The Map of Consciousness Part 1: The Anatomy of Suffering

Introduction

0:00in the conversations with Sri Shantananda Saraswati the Shankaracharya there's an interesting bit where he says that if there were six fully realized people at one time in the world there would be a complete renaissance of spiritual culture and human culture there would

0:31be a complete change they said it would only need to be six and it could be any six less than one in a billion to do that the more enlightened souls they kind of balance out the general level of

Podcast Introduction

0:43consciousness in the world hello and welcome back to the spiritual psychology of acting podcast now what if human suffering wasn't random what if there was actually a map a framework for understanding why certain people remain trapped in cycles of shame or anger while others seem able to rise above the same circumstances and live with courage and joy in the 1990s psychiatrist and

Map of Consciousness

1:17researcher david r hawkins proposed something radical he suggested that human emotions motivations and worldviews exist on a measurable scale of consciousness ranging from the most destructive states of mind all the way to enlightenment he called it the map of consciousness now at first that might sound a bit abstract or woo woo but stick with us because instead of judging people morally what the map actually gives us is a surprisingly practical way to understand the

Levels of Consciousness

1:50mechanics of human behavior so in this three-part mini-series we're exploring all the levels of consciousness starting at the very bottom of the map because in this basement level are four emotional states that can often keep us locked in suffering shame guilt apathy and grief for some these aren't just passing feelings their entire worldviews that can color how we see ourselves and the world around

Storytelling and Consciousness

2:22us and some of the most powerful stories told in film tv and theater are about characters trapped in these states trying to climb their way out so in this episode we're exploring what these levels actually look like in real life and how becoming aware of them might help us to begin to move beyond them let's jump into it well this is a topic that we've long held on our list to to get to so it's exciting that we're

3:00finally getting to delve into it um but for me this i think this is quite an interesting topic to cover

David R Hawkins

3:06for this podcast because i was first introduced to the work of david r hawkins the psychiatrist and and spiritual teacher that wrote this book power versus force i was introduced to it through this book that was on the reading list for the spiritual psychology of acting when i first studied it so where did you first hear about it and and how did this all come to be i i've been aware of this book for over 20 years i think i had a student called ben enright if you're listening ben hi ben uh ben just

3:37came up to me in a break one day in a class and just said have you seen this amazing book power versus force was the title of the book and i was like no and he showed me in there and he actually gave me a copy and said oh you should read this it's really interesting because it gives a table of levels of consciousness of different emotions so i thought well that would be very interesting to look at what is that and i asked him so what what's the lowest and he said shame and i said what's the highest and he said enlightenment it's like oh that sounds very

4:11interesting so there's a gradation of levels of consciousness of each of those maybe we should

Kinesiology and Calibration

4:17qualify a little bit how hawkins came up with the levels of this and the basis in kinesiology can you say about a bit about that right yeah so yeah it's in order to put this into context hawkins posited that yeah there's that you can calibrate these levels of consciousness that they all have have certain levels and the way he calibrated them was through this use of kinesiology which is not something that he invented something that he'd um that sort of already exists which is basically kind of a form of

4:47muscle testing right that it was i think it was used like medically in terms of you know for medication stuff to test certain kind of medication um but essentially it was finding out that you can ask any question and the answer either your muscles stay strong or they go weak in response to that question almost kind of subconsciously you can then calibrate uh not just human beings and levels of consciousness but the levels of consciousness isn't in anything like political ideologies countries movies art all that kind of stuff right i'd come i'd come across kinesiology separately

5:22because i'd suffered from some allergies oh right okay before i'd even you know years before i'd come across this book so probably when i was in my 30s i went along and uh uh went to see a kinesiologist and she put things like like um a dust bunny in my hand and then tested my muscle with the strength i had to hold out my my my arm kind of a right angle i think and then what she would do is put the substance in my hand and then asked me to relax and then test it and then some of the things that when she

5:57tested it my arm went weak and some of it it remained strong and one of the things was dust right okay um so uh so then i changed all my covers i put i did it was like quite a a hoo-ha uh but it did help so there was something um there was there was something in it i knew but i had no idea about these calibrations so can you speak a bit about that about what you've discovered

Consciousness Scale

6:23about the calibrations yeah so so basically in this book power versus force the consciousness scale itself goes from one to a thousand like you say at the end of the bottom of the scale is shame the top is enlightenment and there's lots of levels in between but basically there's a level at 200 which is like the critical threshold and anything below 200 is destructive energy which is rooted in force and then anything above 200 is positive constructive energy which is based in power and so this is where

6:57this power versus force thing comes into it force is like domination and control uh coercion those kind of you know destructive forces whereas power is all about compassion and authenticity and courage and so hawkins claimed that because he died in 2012 i think it was yeah and so there's been a bit of time you know time has passed since since he's passed and his work has been taken on so it'd be interesting to delve more into maybe what you know the state of the world is nowadays which i think has definitely changed a lot in the last 15 you know 10 15 20 years but right so let me just stop you

Calibration and Human Evolution

7:32yeah so if it's so the calibration so from one to a thousand if it's below 200 then we're in a state of in terms of human evolution we're in a state of regression yes if it's above 200 then there's some kind of evolution yes that's right yeah yeah that's a good way of looking at it yeah yeah and so i just want to ask though because i know the answer at the time that this was written was the general level of

8:03consciousness of the human race calibrated and if so what was the number well yeah so this is the thing so when hawkins was alive he claimed this would have been probably early 2000s that 85 percent of humanity calibrates below 200 so over four-fifths of all humans are below this this level which is you know destructive and that the average level of human consciousness back then was 204 so barely

8:34just above the threshold for humans taking responsibility for themselves so i think you know back then that really means that society was operating from mainly from like things like fear and desire pride anger all these destructive levels and only a small minority really operating from things like reason and love and acceptance that kind of thing but i think you know i think the the state of affairs in the world is is a lot worse now um in terms of the average level of human consciousness so i do wonder if it's below 200 as an average now yeah i wonder because because i know as

