At this point, I’m guessing you’ve mapped at least one state, and perhaps a few or more. If you still haven’t done so, make sure to dig into Volume 1: Fieldwork Mapping section, and if it helps, use the Try It! page(s) to complete mapping for at least one.

Now, before beginning to actually walk a specific feeling state through the moving process, we’ll need to set things up in a way that helps the move go smoothly. Here’s what’s most important for the setup.

Choosing a State to Move

Now, one thing to keep in mind as we go forward here is that every part of you is strongly interconnected with other parts. We’ll go deeper into the topology of that in the upcoming Science section, and that will give us the understanding we need to navigate the complexity better. For now, we’re going to keep things relatively simple.

If you’ve mapped only one state so far, just go for it and take that one through the moving process. Often, the first time through goes very smoothly, in part because you’ve never experienced it and don’t know what to expect. So any parts that are connected with this one will most likely go along for the ride.

Later, after you’ve gained some experience with moving, other parts related to the one you’re moving may have higher priorities and require being moved first. For now, if you’ve mapped more than one state, let me give you two rules of thumb for choosing which one to move.

Option One: Go for the Easy One

As you enter into practice with moving states, I recommend starting with a mapped state that is easy for you to access. Choose one that you feel very tangibly, the map for which feels clear and accurate to how you actually experience the state. Avoid states that seem ambiguous or vague.

Option Two: Go for the Most Uncomfortable One

If you have two or more states mapped, often one will feel more uncomfortable than the others. This one is likely to offer a more satisfying moving experience, so it’s a good place to start.

Option Three: Go for the Pivot

Two or more states that are related to one another often have dependency relationships. In other words, one state is a reaction to something you experience as outside of your control, while another state is a reaction to the first. If the first is not reacting, neither is the second.

Here’s an example. Let’s say I’ve mapped Anger and Shame. If I feel aShamed about having lost my temper, for example, the Shame is likely to be a secondary state reacting to the Anger, rather than a primary one. In contrast, if the Anger shows up in situations in which I have lost connection with someone important to me because of something I did about which I feel Shame, and the Shame gives rise to the Anger, then it is the Shame at the center.

I call these reactivity hubs pivots. Start with a pivot, and you’ll have much greater leverage in moving the group of states. The moving process will proceed with greater ease than if you try working from the outside in.

Entering the Felt Experience of the State

As you approach the moving process with the state you’ve chosen, it will be very important to start from a place where you are clearly and tangibly feeling the state, in the moment. If you’re having any trouble with that, take some time to read through your mapping description. Carefully place your field of awareness over the space occupied by the virtual material properties of the state, taking in the full size and shape of the feeling object.

Then, review each of the properties, revisiting your experience in the moment with an openness to noticing how your current experience may be a little bit different from what you mapped. If needed, use the slider test (see Volume 1: FM-11: Pro Tips) from time to time in order to confirm that yes, this state you are experiencing right now is the same part you originally mapped.

Choosing to Intensify Slightly Before Setting the Container

If you’re able to access it easily, and you feel it strongly and clearly, you’re good to go. If it feels a little “meh,” not so tangible, then I recommend going for a little intensification before you start. To do this, use the slider test again, but this time, deliberately shift one or two key properties that seem to have a strong effect on your experience of the feeling. Shift them in the direction that intensifies the feeling state in your experience. You always have the option of reversing the intensification, and you might just practice that if you have any concerns.

At this point in the process, you will want to intensify only to the point where you can feel the state very clearly. This will help make sure the next step in the process works well and the container can be strongly set. We’ll do that in the next chapter. Feeling the state clearly and distinctly makes it much easier to communicate with it about what is about to happen, and to set its expectations and intentions to best support the process.

Going for More Intensity to “Set the Hook” Before Actually Moving the State

Looking ahead to slightly later in the process, after setting the container, for some states it can be very helpful to use the property sliders to further intensify just a bit before starting to work through the properties. I call this “setting the hook,” as if we’re catching a fish and we want to make sure we really have it on the line.

By setting the hook and intensifying the felt experience of the state we’re moving, we activate it strongly enough to influence the physiological systems of the body. The heart pounds a bit, the stomach tightens, the breath gets more shallow — that sort of thing. This lays the groundwork for a full-body experience of the shift when we work through the properties and transform the reactivity into resourcefulness. It’s a powerful tactic, and it sets things up so your entire being experiences a profound shift that can’t be mentally explained away.

When the full body is more involved in this way, other states related to the one you’re moving will often experience a bit of a shift as well, so you’re getting a broader effect for your work.

Again, though, make sure as you begin that your intensification is fully within your capacity for agency, and that you have the ability to ratchet it both up and down, completely by your own choice. This strengthens your position as occupying a strong witness outside of the state itself, and solidifies your position as the facilitator of your own inner experience.

More…

After you have more experience with both mapping and moving, and after you’ve had a chance to begin to understand the underlying topology of how these parts connect to one another, you’ll be in a position to bring much more skill and agency to your fieldwork. Later in the book, you learn about the topology of a set in the first Science section. Then, I’ll go more deeply into some of the more advanced skills and strategies of this practice. There’s a lot to this work, and it’s quite an adventure to gain the agency and capacity to observe that enables us to more fully explore this inner terrain.

Another Example of What You Have to Look Forward To

To support your anticipation for what is to come in this adventure, I am offering before/after examples of feeling states my client Ruby gave me permission to share.

Fear

Goes hand in hand with Self-Doubt (to be shared in the next chapter).

Especially arises before starting a new class, becomes a barrier I have to get through to even start the planning process for that class. It also comes a little more subtly before any class I teach.

I’m planning two new classes coming up, in a new space, new set of people, starting in August. With that a lot of fear has been coming up, to the point I haven’t even started planning it and it’s coming up in just two weeks.

Whenever I feel any of these emotions, I get a sensation around my heart.

Fear is in heart center area, starts to go up into the throat. Gas, thick, heavy; seems mutable. Pretty hot. It’s almost a metallic color, but dark like when silver gets really old, silver-grayish, translucent. Both circulation and a very slow outward growing, then back in a little. It’ll go out a little, then come back in a little, increasing fear with outward movement. Kind of like a creaking sound that you’d hear in a scary movie when they go to a scene in a forest. Shape is in the throat and chest, but when it expands out, it goes out the back of the chest and I feel it throughout my rib cage and stomach area, goes a little outside my skin, just a little.

Very negative. It tells me that I’m not going to be able to succeed in these things. Something’s going to go wrong. Therefore, why even try if it’s not going to work? And... “You don’t know what you’re doing,” etc.

Support

⟹ Cooler, a comfortable warm temp; lighter... it would be light; an emerald green, shimmering, translucent; still in throat and heart, but more free to expand, and when it expands it can go out of my skin a little bit. It can expand all the way down to my hips. Radiating out, particularly from the heart, and it goes all the way to a foot outside of my body; I’m picturing these rays of light radiating, but within the rays is a shimmering, wavelike movement. Sound of singing, an “aahhh” sound, a male choir.

It still wants to warn me, because that’s its job, but in a nice way.

[If nothing to be warned about?] ⟹ It would want to support me.

I keep hearing, “We are here for you.” It’s like they are my spirit guides.

New name ideas: support, guidance

New name: Support.

[What’s different?] It’s amazing; it’s like, I can truly go out in the world as myself, free of that fear of loss or failure. And I can just... there’s no restrictions as I go about my life.

I have had a hard time planning new classes because of that Fear, but if Support is there instead, not only is it easier to do it, but it’s so much more enjoyable.

I’m feeling the Support really wants to see me touch other people’s lives.

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When we worked our way through the sequence of mapping questions in Volume 1, for each parameter trying on this value or that one until we found the right fit, it felt as though we were merely applying an instrument of perception. Mapping seems like using a fancy telescope to view something far away, or passing x-rays through a body part and capturing the image on film in order to reveal the contours of the broken bone.

In mere perception, you can’t interact with your perceptual representation to directly alter what it is you are perceiving. For example, you can’t take a white pen to the x-ray film and color in the gap between the broken ends of the bone, and expect the bone to heal itself as a result.

The Bizarre Power of Direct Interaction

However, here’s where things get weird. With the type of perception we have created in our mapping, we can do exactly that. Namely, we are able to directly manipulate the virtual material properties of the mapping image we have created, simply imagining them to be different, “trying on” different values for specific properties, running the “slider” one way or the other, and the feeling state itself will transform as a result. If you take an anger that mapped as a hot, erupting liquid, for example, and simply imagine it cooling down, you will experience the anger itself “cooling down” as a result, most likely transforming from anger into something less volatile.

I can understand if this causes you to take a step back in skepticism. Nothing in our conventional understanding of feeling, mood, and emotion suggests that such a thing is possible. In my very first experiment with this method, my map was very crude, consisting only of the observation that a feeling of depression in my chest seemed to have a strong, gravitational pull downward. I reversed the direction of the gravity, imagining a strong push upward instead, and the feeling transformed instantly into a pervasive cheerfulness that shifted my mood for the rest of the day.

I was so stunned that I backed off, and did not attempt another such experiment for a couple of weeks. In the background, my mind was freaking out about what it might mean if my experience was actually what it seemed to be. At that time I was strongly invested in the methods I had been using to attempt to get control of my moods, namely self-hypnosis, journaling, reframing my thoughts and beliefs, and other approaches oriented around rewiring traumatic memories and the beliefs formed around them. I had invested hundreds if not thousands of hours in training and practice along these lines.

In contrast, in this experience I had made no effort to connect to the past, to memories, to ideas or beliefs, to any kind of thought structures or memories whatsoever. I had brought my attention, focused on the pure present moment of my experience, exclusively to this absurdly trivial and nebulous quality of the downward pull. A “downward pull” seemed irrelevant to the meaning and feeling of my depression, yet the impact of shifting it was impossible to deny.

The bizarreness had to do with a disruption of the fundamental, unconscious and unexamined assumptions I held, and we all hold, regarding our own experience of feeling. The baseline for these assumptions could be summarized like this:

Feeling is a product of a) our somatic physiology and b) our cognition including thoughts, beliefs, and interpretations of our perceptions. If we want to change how we feel, we must manipulate the underlying causes of the feeling by changing our physiology or our cognition.

This is something so close to home, so much a part of the air we breathe, the water we swim in, the ground we walk on, that we don’t ever consider questioning it. All of the science of emotion is built on these assumptions, as are most if not all of current psychotherapeutic, spiritual, and other practices.

When we encounter something that behaves in a way that goes completely against our most fundamental assumptions, the experience can be disorienting. It was for me, and it is for many people. Here is what my client Louise wrote about her experience of shifting her first feeling state:

“The experience of shifting the feeling left me stunned. It moved quickly and the feeling of relief and lightness was sweeping and overwhelming.”

Be prepared for your own experiences of “Huh?” as you begin to move your own states, and give yourself enough open time and space to integrate, especially with your first few times through.

A Brief Overview of the Process

In this Fieldwork Moving section of the book, I want to lead you step by step through your own experience of shifting a feeling state. The process I describe is the result of over three decades of incremental refinement. My intention here is simply to lead you through the experience as best I can.

Direct experience will be key to your understanding. Afterwards, we can begin to dig more deeply into how to skillfully apply the method. And we’ll be in a better position to apply our skills to more rigorously investigating what it is we are working with here, and continuing to assemble what our work reveals into our new science of subjective experience.

The fieldwork moving phase has six steps. Make sure to continue taking thorough notes as you go through the process. What comes up along the way may play a role in completing your move with this part, and it may also turn out to be helpful in working with other adjacent parts.

1. Choose a State

Every feeling state you will ever map exists in relationship with multiple other states. Each state is a unique expression of a module of your whole self, a part of you with its own function, purpose and intention. These interrelationships mean it can matter quite a lot which state goes first in the moving process.

2. Prepare the Container

Because of the tightly interwoven relationships between the state you choose to move and the others in its family, it is very important to set the space in such a way as to give the part you’re moving a maximum sense of freedom and support to follow its own inner compass.

3. Invite a Shift

In moving the state, we prioritize and support the part’s own autonomy in choosing what it prefers. One by one, we work our way through the virtual material properties, inviting the part itself to choose what feels best to it. Eventually, we reach a point of optimization, where it seems that no further property tweaks will make it feel any better.

4. Notice New Thoughts

From the new state that arises in the course of adjusting the virtual material properties, we gain access to a new perspective. In the course of moving the actual felt experience, we discover that our perceptions, thoughts and beliefs have spontaneously shifted in ways congruent with what we feel.

5. Name & Draw

After arriving and settling into the new state, it’s time to sit with its presence and find a new name for the feeling of it. At the same time, drawing the state with its new configuration of virtual material properties can further feed into the adjustment and refinement process as the visual representation brings the state even more tangibly into your felt experience.

6. Integrate What’s New

After a part has regained access to its ideal state, a phase of integration opens up. This part has recovered a more complete range of expression, and through that, a deeper sense of its identity and purpose. The emerging sense of new possibility invites you to establish new relationships with the other parts with which it is connected, and with your life as a whole.

Looking Forward

Over the coming chapters/posts, I’ll walk you through each step to help you get the best results. If you’re eager to begin, in Volume 1, the chapter FO-1, Fieldwork Quick Start takes you through a very concise presentation of both mapping and moving. Here on Substack, you can visit the Try It! page for links to that and several other posts that will lead you through the process using audio, body outline templates for drawing, and other support.

Also in Volume 1, make sure to review the question of whether it will work best for you to work solo or with a partner. Chapters FM-2: Working as a Solo Explorer and FM-3: Working with a Partner cover these complementary approaches.

An Example of What You Have to Look Forward To

To support your anticipation for what is to come in this adventure, I will be offering before/after examples of feeling states my client Ruby gave me permission to share.

Should

A looming feeling; a shield the shape of my body in front of me, especially my face & forehead; heavy; dark. I can feel it in front of my face, and weighing down on my chest. It’s not completely solid, more like a gas, but it’s heavy and dense, and more dense in certain areas; black, kind of translucent; moving like a shadow with me as I go around, moving as one whole unit; kind of warm (uncomfortable).

“You have to practice yoga every morning and you can’t eat until you practice, because you’re not going to be a good teacher unless you practice yourself.”

Encourager

This becomes lighter in density; a little cooler, so it’s a comfortable warm; an energetic light; whitish/yellowish, translucent, iridescent, sparkling; all around me, touching me, and I can feel it in my heart too; radiating/glowing, moving out from me in all directions out from my skin, and there’s a little ball of it in my heart, radiating out a little bit too; a high, singing sound, like an angel’s voice, kind of hard to hear.

Wants to be something that is supporting or guiding me in a positive way, “I’m OK how I am, and everything’s going to be OK.”

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The New Experience of Being Hugged

Susan: So in the moments right as I saw my new drawing, and as I experienced my feeling state shift, there was a very palpable, distinct opening in my heart. I could really feel that steel plate moving, and I could feel an openness that I would really... It’s like that barrier that I had always been aware of inside of me, that really was gone. It was just gone.

That in itself, of course, was a lovely thing. But the thing I really want to emphasize is I began to experiment. Like, “Oh, what does it really feel like?” So one thing I have done very differently -- I don’t always remember to do it, but I mostly do -- is when I am hugging people, I deliberately relax my body even more. I really think, “OK, open and receive.” And while I’m hugging the other person, and they’re hugging me, I really think, consciously, “Receive this hug. Receive this love.”

And I didn’t realize until we had this session how, when I was hugging people and they were hugging me back, of course I was aware I was being hugged back; I couldn’t miss that. But the distinction, the contrast that I saw was how I never really let the hug in. You know? I was so focused on hugging the person and sending love to them, and accepting them, and all that, that I just was oblivious, is the truth, to “Oh, my goodness; I’m also being hugged here. I could receive this.”

So it’s been really interesting, and I would say the result of me doing that is I notice I have experienced a very consistent feeling of being loved, in a way that I hadn’t in the past.

