Time, Desire, Energy and the Map of Consciousness

This is an excerpt from lecture 37 of The Calmness in Mind Process, where John Glanvill talks about awakening to the realisation that everything is about energy; it can’t not be, really! We are made of atoms (which are energy), and those atoms are connected to other atoms by some sort of (intelligent) energetic life force that holds them all together. The Sun (which is energy) supports us, and so it goes on…

Three resources shape a calmer life more than most people realise: time, desire and energy. Used wisely, they open possibilities. Used poorly they keep us stuck. Of the three, energy is the most elusive and, in my experience, the most decisive.

Time is finite and non-refundable. Most of us waste years waiting for perfect conditions, more certainty, or less fear before we act on what we want. Desire, when clear and honest, is simply the direction we want life to move. Without energy, however, both time and desire remain theoretical. Exhaustion, low mood and chronic anxiety drain the fuel required to turn intention into action.

Nature appears to organise itself through invisible energy fields that either support life or diminish it. Animals and young children sense these fields directly. They move toward people and places that feel safe and expansive, and they withdraw from those that feel heavy or threatening. Adults often override this sensitivity with logic, social rules and old conditioning, yet the body still registers the difference. High-energy states leave us feeling lighter, more capable and more connected. Low-energy states leave us depleted, reactive and small.

One of the clearest frameworks I have found for understanding these fields is Dr David R. Hawkins’ Map of Consciousness. Hawkins was a medical doctor, psychiatrist and researcher who spent decades calibrating the relative power of different emotional and spiritual states. His scale runs from the densest, most life-denying energies at the bottom to the rarest, most expansive ones at the top. The critical dividing line sits at 200, the level he called Courage.

Below 200 the fields are destructive or contractive. Shame, guilt, apathy, grief, fear, desire (in its craving form), anger and pride all calibrate under that line. These states feel heavy. They pull energy from the person experiencing them and often from those around them. People living predominantly in these fields tend to force outcomes, control others, or collapse into helplessness. Life feels like a struggle because the underlying energy is working against vitality.

At 200, Courage, the polarity flips. Energy begins to support life rather than drain it. From here the scale rises through Neutrality, Willingness, Acceptance, Reason, Love, Joy, Peace and, very rarely, Enlightenment. Each step upward represents an exponential increase in available power. A person operating at Acceptance or Love does not need to force results in the same way someone operating from Fear or Anger does. Influence replaces control. Possibility replaces threat.

This is not a moral hierarchy or a way of ranking people. It is a practical description of the energetic climate a person is living in. Most of us move up and down the scale depending on circumstances, yet we tend to have a default range. Anxiety, OCD and depression keep people cycling in the lower half of the map for long periods. The stories, the hyper-vigilance and the constant scanning for danger are both products of those lower fields and the mechanisms that keep them in place.

The useful implication is straightforward. Raising the level of consciousness from which we operate changes what becomes possible. Moving from Fear into Courage allows action that previously felt impossible. Moving from Pride or Anger into Acceptance reduces the need to be right and frees energy that was locked in defence. Moving toward Love and Joy does not mean becoming passive or naïve; it means the nervous system is no longer organised around threat, so more of its capacity is available for creation, connection and repair.

Hawkins suggested that most people shift only a few points in a lifetime because they remain identified with the conditioned story of who they are. Those who deliberately examine their emotional habits, release stored charge, and practise new ways of relating to thought and sensation can make larger movements. My own experience tracked this pattern. As the lower-energy patterns of anxiety loosened, life became less effortful and more generative, not because external conditions suddenly improved, but because the internal climate had changed.

None of this needs to be taken as absolute truth. It is a model. Like every model it is incomplete. What matters is whether it proves useful. If noticing the difference between a low-energy and a high-energy state helps you choose differently in the moment, the map has done its job. If the language of attractor fields and calibration feels alien, set it aside and keep the simpler observation: some internal states leave you stronger and clearer; others leave you smaller and more reactive. Learn to recognise which is which, and spend as much time as possible in the former.

Time will keep moving regardless. Desire will continue to point toward what feels meaningful. Energy is the variable we can influence most directly by the company we keep, the thoughts we feed, the emotions we process rather than suppress, and the daily choices that either raise or lower our internal climate. Used consciously, these three become reliable allies rather than sources of quiet despair.