9:09well they calibrated the countries didn't they and two of the countries that came out on top were of course the united states in great britain yeah 400 420 or something like that yeah yeah because of democracy and reason so so what were those things so democracy reason so what was it that that allowed it to calibrate so high let's say the united states so that was so so yeah so the united states and united kingdom they calibrated around kind of 420 and that is because of like their strong institutions that

9:41they had the intellectual culture that surrounding it all the kind of philosophical tradition which we know now has obviously definitely suffered over the years somewhere like canada was just below that 415 for their kind of like social cooperation and pretty stable governance um australia just below that at 410 so you've got all these kind of various strengths basically you know some like the netherlands for their tolerance their um strong civic systems germany for their engineering culture all these things that kind of raise this level of consciousness overall but yeah the uk and the

10:15us where we're at right now i'm not sure we're anywhere near that level well so if if the us high calibration was due to its democracy its order its law its reasonability its standing as a peace protector in the world and that's what gave it is 400 i wouldn't i would dread to think what the general level of consciousness of the united states is currently absolutely yeah yeah and and so but also i think what's interesting is that these are not kind of moral judgments as well it's it's taken

10:48as a kind of an overall they can the overall consciousness level so somewhere like india in india there's a huge level of poverty and so that drags the consciousness down you know a lot of these third world countries they don't have the ability um to to have these thriving democracies you know for various reasons for dictators for parts of society that's that's fallen apart so that's the kind of interesting thing to to take into consideration as well is that a lot of these kind of countries even the ones that are kind of mid-level ones there's a neutralness there's a kind of a willingness

11:21and acceptance which you'll get to in some of those levels in later episodes um and just just in case anyone's wondering we are going to cover all the levels we're going to go for we're going on a journey not just in this one episode this is going to be a three episode mini series within this season on the levels of consciousness and we are going to go through all of them but we're not not today we're just going to go through the first few today first four yeah and i think you know there's probably a lot more to be said about the lower levels of consciousness because it's where a lot of

11:52like we say most people do live chronically under this this critical threshold these kind of more destructive negative forces there's probably a lot more that's recognizable um for people yes well um we'll come to that as we go along but i think it's important one of the things that i wanted to say is just to sort of clarify about we're talking about levels of consciousness so first of all the consciousness what we're talking about what is consciousness consciousness in sanskrit chit is the in simple terms it's the intelligent creative life force which animates matter and is the life of

12:32all things so the life force itself is the consciousness and i just want to clear up first of all that actually the idea of levels of consciousness is a bit of a myth um you can't have levels of of consciousness if consciousness is one it doesn't have levels what we're really talking about here are levels of impediment and levels of limitation and actually there is no raising of the level of

13:04consciousness there is only delimiting the consciousness so i think that's important to point out isn't it is the journey it's like you know the self is pure consciousness the art man the self of all of us is pure consciousness but it's encased you know i always think of the analogy of you know in star wars where where they find themselves in that rubbish constructor yeah the trash compactor yeah it's a little bit like that that the walls close in there's a limit there's a limit

13:37people inhabit a limited more and more limited sphere of thinking as their thinking becomes more about just themselves you see what i mean it just gets limited and limited and limited but if you imagine that um garbage compressor in star wars beyond the walls there's space yeah so if we could remove the walls which are the ideas and the impediments then there's a natural expansion um but it isn't an expansion as such it's a delimiting because that which is a whole and

14:11complete doesn't have levels and by definition it cannot expand so i just wanted to make that clear that really we should call this the um the levels of impediment of consciousness rather than levels of consciousness but i think everybody knows what we're talking about visually it kind of makes me think of like if it's a kind of a ball in water it's a submerge and it's any gravity when you take a plate away that gravity would release it would rise to the top and then take another one it would rise to the top again it's that kind of thing isn't it that is that if it's like a table here we've got where

14:42you know this consciousness is just getting it's becoming more and more free taking this move move freely right exactly other way of looking at it and i think it you know in spiritual terms it's um the the sort of the lower levels are where the life is governed by the individual ahankara so ahankara just if anyone is not you know if you're new to the the podcast ahankara is a sanskrit word ahom is the name of the self and the word kara can translate as a vehicle so ahom vehicle

15:17the vehicle of i right the i is the self is the consciousness and the individual is is known as the ahankara which is the ahankara which is the i vehicle right that the consciousness is kind of travels in that and the the depending on the level of the guna the ahankara the individual is very different in when tamas is dominant that's the lethargy ignorance etc the the the heavy particles

15:49of creation when that's dominant then the ahankara is just thinking about its own survival and its own needs etc when the uh ahom the self is is uh really the the central factor is the central point of reference then that makes a very big difference because then one's thinking is more universal so there's there's an expansion in that way and i wonder if like the power that he's speaking of is really the power of the atman the power of the universal self the power of consciousness itself

16:23and the force that he's talking about is really the force of the individual ahankara yeah but just by another name yeah yeah but the same truth yeah so that would mean then in order in terms of raising the level of consciousness it's a question the that the factor that we need to consider is the balance of the guna so these three constituents of creation the tamas the inertia the rajas the movement and energy and the sattva the purity and light so when tamas is predominant

17:03the being devolves to lower levels of consciousness when rajas is predominant the being stays at the same level of consciousness i always think of it like a gerbil on a wheel expending a lot of energy but not rising or going anywhere so you spend a lot of energy but you don't go anywhere when sattva is predominant that's what creates the light and space and the apparent elevation as it were so in terms of you know changing the level of consciousness in the human race what we need is more sattva

17:39less rajas and tamas yeah well actually that works out as well in terms of what hawkins developed in in these levels of consciousness with each level that goes higher up there is a bit more energy attached to it so we'll see as we as we get into it that states are close together the levels are close together often are very similar but just they one has a bit more energy to it which allows the levels to to rise there is that sense of the energy that i think that's definitely there's