A World Full of Love

Susan: It was also that recognition – and this came like a couple of days later, and it was in the context of a circle, but I know that our work together opened the space for me to have that – is how much love there is in the world. And that really, I mean like my head of course has known forever that the world is full of love, but the contrast was a visceral experience of, “Wow, there is lots of love everywhere all the time if I open myself to it.” I mean, there is always the love of the divine. And again, my head of course has known that my entire life. But it feels like I have more of an awareness of it, rather than just, “Oh, of course God loves me, of course he does.” It’s like, “Oh! God loves me!” I feel it. I can tune into that. It’s like, without that steel plate, and with that radiance, that opening, it’s like, “Oh. I can feel this any time. I can tune into this any time.”

I Create My Circle

Susan: In circling, my experience has been that I am now aware that I create my circle. In the past, my idea – which is one of those 20:20 hindsight in retrospect how could I have been thinking that – up until we had our session, I had put the feeling of the circle kind of outside on the circle. Like this is something outside of me that’s happening. And now when I go in a circle, it’s like, it’s here. The circle is here. The love is here. It looks however it looks. It may, depending on where people are in the circle, there may be somebody there who’s upset, (not with me), but just who comes in with a fit, or who comes in kind of guarded, or with some protection or holding back, it’s like, “OK. I know you are love. Whatever is happening on the surface right now is happening, but you, yourself, are love. And I can open and receive that.

Love Is

Susan: And so another part of it is, I see, it’s like love is. Contrasted to doing-ness. It’s just, “Oh! It’s always here. It’s always available.” It’s a matter of tuning into it, not creating it, not doing something, not making it happen. It just is. And knowing me, you can know how significant that feels for me.

Infinite Love

Joe: A lot of what you’re describing, it sounds like a big part of your experience is the state you called Infinite Love.

Susan: Yes. Yes.

J: And that it’s always available, always present.

S: And kind of like breathing, it’s not something I have to have conscious thought about. We’re not saying, “In...[breath] out...[breath]” You know? We just breathe.

J: Right.

S: And I don’t say, “OK heart, beat... beat.... It just does.” So it’s in that category.

J: Yeah, yeah.

S: Which, as you can imagine, is a significant upgrade in my life experience.

J: That’s exciting.

S: Yes. I agree! [chuckle]

“You’re Different.”

Joe: Has anyone spoken of noticing anything different in you?

Susan: So pretty much everybody that’s seen me has said, “Wow, you’re really different.” And nobody said, “Wow, you’re really different; you’re so much more loving.” I mean, nobody has said what’s really different, but pretty much to a person, it’s been like, “There’s... you’re... clearly something’s happening with you.” [chuckles]

And it’s not surprising because I think people experience me as loving, so I wouldn’t think people would say, “Oh, and you’re so loving.” I mean, that’s what they think I am anyway. That’s their experience anyhow. So I think what they’re feeling is how I feel different inside. Like it’s so different for me inside that my energetic outside, it’s like, “Something’s different,” without there being a precise thing.

J: And I imagine, my sense is, that there’s... when I feel that my love is being received, that feels different.

S: Yes. And again, no one has said, “Oh, you’re really receiving me now, aren’t you, and you never did before.” Or, “You’re receiving me much more than you did before.” I think it would take a finely tuned perception for somebody to get that, or to notice that. Because I am quite tuned in about my hugging, I can feel when people are letting me in or not. But I don’t think most people have an attentiveness to that or a discernment, a distinction about that.

And actually, the comments come before they’re hugging me. It’s like they walk in the room and say, “Wow. You’re different.” [laughing] “You’re different.”

J: Wow.

S: And I mean, I have been in many ways on a very accelerated path of transformation. So I don’t think people need to think they can tell exactly what it is about me. You know? It’s just like, “Oh, more!” [chuckle] “More of that.”

Original Fear to Love

Joe: I’m curious, it sounded like there was a specific memory you had about what happened that made the Fear show up. It was like, this was appropriate to show up, but then it stayed around for too long.

Susan: Yeah.

J: It should have been something that I let go of, but I hung on to it, and the Shame was about having hung on to it.

S: Yeah, it was like, why did I think that was a good idea. Give me a minute and it will come...

I’m pretty sure that this would have been put in place when my mother died, with that decision, which I clearly remember making. I didn’t make the steel plate thing, that wasn’t conscious. That was more like a consequence or result, because when my mother died, and I have a vivid memory of this, I consciously said -- I was 13, sudden, completely unexpected death -- I said to myself, in my intense grief, “I am never going to love anybody that much again, because it is just too devastating to lose them.” And I can remember consciously deciding that.

So that was when I was 13. When I was in my mid-30s, I was vividly reminded of that decision when I met an older gentleman at church who was grandfather age that I just happened to sit by in church one Sunday and we really clicked. When the service was over he said, “Well, you probably need to eat. Would you like to come to lunch with me?” And I said, “OK.”

During that lunch, he shared with me that he had a diagnosis of prostate cancer, and back then the very best prognosis you could have was to live about eight years after your diagnosis, even if you did all the treatments you could do and they worked as good as they could work, eight years. He was about at year four. So of course, as evidenced by my mother, anybody could die at any time, but this was a person who was absolutely going to die, and sooner than later. I remember thinking that decision I had made, and I thought, “Susan, you can do this however you want to, but there’s such a loving, precious connection that’s available to you here. Your own grandparents died when you were eight, so here’s a lovely opportunity to have grandparent love and attention, and you can have this, and you can totally open your heart, and you can love this person with all your heart, or you can stick with your decision. And it’s up to you.” And I thought, “You know what? That was not the best decision I ever made. Let me unmake that one.”

Original Fear of Being Loved

Susan: What I didn’t realize until around the time we were having this session... Oh, it was right before this session because that’s how it impacted me so much. In a circle, I saw that was a corollary decision I had made at the same time, that I didn’t realize I made, that I wasn’t conscious of, which was, “And I am never allowing anybody to love me that much either, because it is too devastating to lose being loved.” When I saw that, it was like, “Wow. OK, didn’t know that. Now that I do, let me be aware and rethink that one.” And that’s the thing that, when we did our session, like I had always, any time I would feel it, I would feel that steel plate. You know? I could feel that it was there. I just hadn’t paid much attention to it. It was just part of who I was. And I certainly hadn’t examined the origins of it. But when I saw that, and then we did the feeling state work, and I felt the steel plate, it’s like, that’s what that is. That is the thing, that I, without any consciousness at age 13, 52 years ago, put into place to protect myself from the pain of losing.

And so when all that kind of came together, it was like, “Oh, and you know what? I don’t have to do that any more.” You know, I can receive. I choose to receive. Even though, yes, when that person or that relationship ends, am I going to notice it? Will I feel grief? Will I feel the loss? Of course I will. And why not have all the love in the world I can have, I can experience, why not receive all of that every minute I do, and when it’s not there, it’s not there.

And there’s also that Infinite Love that’s always there. So while I might lose a specific relationship, and would certainly have the natural, normal grief about it, it wouldn’t be the devastation that I had erected that to protect myself from, because now I know there’s an infinite supply. Whereas when I put that up, it was like, that specifically came from my mother, and now I don’t have my mother, and so, you know, 13-year-old mind, grief, shock, whatever that had me decide that, now I’m many, many years older, and I can make a different decision.

Origin of Shame

Joe: What’s your sense of how the Shame found its way in there?

Susan: So the Shame is that I know how I feel it when I love someone and they don’t accept it. And so the Shame is, “Oh my goodness, completely obliviously, unintentionally, but nonetheless truly, have I been not receiving people’s love.” And not trusting it. Like there was the whole mistrust thing. And the impact I had been having all these years, these 50-plus years, on all the people who loved me. You know? And feeling the embarrassment, and the Shame, that I had pushed them away.

J: So it seems like the Shame, what you’re describing is, that is pretty recent, it really showed up as you became aware that you had been doing that?

S: Yeah.

Shame + Marriage

Joe: Seems like the Fearful Fear would leave if it knew how, but it doesn’t know how.

Susan: Right.

J: So it’s not a shame that Fearful Fear appeared, but that it was meant to be temporary and somehow it got trapped. That it never meant to stay.

S: Yeah. It’s that, yeah, that’s the Shame. That I didn’t know, and the impact that has had. And it was like, I would like to think that I’m loving and that I allow myself to be loved. And I can look back, like for example in my marriage, where in the beginning at least, (and there’s a story around that), where I was loved as much as my husband was capable of loving me. And I can remember pushing it away. Part of the pushing it away was, I had a sense which turned out to be correct, that he was loving an idealized version of me, contrasted to me. So I wasn’t off on that one. But still, I was pushing it away.

Something that was true in my marriage was, both my husband and I were pretty exquisitely attuned to the energetics in our relationship, whether we were consciously aware of them or not, or whether we spoke of them or not, we were both really tuned in to that. And so I’m sure he felt my guardedness. And that cannot have felt good. It just cannot have felt good.

I’m not going to say that ruined our marriage, there’s a million factors about what worked and didn’t work in that. But my shame is that he loved me and I didn’t let it in. And the impact that had on a tender heart that was very open and giving.

J: Do you think that shame was present then?

S: No, I don’t think I knew it at all. I mean, the Shame came up out of the realization. I mean, was it present somewhere at some deep, completely unknown level? I think yeah, it would have had to have been. But there wasn’t the consciousness of it.

That’s why when we were doing it, and it showed up, it was almost kind of a surprise to me. That’s my recollection, in the session it was like, “Oh! And then there’s this, this unexpected thing, and what is it when I feel into it? It’s Shame. And it’s Shame that I would have been doing that, that I would have been pushing, or keeping, making a barrier to receiving love.

And until I processed and forgave myself for that, nothing could move.

Opening to Something New (Another Month Later)

A month after our followup call, (two months after the session), Susan and I were talking, and she shared the following story about the further unfolding of the work we did.

Susan: My ex-husband called after a mutual friend died. While we were talking about her I said, “You know, I really miss talking to you.” Because it’s been his choice for us essentially not to communicate.

A little later he shared that a book he’s always wanted to write about his family’s history is finally about to be published. I was saying what great news that was, and really celebrating with him that this is coming to pass. And I said again, “I just want to be sure that you heard me. I really miss us being in communication like this. I really treasure us just being able to be friends and talk.” And he said, “I know. And I acknowledge it was my anger and my hurt and the way I was being that stopped this, but I think I’ve moved past that now, and I miss you too. And I’m willing to be in communication with you.”

As far as I’m concerned, that’s just a miracle. I have so longed for that, but it’s not anything I could make happen. You know? It had to be his choosing to do that. And so he has sent me the final draft of the book for me to read over. A year or more ago I had said I’d be happy to read over a draft of the book, and it was like, “Nope.” So he’s now sent it to me to read, and he said, “You always have great comments. Here are the things I want you to look for and comment on.”

So it just, it feels wonderful, to have that. It does really feel like a shift, and for me, what I’ve noticed is that, (and this sounds paradoxical), what it feels like is that I now feel like I’m free to pursue another relationship. It seems funny. I don’t want to be anything except friends with my ex-husband. The marriage part of our relationship is done, and I’m not looking to rekindle that. But what I’ve noticed is that for me, the not-friendship was like an incompletion, and I was holding out for that. It’s kind of like all the relationship space in my head was taken up with, can I just get him to be friends with me please. And now that I have that, it’s like “OK, cool. That’s complete. Now I can move on to the next thing.”

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Audio:

J: All right, so, any final thoughts?

S: No, I mean, it does feel like there isn’t any boundary or barrier any more to letting love in. I mean like, I’ll find out the next time somebody hugs me or whatever.

J: Right.

S: But just checking in with my body right now, I don’t feel any barrier.

J: Right. Well, this seems like it was a great little tour here, little excursion.

S: And what I noticed is, and I think you pointed to this before, but actually getting to what the heart of it is, getting down to it, as soon as I got there it started shifting without me even making any effort to shift it.

J: Right, right.

S: When I got to the Shame, which I didn’t know was there, and I think the key point was when you asked me, “if you feel into the body of the Shame,” as soon as I located the heart, and it started pulsing, it was already done.

J: On the way.

S: There was the exploration, the doing of it, but it was like, “Oh!” The love that I thought was out there, that I needed to be cautious about receiving was already inside.

J: Yeah, yeah. And its natural state is, there’s love everywhere.

S: Yes.

J: No shortage.

S: Right. Yeah. And I think the sensation that I will carry with me is the expanding infinitely out and then flowing back, and then even further out, which means there’s more to come back, which is there’s more to give out... so, which is consistent or congruent with how I think love is anyway. The more you give, the more you can receive, and the more you receive, the more there is to give. That’s just how it works. But actually experiencing the sensation of that.

J: Great.

S: So I would say it’s moving it from an intellectual idea to a felt sensation.

J: Right.

Anticipating the Future

J: Projecting forward, imagining the next time somebody hugs you, or expresses...

S: Well I was thinking just going to the grocery story. I mean, that’s the next task outside my home I have to do. And it’s like, Oh, I could just be standing in the checkout line at the grocery store, or going up and down the aisles, or whatever.

J: Yeah.

S: It’s just like, Oh! I could just be sending love out into whole grocery store, and receiving love back, and it doesn’t even have to be love that’s specifically meant to be for me. But just the love that’s inside the hearts of the people in the grocery store. The Heart Math people have figured out that the electromagnetic field of the heart is somewhere on the average 20 to 40 feet.

J: Wow.

S: So it’s like, wow, the grocery store is full of these electromagnetic fields of 20 to 40 feet of all the people in the grocery store intersecting one another.

J: That’s a nice image.

S: Yeah.

J: And now, without that barrier, that’s available to you.

S: Yeah. So like moving through a field of love, an electromagnetic field, an energetic field of love.

J: Right, right.

S: Which feels really safe. So that’s the Exquisite Safety. A very different emotional state or feeling state.

J: Mm hm. Would you anticipate it will affect your experience of circling?

S: Yeah, I would, actually, because, I mean like recalling that idea about the electromagnetic fields, it’s like yes, we’re all on the computer screen. Yesterday on a call we happened to have somebody in Norway and someone in Australia, a huge geographic distance, and then us in Texas, in the middle. But I mean it was a huge geographic distance. And yet, you know, we could feel that field amongst us. So I think it does give me an even deeper way to connect in this global community that has quite a great, a lot of geographic distance.

J: Yes, that’s great.

S: And just remembering that our hearts are sending, I mean, this is not something we control. I don’t say to my heart, “OK, only a 10-foot electromagnetic field now. OK, now you can have a 30-foot one.” It’s just doing what it’s doing. So it doesn’t even have to be that I’m having loving thoughts. My heart is out there doing that, just like I’m breathing, and I don’t have to think, “OK, In. Out.”

J: Right, right.

S: It’s doing that. That’s a very different world view.

J: What’s cool is it sounds like, like you said, this has been an idea. You’ve known this.

S: The facts, yes.

J: But it hasn’t been a felt experience.

S: Right.

J: And now you’re actually already feeling the difference of actually having it be embodied.

S: Yeah.

J: That’s great.

S: Yeah, I mean, there’s seven point three billion people on the planet with hearts that all are having electromagnetic fields. And even the ones, I’m assuming even psychopaths or whatever, their heart does this too, not in their conscious control. You know? There’s nothing that I’ve read about the electromagnetic fields of the heart that says, “OK, if you’re a psychopath or if you’re a really mean person, then you don’t have an electromagnetic field on your heart.” I think you do anyway. Which expands my understanding of The Course of Miracles, which is my spiritual path, which is, there is only love. (And... it can seem like there’s a lot of other stuff.)

J: Yeah.

S: You know, which is real enough in the physical plane. But in the meta view...

J: Right.

S: Yeah. So a lot to think about and be with.

J: So you’re going to have these thoughts running...

S: ...percolating...

J: ...through your whole body as you go to the grocery store, and go there...

S: Drive on the highway or whatever.

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Audio:

Moving Love

J: We could draw Receiving right now. Or we can go ahead and move one of the other ones.

