Themes for November 20th to December 19th

Although we emphasize cycle of transition in The Extended Self Program, we’re a ‘culture of destination’. Every transition has a point of departure and point of arrival. We’re social conditoned to attend to the arrival – where we end up, rather than how got there. When a transition ends, we speak of it as a ‘recovery’ of the status quo, which is now enhanced with novel experiences. During this lunar cycle, many new college students will return home after a few months away at school. They’ll return to find that their home town looks a little smaller, a little more vanilla than when they left in September. One of the cardinal signs of recovery is what’s known as jamais vu – which is when the familiar appears foreign.

Nowhere is this aspect of our self-awareness more apparent than when we detect a shift in voice mode. To be complete, we track 4 different ‘voices’ when we’re in a conversation with ourselves or others. Surprised?

1) Nonvocalized, Nonverbalized – PHYLO Voice Mode
2) Nonvocalized, Verbalized - ONTO Voice Mode
3) Vocalized, Nonverbalized – ECO Voice Mode
4) Vocalized, Verbalized – EXO Voice Mode

Society tends to focus on the verbal > nonverbal and the vocalized > nonvocalized. People, on the other hand, pick up on the way words are expressed (tonality) and how their body reacts to them (psychoacoustics). By becoming more sensitized to the voice mode of your primary domain, you can develop a resonance between your social and biological channels.

Let’s use the 4 Domains and their voice modes to migrate through a cycle of transition in the context of a conversation. Again, we’ll use the somatic interfaces to chart the journey. That 1st interface is where we begin. Here our primary domain is operating and we are within the boundary conditions of what we recognize as familiar, whether that offers us a high or low level Sense of Coherence. We are guided by our primary domain’s voice mode, using the other domains as support and a means of cross-checking things that occur close to the edge of those boundary conditions. When transition begins, that bubble is burst and we are bounced from the stable and predictable world of the 1st interface into the spiraling, dizzy one of the 2nd interface. We are now departing…

When the status quo we occupy is disturbed, the PHYLO voice mode is activated. If our primary domain is PHYLO (and for most of us, it is), when tend to not notice the drop in coherence right away since PHYLO’s are a naturally unstable crowd. Almost any stimuli will launch them into a cycle of transition. This makes sense, since PHYLO’s have the longest trip to make to fully translate their raw experience into all 4 voice modes. If a journey can be otherwise known as a quest, a conversation is launched with a question. That question is posted in a nonvocalized, nonverbalized voice mode. By that we mean that our inner voice is manisfested as bodily tension or apprehension.

That old PHYLO feeling of vulnerabilty allows our filters to open and allow more stimuli in to assess our surroundings to locate the source of this change. As this search contunues the 2nd somatic interface can be readily distinguished now and even PHYLO’s will experience the transitional state of shock. As the PHYLO voice mode intensifies, we reach a threshold where we begin to convert that nonverbalized tension into verbalized inner dialogue. This is when we have re-stabilized ourselves into the 3rd somatic interface, where we activate our coping mechanisms. The ONTO voice mode takes over here and we chain together sensations (stimuli) and feelings (responses) into an emotional schema (meaning). The moment we recognize our inner voice, we can once again manage our state, using it’s many maps. This gets us half-way.

The migration from status quo (stable) to shock (unstable) and back to coping (stable) happens in lock-step fashion. It’s hard-wired into our stress response. In general semantics, this whole section of the conversational arc is called our semantic reaction. Here’s their fast take.

[The semantic reaction] can be described as the psycho-logical reaction of a given individual to words and language and other symbols in connection with their meanings, and the psychological reactions, which become meanings and relational configurations the moment the given individual begins to analyse them or somebody else does that for him. [italics original] (S&S 4th. Ed, p. 24).

http://www.xenodochy.org/gs/sr.html

Most people are satisfied at this point. They trust their inner voice and feel secure what it is telling them is sufficient to deal with everything. But remember, this whole process began with a question. We still haven’t found the outer source of the internal dialogue. Society teaches us to resort to skip ahead to the formal language of the 5th interface. That’s where we enter into crisis and seek the support of our social relationships. And many of us lack an adequate ‘roster’ to restore order.

