Levels of Consciousness – And How to Raise Yours

The Levels of Consciousness

Human consciousness operates through a range of different frequencies or levels of consciousness that relate to how we feel, act and experience reality. Understanding where you are on the scale, and how to raise your default level can be liberating and life-changing.

• Low Energy Emotions – Shame, Guilt, Despair and Grief feel heavy and hopeless, and are often linked with trauma or unresolved emotional pain.
• High Energy Emotions – Anxiety, Craving, Anger, Hatred and Pride are egoic and reactive, and activate to protect us from sinking into the low energy emotions
• Transitioning to Mind – Courage is a key turning point that takes us out of emotional negativity and reactivity into Optimism, Acceptance and Logical Reason.
• Transitioning to Soul – Wisdom, Love, Joy and Peace mark the transition from our mind to deeper soul qualities.
• Realising Self/Soul – Inner Peace, Presence and Unity Consciousness are states of being that correspond to self-realisation, enlightenment and nonduality. The Self has disidentified from the ego (conceptual-self), but some ego structures (negative beliefs, deficient feelings and reactive patterns) still remain. So, enlightenment isn’t the end of our journey – it’s simply the end of one leg and the beginning of another.

All of the above frequencies or levels of consciousness emerge from the still, silent, unmanifest emptiness that underlies all manifest existence. It’s comparable to the black emptiness of a TV screen when none of the pixels are illuminated, so there is nothing on the screen to experience. It is vibrationless and has zero frequency. 

Why Our Level of Consciousness Matters

Our level of consciousness determines how we perceive life, relate to others, and make decisions. For instance:

• At the lower levels of consciousness, life feels threatening, so choices are made out of anxiety.
• At the middle levels of consciousness, we begin to trust life, ourself and others.
• At the higher levels of consciousness, we realise our true nature and can sense the underlying unity of all things.

Raising our consciousness is the same as raising our frequency. The higher our level of consciousness, the more happy, peaceful and fulfilled we feel. It doesn’t just improve our life, it also affects everyone around us because it affects how we relate to other people and how we respond to challenges. I’m not saying that a higher level of consciousness means we no longer face challenges in life, but it does enable us to handle things better.

How to Raise Your Level of Consciousness

1. Become Aware of Your Current State: Ask yourself honestly: what emotion or energy dominates your daily life? Awareness is the first step to shifting it.
2. Heal Unresolved Trauma: Many lower states are rooted in past wounds. Somatic work, Inner Child healing, and Internal Family Systems (IFS) can help you to release them.
3. Practice Presence: Meditation, mindful breathing, and conscious embodiment anchor you in the here and now, connecting you with your soul, which naturally raises your frequency.
4. Cultivate Love and Gratitude: Love and gratitude resonate at high frequencies. Daily gratitude practice, loving-kindness meditation, or simply noticing beauty in the world can raise your frequency.
5. Shadow Work: Integrate the parts of yourself you’ve rejected or denied. When nothing is pushed away, your energy becomes more whole.
6. Don’t Dwell on Negativity: When you notice yourself getting triggered or caught up in a strong emotion or negative thinking, quickly re-ground and re-centre yourself by feeling down into your body. This disconnects you from the unhelpful mental narratives and connects you with your soul’s presence.
7. Surround Yourself with Uplifting Energy: Conscious media, nourishing relationships, and sacred environments support your growth. Choose wisely what you consume.
8. Let Go of Resistance: Surrender doesn’t mean passivity – it means relaxing the ego’s grip and allowing life to flow more naturally. This opens the way for higher states of consciousness to emerge and become embodied.
9. Work with a Spiritual Coach or Teacher: A spiritual life coach helps you to become more aware of your true nature beyond the ego, personality and conditioned mind, which gradually raises your level of consciousness. If the spiritual coach or teacher is nondual realised, working in their field of consciousness will help to raise your level more easily, due to attunment or transmission.

A Journey of Evolution and Growth

Raising your level of consciousness isn’t about trying to become a “better” version of yourself while rejecting the parts you don’t like. Spiritual development isn’t about bypassing your pain, forcing yourself into false positivity, people-pleasing to keep the peace, or pretending to be endlessly calm and happy. It’s about becoming more you – more authentic, more aware, and more aligned with your inner truth. And that inner truth includes everything: your essential nature (the core of you that is peaceful, wise and whole) as well as your shadow aspects (the unmet needs, wounds, fears, and patterns you’ve learned to hide or avoid).

As your level of consciousness (LOC) rises, life begins to feel different from the inside out. You experience more clarity, more emotional spaciousness, and a deeper sense of inner balance. Problems don’t magically disappear, but your relationship with them evolves. What once felt overwhelming becomes manageable. Fear gradually softens into trust. Avoidance loosens into acceptance. And the illusion of separation – from yourself, from others, from life – gradually dissolves into a sense of connection and unity. True growth isn’t about becoming perfect – it’s about becoming present and becoming authentic. It’s about meeting life as it is, and meeting yourself as you truly are.

Closing Thoughts

Raising your level of consciousness isn’t just possible – it’s natural. It’s what life is always inviting you to do. Every moment of discomfort, every time you get triggered, and every time your inner-critic shames you, is life showing you exactly what you still need to work on. By feeling into the old, unmet and uncomfortable emotions that reside at the core of your being – the emptiness, loneliness and fear of not being enough – you begin to release the emotional weight that you’ve been subconsciously carrying. It’s the most direct and effective way to raise your consciousness, because it clears the space for your natural essence to shine through.

Instead of resisting these painful moments, you can learn to use them positively – for your growth. By feeling into the old, unmet and uncomfortable emotions that reside at the core of your being – the emptiness, loneliness and fear of not being enough – you begin to release the emotional weight that you’ve been subconsciously carrying. It’s the most direct and effective way to raise your consciousness, because it clears the space for your natural essence to shine through. Think of it like a hot-air balloon: you can keep pumping in more heat (more spiritual practices, techniques and ideas), but you won’t rise until you let go of the sandbags (emotional baggage) that’s hold you down. The more you release, the more you rise, naturally.

As your LOC increases, your experience of life transforms, and things seem to flow more easily (more of the time). You don’t stop facing challenges, but you respond more than you react. You trust more than you fear. You accept more than you avoid. And slowly, almost imperceptibly at first, you realise that you’re no longer struggling against life – you are flowing with it.