What Are Life Event Diagrams?

What These Diagrams Represent

On this page there are four diagrams, each representing a different aspect of the Life Event Diagrams. The first, A Single Time Grid, as well as the other three, are all simply a streamlined version of the third diagram (A Single Moment in Time) in my article on consciousness. Thus, anyone wanting to explore the theory behind these diagrams in more depth should read the article on consciousness in the Consciousness section.

As for my goal here, I am simply using these four diagrams to show how the three aspects of the Consciousness Metaphor can be used to map out peoples' levels of conscious during their various life events, and how these maps can be used to represent various events, including getting wounded and healing.

What is a "life event diagram?" Very simply, it is a three dimensional, graphic representation of the degree to which a person is conscious over a given period of time. In more practical terms, it is a red line plotted by joining a series of plotted points, each point representing a single moment in this person's life, and each group of plots a series representing an ongoing event. Thus, each event diagram is made up of a series of individual moments, "time grids" if you will, each of which is a plot of how much the person is internally picturing in each individual moment.

How are these individual moments plotted? Each moment is a point derived from the intersection of two lines, each line representing a kind of data. The two kinds of data are Information and Meaning, the first two of three continuums in the Consciousness Metaphor.

Practically speaking, then, the first line, the line plotted on "X" axis or "horizontal axis," represents the mix of Mental to Emotional Information, with all Mental being represented by the extreme left, and all Emotional being represented by the extreme right. And the second line, the one plotted on the "Y" axis or "vertical" axis, represents the degree to which the person can assign meaning to what he or she is internally picturing. Finally, the point at which the two lines intersect is the plotted degree of consciousness in this single moment of time.

the Life Event Diagrams (first view)," you will see a sample point plotted in the upper left quadrant. By the way, this point, somewhat to the mental side and a bit above the mid meaning line, is a common, average level of consciousness for many people.

Now if you move to the diagram below, the second diagram, "Introducing the Life Event Diagrams (second view)," you will see that two additional colored "zones" have been added. The upper, gold colored zone is called, the "Holistic" zone, while the lower, green colored zone is called the "Dead" zone.

What do these two "zones" represent? The upper zone, the "Holistic" zone, represents the upper levels of human ability to internally picture. This state is called by many names, from "ecstasy," to "falling in love," and from the "high" addicts seek to the "spiritual experiences" for which the mystics search. Actually, though, the way you would most likely be able to picture this state is to picture "hypnotic trance," the state hypnotists put people into, which is, in fact, the same open, vulnerable, and very visual state in which babies live for most of their first years of life.

And the lower zone? The lower zone is called, the "Dead" Zone, and this green colored area represents the state in which people can not internally picture, in a sense, the area inside them in which their ability to picture is BLocked, literally the area in which they are unconscious.

As for the third and fourth diagrams, both located below, in both cases you will see a sequence of "time grids," each of them with a plotted point and with the whole sequence of grid points joined by a single red line. Finally, on the bottom is the "Z" axis, the third continuum of the Consciousness Metaphor, the "Time" axis.

Obviously, these red two lines, and every possible variation of these red two lines, has a shape. Herein lies the whole purpose of these event diagrams. The shapes of the plotted red lines, especially those for common human experiences like getting wounded or falling in love, repeat.