This post is part 7 of a 7 part series on my personal experience working with applied kinesiology (muscle testing) and performing consciousness testing using David Hawkins Map of Consciousness.
- My Unexpected Journey in Muscle Testing
- If Muscle Testing and Consciousness Had A Baby
- Quantifying Consciousness Using the Map of Consciousness
- Ascending the Map of Consciousness and Its Implications
- Measuring & Understanding My Own Consciousness
- Emergent Phenomena Consistent with the Map of Consciousness
- Measuring the Consciousness of the World Around You
These posts are not my prescriptions on how you should live your life or make decisions. I share these thoughts and experiences not to gloat or cast judgment, but rather to feel the joy of creatively expressing myself and to potentially help others on a similar journey.
The biggest challenge facing the well-being of humanity is the difficulty of determining what is true and supportive of life.
If man were able to know with certainty what most supported the states he truly desired, love, creativity, health, and joy, all of the divisiveness, uncertainty on right action, and struggle for positionality would evaporate.
This is why the potential of having a tool to discern truth right in your own nervous system is so compelling!
Where You Can Apply Consciousness Testing
This post describes my experience and learnings using the map of consciousness to understand things beyond my own consciousness.
In his books, David Hawkins describes in detail all the vectors one might apply consciousness testing. I simply began by calibrating all of the curiosities I could think of.
Categorically, these included:
- Books
- Health advice
- Substances (i.e. alcohol, mushrooms)
- Spiritual practices
- Spiritual leaders
- Metaphysical concepts
- Products
- People
- Philosophies
- Populations (i.e. comparing consciousness of two cities)
- Films
- Statements (often from books – i.e. humans originally had 12 strands of DNA)
- Companies
- Places
- Historical event accuracy (i.e. the U.S. landed on the moon)
I keep a log of all these calibrations for my reference, analysis, and further experimentation such as future retests.
The Utility of Consciousness Testing
How you apply testing insights really depends on the object being tested. Beyond the simple yes/no application of muscle testing, having a scale helps you understand the context (consciousness paradigm) of any subject.
Trust
I guess I could ask questions like “is this book integrous” with a simple muscle test, but I find that I gravitate more towards using the scale to evaluate the integrity of information.
Generally, I try to avoid things that test below 200. For example, I test every book before I read it and if it’s below 200, I just move on.
Above 200, it is really important that you don’t view things as better or worse then. The measures are merely expressions reflective of their paradigm. So for example, if I were to compare the practices of breathwork vs. transcendental meditation, I wouldn’t equate one scoring higher then the other as better for my growth.
Understanding Other’s Paradigms
Testing people really just provides a frame of reference for their context and paradigm. If I test someone and they are below 200, it’s likely they are predominantly operating out of the survival state of the ego. I am cautious about the information they share and have compassion for their actions that typically manifest out of a state of victimhood (the world happens to me).
Another example, would be testing a friend in the 400s of which I have many. With this information, I should assume the paradigm of my reality view, god view and its accompanying motives are unfamiliar.
Considering, most of the atypical changes that emerge around level 500 are completely subjective and experiential, I can’t expect them to see things my way. How could they!?
One thing I’ve found really helpful to open your heart is relating to people at their true essence vs. programming. Instead of seeing someone as their behaviors which are reflective of their patterns and context, you understand that this actually isn’t who they are on the deepest level. A sense of compassion emerges and you don’t get caught up in the content of how they are behaving. The scale proves to be a useful aid to maintain this perspective.✓
Avoiding Spiritual Error and Better Habits
As a reminder, ascending the scale has to do with intention, devotion, and the alignment of repeated actions to the energetic field you want to move towards. Because your actions are likely driven by patterns or beliefs, bringing awareness to them is an imperative.
With this in mind there’s lots of people advocating the different things you should be doing. This is very true with spiritual growth and the whole thing can be fricken confusing.
With the recognition that everyone is simply sharing information from their level of consciousness it all starts to click. For example, someone who is really interested in manifesting is trying to persuade you into their context. The context of manifesting, which is a reinforcement of the ego that wants things, is quite different and lower on the scale compared to things like surrender of the personal will to the divine will.
