00:00People are tired of being a prisoner to their own personality.
00:04For years, many people have been operating from a constructed mask,
00:09just an outdated operating system of the brain,
00:13built on a shaky foundation of fear, drama, and distrust.
00:18You might feel lost.
00:20Some people feel stuck in a cycle of addiction or anxiety.
00:25But here is the truth.
00:27Addiction is not a character flaw.
00:30It's a normal response to an abnormal situation.
00:34It's an attempt to solve a deep life problem imposed normally by trauma of some kind.
00:41But today we're going to talk about the paradigm shift that we need
00:46that takes us out of the story of our past
00:50and into the future of the construction and recovery of your sacred self.
00:58We've got personality on one side and spirituality on the other.
01:04You know, addictive personality disorder, spiritual recovery.
01:09So one side is labeled personality.
01:12It's many different names.
01:14And the other side, spirituality, represented with light, freedom, expansiveness, you know.
01:20Most of us spend the first half of our lives building a personality to survive.
01:26We develop what we call ego insurgents.
01:30It's like ego defenses.
01:31And these come in ten different forms.
01:35And we can go through the controller.
01:37The perfectionist is another one.
01:39The victim.
01:41And these masks of personality are here to protect us from a stressful world.
01:47These masks were meant to be shields, actually.
01:51But eventually they become 20-ton weights that throttle and choke us.
01:58Just like addiction does.
02:00So spirituality, on the other hand, isn't about dogma.
02:04It's about the unveiling of your real, true, authentic self.
02:11While your personality lives in the basement of survival mind,
02:15which is the limbic system, your spirit resides in the penthouse of the prefrontal cortex of the brain,
02:25where all executive functioning happens.
02:28Not addiction.
02:29Executive functioning.
02:31Where we can actually do the things we want to do that serve us.
02:37So the shift from one side to the other, neurobiologically speaking,
02:41happens when you realize you are not a puppet of your past,
02:45but the conscious author of your destiny.
02:49And it's important in recovery.
02:51You've got to realize that.
02:52So how do we start?
02:54How do we get an image of ourselves shifting from this, you know,
03:01addicted, closed, shadowed, vulnerable victim of a person
03:07who wants to return and recover a sense of gratitude, self-love,
03:16you know, belonging, connectedness in this world,
03:20developing certainty for themselves, presence and resilience,
03:25those sorts of things.
03:26We liken it to a skyscraper of consciousness.
03:31Now this ESC, or energetic scale of consciousness, as we call it,
03:38is how we measure people's recovery.
03:40We measure their transformation to the point.
03:45So the scale is 0 to 1,000,
03:47zero being the basement where you're closed,
03:53vulnerable in severe suffering and pain.
03:55You can't see anything around you,
03:58and you're in the depths of despair.
04:00And then, of course, you go up 200, 300, 400, and so on,
04:04to 1,000 where you get to the penthouse eventually,
04:08and you can see clearly now.
04:11You know, you get to see what's around you.
04:14You get to be free and conscious and aware,
04:19where, of course, addiction has nothing to do with awareness.
04:22So the skyscraper of consciousness is something
04:29that people really, really resonate with in recovery.
04:32They get to see exactly where they were at the worst of it.
04:38They get to plot themselves out literally within 95% usually
04:43to 99% of exactly where they are known.
04:47And it brings a sense of comfort.
04:50And it takes the variables of, oh, crap, where am I,
04:56to I'm right here.
04:58And you can see with that trust in a process that's tangible.
05:03You can see where you're going.
05:05And you move out of things like force towards authentic power.
05:12You move from being reactive up towards thriving and so on.
05:20So going up on these floors in 100-story skyscraper
05:25is such a beautiful way of envisioning the invisible chains
05:32of learned helplessness, you know,
05:34those beliefs that we are powerless because of past pain.
05:39In the survival zone of our skyscraper here,
05:43which is about 100 to 200 joules,
05:45we scan every experience for fear.
05:49You know, we're sitting there waiting for tigers
05:52to jump out of the bush at us.
05:54At least that's what the brain thinks.
05:56So in recovery then, we must cross the abyss
06:01from the known to the unknown.
06:04Now the known, if we do what we did last month, last year,
06:09we're addicted to our thinking more than our drinking.
06:13So you have to be willing to ask,
06:16who am I without the stories I'm believing in my brain
06:21of myself, of others, of life, of God, etc.?
06:25Are the stories I'm believing even true?
06:29So that questioning, which comes from Einstein's process,
06:34is where we begin.
06:37And then that takes us up as we start to question
06:42question why, we naturally open up
06:45and we start seeing and realizing
06:50what's not working for us,
06:53but more importantly, what will work for us.
06:56And then we drift over there.
06:58So we dissolve and integrate this old self,
07:02this addicted self,
07:04and recover the virtues of what we call our sacred self.
07:11So we use these 10 masks of addiction
07:14to get us back to our authentic self.
07:18We let go of the controller first
07:20to recover a sense of self-love.
07:23In the second paradigm,
07:25we let go of the victim masks that we wear,
07:27that's a big one with addiction,
07:29and recover a sense of resilience at the same time.
07:34Resilience is innate to everybody.
07:35We all have it as human beings.
07:37We have to have it.
07:38We start realizing we are creative agents
07:41through this process,
07:42not helpless pawns.
07:45And there's only 10 paradigms that we go through,
07:48pretty much like the 12 steps, sure,
07:51but we shift from personality to spirituality.
07:55So indeed, there's a spiritual solution.
07:59This method of addiction recovery
08:02is a scientific revolution of the self.
08:06You are accessing your internal agency,
08:09your internal pharmacy,
08:12which is neurochemical,
08:14using self-regulation, for example,
08:17which slows down your brainwaves.
08:22It's brain-heart coherence that happens.
08:25It's a natural physiological flow into ease
08:30from frightened states.
08:33And eventually, doing enough work,
08:35you arrive at a state of consciousness,
08:37expanded, pure consciousness,
08:39where fear flees
08:41because it has nothing to attach to.
08:44When you remove the mask,
08:47fear has nothing to attach to.
08:50You're no longer reacting
08:52to a 500-piece puzzle that you thought you were.
08:57You now see a million-piece puzzle of reality.
09:01So you open, expand your consciousness,
09:05and that's recovery.
09:07You become a creative, contemplative,
09:11choosing love over fear at every turn,
09:14rather than self-harm.
09:17You finally realize that nothing you truly are
09:20was ever lost.
09:21It was only veiled by your frightened personality.
09:24So there's a sense of freedom with that.
09:28Your recovery journey from survival to arrival
09:31starts with one conscious choice.
09:35Stop searching for external alexas
09:38and arrive at your sacred self.
09:42Go within, not without,
09:44and ask yourself before every decision,
09:48does this nourish my soul?
09:50DT NMS,
09:52does this nourish my soul
09:54as you bring choice back into your life?
09:58Addiction is choiceless,
10:00and the work is waiting for every one of us.
10:03All you have to do
10:04is show up for yourself,
10:07develop awareness,
10:09cultivate acceptance,
10:11formulate a plan of new action.
10:15awareness, acceptance, and action
10:17is the 10-step paradigm process
10:21for addiction treatment.
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