The Evolution of the Soul: your path to greater Forgiveness and Acceptance
Forgiveness and acceptance seem to be a stumbling block for many people on their healing and spiritual journey and there has been much written about the need to forgive others and/or accept situations.
Of course, forgiveness is not about condoning the behaviour of others, nor is it initially about making the perpetrators feel better – although, this can be a worthy second step to forgiveness.
The first step to forgiveness, is, however, all about you, your health and your energy. When there is a need to forgive, the chances are that there are trapped emotions of anger, resentment, bitterness, heartache, guilt, blaming, frustration, jealousy, humiliation, betrayal, abandonment……the list goes on. It is these trapped emotions that are the problem – releasing these is where you will find the relief and energetic shift you seek.
As Mark Twain said,
“Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.”
So, step one, releasing trapped emotions. What is a trapped emotion? The Emotion Code
Step two to Forgiveness and Acceptance comes from Understanding. Understanding raises Awareness. Awareness puts everything into perspective. And I believe this awareness can be found at Soul Level and comes from understanding the Soul, its journey and its evolution. Understanding the different stages of Soul Evolution shines a new light on, not just your life, but the world around you.
There are many versions of the different stages in life. Some referring to the stages within a single incarnation. Others referring to the stages of the Soul throughout all its incarnations. And some referring to both. Some relate to the Chakras of our energetic body. Some relate to levels of consciousness.
The Soul Age Stages here relate to stages of the soul throughout all its incarnations.
We first incarnate as infant souls and through a series of choices, lessons and experiences over the course of many life times we evolve. We haven’t always been nice people which some people don’t like to hear but it makes perfect sense as we have been learning and growing from our experiences and choices along the way and that’s what it’s all about. There is no judgement here – of yourself or others. You wouldn’t judge a baby for not being able to feed itself and you wouldn’t expect a toddler to be able to drive a car. Keeping this idea in mind will really help you understand some of the difficult people you encounter in life.
As Jesus said,
“Forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
Infant Souls deal with issues of survival. Life is primitive and usually focuses on fear. These souls flourish in simple environments close to nature. Infant souls focus on being alive and their learning experiences include survival, physicality, mortality and environmental awareness. Infant souls have no concept of wrong doing so without the loving guidance from older souls who can teach them right from wrong, they may react violently to perceived threats and commit anti-social and immoral acts. They are purely instinctive. Untarnished by culture. Without conscience and fearful of life.
Baby Souls have a need for structure and they tend to follow beliefs based on dogma. They love following and enforcing rules, such as religious rules. Baby souls focus on belonging to a culture and their learning experiences include rules, roles, law and order, crime and punishment and social awareness. They are typically moral and law-abiding citizens but suffer from rigid thinking. They thrive when surrounded by like-minded souls and can be very community orientated but have difficulty accepting others who do not follow their dogma and can become judgemental. They are conformists.
Young Souls are very success orientated and set high standards of personal achievement. They are goal setters and goal getters. They recognise their personal power and are very assertive. Their experience of life is competitive, industrious, restless and independent. Winning is important to them and they want to leave an impact on society. They value their personal power but view it as something unique to them and tend to separate themselves this way. Young souls focus on being a free agent and are here to learn independence, self-advancement, personal achievement and free will.
Mature Souls are emotional and relationship orientated. Their focus is on their inner world and exploring self-awareness. They are empathic and reflective. Their experience of life is self-aware, emotionally dramatic and intense. They question everything, have a growing understanding of self and are literally soul searching. Mature souls tend to focus on co-existence with others and their learning experiences include interdependence, relationships, empathy, intimacy and self-awareness. These souls are far happier when they can be good, and share good and they crave to live in a loving world.
Old Souls seek the bigger picture and tend not to be materialistic. They are more detached and have a live and let live approach to life. Their experience of life is relaxed, philosophical and spiritually minded. They are a source of wisdom. They appear untroubled and stable although they can have problems integrating into a society that does not follow Divine laws. Old souls focus on being part of all that is and are here to learn, among other things, autonomy, non-attachment, wise counsel and spiritual awareness.
Soul ages and levels of consciousness are not two of the same. You can be a mature soul, for example, stuck at a certain level of consciousness. It’s all about what you came here to experience. However, the levels of consciousness can be characterised and summarised in a similar fashion. This serves the purpose of raising your awareness so that you can, not only, better understand yourself and your present path but also better understand those around you. This, in itself, helps develop tolerance, forgiveness, acceptance and non-attachment. It also helps to not take things personally which, in my experience, opens the door to greater inner peace and happiness.
Levels of Consciousness
Our consciousness can be compared to a lens through which we view and perceive the world. As we raise our consciousness we change the lens and our perceptions change causing a change in our reality. The perceptions, beliefs, mindsets and values we hold right now are a result of the consciousness we are operating in. Whenever we experience a shift in our consciousness, we are actually breaking away from our old consciousness and as a result, away from our old belief systems and attitudes.
Your thoughts, feelings, beliefs, values and actions reflect the level of consciousness that you are vibrating at. While the object you are observing, whether it be your life, world events, a person or a situation, can remain the same, just having a different consciousness level, and therefore perception, causes your thoughts, feelings, beliefs, values and actions to be widely different. This explains the famous quotation by Dr Wayne Dyer, about changing what you see by changing the way you look at it. For example, what do you see when faced with the playground bully? Do you see a nasty piece of work who needs to be taught a lesson by having a taste of his own medicine? Or do you see an angry and hurt child who is just crying out to be accepted and loved? How do you view failure? Something to bring you down and shake your confidence? Or something to learn from and raise your motivation?
