The Psychology of Awakening

By Tchiki Davis, M.A., Ph.D.
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Think about awareness like it’s looking through you (your self-concept) like a camera. As we move through the developmental stages, it's like we place a different colored lens on top of the camera at different times.

For a moment, let's imagine that we are currently looking through a yellow lens. Everything we see looks yellow, and this yellowness affects all of our other experiences. For example, with our yellow lens on, we may believe that an orange fruit is a lemon. We may then have thoughts that we should make lemonade. We may then have emotions of excitement about making the lemonade. We may then take lemon-focused actions—we use a lemonade recipe instead of an orange juice recipe.

In this example, the perspective (or lens) that’s laid over our awareness has just affected our beliefs, then our thoughts, then our emotions, and then our behaviors. In this example, you can see that our perspective affects all of our experiences, and it does so in a specific order.

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The Emergent Process of Psychological Experiences

The process model below shows how psychological experiences seem to emerge and the order in which they do so (they flow from left to right). In other words, the earlier experiences seem to cause the later experiences. And all of these experiences contribute to what we would describe as ‘the self’ or the self-concept.

Awareness > Concepts > Beliefs > Thoughts > Emotions > Behaviors > Social Experiences > Physical Experiences

Awareness
Research supports each of these steps. First, awareness must exist for us to observe or experience anything (e.g., Wilber, 2024). If we aren't aware, then we can’t experience anything. So, awareness is required for any experience to exist.

Concepts
Concepts are what define these experiences and enable us to form beliefs. For example, we need to have a concept (or mental idea) of God in order to believe in God. We need to have a concept of the self in order to believe in the self. We need to have a concept of a sandwich in order to believe in a sandwich.

Beliefs
The way we define each of our concepts affects the types of beliefs we have about ourselves and our world (e.g., Cook-Grueter, 2014; O’Fallon, 2010). In other words, if we define art as something that has to be beautiful, we will believe that only beautiful things are art. If, on the other hand, we define art as any creative work, we might believe that art includes scribbles by children, ugly paintings, or even creative computer code. As you can see, our beliefs depend on our concepts.

Thoughts
Further psychological research shows that beliefs lead to thoughts (Buschmann et al., 2018). Simply, if I believe that I am unworthy, I will have thoughts about my unworthiness. Thoughts are then a necessary precondition for emotion (Lazarus, 1982). For example, if I have unworthy thoughts, I may feel emotions related to unworthiness.

Emotions
It is also important to note that many researchers believe that emotions are a type of thought (e.g., Solomon, 2003). Indeed, many emotions (e.g., regret, contempt, shame) are clearly a combination of thoughts. However, even “pure” emotions become thoughts once we label them as emotions. In other words, once you label an experience as ‘sad’, it becomes a thought. Thus, emotions can be seen as stepping stones between the cognitive evaluation of a situation (i.e., thoughts) and behavior (Mauss & Robinson, 2009; Sander et al., 2003).

Behaviors & Social Experiences
Additional studies show that specific emotions lead us to engage in specific behaviors that result in specific social experiences. For example, jealousy is thought to motivate us to restore important social bonds in the face of threats. Embarrassment motivates others to forgive us if we have done something wrong. And sadness motivates sympathy and leads others to help us more (Keltner & Kring, 1998). Thus, each emotion leads to specific actions (although these actions will vary somewhat for each individual).

Physical Experiences
All of these experiences contribute to physical (e.g., body or health) outcomes (e.g., Colagiuri et al., 2015). For example, anxiety is well known to produce many physical symptoms, including increased heart rate, sweating, or even skin tingling. Notably, social experiences seem to have the biggest impact on our physical health (e.g., Holt-Lunstad et al., 2017).

When The Emergent Process Begins

At birth, we only have access to our physical experiences (sensations and the 5 senses), so the full model is not yet operational. However, by 18 months of age, we can already predict other people's thoughts to some extent (Repacholi & Gopnik, 1997). At about preschool age, our minds have already developed concepts (Malik & Marwaha, 2023), and we begin to record memories (Peterson, 2021). We then continue to add more and more concepts as we grow, further strengthening this process. So, for most of us, this model is operating from a very young age.

How Awareness Observes This Process

This emergent process creates our experiences from the time we are very young, flowing from left to right. However, we can not directly observe all of these experiences until we zoom out into the relevant developmental stage. We zoom out from right to left. In other words, we can directly observe physical experiences like pain, sensations, and information gained through the 5 senses from the time we are born. In early childhood, we begin to become aware of, and able to directly observe, our social experiences (Flavell, 2004). And as we continue to move through the developmental stages, we can increasingly observe more of our psychological experiences (Cook-Grueter, 2014).

Generally, we become able to directly observe the following experiences in each stage:

Pre-Conventional Stages

Red: The physical self (1st person perspective); We can observe physical experiences.
Orange: The social self (2nd person perspective); We can observe social experiences.

Conventional Stages

Yellow: The agentic self (3rd person perspective); We can observe behaviors.
Green: The achiever self (Time-expanded 3rd person perspective); We can observe emotions and outcomes.

Post-Conventional Stages

Teal: The mental self (4th person perspective); We can observe thoughts.
Blue: The contextual self (Time-expanded 4th person perspective); We can observe beliefs.

Transcendent Stages

Indigo: The awakened self (5th person perspective); We can observe concepts and awareness.
Violet: No self/full enlightenment (6th person perspective); Awareness can observe itself.

How Awareness of Experiences Changes Throughout Development

When we identify primarily as the agentic self, we can directly observe our behaviors and how they affect our social experiences. In other words, if we yell at a friend, they may become angry—we understand that our behavior has just caused a social experience. A person who is viewing the world from a 1st or 2nd person perspective can not directly observe this causal relationship. You can discover this for yourself by watching a young child. They might steal a toy from a playmate (behavior) without realizing that their behavior might cause the playmate to get mad (effect on social experience).