Energy and Consciousness

18:09something in that so we start off with the first one and number one is shame where in that's in absolute tamas one is fixed and stuck in that yeah and then as it goes into guilt there's a little bit more rajas right that's number two we're going to reveal these as we go along and then do you see what i mean so there's more rajas comes into it i must think think there must be a certain point when we get to the middle where sattva starts coming into play yeah you know that really you can see a gradation of the guna balance from tamas through rajas to sattva i think that's right yeah

18:40yeah i think there's something that's interesting as well that you know in terms of other stats that the calibrations that hawkins worked out apparently according to hawkins only eight percent of people operate in the 400s and above only four percent of the world's population reach 500 or above and people that are at levels above 600 are literally one in a million so i think you know when you're talking about people you know we throw terms like genius or saint you know something like mother theresa is very high because of her like amount of unconditional love that she that she had

19:15that was just emanating from her you know or like world changers like political figures and leaders that affected great positive change you know we're talking about these terms that we can often loosely throw around but actually maybe what it is is it's a about talking about a rarer state of consciousness if these are like very small percentage of the population it's a level of consciousness that some of us just haven't even come close to right right but those people at the higher level of consciousness don't they counterbalance all the souls that are at a lower level of

19:47consciousness yes yes this is something yeah that it's a it's a claim that hawkins made it's probably one of the most surprising but also the most positive i think is that well he says that for one individual that at 500 or more they counterbalance hundreds of thousands of people that are below 200 and one individual that calibrates above 700 counterbalances millions and so like you know if that's taken literally or or metaphorically like it suggests really that one person's influence can

20:17change the whole course of not just the world but the future you know kind of generations it's like one person really literally can make a difference well that's a you know that's a spiritual renaissance and that's what we're long overdue really aren't we all here on planet earth at the moment where you know i've been waiting for it for a while yeah i've set my clock and it didn't in the alarm and it didn't go off when i anticipated um that and that do you know what that rings true as well in the conversations with sri shantananda saraswati the the the shankaracharya um the realized sort of person

20:53there's um there's an interesting bit where he says that if there were six fully realized people at one time in the world there would be a complete renaissance of spiritual culture and human culture there would be a complete change he said it would only be need to be six and it could be any six could be any one of the seven billion you know we need like literally you know less than one in a billion kind of thing to to do that and i always thought that that this confirms that doesn't it you

21:27know this is the same he's saying the same thing really the more enlightened souls they kind of balance out the general level of consciousness in the world yeah there's actually something that also hawkins talks about is if you calibrate certain historical events like say like the second world war that calibrated around 125 and 150 because of all this you know hatred and fear and just pure survival but that certain responses within the war itself things like heroic resistance and courage

22:00would raise that level up which is why it calibrates like higher or lower compared to you know what's going on in that war and so it's like that that can redress the balance of evil in the world is when there's more power than there is force right it's fascinating isn't it yeah it's fascinating and you know and it's it says a lot for where we are now and what we need to do you know we need to cultivate the sattwa in each of us you know we're gonna i know we're going to come on to this more as we go along anything else to say before we start going into the first one i think that yeah i guess

22:35just that also to preface that you know that this work from from hawkins isn't really considered scientific it's probably more like it's kind of spiritual philosophy and that's where it is best taken on board i think that it's critics might say that it's not it can't really be properly tested or that some of it's subjective um but i think it's you know at the very least it's a very fascinating way to to think about human behavior and you know what makes us do the certain things that we do and i think that has a great effect on you know the characters that we play and i think you know it's

23:07like you say if this is all about removing the impediments uh to to reach a higher level of consciousness then uh it can only be a good thing right it can only be a good thing i mean i know that we've in our preparation we've looked at some uh films and plays and characters and films and plays to give examples of some of these but i'm not really sure about the effectiveness of the you know the practical use of this knowledge within acting because acting is a very practical you know pragmatic

23:38craft and as you know as far as the spiritual psychology of acting is concerned we use a very clear system of causal thinking purposes objectives and psychological actions to describe all aspects of human behavior you know so it doesn't really matter i think this could help as an actor for an actor to see where their characters are or even better to see where they're at you know this where are we on the scale and therefore where do we need to go you know where are we on this scale but i know that in in our preparation we are going to share some uh examples from plays and films of characters that are

24:15resonating on these various levels yeah i think that can always be really helpful seeing examples helps you kind of tune into the the right frequency for you get the right pictures in your head yeah yeah there's some really good examples there so what do you think should we start with the first

Shame and Guilt

24:30one i think yeah we better right the very yeah it was quite surprising when i first saw this map of consciousness that the the very lowest level is it calibrates at 20 out of a thousand and that is shame um so we'll go through a few um kind of anchor points for each one um the life view for shame is that life is miserable yeah and life is shameful of course yeah yeah it would be miserable that's quite generic isn't it particular kind of miserable is is life is is humiliating or yeah life is shameful

25:02there is actually a purpose on the list of i want to be lost in shame right yeah yeah i want to be lost in shame uh and of course just that's deeper than just that i want to be ashamed of myself purpose um but if anyone's unsure of what why we're saying why would anyone want want to be then then you need to go and listen to the episode from one of the earlier seasons which we did one yeah that was on the shadow purposes um is a useful thing to look at in relation particularly

25:34to these lower emotions so the main emotion there is humiliation humiliation and the core belief of of shame is that i am worthless i think that's that's the you know when we're talking about shame and guilt the shame is when we believe that we are inherently wrong or worthless so it's it's a it's an identity thing it's not something that you you've done it's something that you are that you feel inherently unworthy of love there's an inherent worthlessness that you feel and it erodes it erodes our sense

26:04of self to the point where it can collapse entirely i think you know that shame that's why it's so destructive it's so destructive and also i tell you what else is very destructive about the shame is the lengths that people go to to avoid and cover it up the chaos that's created um because of of people understandably you know not not being able to or not or not willing to because shame is as it is it's shameful being able to confront that shame that the knock-on effect that that has on the people

