With so many personal development materials out there it is quite hard to understand how everything fits together. How do we determine what is going to work for you and what will not?  Is there any chance of building a framework on which all pieces fit to create clear images that everyone can see or what is relevant to their circumstances? I keep asking myself those questions. I have personally read so many books, articles, gone to so many seminars, listened to CDs and watched many DVDs and I found that not every approach or technique bought me promised results; although I watched others being successful at using those tools.

As we go through life we learn new things. Our minds open up to new possibilities and what we were not able to comprehend 10 years ago might seem so obvious today.

What you or I perceive as universal truth, others might see as incorrect; one of the explanations for this would be that as we all grow, we find ourselves on different levels and we perceive the world only from that level. We are unable to understand anything that resides above our current level of perception or we experience only small glimpses of what is happening on those higher levels. For example; some people use only their mind to make decisions in everyday life. They ignore their intuition as a valuable tool, but that does not mean, they will not get the feeling to do something and then overwrite this inner feeling with the logical decision that will contradict this feeling. People who use their intuition might be on a different level comparing to ones who use logic. There is no right or wrong way and either of these might bring you positive results. The point here is that it would be a waste of time to explain to someone how good a certain technique is if they are not ready to accept it yet, perhaps in a few weeks, months or even years they may.

As soon as we can determine on which level of consciousness we are currently operating on, we can find all the relevant tools to help us achieve what we want in life and prepare us to move towards the higher level.

Another example to illustrate this would be to take a single mother who is struggling to survive on a low income, whilst trying to juggle her life and raise her children; a person who reaches out for help and comfort and sees no solution to her financial problems. What a person like this may need is a sense of security, which can be found in a better paying job or a new partnership. If we told this woman that she should use some relaxation techniques to lower her stress levels, she would not accept your advice or suggestion; the only thing that will lower her stress levels in her view would be medication. When you are on this level of survival you will not be ready to accept help using tools relevant to other levels.

Let me use this analogy; there is a multilevel building where on the first level, they sell clothes, on the second level they sell electronics and on the third level they sell furniture.  It would be a waste of time to walk up to the third level to look for a new pair of pants to buy; and the same applies for personal help and development.

One can come up with many levels and we will stick to 7 basic ones. Most of the material on this website will refer to the first three levels and about 5 to 10% to levels 4 and 5. People who reach levels 6 and 7 are extremely rare and in a way they do not need any help from external resources (like this website).  Looking at situations in this world, more than 95% of people are currently on levels 1 and 2 or somewhere between. They do however have the occasional insight to higher levels.

We all sometimes experience a beautiful moment of bliss, when everything flows and it almost seems like time has stopped. Some refer to this as “the zone”. When you enter this state, all seems to fall into place without us putting any effort into it. It feels like someone else took over our life making sure everything works just perfect. People who are capable to live this way in every moment have probably reached level 3 or are in transition from the previous level where everything revolves around our need for our ego.

On occasions, is it difficult to determine which level we currently operate from. Some of the aspects associated with lower levels might still show up in our lives even though we grow into higher plains. The challenge here is not to let go of everything that used to serve us in times when we had more growing to do, but integrate everything that was once useful, being aware of it, seeing it as a part of us and being able to move away from it, closer to new discoveries that will resonate with our current state. This way we will not become separated from others, more so we will be able to understand everyone, seeing others as another form of ourselves in the past or future.

From the previous paragraphs, you might be getting a sense of what those levels are and how important it is to know where we are and go from there. Endless searching for things becomes a struggle and whilst we do not know what they really are, we will stop in that moment of peace, without taking into account our current situation. We must stop trying to be something we are not and make decisions to go forward from there.  Only when we fully understand what drives us to do things we do in our lives, then we will be able to move away from things we do not want and have more of what we wish to have.

Many people are stuck on the first two levels as they do not know any better. We are raised in a society based upon values that arise from the level of survival and our ego. We need a job to make money, money to pay for bills, bigger bills for more things; more things to look better in other people’s eyes. We want money and power, we want to be recognised. We have needs that have been implanted into our minds without us even knowing. We worship celebrities, paying them millions of dollars, while at the same time we choose to ignore homeless on the street. This is not right or wrong, this is just something our society is based upon.

If our happiness depends on events on the outside, we become prisoners with no control. There will never be enough! Nothing will ever be good enough!

By reading other articles everything should become clearer as your mind opens up to the new possibilities of life. I wish you good luck on your journey wherever you are.

Related articles:

Survival - 1st Level of Consciousness 

Ego - 2nd Level of Consciousness