When we identify primarily as the achiever self, we see ourselves as our outcomes. In other words, we are what we can create. We are able to observe how specific actions lead to specific outcomes, and we can optimize this process to achieve the things we want in life. However, at this stage, we are not yet able to directly observe the underlying thoughts and beliefs that lead us to value and pursue some goals over other goals.

When we identify primarily as the mental self, we begin to directly observe how our thoughts and perspectives may be different from other people’s thoughts and perspectives. Prior to identifying with the mental self, we generally can not see that our experience is a perspective. For example, prior to this transition, I remember being in arguments with my husband where my sole goal was getting him to understand my perspective--my perspective felt like the one-and-only truth.

After making this transition, it became clear that his perspective was also true. Both his perspective and my perspective were equally valid and they could both be true simultaneously.

When we identify primarily as the contextual self, we begin to directly observe how specific beliefs cause specific thoughts (and emotions, and so on) in specific circumstances. For example, if I believe that relationships are dangerous, this may cause thoughts about how others may hurt me, which may cause emotions of fear when I’m around others, which may cause the behavior of avoiding social interactions. We can also see that this belief is only activated in certain relationships or certain situations. This realization leads us to reidentify as a self who has patterns and changes across contexts.

In awakening, we see that certain concepts are socially constructed and that our definitions of concepts shape our experiences. As this insight matures, it eventually reaches all of our concepts, including the self-concept, and they all fall apart.

Work With The Earliest Experience You Can Directly Observe

As we move through the developmental stages and our awareness expands, we can directly observe more of our psychological experiences. When it comes to moving towards awakening, we generally need to work with the earliest experience in the chain that we can directly observe.

In other words, see if you can observe and name your specific emotions (a practice referred to as emotional granularity; Tan et al., 2022). If you can do this but it's still difficult to observe the specific thoughts that give rise to specific emotions, then start there. If you can observe the thoughts that give rise to many of your emotions, but you can’t figure out which beliefs create these thoughts, then start there. Or, if you can observe many of your beliefs but don’t yet see how concepts create these beliefs, then start there.

If you try to go right to deconstructing concepts without going through each of these steps first, it’s often more difficult. You might just get frustrated and quit. But, if you start where you are and apply consistent effort, it may not take that long to get to the point where concepts begin deconstructing themselves and awakening happens spontaneously.

Feedback Loops & The Psychology of Awakening

It’s important to note that there are also feedback loops at every step of this process. A feedback loop is when the output of a process is then routed back into the process to either increase or decrease the effect. A positive feedback loop (or self-reinforcing feedback loop) is a process that occurs which increases the effects of a cause. A negative feedback loop is a process that occurs which decreases the effects of a cause. We mostly experience positive feedback loops in this process such that experiences later in the chain reinforce (or exacerbate) experiences earlier in the chain.

For example, if we’ve zoomed out to the point where we can observe behaviors and we have a panic attack, we can only directly observe the behavior and later experiences in the causal chain (panicky behavior, panicky special experiences, and panicky bodily sensations). However, the entire chain is causing our experience. As one example, the concept of panic may cause us to form panicky beliefs, which causes panicky thoughts, then panicky emotions, panicky behaviors, panicky social interactions, and panicky bodily sensations. However, the panicky bodily sensations often trigger more panicky thoughts (a positive feedback loop).

When we can’t directly observe these panicky thoughts (because we are not yet in the developmental stage where we can observe thoughts), we have a difficult time stopping the panic. Because we can’t see the causes clearly, it’s generally harder to control the feedback loops that strengthen our negative experiences.

Interrupting Feedback Loops

Even if we are not yet able to directly observe the earliest experiences in this process, we can still use our knowledge of this process to decrease our negative experiences. We do this by replacing the positive feedback loops with negative feedback loops.

One way to do this is by engaging in a technique called ‘opposite action’ (Linehan, 1993). We can use this technique by engaging in the opposite action or behavior to what our emotions seem to be telling us to engage in. For example, if our anxiety is telling us to avoid going to a party, we would instead go to the party. If our anger is telling us to yell at someone, we would instead sit quietly with our emotions. If our craving is telling us to consume alcohol, drugs, or sweets, we could instead not consume those things. Opposite action can be a useful way to interrupt the link between emotion and behavior and stop the feedback loops that follow.

How Awakening Affects This Process

The emergent process of psychological experiences is an extremely useful tool for understanding our experiences and how they arise before awakening. It is also a useful tool for deconstructing and disidentifying from our experiences during the awakening process. Whenever an experience in any part of the causal chain begins dissolving, it affects all the other experiences in the chain.

For example, maybe we stop having the belief that we are worthless. As a result, our thoughts, emotions, actions, social experiences, and physical health issues related to this belief eventually stop arising. As more and more of this process falls apart, we may find ourselves feeling more and more free. Mental and emotional experiences arise less frequently, and all we are left with are the raw physical experiences that we were born with.

Despite the usefulness of this tool, the emergent process of psychological experiences, itself, begins to fall apart as we move towards full enlightenment. Everything in this chapter refers to the self, and once the self is gone, the concepts in the model stop making sense. So, none of the labels, models, or maps that anyone uses to describe reality are completely true. They are simply tools we use to move through the four stages of enlightenment. And once full enlightenment arises, we don’t need them anymore.

Final Thoughts on The Psychology of Awakening

When we understand how our experiences emerge, we can better understand where we are on our path to awakening and where we are going. These insights can help us better focus on the tasks of our current stage so that we can more easily move into the next stage. If we work our way up to observing the concepts that give rise to our other experiences, then awakening may happen on its own.

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