26:39around them is quite staggering as well isn't it yeah because i think there's there's a sense as well obviously that it's you know turned in on yourself but when that shame is internalized and it gets then becomes i think you know one of the things we should probably mention about these levels are that obviously these are states and emotions that we all experience we've all felt shame guilt fear anger all that kind of thing but when we run into real problems with this stuff is when this becomes chronic when we live permanently in these states or we live for an extended period of time in these states

27:12that's when the real the troubles arise right yeah or we keep returning to it as a kind of baseline emotion right yeah yeah yeah yeah but for shame as well you get a lot of if people operate from shame they can be quite kind of moral extremists right that they feel there's a righteousness in attacking or or or or killing somebody they're acting out of shame you know i think you get that kind of sometimes with with with famous serial killers that they're they're acting out some kind of shame that they feel themselves you know or children have been shamed then turning turning from a victim into the aggressor

27:46and then being cruel to like animals or then to other people because of the shame they feel inside right again like you say yes operating from that level it could be really dangerous so it can be a as well as you know we've got the sort of shadow purposes i want to be ashamed of myself i want to be rejected punish myself suffer and all of that it's there's also got the the purposes like i want to be perfect take revenge be powerful punish and destroy people right yeah yeah on on the other side of it yeah this you know shame i think also comes from there's a lot of trauma it can be based in i think you talk

28:22about like medieval uh societies they often used like public humiliation and i think i think that comes to mind is in game of thrones when you've got cersei that one of the main characters this very powerful woman when she's usurped and taken over by the overly righteous zealous monks and nuns they parade her down the street naked and literally shouting shame shame as she's walking down the street and people are throwing excrement or spitting on her that was quite kind of prevalent in medieval societies used as a kind of

28:53a form of uh humiliation and punishment again it's a form of identity destruction right losing degradation degrading into the lowest level of shame is putting people into the lowest uh emotion of shame isn't it yeah that's right through the degradation yeah and so a few examples of this from from from films i think a great one is arthur flick the joker character in joker the play by joaquin phoenix you know there's there's a huge part of that plot is that he is someone who

29:27has experienced a lot of trauma and abuse in his life he's mentally ill and because he doesn't get the help he needs he's pushed to the fringes you know there's a there's a kind of an isolation which then forces him to become violent you know he becomes kind of righteously dishing out revenge because of the shame that he feels well we we find that a lot don't we with the the shame you know when we're designing a character that that uh is cruel that very often we'll put we need to put their own shame and pain behind that um like for example norman bates in psycho yeah yeah yeah um he had a

30:07domineering mother and was full of shame and you you see where that where that sent him into a sort of split personality situation dealing in order to deal with that shame and deal with those impulses yeah yeah yeah and also i would have thought the murders are really he's projecting his or transferring his mother onto the ones that he's murdering if you see what i mean yeah it's really nice and twisted that story isn't it totally yeah it's almost archetypal now isn't it

30:39yeah yeah yeah finally travis bickle as well from taxi driver that's like you know he's described as god's lonely man isn't he is there's a kind of uh uh alienation there that's what that film's all about really that that's that's what turns him into this um quite dangerous person he doesn't start out like that yeah i think that's that's probably more alienate and loneliness than shame is it is there a correlation between the two i would have thought when when we have shame we we withdraw from the world and become lonely yeah that's maybe it's it's i think taxi driver explores shame on a

31:14more societal level doesn't it and then travis bickle is the kind of the one that's he's a character moving through that yeah and a perfect example again is the film shame the uh steve mcqueen film with michael fassbender that's all about sex addiction it's literally called shame you know this is a guy that's like dealing with really deep-seated shame and again like that that emotional um like lack of identity that's manifest as sex addiction it's it's also it's attributed as one of the main causal

31:45factors in cluster b personality disorders oh right what's that well cluster b are things like um borderline personality disorder or as it was called borderline personality disorder or emotional regulation disorder disorder or narcissistic personality disorder and then what what it means a cluster is there are certain attributes of behavioral attributes that are found in all that and they're known as the cluster b there's a cluster a and there's a cluster c uh the cluster c

32:20it's seen that one of the theories is that what's at the basis of it is shame but actually there is a more recent theory uh in those that actually it's genetic all right okay yeah that uh that someone can be you know have the the building blocks as it were for a personality disorder and then have a lovely childhood and still the personality disorder there's not there's no shaming there's no there's nothing of that goes on and they still the personality

32:51disorder comes out so there is there is a genetic component which is obviously historic isn't it it's come you know the genetics are formed by the people who have lived before the generations before generational trauma yeah yeah i often think you know for shame that because it's so to do with self-identity and and it's to do with how you you personally feel rather than actions i think that's one of the ways out of it that if you practice like separating yourself from choices

33:21and actions that can be helpful to you know we talked about don't believe your thoughts or you know reframe your thoughts so that that you realize inherently you are still worthy and lovable because you're a human being with inherent value even if if others make you feel um or even if others seem disappointed with you or with your actions that there is an inherent core quality as a human being which can't ever be taken away from you well it's all to do with your own sense of self isn't it yeah that's why they also say with like the cluster bees is that that one of the factors is a lack of a

33:54core sense of self so when there when there's no central point of reference you know i'm the self the universal self that seems to be where all the trouble and the shame comes from it's interesting in the you know in the looking at the mythological stories of the old testament as soon as adam and eve discovered the duality right so they ate from the tree of the knowledge of the pairs of opposites good and evil yeah and when as soon as they did that they became aware of the division of

34:25male and female and it's very interesting that the first emotion that they experienced is shame which in the story is signified that they cover up their genitals with fig leaves yeah and then when when god who's taking a an evening stroll through through eden comes across them and he says you know what what are you doing and they're hiding they're hiding in shame yeah you know and in many ways i i feel like the human race has been hiding in shame since then various levels yeah yeah yeah in various guises and forms yeah totally uh but it is a real

