Download the Document here (PDF): Map of Consciousness with Existential Vacuum
Transcript
Have you ever struggled with addiction or alcoholism and really wondered why you can’t break out of that cycle? Hi, my name is Roger Brian. I’ve been sober for nine and a half years. And this morning I was having a conversation with a friend who was dealing with some issues and it led to us talking about, well, there is the opening bell for the markets.
Sorry about that. It led to us talking about. Why this happens and it was more in the context of their ex in the conversation about whether or not They maybe could have worked things out if they would have put more effort into it So in this video though today, I want to share with you How we’ve taken we i’m sorry.
I have taken the work of david hawkins map of consciousness Victor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning or the Existential Vacuum with a little bit of Richard Rohr’s Heaven and Hell concept and put them all together into what I believe is a map that can help us better understand how people find themselves in a cycle of addiction or alcoholism and potentially what they can do to try to break themselves out if nothing else has worked.
This is a very philosophical conversation but I’m going to share my screen And show you what I am talking about. All right, so hopefully, yeah, you can see my screen. Now, I am going to open up. Let’s annotate. Okay. Got it. We are going to be concentrating on I don’t want to draw. Where’s a shape race. I guess draws good enough.
Oh, there we go. We’re going to be concentrating on this area down here. Let me explain what this is. Dr. David Hawkins created this map of consciousness in, I believe, in the 80s or 90s, and it’s designed to give an energetic log or level to every state of being everything from a book to a person to a story to the constitution.
We’re not going to dive too deep into that, but what we’re going to say is that. When you look at this, if you are struggling with alcoholism and addiction, this is a state of being that is part of the survival paradigm. Typically you’re living in a state of hell or purgatory. You’re living, uh, you self identify with your lower ego.
You are constantly in the victim abuser consciousness. And then this is a list of your emotional states, your view of life, your view of God, uh, and the process that you go through when you’re, when you’re working on things. Existential vacuum. This was a concept created by Viktor Frankl, um, published in the book, uh, Man’s Search for Meaning, maybe published earlier than that, but I would highly recommend reading Man’s Search for Meaning.
Um, he was, um, a therapist in Austria in the 30s, um, Jewish. Ended up in the concentration camps for between 3 and 4 years when he got out, he found that his entire family had been killed by the Nazis and he took his the strategies that he had developed before this experience combined with the experience of going through that and found that 1 of his most famous sayings is that a man can survive.
Anyhow, as long as he has a Y, so an existential vacuum is is defined as a lack of purpose in life. So, when you look at this, and you see that there’s this red line across the screen, and it is. A lack of purpose that is that line, meaning that if you have no purpose in your life, no, um, passion, no reason to get up in the morning, this can be different things to different people that it’s very hard to break out of these lower levels or these lower energetic logs.
The, the higher levels require a sense of purpose, a sense of motivation, a sense of drive. And many people find themselves stuck in situations where they don’t have this. Um, I reflect on, um, my father. He lived most of his adult life below this level in an existential vacuum after being laid off from a job and then having a heart attack with no life insurance and filing bankruptcy, but even bankruptcy doesn’t get rid of medical bills.
And basically destroyed his life around the age of 45. He lived to be 73 and he never bounced back. Um, I myself can reflect on this that from the early, when I was young, I went into the military. I went to college. I started a company. I grew that company. I sold it. And when I sold that company, let’s say in 2012, I did kind of go through this state of apathy.
Which is down here
and I had some grief and regret despair for about 6 months and. This was because once I sold the company, I had a non compete. The, we signed on, I remember this on Valentine’s day, but we didn’t close until like a couple days before Halloween. I could do nothing. So here’s a person that worked a hundred hours a week, military, a hundred hours a week, full time job in school, a hundred hours a week building the company, sold the company.
And now I’m just sitting there. Nothing don’t have the money from selling the company and don’t have the ability to go do anything else. Cause I don’t want to break that non compete accidentally. So I went into this state. Now I bounced back by starting another company. Once that was all done, building it, growing it.
Then in 2017, kind of lost interest in it. And 2018, I started to get into investing with crypto made a ton of money. If I would’ve just stopped. It would have been set for life, but I was like, you know what? I’m going to turn this into a business and I’ve watched my life decline from there. Now, what does this have to do with alcoholism and addiction?
Now alcoholism and addiction and alcoholism is one thing addiction. It can be drugs. Um, it can be pornography. It can be shopping. Um, it can be impulsivity. There’s a lot of different things that can be considered addictions and they all live in these lower energetic states. So I find myself here today just talking with my friend and we’re both agreeing that we both kind of live in an existential vacuum that happened in 2018.