One’s not better than the other, they are just pointing you at different expressions of consciousness.
Having a compass that provides a linear map makes it easy to stay focused and not spend too much time dabbling in contexts you don’t want to stay in. This is why “right practice” is so important spiritually and where the scale can help.
In the same vein, I’ve found the ability to put a numeric value next to many inputs helpful to form and maintain better habits. People say things like, ”I want to keep my vibration high” yet they don’t even know how to measure the vibration of anything they’re doing. Now they have a tool to do so!
A simple example is alcohol or talking bad about others. Obviously we know these things aren’t good for us. For some reason, the fact that I can see the gap between their calibration and where I want to go makes the behavior even less desirable and motivates the right action.✓
Other Interesting Observations
Context of Consciousness Testing
One of the interesting things about working with the scale is making sure you’re clear about the context of anything you test. For example, I’ve had a lot of friends do Kambo which is basically a detoxification ritual that uses frog mucus. Sounds fun, right!?
I’ve never done it because every time I meditate on it, the answer I get is no, but nonetheless, I was curious about it.
My initial calibration of Kambo was quite low (below 100). But when I tested “the practice of Kambo for detoxification” the calibration was quite high. Ketamine the substance vs. ketamine therapy would be another example where you might get dramatically different results.
Understanding this is important as you experiment and try to avoid encountering false positives.
Calibrations vs. Material Success
One thing that became apparent as I calibrated many business and world leaders, is that level of consciousness has very little to do with material success or status. Some of the most famous business people in the world, seemingly operate out of anger and pride vs. others who calibrate out of love. The same can be said of political leaders.
Someone’s internal paradigm does not correlate 1:1 with success in the outside world. If it did, saints would be rich which as you know, isn’t the case. We must come back to the view that the main variable as you go up on the scale is the embodiment of love.

This again reinforces that these numbers should not be viewed as better or worse then. They’re simply expressions of someone’s paradigm which includes their predominant inner state.
Spiritual Inertia
One thing a single calibration does not account for is the notion of spiritual momentum or inertia. For example, according to David Hawkin’s research, Hitler calibrated very high at the level of reason early in his life. Obviously, he had a tremendous fall from grace later in his career which affected his calibration (c. 45). Another example of this would be testing the freedom of speech in America which David reveals is declining over time.
So something to think about is the dimension of time when you are calibrating anything specific.
Looking at my own chart over the past 3.5 years, what would not be obvious through a single measurement was my level of intent and devotion which impacts my trajectory. I think this is why you might encounter many spiritual seekers who calibrate low. The intent is there, yet they have a lot of non-obvious inner work to do which is reflected in their current calibration.
Inconsistencies and Inaccuracies
What if you get a number that’s crazy high? Or inconsistent?
Read the book Power vs. Force and its descriptions and see if it’s true. Be honest with yourself. There’s no prize in deceiving yourself for where you’re at and what you need to do to evolve. If the numbers seem way off, have someone else test you. And sorry, I can’t be that person. I have my own life and commitments : )
Closing Thoughts
This has been a beast of a series. I am grateful to anyone who has taken their time to read through these experiences and ideas.
I have found applied kinesiology and the map of consciousness to be useful tools at this point in my journey. I don’t claim to be an expert and know it all. This is just me documenting my attempt to grow and better understand my own experience. So if any of this resonates, I encourage you to read David Hawkins work starting with Power Vs. Force.
I plan to continue to work with both tools in my own life as well as apply these concepts to other existential questions to further explore the nature of reality.
I will be sharing these ideas in future posts and have listed specific concepts I plan on writing about when I get time.
Future writings as well as topics for research, experimentation and exploration:
- How patterns map to consciousness calibrations
- Opening of the heart
- Practices of a Consciousness-first company
- Interpreting proposed versions of reality
- Interpreting the various theories of free will
- The role of the physical body in spiritual ascent
- How we can think about psychedelic experiences relative to the map of consciousness
- How we can think about how the purpose of meditation evolves relative to the map of consciousness
- Understanding attractor fields
- The energetic interpretation of Karma