35:03poison to the psyche that the shame and i think a lot of therapy is is helping people at that level to you know to deal with the shame and come to some sense of self-acceptance yeah yeah yeah which then probably leads us on to the next level a little bit higher up at 30 which is guilt and they're often confused aren't they people interchange those those terms shame and guilt but they are very different things i think brenny brown talks about she's dug a lot into this and really the difference is that guilt is when we believe we've done something wrong so again it's that sense of it's not the inherent

35:37self-value but you feel guilty for having done something it's to do with your actions rather than who you are as a person yes i mean obviously you can have guilt and shame and shame based guilt yeah but but i think what you're saying is is that that uh it's to it's rather in shame it's an intrinsic sense that i am bad and worthless yes yeah and with guilt it's i did something that was bad yeah and i think that's the the it's why it's higher up in the levels because shame is is just purely

36:07destructive it's it can never be a driver of any kind of positive change whereas guilt somebody can feel guilty for something they've done and then change their behavior and so that's why it's a bit higher up so there's there's more energy to it in that in that way guilt and atonement then you can you know you the first precondition of atonement is you've got to be guilty right yeah and that's i think you know guilt is often typified by there's a lot of religion attached to guilt right so many religions have guilt as a kind of dominant factor you know preoccupied with the concept of sin or you know i think

36:39it's the thing that can be exploited by religions as well isn't it absolutely and and uh it's very addictive the guilt you know as you know that from from the course one of the shadow purposes is i want to feel guilty and i define that as i want to suffer in the knowledge of what i should or should not have done or should or should not be doing yeah now when you look at the definition like that it's like

37:09really what are you running when you're feeling guilty you're running pictures of what you should or should not have done and as a result punishing yourself yeah yeah to atone for for what for what you've done and the thing is is then this can become very addictive i had a student once who told me that he had um he was very really into the course very bright really embracing all the knowledge he

37:40was learning he was progressing really well really quickly um and then he told me that he on a sunday he always has a hangover and he he's got a tradition where he goes out and drinks like 10 pints of lager on a saturday night just the thought of that but uh god forbid but he drank 10 pints he would drink 10 pints of lager and then his daughter who who he'd be looking after for the weekend you know he was uh divorced his young daughter would come whilst he was lying on the sofa with a hangover

38:15and prodding him saying dad can we go out and play in the garden and he wouldn't have the energy and go oh yeah i need another paracetamol and what was interesting was that he what he clicked was he realized that when he was drinking the 10 pints of lager he knew that this was going to be the outcome he knew he was looking after his daughter the next day and he knew that this was an outcome and what clicked for him and what i pointed out to him was really he was addicted to the guilt and then he said well that's very interesting because i was brought up a catholic sorry i'm not trying

38:48to insult any catholics here um but i was brought up a catholic which has got that inherent you know people are inherently evil and they need to atone aspect to their theology doesn't doesn't it yeah i think a lot of people struggle with catholic guilt that's a big thing yeah yeah and as a result there's another purpose that comes from that with people who have this intrinsic kind of guilty i want to feel guilty and that's another little purpose to divert from it which is i want to be

39:20blameless if you've ever met you probably people listening to this will know this if you've ever had an argument with somebody who wants to be blameless or when i say an argument it always turns into an argument if they want to be blameless um if you ever have a discussion with somebody who wants to be blameless it will always turn into an argument because they can't accept any responsibility for their actions so what because of the burden of guilt the thing that they fear the most is feeling guilty so they will deny all responsibility of everything and not be able to learn or grow

39:54because they can't learn from their mistakes because they're too busy denying their guilt because they're so afraid of the suffering that they're going to have if they admit to their guilt if you see what i mean yeah yeah totally yeah yeah so that's the thing isn't it can be used in a self-punishment or you can weaponize it like you're saying like it can be used as a kind of protection yes as armor yeah when you literally get there's there's a sect of catholicism isn't there where they go in a room and they they they flail themselves with a whip right yeah yeah uh and and create

40:27wounding you know as a form of atonement and it's interesting word isn't it atone means at one yeah yeah but it's ludicrous because how can you suffer your way to union you know guilt trip your way to realization or happiness it's just it's just not possible i think that yes even like capital punishment as an as a an idea that that is almost like a subconscious thing isn't it that it gratifies something in in in society and culture because

41:01there is a guilt there and it's like and it's because they're so preoccupied with it it's that actually it's like it's gratifying or satisfying some kind of inherent guilt right well let him with a clean conscience throw the first stone he he who is without sin throw the first stone you remember that it's in the new testament and then they all put their rocks down because they all realize actually and quite interesting psychologically what's being pointed out there in that story very wisely is that all the people that are throwing those stones at the at the brazen woman

41:34they're all really projecting their own guilt and shame onto her yeah yeah and that's the problem with it isn't it that's where it becomes destructive for those around them is the projections of the guilt and the shame our modern day equivalent really this is social media pylons isn't it okay yeah in the comment section jump on somebody for something they've said or done and it can often be a reflection of of their own guilt yeah yeah uh righteous um indignation a kind of justified which

42:07witch hunt i mean that's what the witch hunts are well aren't they really yeah they're people projecting their own shame and guilt their own shadow essentially so it has a lot to answer for i think we've touched on before jung's theory about the nazis that because of the nazi ideal it created a very deep shadow so they knew that they weren't the ideal and it created a shadow so what are they going to do with this collective shadow i know let's project it onto the jews yeah and then i guess after that you know after the downfall of all that then you've got the entire country

42:42entire nation of germany then reckoning with a collective guilt you know that they kind of had to go through that as a as a country as a nation yes like geopolitically that after the war they had to kind of rebuild and and kind of come to terms with it and it still affects the psyche of the country today yeah very much so you know having visited last year that it very much um you can sit you can feel it that there's that yeah yeah and so we should say as well the the core belief for guilt is i deserve punishment which you covered yeah but the emotion the experience is blame that's being

