You're Not as Solid as You Feel

Take a second and think about what you actually are.

Not a fixed object walking through a fixed world. You're made of energy — organized just enough to hold a shape, and feel solid and real to yourself. Even your thoughts and feelings are just signals moving through your body. They're not some separate "mental" thing happening apart from you — they're part of the same energy that makes up everything else about you.

In other words: how you feel isn't just background noise. It's information. It's telling you something real about the state you're in — and states can change.

A Map of How We Feel

Years ago, a researcher named Dr. David Hawkins mapped out human emotions on a simple scale — from the heaviest, most stuck-feeling states, up to the lightest, most open ones. You don't need any special background to recognize it. Most people have felt every single level on this list at some point.

The heavier states (these tend to feel like life is happening to you)

• Shame — feeling humiliated

• Guilt — feeling blamed, or blaming yourself

• Apathy — feeling hopeless, checked out

• Grief — deep sadness, regret

• Fear — anxious, on edge

• Desire — craving, never quite satisfied

• Anger — feeling wronged, hostile

• Pride — looking down on others or yourself

The turning point

• Courage — the moment life starts to feel possible again. This is where things shift.

The lighter states (these tend to feel like life is happening with you)

• Neutrality — calm, easygoing

• Willingness — hopeful, open to trying

• Acceptance — at peace with what is

• Reason — clear-headed understanding

• Love — warmth, appreciation

• Joy — deep contentment

• Peace — total ease

• Enlightenment — a state some people describe as beyond words

Nobody lives at the top of this list all day, every day. That's not the point. The point is just noticing: where am I right now, and can I move one step up?

What Actually Changes When You Move Up a Step

This isn't just a feeling that stays in your head. When your state shifts, life around you tends to shift with it — often in ways you can notice within days, not years.

Your body relaxes. Heavier states like fear, anger, and guilt keep your nervous system on alert. Move even one level up, and sleep gets easier, tension eases, and you stop bracing for the next thing.

Your relationships change texture. People respond to your state, not just your words. Show up in blame or resentment, and conversations turn defensive. Show up in acceptance or warmth, and the same people often soften without you saying anything different.

Your decisions get clearer. From fear or desire, choices tend to feel urgent and narrow — you grab at whatever seems safest. From courage or reason, the same choices open up. You can see more options, and trust yourself to pick one.

Opportunities seem to find you. This one sounds like magic, but it's simple: when you're not spending your energy on staying defended, you have energy left to notice things — a conversation, an idea, an opening — that fear or apathy would have kept you too closed off to see.

The step itself gets easier. Moving from Shame to Guilt is hard. Moving from Acceptance to Love is almost natural. Each level up makes the next one lighter — the climb isn't equally steep the whole way.

None of this requires becoming a different person. It just requires moving one honest step from wherever you actually are right now.

The Same Day, Two Different Frequencies

Nothing makes this more real than seeing it play out. Here's the exact same day — same events, same schedule — lived once from Anger, and once from Joy.

The Day, Living in Anger

The alarm goes off and you're already irritated before your feet hit the floor. You drink your coffee too fast, barely tasting it, scrolling through messages that seem to be one long list of things people are doing wrong. Traffic on the way to work feels personal — like every other driver is deliberately in your way. At your desk, a coworker asks a simple question and you snap back sharper than you meant to. Lunch gets eaten at your desk, fast and resentful, because there's "no time." By the afternoon, a small mistake feels like a disaster, and you spend the drive home replaying an argument that hasn't even happened yet. Dinner is quiet, but it's the quiet of two people avoiding a fight. You fall asleep still tense, jaw tight, already dreading tomorrow.

The Same Day, Living in Joy

The alarm goes off, and you wake up a little slower — no rush, just a breath before you get up. Your coffee actually tastes like something; you notice the warmth of the mug in your hands. Messages come in, and most of them get a smile instead of a sigh. Traffic is still traffic, but it's just traffic — you put on music and let it be what it is. At your desk, the same coworker asks the same question, and you actually enjoy explaining it. On your walk to grab lunch, you notice a small handwritten sign taped to a café window — a local book club, meeting Thursdays — something that was probably there yesterday too, but you were moving too fast and too tight to see it. You snap a photo of it, thinking you might actually go. Lunch is a real break — maybe outside, maybe with a friend — because there's always time for that. The same small mistake happens in the afternoon, but it's just a mistake: fixable, not a crisis. The drive home is easy, maybe even the best part of the day. Dinner is warm, conversation flows, and you fall asleep loose and unguarded, looking forward to tomorrow — already thinking about Thursday.

Same alarm. Same coffee. Same commute. Same coworker. Same mistake. Same dinner table. Even the same sign in the same café window. Nothing about the day changed — only the frequency you brought to it. In Anger, that sign was invisible; you walked right past it, too tight and too fast to notice. In Joy, it was an invitation. That's the whole point: your circumstances rarely change as fast as your state can — and a lot of what life is offering you is only visible once you're open enough to see it.

Four Ways We Relate to Our Own Lives

As people grow and heal, they tend to pass through four different mindsets — sometimes many times, in different areas of life:

1. "It happens TO me." Feeling like a victim of circumstances. Reacting, blaming, feeling stuck. No sense of control.

2. "It happens BY me." Realizing that blaming others hands away your own power. Taking responsibility. I can actually do something about this.

3. "It happens THROUGH me." Less gripping, more flowing. Trusting the process instead of forcing it. Feeling supported instead of alone.

4. "It happens AS me." A deep sense of connection — to something larger, and to everyone around you. Less "me vs. the world," more "we're all part of the same thing." This is where peace, love, and joy stop being goals and start being your natural state.

Most people move back and forth between these depending on the day, or the area of life. That's normal. The goal isn't to "arrive" — it's to notice where you are, and gently keep climbing.

Why This Matters at Vital Roots

Here's the simple version of everything above: you are not stuck. Your state — mentally, emotionally, physically — is not fixed. It's energy, and energy moves. Change the energy, and everything downstream from it — your thoughts, your body, your life — has room to change too.

That's what we're here for. Not to fix you, because you're not broken. Just to help you shift the energy, one level at a time.