It’s 2024, six years later. I still haven’t broken out of it. And I live in this survival paradigm paradigm. I constantly am reminded of how I am living in purgatory or how, how I live with desire. Uh, or craving for a life that I had before. Um, I have anxiety about the life that I’m in today. I would say that my view of life today is disappointing.
Um, for all of the blessings that I’ve had in my life and all of the good things that have happened, I get so stuck in this state that I can’t pull myself out of it. Now, I haven’t gone back to drinking, but I have been a victim of other addictions. Um, well, there we go. Wait. I’m in a victim consciousness.
Let me rephrase that. I have made. Decisions and choices that show that I’m living in a lower state, which are part of the addiction problem and all bouncing off against this lack of purpose, this existential vacuum. Now in AA, in the 12 step process, part of it is giving yourself up to a higher power. I never really understood this.
Like I was in AA for probably, well, let’s just be exact. 45 minus 10, 35, uh, 20 to 35 for 15 years. I bounced in and out of AA. Sometimes court ordered because I got myself in trouble. I used to drink a lot. Sometimes I was really like, okay, now I’m going to actually do this. Never stuck with me. And it was primarily because I never grasped the concept of giving everything up to a higher power.
I had never really found spirituality or religion to resonate with me. And this is where Richard Rohr came in, in his book, uh, Breathing Underwater. Where he talks about why people with alcoholism and addiction problems have trouble doing that when you’re in a lower state, you can’t see the positive in life.
You can’t see the, um, how the non changeables of religion until you give yourself up to it. And this can help you in getting clarity about your lack of purpose. And that’s what happened with me, October of last year after numerous therapists, psychologists, um, Even, um, a psychic once it was, we were waiting to go to dinner and we had nothing better to do.
So we went into see a psychic and she looked at my hand and she’s like, you know what? Your, um, Aura is broken. You have no beliefs. You believe in nothing. Um, I can’t help you until you, you fix that. She’s like, let’s spend two days together working on that. I thought she was just trying to pitch me, but the reality was she saw something that I wasn’t willing to accept myself.
I came up again in a program called the break method that I’ve been in since October of last year, which has been a huge help in my life. And going through that, it came up that, like, hey, having spiritual beliefs. Not you don’t necessarily have to be a person that goes to church every day or every week, even though I am, will help you to get clarity on what’s going on in your life.
It’s different for everybody, but it helps a lot with alcoholism and addiction. And it’s been proven in AA. It’s been proven with Richard Rohr’s work that when you get to that spiritual belief, You have something to focus on. You have a purpose. You have a belief that will allow you to let go of some of the things that are holding you in that state of addiction or alcoholism or that state of apathy, as I’ve said, that I I’ve lived in finding that purpose is the key, though, if you’re sitting there today.
And you are struggling to quit drinking. You’re struggling to quit drugs. You’re struggling with, um, other addictions that have stopped you from having healthy relationships with yourself or with other people start by finding a purpose. It can be something small. Um, I’d like to say that we can find purpose in our kids.
I have 2 children. I love them to death, but they’re not going to give me. The fulfillment of purpose that helping the rest of the world or building something that I wake up every day and then I’m excited about. In fact, by trying to make your kids your purpose, you’re actually going to make things worse for you and for them.
So you need to find an internal Purpose so that you can better, uh, participate in the external world. Um, I say that specifically because many people, when they look for purpose, they will look externally, they’ll look for a relationship. That relationship may be good. It may be bad for them, but it could be the best relationship ever, but they’re going to ruin it.
By trying to find external validation or external purpose in life when the reality is they need to find it internally. 1st, they need to have a reason to get up in the morning. They need to enjoy what they’re doing and they need to see that. It’s going to help them achieve the goals that they set in life.
I don’t want to talk to an addict or an alcoholic about bigger life term goals. It’s not fair because basically you’re dangling a carrot in front of them that they’re never going to reach. They’ve got to first find purpose and let that purpose pull them out of these lower states of being. As soon as they start to feel optimism, they start to become hopeful.
They start to feel affirmation and they start to find gratefulness. They start to let life Start happening. And this all happens around courage. They are now out of hell, out of purgatory. They’re in the rational self. They’re in between purgatory and paradise. But that in between state is a great place of being because it’s a forward moving place of being.
If you ever want to find true love and that peace that comes with it up here,
being with the love of your life and being in that moment with them, that truly is paradise. And it’s a very hard state to get to. And it’s an even harder state to hold on to. You’re not going to get there. If you’re living below the existential vacuum threshold, you’re living in those lower energy levels.
You’re living in a state of being that is not in a positive Uh, residence with the universe. So I will post a link below this video directly to this document so that you can take a look. I hope this helps you in some small way. Uh, and I look forward to seeing you in the next video. Hey, remember subscribe.
If you liked this video, give it a thumbs up, leave a comment below. Let me know what other kinds of videos I can do to help you out. Thank you.
