This article is an excerpt from the Shortform book guide to "Power vs. Force" by David R. Hawkins. Shortform has the world's best summaries and analyses of books you should be reading.
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How do you know what’s true? Can discernment be improved?
According to David Hawkins, truth vs. falsehood is determined through consciousness. The higher your level of consciousness, the more you’re able to distinguish what’s real from what isn’t.
Keep reading to learn Hawkins’s intriguing model for truth testing.
Truth Testing
David Hawkins contends that your connection to the universal consciousness allows you to instantly know whether something is true or false. This truth testing is possible as long as you can receive and understand the universal consciousness’s signals. It’s the ultimate source of truth; with a strong enough connection to it, you become effectively omniscient.
(Shortform note: Another possible explanation for this apparent omniscience is intuition: when your mind subconsciously processes information and arrives at conclusions without the need for conscious, rational thought. Psychologists say that your senses take in significantly more information than you’re aware of because your brain filters out irrelevant details. However, by reviewing this filtered information and looking for patterns and connections, your subconscious generates conclusions quickly, and seemingly from nothing—you instantly know the truth, as Hawkins might put it.)
Calibrating Truth With Kinesiology
Once your awareness—in other words, your consciousness—reaches a high enough level to connect to the universal consciousness, Hawkins explains that you can instantly tell whether something is true or false by using simple, scientifically proven tests. The same tests will also indicate whether something is good or bad for you.
Hawkins spent decades studying kinesiology, which is the science of how the human body moves. Through his studies, he found that the body and mind are intrinsically linked. Therefore, if your mental connection to the universal consciousness is strong enough (meaning 200 or higher), you can use basic physical tests to interpret the truth signals you’re receiving. Hawkins calls this applied kinesiology.
How Truth and Falsehood Affect Your Muscles
Hawkins describes several different kinesiology tests, but the common theme is that your muscles become weaker when you’re exposed to something that’s untrue, unhealthy, or undesirable. For instance, if you say something true and then lift a dumbbell, you’ll find it much easier than trying to lift that same dumbbell after saying something false. Crucially, this isn’t testing whether you think the statement is true; it tests whether the statement is objectively true, which is possible because of your connection to the universal consciousness.
Becoming More Receptive to the Truth
The lower end of the consciousness scale (below 200) represents what Hawkins calls force: aggressive, harmful, and egotistical states of consciousness. These states are undesirable and hurtful.
Hawkins says that force might lead to short-term satisfaction, but never to true happiness. At this low level of consciousness, you’re unreceptive to the truth—you can’t determine what you really want out of life or how to get it.
When you’re in a powerful state of over 200 on the consciousness scale, you work together with others to achieve the best possible outcomes for both yourself and everyone else. You’re receptive to the universe’s truth signals, meaning that you can understand how to live a life that will make you truly happy.
Throughout Power vs. Force, Hawkins emphasizes that improving your consciousness will drive you to keep improving. The virtuous cycle that Hawkins describes has four steps: develop cooperative power, reduce your reliance on aggressive force, elevate your level of consciousness, and increase your receptiveness to truth. Each step leads to the next, with the final step (increase receptiveness to truth) leading back to the first (develop cooperative power).
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Here's what you'll find in our full Power vs. Force summary:
- A complete guide to human consciousness
- How to connect with universal consciousness and glean its insights
- How to use applied kinesiology to tell if something is true or false
