There’s an interesting idea in my mind that we all live in the same reality, but we don’t necessarily experience it at the same level of consciousness or awareness. Some people have a much poorer grasp of what’s happening around them, they don’t notice things, question things, or reflect as deeply as others. This raises an interesting question: why do some people operate from such a lower level of awareness and remain there if we all share the same conscious experience?
It sometimes feels like many people are living from a very limited version of themselves, they seem to operate on a much lower “vibration,” while others appear more aware, observant, and capable of seeing beyond that level.
I’ve also noticed that people at that low level of awareness often make bad choices and lack a strong moral compass. It makes you wonder if being like that ultimately leaves you living a lesser version of the life you were meant to have
To me this is normal not just a idea as you seem to proclaim. Lower tones are for more predatorial behavior. Higher tones are more for union. Most are in between these two truths. They say time is relative, that should also mean so are our experiences. Not always of course.
In my opinion, one should try to graduate outside the matrix. Just a thought. Buddhists call this escaping samsara.
To any that come across this, I also recommend not to judge the lower vibrations beings unless you have walked in there shoes. There not at fault as they have been programmed to behave that way. If true, that means the fault lies with the programmer, not in the brainwashed.
The developmental psychology is among other things researching the human awareness, there are few interesting models that directly or indirectly are connected to the topic: Ego development theory (Jane Loevinger and Susanne Cook Greuters), Spiral dynamics model, Maslow hierarchy of needs is also addressing some of the things you raised.
Anyway- there are indeed different levels of awareness, and basically it is mostly correlated to metacognitive thinking.
A few years ago on a podcast a statistician for life and health insurance decided that classifying people in the normal categories (sex, race, age, …) wasn’t a sufficient representation of their insurance risk. Instead he came up with a questionnaire that weight their risk along something like 9 dimensions. I haven’t been able to find a direct reference but there is a lot of information that people fall into 3 main categories: high-risk Apathetic Clusters, mid-risk Anxious or Reactive Clusters and low-risk Proactive Clusters. Examples of high-risk are people that are fatalistic live life carefree, mid-risk are people who are highly vigilant or hypochondriac and low-risk are people who are preventive and disciplined. There are subclusters. I’m low-risk but a calculated risk taker and pursue activities like mountaineering and occasional excessive drinking while pursuing healthy activities.
Another way of thinking about this is that we all live multidimensional lives. Think of it as a multidimensional surface. Along this surface are stable plateaus where personal characteristics cluster forming stable lifestyles. Transitioning from one plateau to another is extremely difficult because of the dimensionality you have to traverse. In a stable condition the dimensions are interlocked and by only changing one or two you can’t reach another stable lifestyle and the other dimensions only pull you back.
Ever since I started looking at life this way I can’t stop seeing it.
The way I personally look at this is:
There is a “consensus reality” which is term used in philosophy and some other areas- and represents the societal norms, ethics, rules, laws etc… Consensus reality depends on culture and many other things and it tends to change- this is the lense through most of people view the reality- likewise:In ego development theory majority of people are in so called “conventional stages”
but some people sometimes move into “post conventional” stages (and some of them sort of have two realities) firstly it starts with doubting at norms and rules, questioning everything, and deconstructing everything and they start developing metacognitive thinking and they are becoming more aware and their lenses through which they filter reality starts changing- and some of them almost live in 2 different realities-
that is how I understand Zen proverb: “Chop the wood and carry water; get enlightenment; and then chop the wood and carry water.”
CG Jung also talked about how at some age some people start deconstructing everything they know and after deconstruction then starts process of “individuation”- and awareness starts to change.
However- it doesn’t mean that people who have less developed metacognition are less happy or sre less worthy- it is that their worldview is simpler, narrower, but at the end of the day- no one can’t see reality as it is.
I agree the kinds of ‘spiral dynamics’ models and the idea of ‘metacognitive awareness’ are highly relevant here. But I’ve long argued that the predominant scientific worldview doesn’t really possess the conceptual space for ‘higher’ levels of consciousness — because there is no ‘qualitative axis’ or ‘axis of values’, as it were.
Abraham Maslow’s ‘hierarchy of needs’ was an exception, as you pointed out. For a long while I was interested in what used to be called ‘transpersonal psychology’, in which Maslow was a central figure. It was kind of a fringe movement that was popular in the 1980’s and 90’s until Ken Wilber (for reasons I can’t remember) put the kibosh on the term ‘transpersonal’. Jung was also a figure, albeit a very complex one, with his multi-faceted approach. More recently, I’ve listened to John Vervaeke’s ‘Awakening from the Meaning Crisis’ series of lectures — have you heard of him — which discusses, or rather is about, the absence of the qualitative dimension in modern culture. He talks about ‘anagoge’ as a kind of ascent to higher levels of integration.
I take the aims of these kinds of insights to reach a ‘unitive vision’ which finds expression in some of the classical schools of philosophy, but which is a very difficult matter to understand. I recall Vervaeke saying that the One of Plotinus is not something you can ever really understand. He writes:
When reading Plotinus, you are not just reading an argument. You are also undergoing a spiritual exercise that is trying to transform your state of consciousness and cognition.
Vervaeke, John; Mastropietro, Christopher. Awakening From the Meaning Crisis: Part 1: Origins (p. 301). (Function). Kindle Edition.
Yeah, it seems like there are definitely higher and much lower levels of awareness. I’m still having trouble finding something that specifically talks about this idea, though.
The way I understand it, and easiest way to put it having higher awareness is moving from perspective back to perception,
as some say not being like a “dog chasing the car” completely unaware of the “forces” driving him.
We can only see what our minds lets us see- and removing everything that clouds our mind is the process of raising awareness- it includes mindfulness/meditation deconstructing of inherited and imposed beliefs and repressed material (shadow in CG Jung), and raising abilities to observe the own thoughts and emotions, and seeing things as they are, it goes further but I don’t quite understand it.
Anyway- lots of sources are talking about this- so pick any that resonates with you mostly.
I wish it’s that easy. Most people can’t see through the cave. In Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, most people are only able to see the shadows, not the reality behind them.
The Plato’s cave allegory is the way Plato saw “consensus reality”- people in cave believe that is the reality because they never seen anything different- so the biggest trick is the realisation that one is in a cave- and questioning the norms, rules etc- that is basically deconstruction process,you can call it debugging after some point the “integration process” also starts- which is integration of different parts of self, emotions, intellect- for example some people are relying on their emotions too much- some are trying to intellectualise everything and ignore their emotions, and also returning repressed parts of ourselves- so we are aware of all this/ and not being driven by “unseen forces”.
This are the basics, and the biggest mistake and obstacle is to make it into another competition , another ladder to climb on, another label to stick on- because that’s exactly what keeps us in the cave: faster, better, higher… Be more productive… Meditate more, go deeper,etc- we exchange one cave for another- instead of enjoying the journey and experience life becomes “the day that never comes”, as there is always some ladders to climb.
We can’t “understand” people with lot higher levels of consciousnes- it similar to as: it takes genius to understand genius.
The higher level of consciousness is not something that can be learned or more data or knowledge- it is a shift in a perspective which usually happens when something pushes us to question our meaning making- it can be sometimes some difficult event and even reading Plotinus as a different perspective can make us question our own - and it starts the process and at some point everything settles- till next round (if it happens).