In fact, the opposite effect is usually seen. The more we talk at this point, the more we seek support. Eventually, we find ourselves in the 4th interface, the realm of contradiction (yes, unstable again). Now the ECO voice mode is in charge. We’re still able to speak, but the words of the old status quo are less impactful. It’s sort of like when we drive out of range of our pre-set car radio (for all those who remember terrestrial radio). We begin to get the bleeding in of other stations broadcasting on the same frequency in a neighboring town. The ECO voice mode delivers us to a space outside our old truth. We begin to learn a new dialect of it.

As the contradictions we enter the 4th interface with unravel, we begin to organize ourselves again and now we can return to the 5th interface and truly relate our new truth to others. This allows us to cross over any boundaries we had place on ourselves in the old truth’s maps. We’re almost there! Things feel more stable again and we’re sensing a return to normlacy is approaching. We can detect the runway for our point of arrival. Once we touch down though, when we return to the voice mode of our primary domain, something has changed. Unlike the 1st interface, when we were safe in our cocoon, the 6th interface is the exact opposite.

We are now completely outside our boundary conditions. There’s a feeling of fullness within from translating a seemingly random life event into a refined, time-binding form that is now freed from within us. In this way, we complete the conversational arc and the cycle of transition. In time, this new awareness will become familiar and well be right back into the 1st interface again, awaiting the bugle of the PHYLO voice mode to once again set sail on another trip through the rhythmic tides of change.

If we land in that 6th interface and notice we are in a very novel place that offers no logical chain of events back to where we started. We have not only succeeded in translating experiences using all 4 Domains. When we cannot use reason to explain our current circumstances, we have been transformed by the process of journeying through the cycle of transition. When we experience this, instead of the more conventional jamais vu, we are consumed by it’s more ECO-ish psychosocial cousin, presque vu…

The cycle of transition only offers us it’s design. It’s up to us to develop the inner flexibility to be able to leave our primary domain and use the voice mode that best suits the interface we are experiencing life through. Although we get to use our primary domain’s voice in both the 1st and 6th interface, plus one along the road that connects them, we must actively seek out opportunities to witness our truth through other voice modes.

May you all use this last cycle of 2006 to explore your ‘unspoken’ self.

Tacitly, MRF 11.19

Further Reading…
Alfred Tomatis

http://www.tomatis.com/English/index.htm

Don Campbell http://www.mozarteffect.com/RandR/RandR.php?search=toning+voicework

Mantak Chia http://www.redwingbooks.com/products/books/IroShiChiKun.cfm

Sherry Edwards http://www.soundhealthinc.com/about.html

William David/AKA Elias DeMohan http://snipurl.com/116m8

Anacoluthian Processes: From the Greek "anacoluthon" (inconsistency in logic), a general term for system processes or methods facilitating self-organization and emergence. In these processes traditional procedures are followed while at the same time they are transgressed, thereby allowing the emergence of something radically new. An example of an anacoluthian process is the crossing-over of chromosomes from both parents in sexual reproduction. An example in a business or institution when people from diverse organizational functions are brought together in a project team, hopefully resulting in the emergence of an innovative organizational structure. http://www.plexusinstitute.org/Services/Edgeware_archive/think/main_gloss1.html

Local Whirls

Somatics offers us a chance to taken our unique experiences and unify them in a way that allows us to perceive our lives on a grander scale. Somas consist of a self and it’s surroundings ‘yoking’ themselves into an enformed whole. What we describe as our ‘body’ or our ‘mind’ in the traditional 3rd person perspective divides that up and makes our life events appear ‘external’ to us. Let’s correct that.

Back in the early 90’s, I was directed to read Michael Talbot’s book, “The Holographic Universe”. It’s still on my book shelf today actually. During the course of the book I was introduced to two very different scientists. One was David Bohm, a physicist by training, but a philosopher by trade. The other scientist was none other than Karl Pribram, MD, a man who would become a mentor to me in a few years as I shifted into studying brain development and his holonomic model. What I came away with from Talbot’s book was that reality wasn’t ‘out there’ at all. In fact, some of this ‘stuff’ I took for granted like colors weren’t ‘out there’ either. That realization reoriented me. I was trained to be very literal in my work and to focus on only those thing I could see and measure. No one told me that by doing that for any length of time, I was constructing a map inside that was filtering out information that could potentially help me help someone else. I was doubt-ful.

Using some of the evaluation tools I learned through the study of both General Semantics and Neuro-Linguistic Programming, I replaced that doubt with curiosity. Over time I collected and internalized many maps of human experience. Not too much later on I had maps of my maps papering the walls of my office. Today I have boxes and looseleafs stuffed with these maps. I don’t need them now.