S: It almost feels like this did move everything else.

J: Yeah? Well let’s just check in and see what happened, see where the other things went. Let’s check in with the Love. Now that Shame has become Receiving, what does the Love get to be?

S: The Love just gets to be more and more and more. It stays Love, but it’s free to be as big as the universe. It can be as big as it wants to be. There are no restraints on it.

J: So in a perfect world, with access to Receiving, if this part of you were free to be as big as it wants to be, how big would it want to be?

S: Truly as big as the universe, like out into the galaxy, beyond the Milky Way. Huge, it wouldn’t have any boundaries at all.

J: OK. And in becoming beyond-galaxy, infinite universe size, if it were free to take on qualities of any substance at all, would it want to be more like a solid, liquid, gas, pure light, energy, or something else, what would it most want to be?

S: Pure light, I think.

J: And this pure light, what temperature would it want to be?

S: I don’t think it has a temperature, really. I mean, definitely warm contrasted to cold, but it doesn’t feel like light really has a temperature.

J: OK. And what color does it want to be, if it could be any color or colors at all?

S: Iridescent, like all colors.

J: Is there a certain pattern, or a way that these colors are distributed?

S: No.

J: OK. And is it moving at all? Is this light flowing, radiating, pulsing, vibrating, circulating?

S: It feels like it’s going out to infinity, however far that is, and then coming all the way back to me, like to my physical body. And then like all the way out, and then all the way back. Like bringing everything back and then putting it out, and each time it goes out it goes further, brings more back, sends more out, constantly expanding.

J: Great. OK. And what about sound: if you listen to this, what sound wants to be there as a way of more fully expressing its nature?

S: It’s kind of back to the music of the spheres. I think the stars are supposed to sing or make some kind of a sound, so whatever that sound is.

J: All right. Anything else to notice about what this wants to be?

S: I don’t think so.

J: All right. And so from this new place, what feels true, or real, or important?

S: Well in this space, Shame and Fear and No! are not even concepts. They don’t even exist. It’s like they don’t even make sense. They’re not even present. It’s like if it’s August and it’s summertime, the concept of snow is completely irrelevant, you know? It’s 100 degrees, there’s not going to be snow.

J: Right. So what’s important to you about that?

S: Just the expansiveness and the freedom and the possibility.

J: Anything else to notice about what this wants to be?

S: I think that’s it.

J: What name would you like to give it?

S: Infinite Love.

Note: This drawing was made later in our process, after moving all four parts.

Moving Fearful Fear

J: Let’s check in with what happened with the Fear. So now that you have access to Infinite Love and Receiving...?

S: It’s like, if it were fog, it’s like when the sun shines really brightly the fog just disappears, or dissipates.

J: OK. So let’s follow it. So this part of you has a gift for you. And let’s say that the fog does dissipate, but it has the opportunity, from that dissipated place, wherever that is, to contemplate how does it want to come back into the space in and around your body in such a way as to offer you its greatest gift?

...And in doing so, if it were free to take on qualities of any substance at all, would it prefer to be more like a solid, or a liquid, or a gas, or some kind of pure light or energy, or something else?

S: It feels like a soft blanket. Very, like cashmere, very light weight. Not even a blanket; like a cashmere shawl that’s literally, you notice it’s on your skin but there’s no weight to it. And it’s very soft.

J: Ahh. So the temperature is like a neutral temperature, or warm? What temperature would you say it seems to be?

S: Neutral.

J: And if it were free to be any color at all, what color would it most want to be?

S: Kind of a cream color, an ivory.

J: Opaque, translucent, transparent?

S: Opaque.

J: And so the location is like a shawl, or if it could be free to locate itself anywhere, where would it most want to be?

S: It’s maybe six inches away from my body. So it would be as if I could feel the presence of it, but I’m not at all wrapped up or bound in it.

J: Ah hah. Great. And around your whole body? Is it like a...?

S: No, just from my waist to my chin. Kind of like overall where everything else was before.

J: OK. And does it want to be moving in any way?

S: No. It seems to be still.

J: OK. And does it want to have any kind of inner sound to express its nature?

S: Like some kind of soft humming, almost like a lullaby sound or a soothing sound. It doesn’t necessarily have a melody, but just some kind of comforting hum.

J: Anything else to notice about what this wants to be?

S: No. I don’t think so.

J: And so from this new place, if this part of you were free to express in words what feels true, or real, or important, what would it say?

S: You’re safe, and protected.

J: Mm hm. OK.

S: Before, in the very beginning when I was saying it felt like if I let the love in it would just be too much, or overwhelming, this is like, “No. It will never be too much. However much it is, you’re safe, you’re protected. You can let it all in and it won’t be too much.”

J: OK. And what new name would you like to give this?

S: Spaciousness..

Note: This drawing was made later in our process, after moving all four parts.

Moving No!

J: All right. Should we check in with the steel plate, the No!?

S: Yes.

J: All right then. So, you’re getting the hang of this, I’m just going to open up the...

S: Well it feels like the steel plate has gone down under my feet, like it’s this very solid foundation.

J: Mm hm.

S: So if we’re doing the floating out in the universe thing, it’s like the steel plate, now its job is to be the foundation. There’s something to come back to. There’s something solid.

J: Right.

S: So I don’t just expand expand expand expand and never stop expanding. This is when the energy comes back, it comes back and it’s got the home base, so to speak.

J: Got it. So let’s explore, what does the substance want to be? Does it still want to be steel, or...?

S: Yup. It’s the same as it always was.

J: OK.

S: It’s just completely re-purposed.

J: So the same substance and color?

S: Yep, same everything.

J: How about temperature? Still cold?

S: Cool. Yeah, it’s still a little cool. Everything else is warm, so it’s like the cool is a contrast to be the homing beacon or something. It needs to be just slightly different than everything else so it can be easily located.

J: Mm hm. And what about the size and shape of it? Is it the same exact...?

S: Still the same. It literally is that same steel plate. It’s just completely re-purposed.

J: But it’s horizontal now.

S: Right. Now it’s horizontal as if it’s under my feet.

J: OK. And now, any inner sound that comes with this?

S: It’s that same kind of low tone that it was before, and again, the purpose is like a homing beacon or like the signal.

J: And so from this new place, what does part of you bring? What does this part of you most want you to know?

S: That I’m safe, that there’s a place to come home to.

J: Right.

S: No matter how much everything goes out, there’s a big, solid place that it can come back. So it’s really just an exquisite safety. I’m not going to be lost.

J: Great. And what new name would you like to give this?

S: I would say Exquisite Safety, just what it feels like.

J: Great.

Note: This drawing was made later in our process, after moving all four parts.

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What’s Next:

In the next post, Susan will reflect on the journey she has made and how she anticipates these shifts will influence her experience moving forward.

Volume 1, Table of Contents:

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The audio:

J: So does it feel to you like it would be more of a relief to shift the Shame first or one of the others?

S: No. It’s definitely from the inside out in this case.

J: Mm hm. And the Shame, that could shift and the Love would be OK with that.

S: Well, it’s like the Love wants to expand...

J: Wants to expand, right...

S: ...yeah, it wants to... I mean, it’s kind of like, sort of vaporize or... I think vaporize would be the right word. It’s not like blow it up, but it’s just like dissipate it, disappear it.

J: Yeah, yeah. All right, well let’s see what happens with shifting the Shame.

Preparing to Move Shame

J: So before we shift this I want to just establish a couple of frames. One, I want to acknowledge this part of you, this Shame. It took this form at some point in your life when it seemed like this was the best way to serve you. So I want to thank it for doing that. And I want to reassure it that if it ever needs to serve you in this way again, it can do so. Yes, we are going to move this today, but it’s safe to move because you can always put it back. We’re adding to this part’s repertoire of feeling, not taking anything away.

And so because of that, because it’s safe to move, you might as well go for it. What could this part of you be in an absolutely perfect world, where all your needs are met, exactly the way you want them, fully and completely, and you know how to keep them that way?

Also, I want to acknowledge that, as you see, this Shame is connected to the No! and the Fearful Fear and the Love, and there are other parts it’s connected to that we haven’t identified. I want to invite all the other parts of you to participate in this process passively, as witnesses only, to experience for themselves what’s possible for every part of you. But if there is some other part of you that is needing to contribute something crucial to the process, you’ll notice another feeling coming to the foreground, and just let me know. All right?

S: Yes.

Moving Shame

J: So in this moment, in the spirit of exploration of what’s possible in a perfect world, if this part of you were free to become, oh let’s say harder or softer, bigger or smaller, warmer or cooler...?

S: Definitely softer, no more porcupine quills. And it would change color. It would be yellow, kind of like a glowing light, like a sun.

J: OK.

S: But really, very soft.

J: Yes. OK. And so in becoming softer, and changing color, if this part of you were free to take on qualities of any substance at all, would it prefer to be more like some other kind of solid, or a liquid, or a gas, or some kind of pure light, or energy, or something else?

S: Pure light or energy I think.

J: And in becoming this pure light or energy, if it were free to take on any temperature?

S: Comfortably warm. Like maybe a hundred and two degrees, like a little warmer than body temperature, but you know, you could still have your hand on it for a while without being burned.

J: Mm hm.

S: Maybe only a hundred degrees. You know, just a little bit warmer.

J: OK. And in taking on this new quality of being pure light or energy at 100 degrees or so, to confirm the color, if it could be any color of the rainbow...?

S: Sunshine yellow, or maybe lemon yellow, or egg yolk yellow. Like the heart was the reddest red? This is like the yellowest yellow.

J: OK. Great. And would it want to have qualities of being transparent, or translucent, or opaque?

S: Translucent, maybe. Like transparent, it really likes being yellow, and it wants to be noticed.

J: Ah hah. And obviously it’s luminous, this light? Any qualities of being sparkling or shimmering, iridescent, anything like that?

S: Shimmery or sparkly.

J: OK. And if this part were free now to located itself anywhere in or around, or in and around your body, and occupy any size and shape at all, where would it most want to be?

S: Well, the center of it would be right where the porcupine was, but then it would definitely go, like covering all the parts that were gray before. Almost like a circle except there’s not sharp, defined edges. So it would even go up to my chin, probably an equidistance down which might be the top of my thighs, and maybe out to my arms...

J: How about forward/back, also? Would it be a sphere or more of a circle?

S: It’s kind of a shape like this , so however far back the gray fog went before, it’s like that far back, and then however far the steel plate was, it’s like just past the edges of that. So sort of encapsulating.

J: Right. All right. And does this light want to be moving in any way? Is there any kind of a flow, a pulse, a radiation, vibration?

S: No. It’s just glowing. But it’s not... The fact that it’s light means that there’s activity.

J: OK.

S: Without any overt activity.

J: OK. And if you listen internally, does there want to be any kind of inner sound that arises with this feeling?

S: It’s kind of tinkly bells or wind chimes. I don’t know, celestial sounds, angelic sounds, music of the spheres sounds... I mean I can hear them in my mind because I have CDs that have music like that.

J: All right. So you know what that means.

S: Yes.

J: And is there anything else you want to notice about what this wants to be?

S: No. I think that’s it.

J: And so from this new place, this new feeling, what seems true, or real, or important now?

S: It seems very expansive.

J: And what’s important to you about that?

S: That I’m very open, so it’s like I am open to let the love in. It feels like it made that expansiveness.

J: Great. And what new name would you like to give this?

S: Receiving.

J: Mm. Great.

Note: This drawing of Receiving was made later in our process, after moving all four parts.

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What’s Next

In the next post, we’ll have an opportunity to see what Susan’s Love wants to become. We might assume that, well, it’s already “love,” so what more could it want? Well, hang tight. You might be surprised.

Next post in this series:

Volume 1, Table of Contents:

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What you have here, in this book, represents something substantively different from what has come before. Psychotopology fieldwork says, “Yes, strong passions live inside of you. They clamor for expression. And you are granted permission to experience them as they are, to learn from them, discover their deeper needs and longings, and to shape them into expressions that serve you and your entire life.”

There is nothing in the doorway of fieldwork that assigns an interpretation to anything you experience when you walk through that doorway. There is nothing in fieldwork that does anything but support you in noticing what is actually there inside of you, and re-establishing a healthy, real relationship with all that is there.

Through fieldwork, we have an opportunity to enter into these spaces by ourselves and together, and to re-imagine what it means to be human. Through fieldwork, we are invited to feel again, and to show up with the presence of that feeling in our shared worlds. Showing up in this way, with what truly lives inside of us, has the potential to reshape our world, to dissolve these scaffolds of rational confinement, to reconnect us to the powerful creative forces within ourselves. As we begin to feel again, I believe we will regain the capacity to choose presence over production, connection over separation, life over these endless spirals of evisceration.

Life. It lives in us. It wants to move through us, and among us, into the world and back again. This is what it means to be human. This is what it is to fully live, to feel, to be.

Upcoming Group Explorations

One thing I am intending to offer soon, most likely primarily as a local offering in Bellingham, is a series of cohort explorations using fieldwork to “get real” with the actual felt experience behind many of our confusing and complicated personal, relational and social dynamics. Here are some of the topics we may explore:

• Belonging and inclusion/exclusion

• Intimate relationships and sexuality

• Power and social status

• Identity, transitions and self-concept

• Grief and loss

• Conflict and disagreement

• Parenthood and caregiving

• Addiction and coping mechanisms

• Work and vocation

• Religious and spiritual life

• Family systems and intergenerational dynamics

• Ancestry and legacy burdens

• Embodiment and health

• Nature and technology

• Inner safe spaces and danger zones

• Social collapse and global despair

• Transitions and thresholds

My vision for these groups is to support a profoundly accepting space where we are each able to discover the subtle richness within ourselves and one another by:

• Stepping out of the illusion of the citadel self by embracing the beautifully sophisticated multiplicity within us all,

• Escaping the dominance of language over what we allow to be real in our lived experience,

• Noticing and affirming that belonging exists as a fundamental property of existence for all of us, all of the time, and

• Offering and receiving a deep trust among ourselves that in our humanity, we are expressions of life itself in all its wondrous beauty.

I would also like to begin offering training explorations for therapists, counselors and coaches. Let me know how that would best work for you.

Spring will most likely join me in hosting many of these, and I am intending for these offerings to launch organically, through conversations with you. As you begin to open to the opportunities for growth and awareness available through fieldwork, I invite you to reach out to me with your own desires for exploration (joe@psychotopology.com). It will be through these points of contact with you that I will receive the signals for what to offer next, and how to gather a cohort for that offering.

Looking for Collaborators

For maybe one, maybe a few of you, something of what is in this book touches a nerve. A good nerve — one that sends a jolt of intrigue through your system. You smell something, you sense something, you get flashes of some kind of possibility in what I’ve written and what you’ve experienced already in exploring fieldwork.

For example, because fieldwork gives us access to the core architecture of our being, it can be immediately applied in quite a number of directions to support efforts already underway to master this experience of being human. In these various directions, whether philosophical or spiritual, psychotherapeutic or cultural, or simply personal, fieldwork can be incorporated into current practices and frameworks in such a way as to enhance what is already strong. That’s awesome. If this turns out to be your path, I want to support you in whatever ways I can. Let me know what you are drawn to and we will figure something out.

Beyond that, I am also looking for collaborators in this new science. If this speaks to how you think about things, how you approach the challenges of our world, how you tend to hold your own most important projects and questions, perhaps you might find a role to play. I would love to welcome one or more people who see the potential in this already, who trust where I am coming from, and want to jump in, learn more, and contribute their best efforts to bringing this science into the world.

In either case, please get in touch with me and let’s figure out how you can get involved. Just shoot me an email (joe@psychotopology.com), and we’ll have a conversation to see what might be possible.

And if you are one who recognizes the importance of this effort and has something different than collaboration to offer, please let me know how you would like contribute. As I’ve mentioned before, it has been difficult at times running on a shoestring, doing all the many tasks on my own, etc. I will be immensely grateful for any support you can muster.