Adapted from Dr David Hawkin’s Scale of Consciousness
| Level/Emotion | Level of Vibration |
| Enlightenment (Purple – 7th Chakra) | 700 – 1000 |
| Peace/Bliss (Indigo – 6th Chakra) | 600 |
| Joy/Serenity (Indigo – 6th Chakra) | 540 |
| Love/Reverence (Blue – 5th Chakra) | 500 |
| Reason/Understanding (Blue – 5th Chakra) | 400 |
| Acceptance/Forgiveness (Green – 4th Chakra) | 350 |
| Willingness/Optimism (Green – 4th Chakra) | 310 |
| Neutrality/Trust (Green – 4th Chakra) | 250 |
| Courage/Affirmation (Yellow – 3rd Chakra) | 200 |
| Anger/Hate (Orange – 2nd Chakra) | 150 |
| Desire/Craving (Orange – 2nd Chakra) | 125 |
| Fear/Anxiety (Orange – 2nd Chakra) | 100 |
| Grief/Regret (Red – 1st Chakra) | 75 |
| Apathy/Despair (Red – 1st Chakra) | 50 |
| Guilt/Blame (Red – 1st Chakra) | 30 |
| Shame/Humiliation (Red – 1st Chakra) | 20 |
Where someone falls on this chart will depend on their over-riding emotion. That is to say, their natural state of being. We can all feel angry sometimes or even guilty but that does not mean it’s our over-riding state of being.
So at the bottom of the chart we have shame and guilt; the two emotions with the lowest frequency. People with this level of awareness will experience a lot of blame and humiliation in their lives. Moving up the chart you can see apathy accompanies a feeling of despair. Apathy being, of course, when one doesn’t care about anything. People at this stage of the chart are usually depressed and struggling to take action. They feel like life is against them and they are often stuck in victimhood. Anger comes considerably higher, which surprises many people but if you think about it, you have to care about things to get angry. Caring is good! We often view anger as such a negative emotion, but on reflection, it’s a very healthy stage to go through. It shows you want to change things and leads the way to courage, willingness and optimism.
I have found, while running the Heal yourself to Happiness Retreats, that my guests usually fall in this green area. That is to say the Heart Chakra area. Often, just the intention and action of coming on the Retreat is healing for them. It clearly shows they are both willing and optimistic and have dragged themselves out of a state of neutrality. This becomes very evident when what they are working on is very often acceptance and forgiveness. This paves the way for them to move into the blue level, that of the throat chakra where they find themselves with a need and a desire to express themselves. Not only verbally by being assertive and authentic but also at soul level by acknowledging and using their gifts and innate soul characteristics. This is where the journey within really begins. At least, on a conscious level.
As we approach the level of love and joy on the chart, we start to see the world with new eyes and a heart full of love and compassion for all living beings of consciousness. We see beauty and miracles everywhere. We can reason. Understand. Accept. And forgive. There is a peace which resides within. The peace and bliss at level 600 and above is found in the likes of the Dalai Lama, Gandhi, Eckhart Tolle and Mother Theresa to name a few, although it should be pointed out that, as energy, we are always changing and thinking and it is therefore possible to move both up and down the chart at any given time. Each thought has a frequency as does each action. According to Dr David Hawkins, Adolf Hitler went from 450 to 45 during the course of his life time.
Without judgement, you can now hopefully, not only see where you are on your Soul’s journey, but also understand that others do not and can not have the same view point, beliefs and goals as you do. As I said at the beginning – you wouldn’t expect an infant to have the same priorities as an adult. We readily accept that young children don’t share our abilities. We don’t judge them – we just offer them love to help them grow. Likewise we can forgive ourselves and accept love from others to help us grow. It really is the same thing.
Looking at this chart really brings it home, the importance of raising your vibrations. Not only for your own health, happiness and success but also for the sake of the planet. Dr David Hawkins provides some interesting figures in his book Power vs Force (1994). He says that the overall level of human consciousness tests as being just over 200, and only 4% of the population test over 500 and 1 in 10 million over 600. He goes on to claim that just over 2% of the population generate 72% of society’s problems. However, here is the best motivation to raise your vibrations: one individual at level 400 counterbalances 400,000 individuals vibrating below level 200. One individual at 500 counterbalances 750,000 below level 200 and one individual at level 600 counterbalances 10 million below level 200.
So now you can see that by pouring anger and other negative emotions onto wrong doers will only serve to keep their vibrations low as well as lower your own vibrations. What’s the point of that? Only love can help them raise their vibrations. And only love will help you raise yours.
So you can also see that raising your own vibrations and keeping yourself feeling good is paramount if you want to heal the world. Look after yourself, do what your heart desires and make yourself feel as good and as excited as you can as often as you can. It’s not selfishness. It’s love. And it will help raise the consciousness of the whole planet!
In my conclusion on the subject of the Stages of Soul Evolution and Consciousness Levels, I relate each level to a corresponding belief.
- A belief that the world is not a safe place and that it operates on a dog eat dog basis.
- A belief that there is a higher power but that it is separate from you and you have no control over it. eg. most religions/fate
- A belief in your own power to change things but that power is your own personal, individual power.
- A belief in the power of love.
- A belief in one’s higher self and a power that comes from its connection to the Universe.
- A belief that we are all pure consciousness within our individuated human bodies.
“You are not a drop in the ocean, you are the entire ocean in a drop.”
Rumi
Or, as I like to think, we are the whole universe in one body.
This is a summary of Chapter 3 from my second book Heal your Soul: A Simple Guide to Understanding and Healing yourself on a Spiritual Level to create greater Health, Happiness and Success
Deborah Jane Sutton
Heal yourself to Happiness
