I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Dolly Parton and Gloria Steinem passed eight days apart. It may feel like dark days, or even like abandonment (though let’s be fair, they put in their time), but I think it’s actually a symbol of the enlightening of this moment. As I wrote last week, something is stirring.

When my brother-in-law Peter passed in his sleep nearly 10 years ago at the age of thirty-nine, I understood on some level that he’d been called back to the other side to exercise his power more prodigiously. That he could be far more effective architecting, and aiding and abetting all of us from there. I routinely call on him for help, specifically in the ways in which I knew him to be most capable while he was alive.

This might just be the way I comfort myself about the loss of him—and if so, who cares, because the effect is the same: Peter, what would you do? I channel him all the time, tapping into his wisdom and how he moved through the world. This is a helpful question for me, in the same way that I think we can look to Dolly and Gloria for guidance from beyond. After all, Dolly and Gloria had a superhuman impact on culture while they were alive—I have to believe that they can channel their power through us to an event greater effect now, even if it’s solely through the prompt that now we have to fill their very large shoes. They “did” a lot, but mostly they led through their presence, which is a very different thing.

I have been diving back into the late David Hawkins book, Power vs. Force. I think it provides a really helpful frame for understanding why some people are so much more impactful, so much more powerful than others. In our world, we rarely encounter power, and are much more familiar with force—even though we throw power around a lot. Many of the people who hold positions of authority, people we deem “powerful,” actually manage and maintain that authority through force, i.e., manipulating us through desire, fear, shame, anger, grief, sometimes violence, and so on. Over time, force cannot stand up against power.

Hawkins lays this all out in a scale that he referred to as the Map of Consciousness.

Here are some of the basics of understanding what he outlines. The scale is logarithmic, meaning that holding your center of gravity at 350 (Acceptance) is not twice the amplitude of 175 (Pride)—it is 350 to the 10^th power. As he writes, “Therefore, an increasing of even a few points represents a major advance in power; the rate of increase in power as we move up the scale is therefore enormous.”

According to Hawkins, with conscious effort, most of us might be able to move a few notches up—at a maximum—during our lifetime. But the impact of moving from 250 to 255 acts as a counter-balance to a massive number of people who are vibrating at a much lower level.

Here’s Hawkins: “A graphic representation of the distribution of the respective energy levels among the world’s population would resemble the shape of a pagoda, in that 85 percent of the human race calibrates below the critical level of 200, while the overall average level of human consciousness today is approximately 204. The power of the relatively few individuals near the top counterbalances the energy of the masses toward the bottom to achieve this overall average. Only 8.0 percent of the world’s population operates at the consciousness level of the 400s, only 4.0 percent of the world’s population calibrates at an energy field of 500 and over, and a level of consciousness calibrating at 600 and over is reached by only one in many millions.”

I don’t know what Dolly and Gloria would have calibrated at in Hawkins scale, but high. Gandhi hit 700; Einstein hit 499. They were both well north of 200, which made them alternately rare and hugely inspirational. They did their thing—with consistent effort, mostly quietly and with little fanfare, for a long time. They built movements, not egos.

Using Hawkins logarithmic math:

One person at level 700 = 70 million below 200

One person at level 600 = 10 million below 200

One person at level 500 = 750,000 below 200

One person at level 400 = 400,000 below 200

One person at level 300 = 90,000 below 200

(Before you get too excited, Hawkins writes: “At the original writing of this book, there were twelve persons on the planet who calibrated over 600. In May 2006, however, there were only six: three between 600 and 700, one between 700 and 800, one between 800 and 900, and one between 900 and 1,000.”)

I love this scale because it illustrates how certain figures—Martin Luther King Jr., Gandhi, Mother Theresa, and yes Dolly and Gloria—pulled so much weight for the collective, and are such durable symbols for us all. While we might not be able to remotely reach their heights, we can at least climb a few rungs. If enough of us do enough work on ourselves, we can profoundly affect the world. We don’t all have to change; just some of us do. I find this incredibly reassuring: You don’t have to change everyone (an impossibility); just yourself.

Per Hawkins, 200 is a real make-or-break point. When your vibration is below 200, “the world is seen as hopeless, sad, frightening, or frustrating; but at the level of Courage, life is seen to be exciting, challenging, and stimulating. Obstacles that defeat people whose consciousness is below 200 act as stimulants to those who have evolved into the first level of true power. People at this level put back into the world as much energy as they take; at lower levels, populations as well as individuals drain energy from society without reciprocating. Because accomplishments result in positive feedback, self-reward and esteem become progressively self-reinforcing.”

There’s a shift that happens too—pretty beautifully modeled by Gloria and Dolly—where people stop fixating on problems and start focusing on what might help solve the issue instead. I think about all of the good that Dolly did through her philanthropic donations to children’s literacy programs and hospitals. I think about the way that Gloria continually reoriented conversations to getting more women (and men) engaged in equity work instead of alienating those who might not (yet) agree. As Hawkins writes, “Successful solutions are based on the powerful principle that resolution occurs not by attacking the negative but by fostering the positive. Recovery from alcoholism cannot be accomplished by fighting intoxication, but, rather, by choosing sobriety.” (That is a fantastic example, FWIW.)

I’m guessing some of you might wonder how things could feel so bad right now if low-vibration people don’t carry as much power. Hawkins writes a fair amount about how force invariably falls to power (while love, compassion, and forgiveness are literally empowering, being judgmental, seeking revenge, and condemning others eventually wears you down and makes you weak)—but he doesn’t spill a lot of ink on people who are capable of bending culture to the negative. He does offer this: “The extreme negativity of a few individuals can sway entire cultures and produce a global drag on the general level of consciousness, as history illustrates all too well. Kinesiologic testing indicates that a mere 2.6. percent of the human population, identifiable by an abnormal kinesiologic polarity (they test strong to negative attractors and weak to positive attractors), accounts for 72 percent of society’s problems.” I wish he were still alive so he could tell us more about that. My hunch is that it is easy enough to strum the string of fear in people, stir up aggrievement, and manipulate them through their desires…this is happening at scale.

In the meantime, #WWGD and #WWDD. Dolly and Gloria have given us formidable examples of what it can look like to wield real power to inspire movements and change culture—now that they’re not physically here, they’re available to each and every one of us to inspire us in their stead. May we all channel them effectively.

September 11th, 6:30pm (MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA): I’ll be at MECCA Bourke Street, come hang. You can get tickets here.

September 19th, 10am (ONLINE): Quarterly Energy Bath with Uta Opitz for paid community members. Link to register is here.

September 27th, 10am (MISSOULA, MONTANA): I’ll be doing a Q&A with Athena at the Missoula Public Library. You can get tickets here.