One of the most valuable contributions I invite you to consider making is that of an introduction to someone else who might benefit from this work, or who might have something to contribute to it. Reach out to make that introduction by email, or simply share this book with someone. Even if it’s more of a one-link-in-a-chain kind of thing, where you introduce me to someone who might know someone who might know someone who can help. My goodness, I will be so grateful for that.

Stay in Touch

Finally, to all those who have been captivated by what is here in Volume 1 and would like to make sure to stay in the loop for the rolling out of Volumes 2 &3, as well as opportunities to study and practice fieldwork in cohort trainings, study groups, and other programs, please make sure to subscribe. If this work is turning out to be valuable to you, please also consider signing up for a paid subscription or making a donation through PayPal or Venmo (message or email me to ask for details).

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Every little bit helps. Thank you!

~ Joe Shirley
Bellingham, WA
June, 2025

Volume 1, Table of Contents:

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There is a lot you can do with this if you work supporting others through therapy or coaching. Fieldwork mapping addresses some of the challenges in this work in a way that is maximally honoring of the client’s inner experience. In turning toward fieldwork, you support the client in finding their own inner compass, making sense of the challenges of their life using their own wisdom, strengthening their capacity for witness awareness, and exercising more freedom of choice in how they respond to any situation. Not only that, but you can use fieldwork mapping to support yourself in maintaining your own solid base as you lean in to support others. Let’s take a look at a few of the ways this can work for you.

Adding a Stabilizing Third Point of Contact

Typically in therapy and coaching, we rely either on the cognitive dimension or on somatic sensation to navigate the tricky terrain of the inner world. Bringing fieldwork into the process sets up a third, stabilizing point of contact, neither somatic nor cognitive, through directly and intentionally accessing the virtual materiality of the feeling experience.

This can be incredibly powerful. For example, quite often a client has run through the story of why they have a particular challenge, and even why they should be able to get beyond it. But without feeling into the heart of it to notice other discrete feeling objects reinforcing the pattern, they can remain trapped, going around in circles without anything actually changing.

Similarly, someone can become very skilled at turning their attention to the micro-sensations of their body related to a particular difficulty. But the relationship between soma and mind, between body and behavior, is not two-dimensional. It also travels through the medium of feeling, and without bringing feeling into the mix, they can become stuck bouncing back and forth between the thought patterns and the body activations.

Another time the two-point focus on mind and body can get in the way is when someone becomes overwhelmed by physical reactions when they are accessing difficult memories, for example. Training this person in accessing their strong witness presence before entering this kind of territory is one way through, and simply bringing awareness to the more subtle dimension of feeling itself can relieve the overpowering effects of the body’s stored reactivity.

Finally, many times what interrupts solid progress in therapy and coaching is some form of resistance, where something is being protected that is very difficult to access through talk alone. By turning to fieldwork, we get to go in the back door, around the deflections of story, and to discover more directly what lies hidden behind those defenses.

Supporting Yourself in Supporting Others

Of course, resistance can also be challenging for the therapist or coach. How many times have you run up against your own judgment, frustration, or over-eager attempts to please when someone keeps detouring around the work that needs to be done? This can be a great opportunity for you to turn the lens of fieldwork toward your own inner terrain.

You might realize that your frustration was actually a familiar pattern fed by an underlying helplessness. Or that your desire to push them came from a place that fears failure. Giving form to your own countertransference lets you work with it compassionately. It helps you stay curious, brings you back to center.

When you’re grounded in your own feeling experience, you can hold the client’s experience without collapsing into it or floating above it. You become the third leg in their process — not just mentally present or somatically attuned, but field-aware, capable of tracking and inviting what’s actually showing up.

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As I sit here on the morning of June 8th, 2025, I feel a hesitation, a doubt, an impasse. I carry in this moment a profound sorrow for all that we have lost, for all that we are continuing to lose. At least, that’s the best way I have at the moment for putting words to what I am feeling. But it feels important, so I’m going to take my own medicine and do a little bit of mapping as a way of sharing more with you.

I will start by feeling into what I’m sensing and trying to name what’s there.

Sorrow: This is here for sure. It feels both very personal and broadly universal. On the personal side of things, last night, Spring and I talked about our respective difficulties showing up for one another with emotional caring when one of us is having a hard time. I am very good at being present, and listening, but offering emotional holding in a way that Spring experiences as caring is something absent from my repertoire. On the flip side, I have been completely self-sufficient with my emotions, using fieldwork obsessively over the past thirty years to take care of myself and to avoid relying on anyone else for that kind of caring. From this part of me, I wouldn’t even know how to receive that kind of caring if it were offered to me. In fact, it would feel fake, and I wouldn’t trust it.

This is a growth edge for me. I have worked the core structures in myself to dissolve the original reactivity that kept me distant, but have not proactively worked to rebuild new ways of meeting my needs and showing up for others. This is what Spring and I are doing now with one another, to the extent we are able, both of us coming from a place of not having much experience with this, me especially.

I share this very personal window into my reality because it touches yours in some way, or at least, it touches my sense of you as one who is reading this book. We all have those places in our lives where something falls short within ourselves. We are not able to meet someone close to us, or to step out of our productivity obsession, or to take care of our bodies, or to simply trust life and lay down our persistent vigilance. We all have those places where something in us shut down a long time ago, and where the sequestering of that part of ourselves impacts our lives today.

Plus, we all have those parts of ourselves that have stepped into the empty space left by these exiles, that have been doing double duty filling in for them while simultaneously trying to take care of their own domain as well. These compensation parts have grown out of balance. They take up too much space and require too many resources, sending our lives careening out of control at times.

For me, this compensation was through a supreme sovereign self, one who needed nobody, who took care of everything on his own, who lived his life in dedicated commitment to his work in service to humanity. And the primary exile was the vulnerable one, the one who cared deeply about others and longed to be cared for.

So, I want to share with you that fieldwork mapping can serve us in our recovery and rebalancing of these compensatory structures in ourselves. And I want to take the risk of showing you how that might work in real time, here today.

I’ve named Sorrow as a central state in my experience right now. I sense other states around it, and you might be able to see hints of those in the writing above. I’m going to make a judgment call, though, and to move forward with mapping the Sorrow before looking for other states. I could easily go the other direction, but I want to keep things simple, for one thing. For another, I do sense this Sorrow holds something profoundly important for me.

As I settle in to prepare to map Sorrow, I am drawn to renaming it. In my mind, I was saying to myself, “I’m going to map my Sorrow,” and the “my Sorrow” felt more accurate as a name for what I am feeling. So: My Sorrow. Just saying that to myself deepens the feeling of it, brings me a nudge closer to feeling the latent (or pending) tears.

I’m in my recliner seat right now, and I’m going to close my eyes, lean back, and start leading myself through the mapping questions. First, though, let me try a bit to describe in more general terms what it feels like to be me, experiencing My Sorrow, as if I’m sharing with a friend.

It feels big. Like it encompasses a large space around me, and that we are all in this space. It is as if I see us all shrouded from one another in this heaviness, this longing, this separation. I can’t get close to you. You can’t get close to me. None of us can get close to any of us. All of us blindly stumbling around but never actually stumbling into one another, always separated by some distance. That’s my image of it. And I’m in the middle of it, experiencing my separation and seeing there is no way out because everyone else is embedded in the same stuff.

So, My Sorrow. Settling in to map it.

As I lean back to feel into it, I sense there are in fact two parts to it. There is a more concentrated, more painful part inside my chest. That is My Sorrow. And there is the much larger space that surrounds me, that contains everyone else. What do I want to call that? Something like perpetual separation, although that’s not quite it. It feels epic, ancestral, built in, like we don’t have a choice about it. It’s like a curse on humanity.

The word Ancestral comes through as being important. It’s about something much larger than any of us or even all of us here today. Ancestral what? It could be sorrow, or separation. Ancestral Separation gets close to it. But it’s more than separation. There’s a shutting down, an imposition, a closing-in-on, a binding that is carried in it that affects everyone. I’m drawn back to the word “curse,” and I want to call it Ancestral Curse. This is what made my parents so emotionally unavailable to me. This is what turns people everywhere into zombies who hate each other.

OK. So I’ve got My Sorrow and Ancestral Curse. They go together. Whew. I’m going to take a brief break and then come back to continue mapping.

I’m back, with a fresh little thermos of puerh tea.

On my break, and as I sit down again now, I am aware of a vulnerability in sharing this with you. And the vulnerability feels very connected to the My Sorrow. It feels like a third state to include here. I’m going to call it My Vulnerability, and I think I want to start my mapping with that. Something about it seems to shine some illumination on the My Sorrow and the Ancestral Curse.

Starting with a general description of what it feels like, it’s just a pervasive tentativeness. Like, “Oops. I’m not sure. Is this a good idea?” Like, I don’t really know where this is leading me, and it could lead somewhere that’s not good, and am I really going to share that?

At the same time, it feels central to the sorrow in that the vulnerability is a big part of what makes it so difficult for me to be that kind of close to others, where mutual expression of caring is easily present. That feels vulnerable, like I could be hurt if I allow myself to open to that and it turns out not to be available, or to show up in some way that attacks or shames me, for example. So yes, related. I am moving into the space between you and me in a way that is inviting that mutual expression of caring, and I might receive something very different back.

I feel a quiver, a shake of recognition in having spoken that. OK, so mapping it:

My Vulnerability: This feels subtle, more difficult to access than the My Sorrow. Actually, it feels as if it is located inside the My Sorrow, and that it will be easier to map if I map My Sorrow first. OK.

As I seek to place my field of awareness over the experience of My Sorrow, I struggle a bit. It doesn’t seem as distinct as it did earlier. I move my field of awareness out, away from myself, into the space of Ancestral Curse, and right away the My Sorrow differentiates and shows up more distinctly again in my chest. I am struck by how that general sense of people blindly stumbling around, unable to bridge their separation from one another, is key to both My Sorrow and My Vulnerability. It is because of people being under the Curse that they are unavailable to meet in a space of mutual expression of caring, and it is because I am unable to be met there, and because I see all others also being generally unable to be met there, that I feel the Sorrow.

OK, back to mapping My Sorrow. Just a comment, though, before I proceed. So far, this is a demonstration that there is a strong benefit from simply bringing awareness to the distinctly different feeling states inhabiting our inner world, and giving them an opportunity to become aware of one another. Even before explicitly mapping these three states, I have gained a lot from simply engaging with them in an open inquiry.

My Sorrow: I kept looking for it where I had originally sensed it, in my chest, in the space of my heart. But it didn’t seem to be there. Placing my awareness back out into the space of Ancestral Curse activated it again, and I could sense that what is there at my heart is more of a somatic activation, not an affect field. Letting go of that original impression, I can sense My Sorrow occupying a larger space in my upper body, more toward my back. As I bring my awareness there, I can again sense the somatic activation in my heart. The My Sorrow, though, occupies the space of the back half of my entire upper body, from even below my waist into my hips. It extends outside my body somewhat as well, into the inch or two behind my back and up above my shoulders on either side of my head.

The substance is a murky, slowly swirling, thick liquid. Dark, not exactly black, maybe more of a deep purple, but muddy as well. There’s a sense that much of the movement is downward, somehow, as if it doesn’t need to move back up. Some swirling-ish movement, but mostly drifting downward. There’s a weight to it as well.

The constant downwardness makes it seem never-ending, like it’s forever. Temperature is neutral, body temperature, maybe slightly warmer. Sound is like a coarse brown noise, as if under water.

It doesn’t matter. It’s just there as the background of life. “This is just the way things are. There’s nothing to be done about it. There’s nothing you can do about it.”

In reflection, yeah, this is it. It’s familiar. This is a lot of what I carry, overall, in bringing this work into the world. As if the task is too big, and people are too entrenched in their countless ways of staying separate from themselves and one another. And I am too inadequately skilled and too unclear about what actually needs to happen to make enough of a difference. (Sigh.)

OK. I’ll move on now to bring my awareness to the Ancestral Curse state.

This one feels easy, familiar, like it’s something I inhabit most of the time at this point, as I’m wrapping up this book. The mental imagery is as I’ve described, with each person trapped in a dark gray bubble, all the bubbles bumbling around, nobody able to touch anyone else through the bubble spaces and hardly even being able to see one another. Lots of projections going on, though. The bubbles work well as projection screens from both inside and outside.

So, holding that imagery, where/what is the actual, felt experience? I get a sense of a thick mist surrounding me, going out at least 20 or 30 feet in all directions. It’s hard to move within it. It’s more than a mist, more like a misty energy, thick, viscous. It saps my motivation, adds to the My Sorrow. Color is strangely light, a cream color. Like it’s innocuous. Again, a sense of, “this is just the way things are,” nothing special or “dark” about it. Temperature is air temp, like a warm spring day, but it can get colder and thicker. Sound is more of a white noise in contrast to the deeper pitch of My Sorrow.

Interesting to see how the “saps my motivation” is linked to the downwardness of My Sorrow. And this sense of “this is just the way things are” is also so demotivating. Ugh. It’s like, “Why are you bothering with this? There’s nothing wrong, this is normal.”

As I turn my attention toward the My Vulnerability, I notice another part of me wanting to just scream in response to all of this. Like, “No! This is NOT OK! This is NOT normal, not the way things are supposed to be, not the way things could be.” It’s very angry at the oblivious attitude of everyone inhabiting their bubble, pretending they’re content with things as they are while they’re absolutely suffering inside, but doing a good job distracting themselves with their projections.

What to call this? “Rage Against the Machine” comes to mind. Something even more apt in this age of the rise of AI. (I never actually listened to that band, but somehow their name came to mind as the most appropriate name for this state. Looking them up on the internet, it seems to fit well enough.)

I step back for a moment, go downstairs to get a fan from the garage. It’s getting hot in my office facing the sun on this hot June day.

The irony here, of course, is that in carrying these states, and the stories they hold, I am myself inhabiting one of those bubbles. I am keeping others at a distance, believing my projections, maintaining my isolation. The My Vulnerability part sees others as unsafe, believes it is important that I keep my distance. This is the part, I believe, that does not trust that if someone — even Spring — does express caring, that it is genuine. It sees a performance instead, disconnected from authentic presence.

The irony is an essential ingredient of the My Sorrow. I know I am also trapped in my own bubble, also contributing to and participating in this endless fugue of separation among us. I want to find a way out and through, but I have not found it yet.

It strikes me, though, that this realization is exactly what I entered this space in search of. I started writing this transparent recording of my own process to model what I want to invite you to do yourself. And here it is, actually working. In writing this, in sharing my process with you, I am demonstrating what is possible in using fieldwork to unpack your own inner complexity. Fortunately, I am also demonstrating how doing so feeds a desire for growth at the heart of whatever it is you choose to excavate.

Here, my biggest concern in getting ready to release this book is that nobody will “get it,” that I will remain isolated in having developed this new science and made these new discoveries. And in deciding to turn directly into that inner obstruction, I am moving very steadily through and beyond it.

OK, time to wrap up for now. It has taken me almost two hours to go down this path, and I’ve got to get the rest of my day underway.

Update 1: During my workout later, I found myself wanting to rename Ancestral Curse to Ancestral Trance, as a way to remove that kind of judgmental charge. No person or no thing created a “curse” to lead us into this trance. It’s just a trance. This speaks to the relative neutrality I found in the actual feeling of it, surprising as it was. I think the Rage Against the Machine still feels betrayed in some way, though, despite the absence of malicious intent.

Update 2, early morning of June 9th: Last night, Spring and I had dinner with some prospective land mates, people with whom we may be involved in helping to co-create a community living situation with a larger intention of establishing a retreat center supporting all manner of wellness offerings. These conversations about communal living have been underway for us in various forms with various people over this past year, but this one seems most potent in its potential to actually bloom.

I felt truly excited by the possibility, but afterwards found myself retracting somewhat, wondering what I am getting myself in for. These parts of me that I touched on yesterday are stirring. Not just stirring, but more like turning over, like freshly plowed ground.

