“Enlightenment,” according to this new book I started reading today, “is the highest emotion.” And, interestingly to me, “shame” is the “lowest emotion.” Not “sadness,” “depression,” or “anger.” But: “Shame.”
For the longest time, Bagel had been trying to get me to read Power vs Force by Dr. David R. Hawkins. I’ve literally had the book sitting on my shelf staring at me for the past several months. And while I’d initially flipped through it back in the summer, I never continued at the time. Hawkins’s thesis is that via kinesiology, it’s possible to via physical feeling (feeling strength or weakness) to discern the truth value of any given proposition. Literally, any binary question: “Should I invest in Tesla?”; “Is my boss lying?”; “Will Brazil win the World Cup this year?”; “Will this medicine cure my cancer?”
Needless to say, I was skeptical for all of the obvious reasons. But as the months have passed, and as I’ve spent more time with Bagel, I’ve started giving more credence to this kind of “new age” philosophical thinking. I’m not entirely bought in yet, but I’m willing to entertain the notion that humans don’t yet know how this universe works. And for all of our fancy science, technology, and empiricism, I do buy that there are greater forces at work which we, puny humans, clearly don’t currently understand. Thus, I’ve started seriously reading the book! And in the coming months, as Bagel and I slowly wind our way through it, I’ll periodically post musings and learnings that I think are noteworthy here on this blog.
Usually, whenever I read nonfiction books, I like to take notes when I privately journal. Last year when I read The Fifth Risk by Michael Lewis, I’d jotted some of my notes on this blog publicly. And so I’ll be doing the same here as well with Power vs Force. The two other lessons I learned today in reading the book’s four prefaces and introductions (I’m not even at Chapter 1 yet!) is that the “measure of a human” and their “contribution to the Universe” is not measured in a person’s actions (like what the Jewish believe, ie. “good deeds”) or words or beliefs (like how protestants believe that “belief and surrender to God, not good works, is how one gets to heaven); but rather, Dr. Hawkins asserts: “The measure of a human is not in words or actions but in what they become by the time they die.” That stuck out to me.
Finally, Hawkins –who writes well!– painted a good metaphor towards the end of his new introduction: He writes about the story of two ships. In the beginning, out in the ocean, they may only be a fraction of a degree different in bearing. But a hundred miles later after weeks of sailing in the ocean, they’ll be thousands of miles apart from each other in distance. Essentially: Small differences are initially trivial. But over the long passage of time, it matters! And could mean all the difference between setting a proper course and going astray.