The Five Tiers of Being

Deconstructing the consciousness ladder from pure awareness to abject mindlessness and all the rungs in between.

The highest and most elusive state of being is directly experiencing existence, also known as being in the present. Satori and mindfulness and “waking up” are other terms that are used, among others. They all speak to more or less the same thing. There is no higher state than this — it is the top tier. But within this tier, there are a few variations.

When a moment of acute presence is infused with positively-charged emotion, we experience joy. On a neurological level, emotion is produced by a biochemical reaction in the body in response to a situation — e.g., the flood of dopamine when you’re madly in love with someone and she’s lying in your arms and nothing exists outside of this moment. In other words, joy = presence + biochemical happiness. Joy is the most fun of all states of being, even if the biochemical infusion muddles the purity of it.

Some purists even make the claim that presence and emotion are mutually exclusive. The very highest state of being, in this view, are those moments when being in the present (i.e., satori, mindfulness, waking up) is emotionally neutral. These moments may not offer the sheer pleasure associated with joy, but they are arguably the highest-grade of all moments precisely because they’re un-colored by…