/pdf/HDSFamiliesFinalReport.pdf
von Muggenthaler, E. (2001). The felid purr: A healing mechanism? The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 110(5), 2666. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/272259095_The_felid_purr_A_healing_mechanism
Wampold, B. E., Minami, T., Baskin, T. W., & Tierney, S. C. (2002). A meta-(re)analysis of the effects of cognitive therapy versus ‘other therapies’ for depression. Journal of Affective Disorders, 68(2-3), 159–165. Retrieved from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0165032700002871?via%3Dihub
Wikipedia-Ableism. Ableism. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ableism. Retrieved December 6, 2021 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ableism
Wikipedia-Annual Leave. List of minimum annual leave by country. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minimum_annual_leave_by_country. Retrieved January 20, 2022 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minimum_annual_leave_by_country
Wikipedia-Dodo Bird Verdict. Dodo Bird Verdict. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodo_bird_verdict. Retrieved December 11, 2021 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodo_bird_verdict
Wikipedia-Internet Troll. Internet Troll. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_troll. Retrieved January 4, 2022 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_troll
Wikipedia-Quantum Enganglement. Quantum Enganglement. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_entanglement. from Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_entanglement
Wikipedia-Stockdale. James Stockdale. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Stockdale. Retrieved December 18, 2021 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Stockdale
Wikipedia-Turning…Cheek. Turning the Other Cheek. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turning_the_other_cheek. Retrieved November 11, 2021 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turning_the_other_cheek
Williamson, M. (2002). Everyday Grace: Having Hope, Finding Forgiveness and Making Miracles. New York: Riverhead Books.
Wilson, E. O. (2006). Planet Earth: The Future. Great Britain: British Broadcasting Company.
Worl-A-Girl. (1993). Jamaican Bobsledding Chant. Cool Runnings.
Youssef, N., A., Lockwood, L., Su, S., Hao, G., & Rutten, B. P. F. (2018). The Effects of Trauma, with or without PTSD, on the Transgenerational DNA Methylation Alterations in Human Offsprings. Brain Sciences, 8(83), 1-7. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5977074/pdf/brainsci-08-00083.pdf
Zimmerman, M. (1986). Neurophysiology of Sensory Systems, Robert F. Schmidt Ed., Fundamentals of Sensory Physiology. . In R. F. Schmidt (Ed.), Fundamentals of Sensory Physiology. Berlin.: Springer-Verlag.