It feels like dipping into this territory yesterday set me up for a more earnest participation in last night’s conversation. And it feels like last night’s conversation set me up for a more earnest engagement with this territory inside myself.

I am recognizing that, as Spring described in her foreword, I truly have been living like a hermit. The mists of the Ancestral Trance have served like the mists deep in the mountains, keeping me separated, minimizing my engagement with the world. In maintaining that existence, although I have taken an epic journey into the core of my being and have dissolved the great majority of my own inherited “curses,” I have not given myself the opportunity to learn new ways of engaging, collaborating, creating together. I have lived a mindfully steady, very intentionally crafted existence designed to give me the maximum space to find my own way through the deepest caverns of my soul.

Last year, as I began the project of writing this book, intending to finally complete this work and bring it more fully into the world, I made small efforts to shift that position, for example, by setting up my Substack. But I did virtually nothing to promote it, did not even announce it to the many people who have worked with me over the years but with whom I have fallen out of active contact. It was never “ready.”

Now, as I contemplate sharing community with others, contributing to caring for the land and hosting events open to others, I recognize it is time to step out of my hermit’s shell. And I recognize there will be much for me to learn. For example, I will have to be more proactive in making sure that I preserve time to work on the next two books, learning how to set and keep boundaries for myself while honoring my responsibilities to others. This will apply across the board, from making sure I have a space to which I can retreat when I want to do a deep dive into writing, for example, to ironing out clear agreements with Spring about how we share our much smaller living space.

I am grateful for these pending changes, and curious to see how they actually unfold. In the meantime, it is time for me to wrap up this chapter and prepare to release the book.

I suspect at some level you may be able to relate to what I have shared. Perhaps you have your own version of this Ancestral Curse/Trance in how you see the world and other people, at least those who are “different” from you. And I suspect you hold, somehow, within yourself, some way that this inner structure actually mirrors and helps to create what you most fear.

This is what I most want you to come away with as you finish this book. I want you to recognize that yes, we all do have our personal ways to keep ourselves separate from others. And in doing so, we simultaneously keep ourselves separate from large portions of our own selves. And this inner separation contributes to and participates equality in the outer separation. It’s not all “them” that creates the barriers to connection, and we hold massive agency in moving toward dissolving those barriers for our own and everyone’s benefit.

This is what I want to invite you to do, what I want to invite us all to do. I invite you to stop. And to feel. And to notice, in the feeling, what parts of yourself have been compromised. And to invite those parts back into the conversation, back into an ongoing, emerging birth of possibility among others.

I don’t know exactly the results of this little excursion I’ve taken here. I do know that a movement has begun within myself, and I am quite sure that movement will influence my connection with Spring, and with others in my world. I suspect it may lead one or more of you to consider reaching out to me, to get more involved in learning and applying psychotopology in your own life.

In that happening, I will be demonstrating for myself that I do have agency. That I do have freedom to create the kinds of close relationships I long for. That I do inhabit a space of possibility for a world I really want to belong to.

This is exciting. I’m not sure exactly where I will go from here, but it feels like things are already moving toward a more connected life for me. I may not need to do the full excavating, mapping and moving. But I may do it anyway, to offer you a fly-on-the-wall view as I go through the process. It might make sense for me to do that as part of Volume 2, or to share on the Frontiers Substack at least. I’ll keep you posted if you subscribe.

Back to You

Anyway, I do hope you have seen how helpful it can be to simply identify and map a few states as part of any kind of personal exploration. Here are some possible places to apply fieldwork mapping:

• Mindfulness (or other forms of) meditation: Bring a more enhanced awareness directly to those states which seem to get in the way of your intentions.

• Relationship enhancement: Take a deeper look at those places in you that get in the way of intimacy and trust.

• Therapy: Do some of your own work between sessions, and bring a more complete awareness to what you’re exploring in therapy.

• Career development: Get in touch with your longing and your fears as a way to open up more ways to grow into your life’s work.

• Creative efforts: Bring awareness to those places that get in the way of your flow, to find out what they need and how you might enroll them in your process.

• Big life decisions: These are the places where it might be most important to slow down and feel into what’s most alive for you.

• Others: There are as many possibilities for where to use fieldwork mapping as there are significant moments in your life. Go for it.

The bottom line is, you want to use fieldwork mapping to center your experience in feeling as your prime orientation to your life. At first, this might be challenging as you surface all kinds of intensely charged states that have been suppressed for too long. But over time, you will develop a stronger witness awareness, those charges will dissipate, and you will find yourself more and more able to trust what you feel to navigate with far greater ease and agency. In comparison, using your mind to navigate your life will seem in comparison either convoluted or controlling. Definitely no fun.

I’ll have a lot more to unpack about all of this over the next two volumes.

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Mapping Shame

J: All right, so, the Shame. If you were to say that the actual, felt experience of this Shame was located somewhere in or around your body, where would you say that seems to be?

S: Right in my solar plexus.

J: Ah hah.

S: And it’s about the size of my fist.

J: OK. Great. And does it seem more like a solid, liquid, gas, light, energy...?

S: Well, just what I said, it seems like this little porcupine.

J: All right.

S: You know, so it’s not solid like hard, but if you would think like a little porcupine body. It’s soft, but there is substance to it.

J: Right. And with spikes.

S: Spikes, yes. It’s totally, totally all the spikes.

J: In every direction.

S: Well, it’s like if I were lying down, it’s like it would be sitting on my solar plexus. So, like its little feet and tummy would be next to my body, but everything, like if anybody was going to come close, they would only feel spikes.

J: Right. All right. And what temperature does little porcupine-y thing seem to be?

S: Just body temperature. It’s like the same temperature as me.

J: Ah hah. And what color?

S: Gray. Whatever color porcupines are. Kind of gray.

J: Kind of gray. A darker gray or lighter?

S: A little darker, like the dark gray spots in the fog...

J: Mm hm.

S: That color gray.

J: OK. And is it moving in any way?

S: Nope.

J: Any force or pressure?

S: Nope. Just sitting there.

J: And if you listen internally, do you notice any inner sound?

S: Kind of whimpering. Almost like a little pain...

J: Almost like a...?

S: Like if it had a stomach ache or something. You know? Just little whimpers of pain.

J: OK. Anything else to notice about what this feels like?

S: Well, like if its little feet had claws or toenails, it’s like I can feel little, almost like little pricks.

J: So almost like little pricks. Where do you feel that?

S: On my tummy, where it’s sitting.

J: OK. And from this place, from that feeling, what seems true, or real, or important to this part of you?

S: Well, just like when you do the drawing, it’s going to be right under the edge of the steel plate, it feels like it’s the “what’s underneath.” Even though it’s on the outside of my body, it feels like it’s what’s underneath everything else that’s going on.

J: Ah. What’s its intention or perspective or attitude or belief, about you, about the world, about love?

S: It really doesn’t want to be noticed or discovered. That’s all the prickliness, the quills. It’s like, “Don’t come close to me, don’t notice me.”

J: Mm hm. OK. Anything else?

S: That seems to be the main thing.

I’m going to guess that you never expected “shame” would look like this. One of the things you learn pretty quickly doing this practice is to lay down your expectations. The words we use to point to our most private feeling experience are inadequate and clumsy. Fieldwork maps, in contrast, help to bring out the actual, felt experience lying beneath those clumsy words.

Whether you are facilitating someone else or exploring your own interior, I can’t emphasize too strongly the importance of holding the primacy of direct experience over any common (or therapeutic) language interface to that experience. The mapping process provides a more direct translation of the feeling state as it is experienced than any culturally-shaped language we have available. Trust the maps. Hold the labels loosely. Every single person, and every single feeling state within each person, is utterly unique. Support the explorer (and yourself) in maintaining an open, curious attitude to what they will discover, and hold them in a space in which they are free to generate their own unique interpretations and understandings of their experience as it emerges into more tangible awareness.

The shape of this feeling state, with its defensive spikes pointing out toward anyone who might draw close, suggests to me there is another state to be found. Every feeling state has one single function. More complex patterns come into being through the interaction of multiple states, each carrying out its individual task. Defense is one function. What is necessary to defend is a separate function. Each of these will be anchored in its own unique feeling state. I’ve noted this to myself, and will bring Susan back to it soon to discover what else might be there.

Drawing Shame

J: All right. So I’m going to leave it on the same color gray. Does that make sense?

S: Yep.

J: All right. And I think I’ll zoom in a little bit further. And let’s just see where that No! comes to an end. So it’s gotta be right there.

S: Yes, right there.

J: And I’m going to start with, just kind of draw the body a little bit. And then we’ll put our spikes on it... And let me draw this over here... So it’s going to be... About like that?

S: Yes.

J: OK. And then let’s see if this make sense... Does this look spiky enough?

S: Yeah. Yeah.

J: I mean, I could do it a little bit differently, but this is probably OK, right?

S: Yes.

J: Lots of them.

S: Yes. Lots and lots of these little spikes. It’s like if you put your hand anywhere close to it, you’re going to encounter pokes.

J: Yeah. OK. How does that look?

S: That looks just right.

When I facilitate fieldwork, I use two computers: a desktop computer to track the notes and the emerging structure of the feeling states, and a tablet for drawing. When I work with someone in person, I just hand them the tablet and they draw the image themselves. In those cases, we’re generally not talking while they are drawing. I’m including these little exchanges because it seems to bring the conversation more alive on the page.

Identifying Love

J: So. Now I have one more question for you about the Shame.

S: Sure.

J: If you bring your attention to the body part of it, and just scan through the center, do you notice anything? Is it the same kind of substance all the way through the center, or is there something else in there?

S: What immediately I saw when you said like scanning through its body, so it’s like the part inside the quills, the spikes...

J: Mm hm.

S: I mean there was almost like this little red valentine heart in there, that, you know, it’s the same substance or like it’s soft like the rest of the body, so it’s not like hard, but there was very much this little, I mean literally, almost like a valentine heart inside it.

J: Uh huh. OK. So what would you like to call that?

S: And I would just say love.

J: OK.

S: It’s Love.

Aha! Just as I suspected. The hidden state being protected by all those spikes is a vulnerable little thing called Love.

Susan was chuckling here and while mapping the porcupine Shame. It’s quite extraordinary in this process that people are often able to engage with quite distressing feeling states and maintain enough of a safe and stable witness perspective as to have a sense of humor about it all.

I’ll just say, though, that this is not always the case. Sometimes fieldwork will lead to very heavy, dark places. While the mapping process does provide a measure of separation, facing and entering these places can be exhausting, especially when you’re working on your own without a facilitator. Make sure to see the more detailed descriptions of strategies for managing your work in these more challenging territories like FM-10: Cultivating a Witness Awareness.

Mapping Love

J: So I’m going to take you through mapping the Love. OK? What size would you say, the size of a quarter or something like that?

S: Yeah. So it fits easily inside the little porcupine that’s the size of my fist.

J: Mm hm.

S: Maybe the size of a dime. No. Let’s see. No, a nickel.

J: OK.

S: So halfway between a quarter and a dime. A nickel.

J: All right. And if you were to say it has qualities of substance, what does that seem to be?

S: I don’t know quite how to answer that, but it’s definitely warm and pulsing.

J: Ah hah. So warm and pulsing.

S: So it is like a muscle. Like if the body is just like soft, you know? Like if you pet a kitty’s tummy or something, how it feels very soft? This has a little more tone to it. But it is like a muscle because it’s pulsing.

J: And what’s the color of it?

S: Oh, you know, Valentine red.

J: All right.

S: Or lipstick red, whatever that... red-red.

J: OK. And is it moving? It’s pulsing...?

S: It’s pulsing. It’s really warm. Not like melting warm, but like if you put your hand near it you would feel the warmth. You wouldn’t be burned. You know, it’s not like scorching hot. But noticeably warm.

J: Right. And if you listen, do you notice any inner sound?

S: Um, a heartbeat sound. You know, kind of a “kathump, kathump, kathump.”

J: All right. So sound of a heartbeat.

S: Yeah.

J: Anything else to notice about what this feels like?

S: It wants to grow. I mean, it’s very eager to expand.

J: OK. And what seems true, or real, or important to this part of you?

S: Just this compulsion, this compelling urge to expand, to get bigger and bigger. Like it’s really important, and it feels trapped and it wants to break through.

J: OK. Let’s draw it. So the red, we’re talking serious red here.

S: Yeah, like the reddest red you’ve got.

J: How’s that down in the corner here? That works?

S: That looks good.

J: OK. And let’s zoom in a little bit. So on this side... I think we’ll just do a dot, something about like so. Is that good?

S: It is. And I don’t know if you have like symbols and you can actually make it be a heart shape, but the color and the position are absolutely right....

J: Like this?

S: Yes, yes. That’s it... Um, I don’t know if there’s a way to show it in the drawing, but it’s pulsing. That’s a really important feature of it.

J: Yeah.

S: The other things are relatively static.

J: We could indicate that pretty easily. How about if we do this...

S: But this is really moving.

J: Yeah. Let’s try this... If I do something like this...

S: Yes, yes.

J: How’s that?

S: Yes.

J: OK. So any other thoughts?

S: Nope. I think that’s totally it.

Susan’s mapping of Love reveals a bit more of the essential nature of fieldwork mapping. Notice how precise she gets about the size of this Love. It’s the size of a nickel, not a dime and not a quarter. That’s pretty darned precise.

How is this possible? Most of us have a common experience of feeling as vague and nebulous. But when we bring the new lens of virtual materiality to the task, we find ourselves bringing incredible precision to our discernment. (Some people like Susan do seem to have a higher resolution in their feeling perception than others.) In addition, we seem to be able to enter that virtual world and interact in order to gather even more detailed information, as when Susan describes the temperature, “If you put your hand near it you would feel the warmth. You wouldn’t be burned.” What’s going on here?

I believe this represents an opportunity for a more advanced cognitive neuroscience to investigate, perhaps now or maybe some years in the future. For now, I like to think of it like this:

When we enter consciousness as an infant and even before we are born, our first awareness is drenched in and infused with materiality. At first we experience the liquid and solid environment of the uterus and our own bodies lying undifferentiated (to us) within it. Then birth, and the sharp boundaries that emerge between skin and air, skin and skin, milk and tongue, and all the myriad substances surrounding and encompassing us.

This direct apprehension of materiality is our first consciousness, and I believe remains the foundation for all our consciousness. Our brains have the capacity to perceive this surrounding materiality and to map our own bodies quite precisely in relation to it. Further, we have the capacity to extend our own body map to include a toy or hammer in our hands as if it were an extension of our embodied selves. We adjust our sense of inertia, momentum, center of gravity and other properties to incorporate a jug of milk, a hula hoop, a kid sister on our shoulders, and to move as if we were one with the extension. (I unpack this foundational virtual materiality in chapter SO-5: How Virtual Materiality Makes Perfect Sense.)

I believe this capacity is employed in generating our feeling sense, specifically to serve essential functions of consciousness. A self-aware, conscious agent requires certain fundamental functions to be handled if it is to succeed in navigating the world. It must differentiate self from other, for example. It must manage the differences between the array of possible actions, the current state or motivation, a desired outcome, and ongoing guidance of specific actions chosen, with a responsive feedback about the results of those actions in the world.

In fieldwork, (and this is jumping quite far ahead into Volume 2 and beyond, but so be it), we see these functions clearly represented in the qualities and behavior of specific feeling states. Or more specifically, we see modular patterns show up again and again in which feeling states anchor these functions. It is as if the virtually generated “things” of feeling states become anchors for these cognitive functions.

(Ah, there is so much to share with you here! Forgive me for jumping ahead.)

OK, so back to the dialog. At the end, Susan clearly indicates that the Love has a strong motivation to expand. My assessment is that the Love has a natural impulse to grow and expand, but is contained by the Shame. Apparently, for the Shame in its current state, an expanded Love would be intolerable. Perhaps at some point in the past, Susan’s loving led to something painful, and in order to avoid that pain it seems important to keep the Love confined. (We’ll learn more about this in Volume 2, in Susan’s reflections a month after the session.) Most likely, then, we can consider the Shame to be the pivot for this cluster of four states. I suspect we’ll probably start the moving process there after we draw Love.