43:16lost well blame is the deflection of guilt okay yeah isn't it it's what we do to to deflect the guilt is we blame we sort of um yeah okay how we deal with it yeah yeah yeah yeah and so examples of this i think good one is abigail williams in the crucible that it's that same thing she weaponizes guilt right that she's feeling something the uncomfortable with her own emotions and he starts accusing other people as being witches to save herself that is a again that religious aspect of it is huge in that

43:46play yeah but there's nothing religious about it at all is there it's just about people's psychology and her carrying the burden of guilt which is come from probably from those spiritual teachings you know and that and how far short people fall from the good lord do you know what i mean if like jesus is the ideal he's the you know 1000 calibration uh ideal enlightened being then you know we could in comparison with jesus we can only disappoint ourselves yeah we'll never low up yeah and so that creates

44:22that you know the the feelings of the guilt and the shadow and then the shadow gets projected and that's what creates the witch hunt right yeah you see it we see it going on in the united states right now don't we this this whole mechanism at work absolutely yeah yeah i think yeah interesting i think you know if you think about the godfather as well michael corleone you know that there's a kind of a real american kind of he's a kind of almost an avatar for a lot of like american society american dream kind

44:52of thing isn't he but especially in the godfather part two as as he's kind of increasingly like reckoning with the guilt of the violence that he's created you know you take him from the very start in the godfather he's a very different person to he ends up the end of godfather part two where he goes wrong is instead of healing that guilt he then just keeps burying it right and so it grows into this something which he has to you know delve further into his own power and coercion and control over people well it creates more force doesn't it it's like that if you're in a swimming pool and you've got a basketball and you're trying to hold the basketball underwater yeah you know the more

45:28you're forcing it to hold underwater the more equal pressure there is for the for the basketball to want to pop up and smack you in the face right yeah that's repression for you you know yeah yeah yeah that's yeah so repression is is yeah it's um i think as we'll find in all these levels repression is almost as bad as the indulging in it right that you've got to experience it and kind of but not indulge it it's interesting because you say repression and i'm back to the you know the star wars garbage constructor as well and what's the opposite of of that is expansion yeah the delimiting

46:06there you go you know when we we practice in the class as you know you know at the beginning of every class we practice the meditation and one of the parts of the meditation is to be aware of the sounds of the world and then go right out to the furthest most distant sounds and then to go right out to the silence beyond and what that does internally is it creates a sense of expansion which is the opposite to this delimiting self-repressed mode that we're talking about when

46:39people live in get guilt and shame right yeah yeah yeah expansion is the key that's what i'm saying is that we need to somehow expand our sense of self that's the delimiting you know and that simple exercise of just connecting with the silence which is unlimited has a sense of opening the person out opening up the being and letting the sattwa get in there and it's the sattwa that delimits you know it's the rajas and tamas that limits it's the sattwa that delimits and and creates expansion

47:13i think that's a great point because it's people often think they have to try and strive to be a better person or is there's a real working hard at it but it's almost like the harder you work the harder it gets right that's the rajas taking control whereas the sattwa is the releasing the letting go that's the vital next step i guess yes in sattwa we evolve hi i'm martin delaney and i'm here to tell you about the upcoming seminar for the spiritual

47:45psychology of acting i ended up studying the full course and it really helped me to develop as an actor and most recently to prepare for a major film role that i was involved in following on from the teachings and techniques of the great stanislavski and combined with the very best in modern psychology and ancient practical wisdom the spiritual psychology of acting will provide you with the right knowledge and a powerful toolbox of techniques to help you create any character to grow as an actor and to thrive within the industry the seminars last for two and a half hours each it's jam-packed with

48:19useful information and will give you a firm foundation in the main principles of the art and craft of great acting so if you love acting and if you're looking to up your game you can sign up via the spiritual psychology of acting website or click the link in the description and enjoy the many benefits the seminar will offer you and best of all it's completely free so energy level 50 now we're at which is apathy i don't know if i can be arsed with that

48:55that's the spirit i can't be arsed with apathy so apathy so yeah so the core belief of this is that nothing matters um the emotion that you experience is despair uh it's the it's the the view that life is hopeless it's not just despair though is it it's kind of indignation deprivation you might get apathy after deprivation yeah i mean despairing is almost maybe too energetic yes there's there's less

49:27less to struggle against almost because it's just like whatever isn't it is that is apathy is i can't be arsed yeah is really life is a waste yeah and so you associate this kind of with depression and helplessness sometimes a learned helplessness i guess as well well when when one can't fulfill one's purposes when one cannot express one's latent libido drive and i don't just mean sexual libido drive just the energy of evolution and the propensity to to care and nurture that when that is repressed

50:02what's the point yeah you know what's the point is that it's uh that's when the life's a waste and and just to clarify life's a waste is um basically the thought that happiness doesn't really exist so why am i even bothering to go for it so i i have a purpose i go for my purpose i don't fulfill it and it doesn't make me happy and then i have another purpose i go for my purpose i don't fulfill it and

50:34it doesn't make me happy and eventually the mind starts going well where is the happiness then you did all this struggle and all this and there's no thing and that's where the life is a waste comes in and it's partly you know jordan because of the perfect unique ideal aspect of purposes because our purposes when we imagine them our desires they they have this quality of being perfect unique and ideal obviously they cannot be fulfilled in their perfection sometimes we get better than we

51:08pictured most of the time it's not as good as the perfect unique ideal picture that we had it is never exactly the same as what we imagined does that make sense what we imagine the purpose even of the small thing even me going to take this sip of a cup of tea now it was slightly colder than i would have liked it to have been and i imagined it before i sipped it yeah does that make sense yeah so because if you think then that's just a sip of a cup of tea but what about my life goals and etc what happens is is because of the perfect unique ideal desire

51:44when you go to sleep where does that regret go is there a dumper truck that comes and all that regret from your subconscious is emptied out of your ear and taken in a dumper truck and taken to some landfill waste site uh somewhere or other if or not where does it go it goes into the subconscious and it accumulates as life is a waste that's the i can't be asked what's the point um i'm a victim

