You know what I’m gonna get shit for?
This article.
Why? Because I’m attempting to categorize people’s “LEVELS” of awareness.
It’s fucking offensive. It’s not just presumptuous and judgmental, it’s flat out rude!
After all, aren’t we supposed to respect other’s viewpoints? Isn’t everyone’s truth valid, at least for them? That’s certainly what I was raised to believe in the 80’s! Live and let live, I learned (after I heard Axl Rose and “later” Paul McCartney sing “Live and Let Die”)
But here we are, Grown-ass adults now and still by-and-large afraid to make assessments about someone else view being helpful or unhelpful.
It’s not working well for us.
A lot of us, myself included, never really thought this through from the negative side of things. As we face global issues that affect humankind, you can hear what sometimes feels like the last echoes of a call for powerful leadership as we face these problems together.
There is a sense for many of us who still care, that we have to get things right. We must make strong choices in the face of such threats as climate change, terrorism, and human rights violations.
But how can we skillfully evaluate the perspectives of candidates for leadership when “judge not lest ye be judged” is the prevailing rule of the day?
Is their truth of prioritizing lobbyist agendas and fundraising at the expense of their constituents JUST AS GOOD as one of history’s many iconoclasts who stood for justice and risked it all for the collective?
I’m proposing a solution: We can view the world through a “lens of many layers.”
On one layer of reality, everything that exists is perfect.
It exists, and there’s just no denying it. The fact that it exists makes it perfect. It could be no other way and so it is the measure of perfection by which everything must be compared. When we are speaking about truth from this level of reality, everything that has happened was the perfect culmination of everything that happened prior.
There is, however, yet another layer of reality that is built upon the first one. It’s thankfully far more practical.
I call this the layer of “Game”. It’s the layer where we have (either as individuals or groups) declared and agreed that some things are better than other things.
This is the realm of “good” and “bad”. It’s where things could be “better” and attempts “fail”. It’s where you “should” do certain things and “be ashamed of yourself” (to use a colloquial example) for not doing other things.
But you can’t have good and bad, right and wrong if we first haven’t defined what games we’re playing.
Games are roughly defined as this — a declaration that one state is preferable to another (for whatever reason, it really doesn’t matter.)
In this layer of reality, you could call a game “truth”, and in order to know what’s good, you’ve got to know what you’re working toward – you’ve got to know what’s “true”. After all, how can we know what’s moving us to our goal if we don’t know what the goal is? Said in a more abstract way, How can we know what is good, if we don’t know what is true.
But back to the offensive shit. . . you know what’s really a kick in the nuts?
Finding out that someone thinks they’re better than us! Or finding out that we don’t actually have as evolved of a perspective on life as we thought.
Hell, we’re all just trying the best we can, and life has thrown us more than a few curve balls, am I right?
We’re all doing the best we can while getting pelted from every angle with unexpected “surprises”. The question is: Are there some who have, for whatever luck or privilege, been able to rise to a level of admirable awareness — A level of consciousness that I would want in a leader?
Do they have a perspective that is going to serve more than their own self-interests?
Maybe even more importantly than that — are they even aware of how much self-serving they’re up to?
There are lots of critical questions that we want to be able to ask those who seek stewardship over our collective resources.
This is where discernment is critical. We no longer have the luxury of the tepid disengagement who’s battle cry is “judge not lest ye be judged”. We no longer have the luxury of operating without a backbone in the face of fear that we too will be judged.
This is, in fact, a call to come to the table with what you’ve got and be evaluated for your suitability in service. This is something we can get high or low marks in. It is something that we can improve and transform.
Our levels of “consciousness” or “awareness” or “perspective” or “worldview” can reveal how far we have come in life, and also what may continue to hold us back from our greatness.
What a benefit to know where you fall in the world of awareness and conscientiousness! What a powerful piece of information to understand that there are territories into which we can expand!
If see what level consciousness you are at, check out this Levels of Consciousness Assessment or book a discovery call today.
By Daniel Fox