Before we move on, let’s look at all four of these images overlaid upon one another so you can see the structural relationships. This kind of tight interconnection is what we can expect when mapping related feeling states.

Above: All Four Reactive States

What’s Next

In Volume 2, I will be laying out full instructions for the fieldwork moving practice both online and in book form. When that is complete, I’ll come back to finish Susan’s session with the recording and transcript of our working through moving each of these four parts to their ideal states, and we’ll look at the impact of this session on Susan’s life experience a month or two later.

For now, I hope you’re getting a more clear idea of just what we’re getting ourselves into here. Fieldwork mapping takes us into complex and rewarding new territory, a frontier, for sure.

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Mapping Fearful Fear

J: So let’s go back to the Fearful Fear. If you were to say that the actual, felt experience of this is located somewhere in or around your body, where would you say that seems to be?

S: It actually seems to be, like from my heart, maybe like the upper third of my chest. Like if the steel plate starts in the middle of my chest, this starts in the upper third. And it actually goes all the way up to my jaw. So some of it is protected by the steel plate, and some of it is not.

J: OK. And what’s the depth of it? Behind the steel plate, how far back does this Fearful Fear go?

S: Well I’m assuming if my body were sliced vertically, probably about to the middle, wherever the back of my heart is physically located. It goes that deep, like heart deep.

J: Got it. And if you were to say the actual, felt experience of this has qualities of substance, does it seem more like a solid...

S: Like a fog.

J: Like a fog, OK. And this fog, does it seem thick or thin, heavy or light?

S: Thick... and hm... It’s like it’s patchy, so parts of it are heavy but parts of it seem very light. So kind of like overall it’s light, but there are patches of heaviness.

J: OK. And what temperature would you say this fog seems to be?

S: Definitely cold. Not freezing. Maybe like 40s, 40 degrees, like when you walk outside and you say, “Oh! I should have worn a sweater.” But not shivery. But definitely noticeably cold.

J: And what color would you say it seems to be?

S: The heavy parts are dark gray, and the overall color is a light gray. Like it’s not white, but it’s just kind of a dingy color.

J: OK, so sort of a grayish.

S: Yeah.

J: And is this fog, does it seem to be moving in any way? Any kind of swirl or flow, or pulse or vibration?

S: Not swirling, and not pulse and vibration, but it is kind of moving, like maybe back and forth like this.

J: So sort of a drifting back and forth?

S: Yeah, drifting, that’s a great word.

J: OK, back and forth to the right and left, yeah?

S: Yes.

J: And if you listen internally, do you notice any inner sound?

S: It’s like a soft crying, not sobbing.

J: More like whimpering?

S: Not whimpering, not moaning. Gosh I don’t seem to think of...

J: Well, “a soft, crying sound” is probably close enough.

S: Yeah.

J: OK. Anything else you want to notice about what this feels like?

S: Well, the whole time I’ve been talking about it, the word “shy” keeps coming up for me. Almost like it wants to hide or not be seen or not be noticed. And almost like a little feeling of shame.

J: Mmmmm. So from this place, what seems true, or real, or important?

S: It seems like it really would like to go.

J: “Go” meaning...?

S: Dissipate. It doesn’t really want to be here. It just is.

J: Ah huh. Any sense of why it’s here?

S: It seems like it was just a really bad day, like a bad weather day, but just like a bad day and it just came up and then it didn’t know how to leave.

J: Ah hah. OK.

S: Kind of like if smog came in and it got trapped in a valley, and short of there being a big wind storm or a really fierce rain or something that would dissipate it, it’s just kind of stuck there.

Notice how precise Susan gets in describing her feeling state. She gives a specific temperature, quibbles about the color, is very clear about the patchy density of the fog, and describes with a gesture exactly how it moves. The gesture also indicates how integrated the experience of feeling is with our ever-present experience of embodiment. We experience ourselves, before anything else, as material bodies in a material world, and this pervasive materiality infuses our every moment.

Also notice how Susan mentions a hint of “almost like a little feeling of shame” as she summarizes her experience of the fog. As a facilitator, I am constantly alert for hints like this one which often point to further feeling states connected to the one in focus. Feeling exists as constellations of interrelated states, and fieldwork mapping activates a sensitivity to the nuances of our inner experience, supporting us in bringing the full network of distinct states into tangible awareness.

Identifying Shame

J: So you mentioned something like a little feeling of shame. I wonder if that word points to something else that’s connected to this, or if the shame is an attribute of the fog itself.

S: The shame seems to be that it would leave if it knew how but it doesn’t. Not a shame that it appeared, but that it was meant to be temporary, and it somehow got trapped. You know? It was really just like a bad weather day. Really, really it was meant that the next morning, you wake up and there’s sunshine.

J: Right.

S: But somehow that didn’t happen. And then it didn’t happen and it didn’t happen, and here it is.

J: Yeah. OK. So there’s some shame about this existing here, about this being here. It’s sort of a...

S: And that it never meant to stay. The shame is, it was like, yeah, it was a real feeling when it occurred, like the fear was real in the moment, maybe even appropriate, but then whatever triggered it, it was over.

J: Right.

S: But it’s still here.

J: Right. OK. So does it make sense for us to add the feeling Shame to the list of states that are relevant here?

S: Yeah.

First I ask a clarifying question, inviting Susan to compare her felt experience of the label “shame” to the already mapped fog of Fearful Fear. Her reply expresses a relationship between the shame and the Fearful Fear in which the shame seems to be a reaction to the Fearful Fear’s failure to dissipate. If shame is a response to the Fearful Fear, it is different from it, and so I confirm the name and add it to the list of states we are exploring.

Drawing No!

J: Let’s start with the No! So the color of No! is going to be a silvery metallic. Right?

S: Yes.

J: And the thickness of that steel plate is, half an inch, an inch...?

S: No more than a half an inch I would say.

J: Yeah. OK.

S: I mean it’s stainless steel, after all. It doesn’t take a lot of it.

J: Right, exactly. So I think I’ll just use this...

S: So it’s actually out in front of the body. So it’s barely... yeah, there you go. Like that.

J: OK. Is that about the right size, and is it curved a little bit the way I’ve made it, or is it...

S: Ah, no, it’s straight.

J: OK.

S: Yeah, that’s right.

J: All right. And then the front view is going to be...

S: So just start at the collar bone, so you can see where the collar bone is there.

J: Uh huh.

S: And then down to just... up slightly... yeah, right there. And if you were to color it in... yeah.

J: OK. So, that is No!.

For the drawing, I am sharing my screen with Susan and drawing on a tablet with the program ArtRage. I’m starting with a template outline of a human body, and adding the illustration of the feeling state according to Susan’s description and her in-the-moment guidance as we draw it together.

Drawing a feeling state is often a discovery process of its own. When the fieldwork explorer begins to visually see the explicit representation of the state, they will sometimes discover it feels different than what they originally described. If you are facilitating someone and taking notes for them, you’ll want to update your notes with the revised state description after the drawing is complete.

Now I want to call your attention to something unexpected here. Notice that the steel plate of No! lies completely outside Susan’s body. Our common assumptions about “emotion” include the understanding that emotions are strongly somatic, generated by the nervous system in response to threats and opportunities. Our common language about emotions, our science of emotions, our methods of therapy, all orient toward emotion as a phenomenon contained by the body, plus our cognitive engagement with that physiological response.

I don’t want to take you too far into this just yet, but it’s important that I introduce the idea that the feeling we are working with here is not emotion. This map of No! is clear evidence of that. Fieldwork maps of states extending beyond the body are actually quite common as we have seen in chapter SO-4: Challenges to the Assumed Somatic Basis for Feeling.

Drawing Fearful Fear

J: And then the Fearful Fear... I think... I’ll leave this No! here so that we can draw the Fear behind the plate. And we’re looking at, this is not metallic, but this has got gray, darker and lighter.

S: And if you were to drop a line from my ear, down through my elbow, that’s about how deep it goes. Like from there to the front.

J: Right. OK. But it starts a little higher?

S: Yes. Up, right underneath my chin.

J: And would you say it’s a...

S: Yeah, like that. … And then just a little further toward my back, like one more row of color. Yeah.

J: All right. And then, should we add some darker ones?

S: Yeah.

J: Does that seem...?

S: Yep, that seems just right.

J: And how much of this dark color?

S: Just about what you’re doing. You’re on the right track. Yeah. That’s enough.

J: All right. This is the Fearful Fear. Excellent.

Because Susan has a well-developed sense of feeling, her drawings stay true to her original map descriptions. This drawing is simply about visually capturing what she has already discerned in the mapping process.

Drawing a feeling state provides a reinforcement of the detachment of one’s identity from the feeling. When you can see it in front of you, represented on an outline of (your) body, it becomes more difficult to experience yourself AS the feeling. You naturally find yourself inhabiting a perspective that the feeling is something you have, rather than something you are. This in itself is strongly therapeutic in many cases.

Let’s revisit the idea of feeling being different from emotion. In emotion, various external and internal perceptual signals stimulate the emotional systems of the brain and body to produce a physiological state that prepares the body for an appropriate response. The body has one emotional state, possibly generated by more than one emotional circuit but being forced to integrate as one state by the singular nature of the body as a whole.

In mapping No! and Fearful Fear, we see in contrast two distinct and different states. This is further evidence that in working with the actual, felt experience of feeling, we are engaging something very different from the body’s emotional circuitry. Keep that in mind as we proceed. What we currently understand about emotion does not map well to what we discover in our investigations of actual feeling states as we experience them.

Exploring Shame

J: First of all, let me ask, while we were drawing (Fearful Fear), did you discover anything else significant?

S: Noticing the Shame, I don’t think I knew that. I think that was a discovery that there was some Shame. And in particular that the Shame was that there was a good reason this all showed up, but then the reason was done with, and it could have gone away but it just didn’t know how.

J: Yeah?

S: If I were to describe it, it feels like this little porcupine. But all curled up, where it’s just all spikes, you know?

And that actually feels like it’s the feeling that’s at the heart of it. It’s like, if I weren’t ashamed, the Fear would go away, which means there wouldn’t be the need for the steel plate. And the Shame is almost like, it’s like I brought on myself this not being able to receive love. (I don’t know, I’m not saying this very well.)

J: What it sounds like is that the Shame is what grounds the interpretation that it’s not OK to receive love.

S: Yeah, yeah.

J: You haven’t been able to figure out how to let this Fear go...

S: Yeah. And it’s almost like I don’t deserve to, like if I created all this nonsense, and I don’t know how to get rid of it, well...! You know: of course I can’t receive love, and why should I be able to, having done all this silly stuff. You know?

I had originally been on track with Susan to move the two states No! and Fearful Fear. As this was a demonstration session, I hadn’t intended to go more deeply than these two. But Susan was surprised by her discovery of the Shame and wanted to explore it. As she poked around at it, it become clear that the Shame served to anchor the whole set of feelings in place. The Shame seemed to be holding the Fearful Fear in place, which in turn seemed to be holding the No! in place.

We often find these kinds of chains of control in feeling states. When I am conducting a limited session where my client’s intention is to get the maximum benefit in the shortest time, my goal is to quickly identify what I call the “pivot” state around which the entire pattern set revolves. Releasing the pivot often clears the way for a natural release of the full pattern. In this case, it’s clear that the best results will happen if we include the Shame in our list of states to complete.

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What’s Next

In the next post, we’ll dig into mapping Susan’s Shame. As we do, we will discover a fourth state lying hidden inside. What do you anticipate?

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This (including the following two posts) is the transcript and commentary for the first half of a single, self-contained demo session with Susan, a participant in a small training I conducted in early 2017. You can listen to the audio here:

The transcript has my comments interspersed throughout in italics to give you more information about what’s happening in the session, using what shows up to illustrate the method and what it reveals about the territory of feeling.

(NOTE: Susan — not her real name — gave me her full permission to share her session with the public. I am immensely grateful for her offer.)

We’re working remotely by video conferencing. My intention is to give Susan a complete experience of mapping and moving several feeling states and to demonstrate the basics of the fieldwork process.

As you follow this, you might imagine yourself in either my role, Susan’s role, or both. You’ll see an example of how to facilitate fieldwork sessions as well as what it is like to undergo the fieldwork process.

This chapter will cover our experience of mapping four states. I’ll wait to present the second half in Volume 2, where I’ll share the full fieldwork moving instructions. The full map-and-move will look like this when all states are drawn:

Above: Susan opens to love. Four states mapped and moved.

Identifying No!

Susan: I think something that’s really up for me right now in general is receiving, allowing myself to receive. And specifically to receive love.

Joe: That sounds like a great place to work. So what do you experience in situations where you’re not allowing yourself to receive love?

Susan: It’s a noticing, like somewhere inside my physical body there’s a barrier or boundary, like the love can’t come in. I can feel it around the outside of me. And I can even feel it on my skin, on the outside of my body, but as it approaches, and I would say maybe as it approaches my heart, there just seems to be a boundary. So that my heart... when I’m loving, when I’m sending love out, or opening my heart to someone else like in terms of connecting with them, I can feel my heart open. But when I think, “Oh, there’s just this wave of love coming my way, and it would be so delicious to take it in,” it seems to stop. Like to not go fully in.

Joe: Right.

Susan: And it’s almost like there’s a fear, if I really took it all the way in, I might just explode with love or something. You know? It would be more than my system can handle.

J: OK.

S: I mean, I’m just seeing that right now, that behind that barrier is I think a fear that it would just be too much.

J: So do you have any experience of what “too much” can feel like for you?

S: It feels like a loss of control. Like it’s more than I can control or contain. (These things are occurring to me as I’m speaking to you.) So it’s...

J: So the feeling of loss of control...

S: Yeah.

J: Let’s zoom in there. What would you call that feeling, the anticipation of what it feels like to lose control, to have more than you can contain or control?

S: Again it feels very scary. I mean, like there’s some fear, like what’s gonna happen?

J: So what would you like to call that fear?

S: Just, “no.” I mean, I notice when you asked me what I would like to call it, I wanted to do this. {gestures with arms blocking chest}

J: OK. Would it make sense to give it the name, “No”?

S: Yes.

J: OK. Does it need an exclamation point after it?

S: Yes.

In this first few minutes, my goal is to help Susan identify and name a single feeling state for us to map. She has identified something she is calling No! but there also seems to be an indication of something else that could be called “fear,” as if the “barrier” is the No! and as she says, “behind that barrier is I think a fear that it would just be too much.”

I want to call your attention to how I’m encouraging her to call her feeling states by whatever name she finds most useful. We shall see that the standard vocabulary for feeling and emotion is far too limited to capture the immense diversity of actual feeling experience, and it’s important to honor the uniqueness of each person’s experience of every feeling state in this way.

At this early stage, we’re not sure whether the No! is the fear, or the fear is a separate state related to the No! I suspect they are two different states, but that’s OK. I don’t need to know right now. For now we’re ready to map the first named feeling state, and we’ll discover more through the mapping.

Mapping No!

J: Now I’m going to lead you through a series of questions to help you describe what No! actually feels like. Just be open to whatever comes up, whatever shows up for you as an answer to the question, and test out: does that seem like it’s true for you in your experience. And don’t get too hung up on whether it’s a right answer or not. It’s just feeling your way into something that captures your experience as best as we can. All right? {Susan nods “yes.”}

So when you put your attention on this fear, this feeling of No!, if you were to say that the actual, felt experience of this is located somewhere in or around your body, where would you say that seems to be?

S: Heart level, starting mid chest, just below my heart, up probably to my jaw. So through my throat.

J: OK. So mid-chest, just below your heart, up probably to your jaw. So all the way through your throat. Is it just the front part of your chest, or does it go all the way through to your shoulder blades?

S: No. Just on the front.

J: And in that region, if you were to say that the actual, felt experience of this has qualities of substance, would you say that it seems more like a solid, or a liquid, or a gas, or some kind of light or energy, or something else?

