The Enlightenment Level of Consciousness

What is the Enlightenment level of consciousness?

Enlightenment closes Twelv's ladder of levels of consciousness, and it is the stage this site is least qualified to describe. Every other page on the ladder describes a stance that can be watched in ordinary life and recognised from the inside. This one points toward something contemplative traditions, in many languages and across centuries, have described as the end of feeling separate from life, and have also said cannot really be put into words. What follows is offered in that spirit: a sketch of what is pointed at, not a claim to know.

The sketch, roughly, is this. At every level below, there is a self that needs something: safety, comfort, approval, rightness, even goodness. At Enlightenment, the traditions say, the needing falls away, because the separate self it belonged to has been seen through. In a single line, the stance might read: there was never a separate self to protect. What remains is described not as a special state but as ordinary life, lit from within.

If it shows at all, it shows in plain ways. A body at ease. Choices made simply, without a hidden agenda. Relationships with no self in them to defend, so that attention can rest entirely on the person in front of you. None of this is dramatic, and all of it can be imitated, which is why most of this page is about caution.

Why does Twelv's ladder end with Enlightenment?

Because the ladder traces a self becoming less and less defended, and this is where, in the traditions it draws on, the defending self is said to drop away altogether. In Power vs. Force, David R. Hawkins put Enlightenment at the top of his scale and described it as the end of any sense of a personal self separate from others.

He also placed two stages between Love and Enlightenment, Joy and Peace, and Twelv's ladder does not list them separately. It folds both into its last two stages, the quiet joy described on the Love page and the stillness described here, which keeps the ladder at twelve rungs.

There is something fitting about the ladder simply stopping. In much contemplative writing, awakening is described less as a higher rung than as the moment the idea of rungs stops mattering. That is why there is no move up from here, only a way of staying.

Can a test tell whether someone is enlightened?

No. A result of 12 on Twelv is a reading of answers to a test of about 10 minutes, given on one occasion. It is not a spiritual attainment, and Twelv certifies nothing.

The reasons are simple. A questionnaire reads how a person describes themselves. Someone who has read a great deal about awakening can describe it fluently; someone deeply at peace might describe themselves plainly, even doubtfully. The test has checks for answers that look too good or do not hang together, but no instrument can see the inner life the traditions point to, and Twelv does not pretend otherwise.

The traditions that speak of awakening also warn, each in its own way, against claiming it, and against the hunger to have it confirmed. That warning applies to tests as much as to anything. If there are signs of this stance, they are quiet and easy to imitate: an absence of defensiveness, kindness without an agenda, a sense of humour about oneself, a life that looks surprisingly ordinary. Anyone confidently listing their own is probably describing something else.

What is spiritual ego?

It is the shadow of this stage: claiming Enlightenment, or performing it. Of all the counterfeits on the ladder it is the most convincing, because it uses the right words.

It takes several forms. There is the person who had a powerful experience, on a retreat or in a moment of grace, and built an identity around it. There is the teacher who needs students more than the students need a teacher. There is the calm that looks down on other people's emotions, the serene smile that has quietly stopped listening, the vocabulary of oneness used to win an argument. And there is the spiritual bypassing described on the Love page, taken to its limit: no feeling, no conflict and no responsibility, all in the name of having risen above them.

The tell does not change. What the traditions describe as awakening has nothing to protect. Spiritual ego has a great deal to protect: a reputation, a role, a story about being further along than others. The moment awakening becomes something you have, it becomes something to defend, and a stance that defends has slipped back down to Pride, wearing robes.

How might each archetype counterfeit awakening, and what is the ordinary version?

Spiritual ego takes the shape of whatever the self was already invested in, so each archetype has a favourite counterfeit of its own. Beside each one is a guess, offered humbly, at what the ordinary, undefended version might look like at level 12.

• The Innocent: the counterfeit is a serene bubble where nothing bad may enter; the ordinary version sees the whole of life, the cruelty included, and stays tender.
• The Everyman: the counterfeit is belonging to the right spiritual crowd; the ordinary version is at home with anyone, anywhere, with nothing to prove.
• The Hero: the counterfeit turns awakening into one more summit to conquer; the ordinary version has put the sword down and is helping with the washing-up.
• The Caregiver: the counterfeit is the healer who needs people to stay broken; the ordinary version helps, and has no stake in being the one who helped.
• The Explorer: the counterfeit chases the next retreat, teacher or peak experience; the ordinary version finds the same depth on the walk to the shops.
• The Rebel: the counterfeit rebels against the ego as loudly as it once rebelled against everything else; the ordinary version has nothing left to overthrow.
• The Lover: the counterfeit is in love with blissful states; the ordinary version loves the plain, unremarkable moment just as much.
• The Creator: the counterfeit turns awakening into an aesthetic, a curated calm; the ordinary version makes things without needing them to say anything about the maker.
• The Jester: the counterfeit laughs at everyone still caught in the game; the ordinary version laughs mostly at itself, and gently.
• The Sage: the counterfeit knows everything about awakening; the ordinary version has stopped confusing the description with the thing described.
• The Magician: the counterfeit uses spiritual insight as a quiet form of power over others; the ordinary version has no wish to be seen as having any.
• The Ruler: the counterfeit appoints itself the authority on other people's awakening; the ordinary version leads, if it leads at all, by getting out of the way.

What does practice mean when there is no next rung?

It means staying available to ordinary life, not climbing. At the top of the ladder there is nothing left to reach for, and the wish to reach can itself become the obstacle. What contemplative writing describes, in general terms, is less a technique than a willingness to keep turning up for whatever is in front of you. So these are not steps up. They are ways of not leaving.

• Do one ordinary task each day with your whole attention: washing a pan, folding a shirt, walking to the bus. Not to get anything from it. Just to be there for it.
• Listen to someone all the way to the end of their sentence without preparing your reply.
• Sit in stillness for a while each day with no technique, no goal and no record of how well it went.
• When you notice pride in your own progress, smile at it, and go back to what you were doing.
• Stay in relationship. Do not let inner work become a reason to withdraw from the people who try your patience; they are where the practice happens.
• Help someone in a way that no one will notice, including, after a while, you.
• Let other people be wherever they are on the ladder. Wanting them higher is a quiet way of not seeing them.

How does Twelv place someone at Enlightenment?

Only as a reading of answers, which is all a test can offer. The top of the ladder needs a high weighted composite that survives every check Twelv runs, from the weakest dimension still being strong to the paradox questions fitting the rest of what was said. How Twelv places you explains the scoring, and the Neutrality page describes the checks.

Here the limits of the instrument matter more than anywhere else on the ladder. It cannot tell a deeply settled person from an articulate one, so a result of 12 describes answers, not an attainment. A level is a reading, not a ranking of anyone's worth, and Twelv would be wary of any test that claimed otherwise.

Should the result land there, the most useful response is probably a light one: interest, some gratitude, and then back to the washing-up. Oracle, a conversation with your higher self, is there if you want to talk it through, and it has no interest in titles.

Frequently asked questions

Related

• Take the free test
• All 12 levels of consciousness
• Love, level 11
• Acceptance, level 10
• Courage, level 7: the turning point
• All 12 archetypes
• Shadow work prompts by archetype
• Oracle: talk to your higher self