52:17yeah it's like death of a thousand paper cuts isn't it one paper cut is like oh it's disappointing that's a bit sore and they collectively build up into to something that's agonizing yeah it becomes unbearable collecting collecting disappointments yeah and so in this that there is a real sense of pathos and the world and the future itself even like just looks bleak right there's there's it's yeah it's a lack of of hope lack of of um hopefulness yes it's it's life is hopeless life is a waste

52:49you can often get that with society if you know you're living in a time where jobs are harder to come by you know you have to apply for a thousand jobs before you get anywhere close to even an interview it's like it gets to the stage where you know when opportunities start to disappear then motivation starts to collapse and i think that's collapse is a pretty good way of of of explaining this one isn't it's like a collapse of energy kind of collapsing which comes from the psychological action i give up yeah i just i give up i just can't be asked to do it anymore that's the apathy

53:22can you feel it like it feels heavy yeah we were in preparation for this jordan and i were talking about oh god you know the first ones we're doing a really dark we're going to leave the audience on a real bummer promise it gets better it does get better it goes all the way to enlightenment for goodness sake i think again a great example of this then is uh the character of george bailey at the start of it's a wonderful life that's a that's a beautiful lovely film but yet at the start of the film he is in this place isn't he he's completely overwhelmed uh despair like regret about his life

53:57and it's like what's the point of even being here he's ready to to top himself because he's having an existential crisis yeah interesting or not to be yeah that's that's that that whole monologue right is is apathy as well interestingly with with it's a wonderful life hawkins calibrated that film at 500 so it's a very high conscious level film and yet it contains a lot of darkness and it kind of shows you that you can tell a story it doesn't have to be fluffy and light it can you be down in the murky

54:28depths of humanity but yet be a really uplifting um film that you know it raises your own level of consciousness i would go as far as to say that you can't really you know do that without the darkness you can't expose the light without the darkness right yeah yeah and similarly there's a recent film that came out was the the next 28 years later film the bone temple and that is a very dark film it contains a lot of horror and it contains a lot of the kind of really horrifying things that happen in it but ultimately when i came out of that film i felt hopeful i thought there's a lot of love and a lot

55:03of um humor and a lot of kind of this is how you defeat this kind of evil you know there there's there's almost there's an uplift in it even though it contains some really dark stuff so yeah i think you can get some really powerful stories that are able to plumb those depths but make sure that the audience um have a profound and positive experience well you know if the if the if the witch in the wizard of oz wasn't scary there'd be no story if darth vader was a pushover there'd be no story

55:34yeah totally a great example of this probably one of the the clearest examples of apathy in a single character is eeyore from winnie the pooh and obviously he's a cartoon so it's the cartoonish extreme elements but you just have to look at him and you feel the apathy don't you yeah he's gone into his melancholy isn't it his melancholic apathy yeah um misery it's the eyelids you can look at the eyelids and think yeah they're the apathetic eyelids you can feel it yeah

56:05you feel what he feels yeah broken he's you know he can't fulfill his purposes that's what happens isn't it is if you can't fulfill your purposes it's like in in grief i know we're coming on to grief next but i remember when i was in quite severe grief uh period of my life uh it started to shift when i started to to actually get to a place where i could start to think about the future and start to get inspired about things of the future that's when the grief started to lose its

56:35hold because in the grief well we're quite naturally moving into grief now aren't we so let's let's should we go grief i think so yeah so that's the last one for today isn't it is grief

Grief and Loss

56:46i think so like we say these lower levels really are the stuff of drama aren't they because it's all it's where all the conflict and the suffering is um so there's probably more meat in the in these ones here so yeah there's there's plenty more positive ones to come but um but yeah so this next one grief is the emotion of regret is what hawkins put and that life well he said life is tragic but you also said life is cruel that's probably a way of looking at life isn't it when you feel or life is unfair or life is deprivation or something i wanted you know i mean what grief is

57:18loss isn't it yes the first precondition of grief is attachment yeah and the core belief of this is that i've lost something precious yeah that's what consumes the mind yeah or irreplaceable yeah so this is the level of sadness and loss and it's it's um again like i'll say you know none of us are immune to uh to life you know this is what happens you know we we're always going to go through moments of grief but again we run into problems when grief becomes an extended period of time longer than it

57:53should be longer than is healthy and then it becomes a kind of a a life state doesn't it you can get you can certainly get lost in grief yeah and there are payoffs you know people will take care of you you won't have any responsibilities people will will be obliged to be kind to you because you've you're you're in grief there there there could be a good reasons to stay in the grief but the grief has to you know when there's a loss if we don't go through the stages of grief we're not going to get to the end

58:25of grief and the end of grief is acceptance yeah when the subconscious you know catches up with the conscious mind you have to do some conscious work and finally the subconscious catches up that this person isn't coming back uh or this isn't going to you know this isn't going to change and then when you've reached that state of acceptance that's the end of the grief but it's really important to go through the feelings of loss when you've lost someone important you know we've talked about this quite a lot the measure of emotions a lot of the time my students

58:58ask me obviously as actors we're dealing with emotions all the time and what's the right measure of emotion in life and i always say well it's um it's when we neither repress nor indulge our emotions so we allow the emotion to come and we acknowledge it and we experience it and then we let it go rather than we just push it out let it go deny it we have to sort of acknowledge it feel it and then make a decision to let it go otherwise it just keeps coming back yeah you have to allow yourself

59:30definitely yeah in the tv show shrinking one of the characters there who's lost her mother she's a told to uh to have a grief window of like five ten minutes i think it is she sets her clock and and just wallows in the grief and then when that clock finishes that she gets on with her life and it's it's a way of processing right you do have to process it yeah i mean when my wife died if you can imagine what that was like there um the after the shock and you're absolutely in a state of absolute shock then um what what happened was the next more than the the crying began right and i'd wake up in

1:00:09the morning and it would be like this ocean of tears that needed to be released and you'd go i'd go into auto cry you know like and it would just do it and say originally it would go on for say three hours right a three hour bout of this of the loss but then the next day it would be two hours 45 minutes right and then the next day it would be two and a half hours do you see what i mean and i almost felt