S: Solid. Definitely solid.

J: OK. And hard or soft?

S: Hard.

J: Heavy or light?

S: Heavy.

J: OK. Anything else to notice about the substance quality? Does it resemble anything from the material world?

S: Well it feels like a steel plate.

J: What temperature would you say this steel plate seems to be?

S: Slightly cooler than body temperature. Like not freezing cold, but I experience it as cool compared to my body temperature.

J: And if you were to say that this feeling, this felt experience, this substance, this steel plate has color, what color would you say it is?

S: It’s silver, I mean like stainless steel color.

J: So the color of stainless steel. And would you say it’s opaque then, like steel, you wouldn’t be able to see through it at all?

S: Yes. It’s definitely opaque.

J: And is it shiny like stainless steel then?

S: Yes.

J: And is this stainless steel plate moving in any way?

S: No.

J: So it’s perfectly still, no pulse or vibration?

S: Nope.

J: Any force or pressure that you notice?

S: Yeah, a little. I mean, I’m sitting up, so it’s not like it’s weighing on me, keeping me from breathing. But it is as if it’s pressed solidly against me. So I’m very aware of it but I’m not feeling crushed by it.

J: OK. And if you listen internally, do you notice any inner sound that arises with this feeling?

S: Kind of a hum, like mmmmmmmmmmm.

J: OK. What note is that?

S: It is kind of a low tone. And more a minor key than a major key.

J: All right. Is there anything else you want to notice about what this feels like?

S: Well it feels like it covers my chest up to my collar bone, so like from my collarbone to my jaw, my neck and throat, I feel like a little upward pressure. You know, like if someone were, like if I press on my chest, then there’s kind of a pressure up in my body.

J: OK. Got it. So the actual steel plate doesn’t come up to your jaw, but...

S: No. Just to my collar bone.

J: But then there’s the experience of something pushing up.

S: Yeah.

In this portion of the session, we map the first feeling state. I introduce the mapping process by giving Susan full latitude to explore, letting her know there are no “right” answers to the questions I’ll be asking and putting the responsibility on her to find the best ways to capture her experience. My primary job is to guide her attention; her job is to report what she finds. Along the way I’m also taking detailed notes to support her reflection and integration of our work after the session.

Susan is a bodyworker, and has studied a couple of somatic therapy methods as well, so she finds it easy and natural to answer the fieldwork questions. She is able to place her attention on her inner, felt experience of No! and quickly report back about its qualities. Some people will have an easier time than others. You can find tips for how to support someone learning this skill for the first time in the Fieldwork Overview and Fieldwork in Depth: Mapping sections.

The questions themselves follow a standard form in this mapping. I’ve found that most often, things flow most smoothly when attention is led through the feeling experience in this order:

• Location, size and shape.

• Substance, including the possibilities of solid, liquid, gas, light, energy, or other.

• Temperature.

• Color and transparency.

• Movement, force and pressure.

• Sound.

(In the example of substance, providing a list of options makes it easier for the explorer to say “no” to specific qualities and notice which one fits best. It’s a little harder when the question is left wide open. We’ll notice later, though, that Susan doesn’t need this careful guidance.)

At the end of this section, we see that the force of the steel plate pushing inward on her chest is eliciting a responding sensation of something behind the plate pushing upward. These kinds of interactions between feeling state forms are common, and in this example, I choose to explore that upward pressure in her chest.

Identifying Fearful Fear

J: What would you say that is, that’s being pushed up? What’s your experience of what’s behind the plate?

S: It sounds weird but it feels like the metal plate is kind of pushing on the fear, like the fear is rising up in my throat.

J: Ahh.

S: So, like, “Oohhhhhh!” Kind of a panicked, “Whoaaaaaaah,” like that.

J: So it’s like the fear is actually behind the No!.

S: Yes.

J: Ah hah. OK.

S: It’s like the No! is to protect, almost, (that sounds weird too, but), to protect the fear.

J: Right. And what would you like to call the fear? Do you want to call it “fear” or something else?

S: Actually, it’s like Fearful Fear. Which is kind of funny, but it seems to be what’s true.

J: OK. Great. You can call feelings anything you want. So Fearful Fear is a great name. I’m going to suggest that we go ahead and map Fearful Fear, because we will find that No! probably isn’t going to want to move as long as that fear is there. Right?

S: Right, because it’s the protector.

J: Exactly.

S: It’s not going to go anywhere as long as there’s something to protect.

Here we see clearly how the No! and the Fearful Fear coexist and interact. These are two distinct feeling states that are simultaneously present. Susan’s awareness of the actual, felt experience of this interaction provides insight into the meanings of these feelings.

Completing No!

J: So, the No! – come back to the steel plate. We’ll map the Fearful Fear in a second. If you were to capture in words what seems true, or real, or important to that steel plate, what would you say?

S: Well it feels very responsible, like it’s got a very important job to do, and it really needs to do it well. So a big feeling of responsibility.

J: Right. OK. Anything else that comes to mind that you want to notice about this No! feeling?

S: Well I notice it also has a feeling of competence, like it’s up to the job.

J: Ah hah. Great. So it’s a competent protector.

S: Yes.

Here we are inviting this specific feeling state to express its perspective. By inviting this expression, we have an opportunity to learn more about the nature of this feeling state, what it is trying to accomplish, and what other feeling states might be interacting with it.

It’s important that we welcome whatever the expression is, honoring the No! exactly where it is. In doing so, this part of Susan is invited to lean into the process, to trust where we’re going. (In this case, the No! is expressing something that might be conventionally considered a positive sentiment or function. But as a facilitator I want to remain positive in receiving an expression even if it might seem to be “negative” in conventional terms.)

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In this chapter, I would like to revisit work by my client Louise from the intro chapter, IS-1: A New Science of Being. There we learned about her experience of shifting a state she called Crumbling to one she called Core Strength.

In this chapter, we start with Louise sharing her experience of moving another state she called Isolated Outside. Then we check in at two weeks and a few months later for her to share more of her experience of how things shifted in her life over several months and beyond. It’s a nice peek into the experience of psychotopology fieldwork.

Shifting Isolated Outside to Inclusive

In Louise’s words:

“The next feeling I mapped was a strong feeling state I called Isolated Outside. I have always felt on the outside of things. Like a shadow observing but never invited to enter. I saw the whole world of social interactions as something I could never really be a part of. I felt comfortable interacting with one other person, but I always kept my distance emotionally and kept a very solid invisible wall around myself.

In groups, I felt isolated as though everyone involved was a part of something I didn’t have the ability to understand. ‘You’re so quiet’ is a comment I heard many times. I would smile sweetly and say something elusive and somehow people got the idea I was intelligent. I was happy to allow that perception when in reality I felt lost and wary and lonely, and lacking in whatever it was everyone else seemed to have.

I discovered that Isolated Outside is a part of self I developed in response to being so sensitive to people. A simple phrase that may or may not have been intended as a criticism or ridicule would just about destroy me. I kept an uninterested cool exterior image as a front to hide how fragile I felt.

“I shifted Isolated Outside and I discovered a space around me that felt safe and that I influenced. It pulsed. It felt like a warm yellow light all around me. I saw it as a space where people could exist in my life. It was a space I held and it was a part of me but it was removed enough that what happened there could not destroy me. This was a huge relief. I look back at my self in this state and feel a deep sense of compassion, as though my self in that state were an undeveloped me, too young to understand but still kind of cute in its fumbling way.

“Moving this part changed my interactions immediately. I began making friends quickly. People I had known on an acquaintance basis for months or years got closer. The only thing that changed was me and all I did was shift my awareness of, and reaction to, other people. I created a space to let them in.

I realize now that many people also feel shy or insecure or self-conscious at times. I am not the only one. This realization has transformed my interactions with people. I always felt judged by others because I was so harshly judging myself. Other people’s reactions to me shifted. As I became more at ease in my self, people around me became more at ease in my presence. It has led to a wonderful unfolding in my social, professional, and personal relationships.”

---

Below are my notes capturing Louise’s mapping of both Isolated Outside and Inclusive.

Isolated Outside

I’m standing back from the feeling. It’s out in front, spherical, four feet in diameter; like a dense, foggy cloud, charcoal dark gray, wispy on the edges, dense in the middle, but you can run your hand through it, not solid. Kind of cold and damp. Just floating, pretty still. Total silence. Dense feeling at my heart, very dense but moist and gray and very cold. It’s like the cloud is coming out from my center, cold, and then it forms this cloud and gets cool and damp and less intense and bigger, like moisture particles.

I can see what’s coming from here. So I’m safer back here. I can see what might come at me, so that I’m ready. It’s safer here.

---

Inclusive

Body temp; lighter, pure energy; gold, shimmering, translucent; moving with a lot of energy, constant movement, little particles vibrating, humming; radiating out from my core in all directions; pulses in and out, very gently; there’s a pulse but there’s no real end; it’s continuously radiating out of my core. Going out and coming back, like breathing, rate of comfortable breath. Sound is like a breath.

You carry all the protection you need inside of you. It creates a space that other people can move into; there’s this gentle pulse, allowing things in, including other people in the pulse of the interaction.

---

Reflections

Here is what Louise wrote about her experience a couple of weeks after this shift.

“After mapping and moving several states over the last two weeks, I love how this process has a path that you follow. And each part really couldn’t be any other way. It just is. It’s like a discovery. I like how each layer unfolds naturally. It’s not forced. And the few times I have tried to make it be something I thought it should be, Joe stopped me, to focus on just experiencing, unfolding the next piece, to see what it is. I could tell when I was getting off track, but it’s hard not to have ideas. I’ve been working on that. This work really can’t be forced.

“I can start to feel it coming into place. Last week I felt really disoriented. As more things get mapped and shifted, there’s this real feeling of peace and acceptance. I was just sitting here watching the seagulls and clouds, and I was in this feeling of timelessness.”

I love the way Louise’s description here captures the experience of a natural unfolding in the process of fieldwork. As she says, you can’t force it. Mapping and moving is a process of discovery of something innately you.

Louise’s description of her experience before and after shifting Crumbling and Isolated Outside is typical of many people doing the work. Isolated Outside was central to the experience of the entire set of feeling states, playing a role I call a pivot.

Shifting a pivot state can sometimes result in the entire set letting go of its reactive configuration and becoming free to find a new way of being. When I work with people who have limited time, we generally strive to identify and shift a pivot state. It’s preferable, though, to do more thorough work, identifying the full set of parts in their reactive states, and moving each one to its ideal, then supporting the ideal states in integrating. In our work together, Louise and I did a fairly complete job of that, contributing to the significance of her overall shift.

Longer Term Integration

Louise and I worked over a period of several months. She describes her experience as “hitting the reset button” on her life. Here’s what she has to say about the impact of the work a few months after we finished.

“Each area of my life has changed in some way. I find new opportunities to develop my business and my skills daily and I have the confidence to pursue the opportunities. I enjoy meeting new people professionally and socially. I enjoy participating in conversations and adding my voice to the world around me. Instead of destroying me, I find that criticism gives me the chance to clarify my thoughts on a specific subject. The many little fears that used to limit me in the world have all but fallen away.

“When I do feel resistance or discomfort now, I take the time to look at the situation and at my reaction to it. I can use my emotional response to guide me towards rewarding work and experiences and away from useless, limiting or damaging situations. I enjoy starting new projects and solving problems in existing projects and this leads to that wonderful feeling of satisfaction when the job is done and I know it is the best work I can produce.

“The rebuilding is an ongoing process. It is exciting and challenging. Life feels fresher, newer, and the possibilities seem more possible and more numerous. I can see the threads of my life up to this point, and I see how I can shape my future at every step along the way.”

This kind of expansion of perspective is common in this work. When we are trapped in a reactive compensation pattern, our awareness is often locked into very limited ways of experiencing our world. When we release the hold these patterns have on our awareness, it expands to include more of the resources that naturally lie within ourselves. We can see any given situation from multiple points of view, and we bring much more of ourselves to the task of responsively navigating any given situation that arises.

A Reflection on Physical Awareness

Before closing, I want to share Louise’s description of her experience of shifting states with fieldwork and how that intersects strongly with her somatic experience.

“One of the most surprising and intense parts of this process is the physical feeling that accompanies the emotional states. It feels like a real realignment is happening within, not only your mind and your emotional state, but in your physical being as well. Shifting a strong emotion was commonly accompanied by a feeling of tingling all through my body, lightness, and excitement.”

This example highlights the relationship between the field dimension (particularly that of affect fields — see Introducing Inner Fields in SO-11:Getting Real About Inner Experience) and the body. For most people, the relationship is very tight, and changes in one influence changes in the other.

This relationship between affect fields and somatic experience represents a prime opportunity for future research for those researchers and labs set up to pursue it. Just a suggestion…

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Now let’s move to the next example, a dynamic transformation that led to an exciting career shift. This is the story of three sessions in which Gail (not her real name) transforms a core terror that was keeping her from pursuing her dreams. In the first session, she enters her inner space to get an idea of what’s there and create some first steps toward possibility. In the second, she transforms the terror into what she describes as a “bridge to a higher power,” and begins to change the direction of her life toward becoming a filmmaker. In the third session, she addresses a lingering anxiety that arose as she was nearing success. You can listen to Gail’s reflections here:

The interview was recorded about eight months after the work was done, and she discusses how her life has changed. I’ve broken this into three sections below, each dealing with the effects of one of the three sessions, each with a complete transcript (slightly edited for readability).

Session One

I came out of this session feeling very differently and … absolutely positive that the life ahead of me could be as amazing as I wanted it to be.

Gail: Our first session, when you tried to explain to me what your work was, you said, It’s really hard to explain in words because it’s dealing with feelings or the feeling body. And that the best way for me to understand it would be to experience it.

So I met with you and had a session and… what was so amazing about your work is that — the first time that I did it — is that it completely went right to what I call the right brain, the creative mind, which is so different from like psychoanalysis that I’ve been to in the past, which is all, just like your past and your history and like what happened in your life to shape you where you are now and you have to kind of go back through all these facts that are just like stored in your brain.

And it seems like it was such a drudgery to do that, and anytime I felt like I needed to deal with an issue or something that was limiting me in my life or an emotion that felt really scary or something, the thought of going to regular therapy, again, was just, like, too much. Just, I don’t want to do it, I don’t want to go back there, I don’t want to go back to those places and talk about the same old things. And, so I was looking for a new approach to dealing with my emotions and stuff that were coming up in my life.

I think the first time I had a session with you, I was, had already been out of my marriage, was already separated, but there was a lot of stuff that needed to be cleaned up and addressed.

And so when, when I met with you and… going right to those areas of feeling and imagery and expression, it addressed everything right now, like, my state of being now. Which is really where the work needed to be done. It doesn’t need to be done in the past, it needs to be done right here.

I really appreciated that, and I felt that was very powerful, because dealing in now meant that we could change things now or shift things now.

It’s, to me it’s really simple because we all want to feel empowered and joyful and alive and positive and all those things. And so I felt my, my first experience with you was very much that. I was able to go into where I was at the time, which if I remember correctly, was kind of hopeless with what I was feeling, and that some of the dreams that I had for myself were not possible, that I was a failure in some way for my marriage and being a single mom and, and moving this new path in my life. And so I had these fears that some of the dreams that I still had from before I was married were maybe not possible.

And I came out of this session feeling very differently and very, I don’t want to say hopeful, but just absolutely positive that the life ahead of me could be as amazing as I wanted it to be.

Joe: And this was about a year ago, right?

Gail: No, this was longer.

Joe: I think it was December of last year.

Gail: Oh, wow, OK.

Joe: Yeah.

Gail: So that’s when we started, yeah.

Joe: So it seems longer because so much has happened.

Gail: So much, yeah, absolutely.

Joe: And we only met for, I think, like an hour and a half. You were fast!

Gail: Well, and what I liked too, is that you had like the pencils and markers there, so I could draw as part of the work. You had just pencil and paper so I could write. Or I could not do any of it. And I, I really appreciated that because I could see how there could be times where it’s hard to find the words for a feeling, but you could draw it and access it that way.