Here’s a crash course in how somatics simplifies things…

Early on, we see things and we attempt to name them. That’s a verbal form of codifying that is shared with everyone else. But then we tweak things according to their nonverbval idiosyncrasies – we also nickname things we see according to their dominant characteristics. This combination creates harmony in the brain. To use an old metaphor from music, the DO at the beginning of the DO-RE-MI and the DO at the end are not the same. They represent the circular path we take as we travel through what Pribram called an octal code. Long story short, the brain takes multiple variables and weights them in a pre-set template that neurologically allows it to form perceptions and act upon them. So between naming and nicknaming things, there’s a ‘middle six’ that operates to unify the two within us.

Those six are where the somatic interfaces operate. We’ve discussed them before, but not let’s apply them to some of this maps I worked with over the years…

Edgework
Back in 2003, I introduced a system of generating integration of vision and posture using physical landmarks as an ‘experiential anatomy’ to observe ourselves internally. The idea was to develop people skills for life puzzles we have in common. Here’s a chart to summarize how what this attempted to coordinate…

Body Markers
I continued to use the same landmarks in my YES Trainings of 2004 to help people use the discord they experience socially as an opportunity to re-thread their system.

1) Feet – This area nonverbally relates to the life puzzle of INDENTITY – Who am I?
2) Knees - This area nonverbally relates to the life puzzle of REALITY – How am I?
3) Pelvis - This area nonverbally relates to life puzzle of SEXUALITY – Why am I?
4) Belly - This area nonverbally relates to life puzzle of PRIORITY – Where am I?
5) Hands - This area nonverbally relates to life puzzle of EQUALITY – What am I?
6) Heart - This area nonverbally relates to life puzzle of POSSIBILTY - What else am I?

In this way a person can take any image they focus on and it’ll activate and settle into a one of these body markers. It helps to let us reveal our perceptual landscape.

Blissful Practices
Finally in 2005, I combined the 12 Blissful Practices I’d developed for my e-book, The YES Factors, with these same 6 areas to provide an even deeper awareness of the sensory (passive witnessing) and motor (active witnessing) we do everyday…

Do you notice how these maps are intertwining and give us a new way to experience how our physical (literal) and mental (figurative) world in an embodied way? Now let’s go to the next step and toss another one of our maps on top of all this. What if we superimposed the Somatic Centers on the Edgework landmarks?

The 4 Domains
PHYLO
Sybil (possibility) meets SECURITY from opening Somatic Center #1 (breathing)
ONTO
Ida (identity) meets TRUST from opening Somatic Center #3 (feeling)
ECO
Lita (equality) meets INFLUENCE from opening Somatic Center #5 (relating)
EXO
Orie (priority) meets SPONTANEITY from opening Somatic Center #6 (expressing)

Isn’t it interesting that Big Al (reality) and Lotus (sexuality), which map to the knees and pelvis respectively do not overlap with the Somatic Centers? What we get here is that opening Somatic Center #2 (moving) which fosters MOTIVATION is geometrically linked to the landmark of the knees. The distance from our head where Somatic Center #2 is located (over the bridge of the nose) to the knees is the same as the distance of the heart (the landmark associated with the PHYLO domain) to the feet (the landmark associated with the ONTO domain). Isn’t our perception of reality a conversation between our heart and our head? The other landmark, the pelvis, would be left to map to Somatic Center #4, located on the chin. Here we form another geometrical association between the ENTHUSIASM that center fosters through what we say and how we ‘face the world’ and what we do with pelvis to ‘engender’ the passion behind those words. When they are aligned we experience an integration of all 4 Domains often associated with bliss. When we misalign our say/do ratio, we express our passions in a ‘bliss-less way’…

So to sum up, we can use our awareness of universal body landmarks as an objective way to track how well we’re using the full extent our innate resources to perceive and act on those perceptions in an integral way. This helps to paint our ONTO-somatic experience of our own physiology in a more PHYLO-somatic or shareable syntax. This process also gives us new portals into the world within each of the 4 Domains and how those worlds all blend to co-create our somatic terrain.

Use the balance of this lunar cycle to reflect on how centered your perceptions are.

Or Knot, MRF 11.05

Further Reading…
http://quanta-gaia.org/reviews/books/holoUniverse.html
http://www.100thmonkey.com/sacredgeo.html
http://www.innerworlds.50megs.com/enlightenment.htm