1:00:43like what would happen overnight is that the tank would refill and then the next day the explosion of grief and tear the outpouring of the of the tears and everything and then it refilled at night you know like the cistern in the toilet you know it just refills ready to go the next day but then what i noticed is that the amount of tears that came gradually reduced right you know so i've experienced this in a very direct visceral way you know watching watching the body mind machine go

1:01:17through the process of grief which seems like a strange thing to say but um it was very much like that it's like wow look what's what's going on and not there's no control it's just the body has to do it you the body mind machine has to do it it has to go through this um but as you say it's when then i mean i i shared with you earlier on i remember my daughter she was only eight when this happened and she she was doing really well and then i saw her try to capitalize on the grief right it could get

1:01:53her special privileges at school it would mean that people have to be nice to her it would mean she could step out of classes if she felt upset or she got special treatment and i remember looking at her right in the eye and saying ruby and i saw this coming in i said ruby don't become that girl and she knew exactly what i was talking about don't become that girl the girl who uses this you know um as a um as a replacement for actually developing a character personality do you see what

1:02:28i mean i'm the girl who lost their mother and she heard it she heard it and she understood it and she'd seen other children playing that game and she made a clear decisive choice which i'm so grateful for not to go down that avenue you know and she had to return to counseling years later to deal with the grief you know she had to that she was only eight when it happened and what children do at that age is they tend to just put it on a shelf because they can't process it they just carry on but then later

1:03:00on hold on a minute when she got to about 16 she would come home and she'd been to a party with her friends and they'd have had a couple of drinks something would come out you know and she started to process her grief so that's when we sent her to a counselor to help her to sort of like talk this through and after three sessions with the counselor she just thought i'm absolutely fine i'm just telling stories i've told other people and all the counselors doing there is sitting there nodding her head and it's a waste of time um yeah i guess it shows a healthy processing right when that when that

1:03:32happens something that hawkins said about about uh grief is that it will it's it's higher up the level than apathy because there and there's more energy to it and that's what we often find with these levels there is steadily more and more energy available which is why when an apathetic person is then allowed or allows themselves to cry we know they're getting better in his field of psychiatry that's what he found time and time again is moving from apathy to grief is there's an energy level to it which is allowing you to process in a healthy way the tears and the crying

1:04:04is part of it well staying in the apathy is one way of avoiding the grief right yeah you avoid the grief yeah it's easier yeah you don't have to face it i think apathy in apathy as well i think the other aspect of that is blame too because it's like i can't change unless the whole world changes so what's the point yeah you know i'm a victim of circumstance and i can't change unless everybody else changes so i give up yeah and similarly to we're talking about germany they're like there's

1:04:36you can get entire cultures that have or enter into a state of grief especially after like catastrophes so like i'd say like september 11th is a really strong point where like there was a real emotional aftermath that nationally there was a proper grief and partly i guess global as well as a global wave of grief after that event and there's a kind of sharing in that grief as a kind of a as an entire culture an entire society but then channeling those feelings into revenge right yeah not dealing with it

1:05:10in the in the healthy way yeah is let's go and let's just go and obliterate let's go and just cause more destruction as a result yeah revenge essentially isn't it remaining in the lower levels of consciousness yeah yeah yeah i think they're a great example of this is manchester by the sea as it can it's a brilliant film but it is it's got a hard watch casey affleck's character he won the oscar for that performance but there's something about his portrayal of that character which is it's it kind of embodies grief like he's he's kind of grief walking like there's gonna there's um you

1:05:45know in that film he's experienced a real tragedy and it's something he can't really um allow himself to get get past or get through um and you can just see it it's it's incredible performance of of what yeah what grief looks like yeah yeah and uh ricky gervais in afterlife yeah yeah yeah it's a great example isn't yeah because that's what the whole story is about dealing with grief isn't it absolutely yeah yeah so we've now looked at the the first four just the first four yeah there's

1:06:19plenty more to go um and like we say it does get better from here i think the the important thing to remember is that obviously this is still way below the critical level of 200 so these are these are states where people are driven by pain and kind of uh trauma and they're they're kind of running on survival instincts and that's that's probably why it creates such dramatic tension why they're why they're most often used in film and tv and plays because that's where the the real drama lies in life yeah that's where the drama is you know you couldn't have a play if everybody was enlightened we

1:06:54wouldn't need theater or film would we because because all all theater and film is people dealing with problems and if you're enlightened you wouldn't have any it's like i often say you know like you know what what kind of um people say oh what you choose killer joe you're teaching the spiritual psychology of acting and you're using a dark comedy like killer joe like no i'm deliberately using a dark comedy like killer joe um as a reference uh but also who wants to imagine a film where the film

1:07:27is right so in the monastery the monks wake up in the morning they quietly have a have a wash and then they go down and they say their prayers together and then they go into kit into the kitchen they work in silence to prepare a meal and that no one's going to want to go and watch this film what we want we want some we want some terrorists to come through the window and start shooting people we want some drama you know we want some conflict yeah um because i think mainly because it

1:08:00helps us in our day-to-day lives right to kind of experience these things in a safe environment can often be a way of processing difficult things in our own life yes well we get entertained by it but also we get guidance with how to how to navigate i mean that's what mythology really is mythology is a map of human life yeah that helps you at those various stages of human life those stories are to help us through various stages of human life thank you for listening to the spiritual psychology of acting podcast if you're interested in learning

1:08:43more about the spiritual psychology of acting there are some upcoming free intro seminars there's one left this month on monday the 16th of march 2026 and other ones on the 13th of april the 26th of april the 13th of may and the 31st of may if you want to book your place on any of those you can find the link to do so in the description of this episode that is it for now join us next time for part two on our mini-series of the map of consciousness but until then be excellent to each other and we'll see you next

1:09:15time so so so so Thank you.

1:10:08Thank you.