So that was my first experience.

Joe: So, and then what happened after that?

Gail: Oh, okay. So what I, the biggest thing that I remember pulling out of the first experience was we actually created in the session, we created new feelings for me and I remember like giving them names and an identity.

So I had this list, I came home with this list and I remember looking at it for the next couple of weeks. And that just seeing that these feelings were always here and they were always possible and by naming them and giving them an identity, I could go to them right away. And I thought that was really cool.

And that process in itself, just being able to take that home and have those written out, began opening up more stuff for me. Because maybe one day I would look, and want to access one of those parts and, and it was there, but then like something else would come in and, and maybe, you know, make it not so easy to get there. And it was like, Okay, let me take note of that because it’s something I need to work on with Joe. Because there’s so many layers to really getting at the source of who we are.

And so it was that first process, I think actually was more an opening to seeing how many layers of crap, stuff, were blocking my joy from day to day, or from moment to moment, or the possibility of reaching that.

So that’s really amazing to be able to see that.

Session 2

“I can’t even remember what it feels like to have that space of that fear”

Joe: And then, we worked again…

Gail: Yeah, we did.

Joe: Like a month or two later.

Gail: My second session with you completely just blew off the lid of any kind of limitation that I would have in my life. And that session was dealing with all of the fear and… OK, so there was a lot of trauma in my life, regarding some abuse and stuff.

So, in my past, in regular therapy, I learned some coping skills on how to deal with maybe some anxieties that came out around it, and I analyzed all of it that happened, and why it happened and how, you know, I was able to kind of separate everything and see it, and understand that it wasn’t my fault, and make sense of it in a way that it was somewhat manageable.

But there was a feeling that would pop up from time to time, an actual physical, physiological reaction that was created during those times of abuse. And that was still not manageable for me. And it would come up at times when, you know, it was triggered by whatever. And that was something that totally paralyzed me in my life when it occurred.

And it was the scariest feeling I have ever experienced, and it’s like my body would just get trapped in that terror. And that was what we addressed in the second session. And when going into that, instead of trying to manage it, your technique took me into it and asked it what it needed to heal.

Why was it still there? And what did it need? Or what did I need? Or whatever the process is, but the feeling was given a chance to be completely transformed.

And that’s what we did. And that particular moment when we transformed that feeling was, I totally remember, that it was like, I just created a bridge to a higher power that some people would call God or whatever.

I don’t use the word God, but higher power, source, whatever that created us, me here. And it was a just a total bridge to that, “Wow, that this is on the other side of that fear, is this amazing unconditional love and safety. And just, everything is okay.” And to this day, it’s been a year, but I haven’t, I can’t even remember what it feels like to have that space of that fear and that paralyzing feeling, like I couldn’t even get there. I don’t, I just, I don’t feel like it’s even possible to go there. It was there. It was a part of me, but it’s… the other is so much more powerful. And that was the biggest stepping stone for me to where I’m headed now. I truly believe that that was the biggest limitation that I’ve had in my entire life that kept me stuck in patterns and not really accessing who I really am.

Joe: So where are you headed now?

Gail: So, it’s very exciting. I am headed… I’m now a budding film director and producer and writer. That is really where I’ve always wanted to go since I was a little kid. And although I took lots of little steps to get there, there was always something that would just knock me down.

And there was no way I could do it. I couldn’t, no way. “I can’t do that. I can’t live up to that. That’s… absolutely not.”

Now it’s like, “Well, yeah, of course, absolutely. That’s just who I am. I mean, this is so stupid. Like, why wouldn’t I do that?” So there’s, that’s really cool.

And everything else is just like, I don’t know. Everything else is just falling into place around that.

Session 3

“From that day on, I’ve been resting easy and in excitement about my project and my future.”

Joe: So then the third time we worked was when you were having a nightmare or something.

Gail: Yeah. So the third time was another real biggie because I was experiencing this as I chose to move forward as a filmmaker again. And I started working on my project, this short film that I wrote. And so I started taking the steps to pull everybody together for that and get the project rolling. And literally, at night, when I would lay down to go to sleep, I would get, like, stricken with this incredible anxiety.

And all of these reasons and stories in my own head, kinda like voices in a way, that were telling me, “You can’t do this. It’s not gonna work. You’re not important enough. Nobody’s gonna take you seriously. You’re not talented enough. Who do you think you are? I mean, you’re just, you know… “

And it was like the mental experience that I have is, like, I felt like I was sitting in my bed one night, and these demonic hands were just, like, reaching out and grabbing me. That’s what it felt like. “No! You can’t do it! You can’t do it!”

And then I was, but I was kinda like this {curling up, protecting head with arms}, you know, and I didn’t wanna hear them. But the emotions that came up inside of me were… It was just fear because I didn’t know where to go. Here they were trying to grab me, and if I peeked out, they would get me.

And we did some work on that feeling. I can’t remember the things at the moment that we identified, but the result was incredible. And from that day on, I’ve been resting easy and in excitement about my project and my future, and it’s done, pretty much. I mean, we’re editing, but, like, the all the stuff that I was afraid of that I thought I couldn’t do, is done.

And I think the biggest piece of it is that, before that moment, I was still hiding myself from the world a little bit. I was very particular about who I would tell that I was doing this project. Because I thought, well, I kinda chose who would believe in me and who wouldn’t.

And then after our session, it was like, well, it doesn’t matter who believes in me and who doesn’t, this is who I am. This is just who I am. It would be like taking my body and trying to turn it into something other than it is. Now everybody in my life, in the world, knows me as a budding film director, and that’s the way it should be.

That’s really cool. So, yeah, that was… I’ve not had another anxiety attack around that. Around anything, actually.

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Lots of us experience anxiety at various times. Much anxiety is appropriate and serves the purpose of activating our awareness to avoid or minimize a potential threat of some kind. For many people, though, anxiety can become more chronic, disrupting our lives in major ways.

What’s going on in the actual experience of anxiety? By bringing our awareness to the field dimension of the anxiety experience, fieldwork illuminates the dynamic that can set anxiety up for longer-term persistence. It also gives us the means to undo that dynamic and relieve the anxiety, restoring access to greater resourcefulness and more appropriate responses to the actual realities of our lives. Let’s take a look at how this works.

From Black Hole to Love Is Everywhere

I worked with Kelly over a period of about a week, perhaps four or five long sessions. Here’s an image she drew of a state she called Black Hole:

In addition to Black Hole, here are the other states she worked with, with illustrations following.

• Anxiety / Panic

• Despicable

• Angry Teenager

• Shame

• Parental Judge

• Tears of Sadness

• Needs Not Met

• Not Seen

The names of the states give you a sense of what this entire experience of what she referred to in summary as “anxiety” was like for her, and some hints about its origins. Read through this list and sense into the images. Try to imagine the experience of what it was like to be her, holding those reactive states as a set of distinct parts of her experience, all combining into this “weight of anxiety” as she describes it in her reflections below.

From this, it becomes clear that her anxiety does not exist in isolation. It is not a thing in and of itself, but a relationship among a family of parts, each carrying some portion of her history and her response to it. When we can break things down at this level of detail, we get to peer into the complex dynamic that makes the anxiety a persistent dynamic in her life.

The Shift

In working with these reactive states, one at a time, Kelly’s experience shifted dramatically. For example, Black Hole turned into a state she called Love Is Everywhere.

Overall, we worked about fifteen hours total. Here are the names of each of the ideal states that emerged, paired with their original, reactive version.

• Anxiety / Panic ⟹ Divine Innocence

• Despicable ⟹ I Exist, Therefore I Am Loved

• Angry Teenager ⟹ At Choice

• Shame ⟹ Inherently Lovable

• Parental Judge ⟹ Supportive Wisdom

• Tears of Sadness ⟹ Radiant Love

• Needs Not Met ⟹ Full, Warm, & Comfortable

• Not Seen ⟹ Standing in the Flow of Grace

• Black Hole ⟹ Love Is Everywhere

As before, we have nine states, but this time they are working together to give her a very stable experience of comfort and aliveness in her life.

“A profound shift in my being”

Here is what Kelly wrote as a testimonial a few months later:

“Since working with Joe, I have felt a profound shift in my being – physically, mentally, spiritually, and emotionally. I feel like the weight of anxiety (big, dark, gray and black) has been lifted off of my shoulders. This weight that I have felt for a majority of my life has been replaced by a sense of lightness, vitality, and a deeper sense of compassion for myself and others. I feel a sense of calm, centeredness, joy, profound love, and positive energy.

“In my past, my pattern has been to be very fearful of conflict, as I quickly would go to a place of shame and blame. I would be engulfed so entirely by my own feelings (anger at myself, shame, worthlessness, projections of how the other person might be viewing me negatively, etc.) that there would be no room for the other person to have their feelings too. I experienced what effects this had on my relationships, as they were never sustainable within this pattern of relating. It was so frustrating for me, because I knew what I was capable of! I knew I had emotional intelligence and strong abilities to communicate.

“But why couldn’t I get over this pattern? It just seemed more powerful than me…beyond my own ability to control it. I wanted to get rid of it so that I could be ‘normal’. I have spent years in talk therapy, trying different forms of energy work, workshops, meditation, etc. These were all helpful, but the patterns were hanging on for dear life.

“What I have been experiencing since working with Joe is an ability to more easily speak my truth and express my needs, even my anger, without feeling the shame, blame, or worthlessness. There is a spaciousness for the anger or frustration and there is space for the other person’s feelings as well. I can have my feelings, express my needs clearly, and still have the love inside for myself and this other person all at the same time. I can more easily see and experience our humanness, our mutual need to feel loved and worthy, our fear of rejection, etc. It feels so much more encompassing. Perhaps the lightness I feel, and the joy and the love, is about feeling more of a sense of Oneness with others, having more awareness that we are really the same inside, having similar wants, needs and desires that are basic to our humanness.

“Words cannot express my gratitude for what Joe (and the process he has developed) has helped me to open myself to. I do believe it was there all along, just waiting to come out and be expressed. The weight is not necessarily something that has left me, but instead there is a lightness that has come over me and embraced me. And in that, it has lifted me up! The lightness of my being is ‘embracing’ the shadow parts of me, so that I can experience all parts of me with compassion and love. By embracing this in myself, I am more able to embrace the shadow and light in others too. What a relief this is, to know that nothing really needed to be ‘fixed’ or changed, just seen and experienced from a different perspective. I am able to see that these shadow and light parts just wanted to help me survive, to have my basic needs met, to feel loved, and to feel safe.

“Thank you so much, Joe. I feel my life has been forever changed as a result of our work together. It will be interesting to see how this continues to play out in my life. I am excited to be creating my life from this new way of being. How fun is that?”

Accessing What Is Possible

I want to call your attention especially to that next-to-last paragraph. Here, Kelly describes the experience of restoring a set of parts to its natural functioning. The fact is, the shape of Kelly’s life still most likely has a residue from the way she assembled it while under the influence of her early life experiences, including those held in other sets we did not explicitly explore.

At the same time, she now has access to the ideal states for each of these parts. These serve as a compass, pointing the way to what is possible, helping her see the purpose of the “shadow parts” of this set, and to respond to life situations in ways that support her highest well-being. But it goes even further than this one-to-one state shift.

It is apparent from Kelly’s description that she has learned something more fundamental about the role of difficult feeling states. She has established a far more generative and healthy relationship to all reactive feeling states in both herself and in others. She recognizes that they all hold a deeper, positive intention, and she is able to carry a core curiosity about that intention, and a respect for it, as she moves through the challenges of life and relationship.

This enables her to “embrace the shadow and light in others, too.” She ends with, “I am able to see that these shadow and light parts just wanted to help me survive, to have my basic needs met, to feel loved, and to feel safe.”

This is something we learn over and over again as we do fieldwork. Every part of us, no matter how deeply burdened, no matter how dark the shadow, is actually striving to serve us, fully and completely. Every part is doing the best it possibly can. What separates us from the truth of wholeness are the experiences that suggest that our needs cannot be met, that we are in essence separated from our world in some way. Restoring these parts through fieldwork heals that separation and revives our natural wholeness.

Dynamic Sets of Interrelated Parts of Being

I also want to come back to this confining idea of anxiety as a thing-in-itself. When we think of anxiety as a thing, as the problem to be solved or the disorder to be corrected, we miss the bigger essential picture.

Yes, there is the experience of anxiety. But anxiety — and any other state we choose to name — does not exist in isolation. Ever. And when we privilege what we have named (for whatever reason) and push the rest of our experience into the background, we set ourselves up for difficulty no matter how we attempt to address the “problem.”

Here are Kelly’s words again: “I have spent years in talk therapy, trying different forms of energy work, workshops, meditation, etc. And although these were all helpful, the patterns were still hanging on for dear life.” The patterns were hanging on, and those patterns included far more than the anxiety itself.

Psychotopology lays this bare, and calls us to step up in our work to support others’ well-being. If we are to be effective in helping people relieve suffering of any kind, we absolutely must open our field of attention to include the full dynamic of not just the focal state but all the other interrelated components that hold the pattern in place. Fieldwork gives us a straightforward, systematic, and efficient method for doing that.

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Many of us are familiar with being trapped between a seemingly intractable pressure from expectations on the outside and our desires and truths on the inside. This common dynamic shows up in many forms in the individuals impacted by it.

Here are a few examples of unpacking the fear and anxiety that often acts as the paralyzing force, showing what can happen when we release it.

“A Refreshing Transformation”

Mike worked with me for just one hour over the phone, focusing on a fear of public speaking which was affecting his professional success. Here are his words, including a description of how he experienced our work together:

“We talked about some physical distress I exhibited each time I presented a seminar or hosted an event. Through a series of guided imagery questions Joe had me actually visually place the feelings that came up during presentations in a specific place in my body. He prompted me to describe, locate, and get very acquainted with those feelings. He asked me to allow those feelings to transform into a different shape, space, and place.

“I immediately received a sense of lightening up, a refreshing transformation that freed me up and left me very, very energized. He left me with specific instructions as to how I can re-create that transformation and recall the image I created prior to my presentations. I now cue myself before every presentation, client meeting, and networking opportunity to fortify myself with that powerful image of who I am and what I offer those I connect with.

“I found the experience of my session with Joe invaluable. I easily connected with the model of creating visual images and descriptions for the questions he used to guide my learning experience. I am a very visual and creative person. Though we did talk of some very intimate things that lead me to a fairly vulnerable place, I always felt safe with his guidance and support. One of the best things is that he took notes and had a way of recording our session so whenever I want to go back through a reminder or refresher on my discovery, I can. I was completely free to do the work necessary.

“Being freed from the focus on how I’m being perceived, or how am I doing, or what am I going to say next is invaluable. It has allowed me to truly listen and be present while presenting, whether to a group or just one person.”

Mike’s experience was brief and focused. We did not work a full set or go deep into the structure that held his fear of public speaking in place. He is describing our session in the conversational terms in which he understands it. We focused on a simple strategy of shifting the fear itself, and anchoring that new state in a tangible, easily-accessible form.

From there, Mike simply activated that state whenever he needed it. Psychotopology fieldwork makes this strategy practical and straightforward.

“I felt good. I felt victory!”

One more client, Peter, had this to say two weeks after working over two long days with me, maybe 12 hours total, where he transformed a fear of public speaking that was so bad it had put him in the emergency room a few times before he sought my help. He’s describing a recent sales presentation he did:

“If I would have walked in there before I met you, I know I would have been sweating, stuttering, and probably left the room five, ten times, because I just would not be able to stay in there because of fear.

“Yesterday I sat in the middle, spoke to everybody, looked everybody in the eye, and talked to them like I had something to offer. I felt like I wanted to feel, the whole time, without feeling fear. Just like I’m talking to you here.

“It didn’t matter if it was one person or ten people, I was me, all the way through, and not out of whack, not too scared, not nervous. And I felt good. I felt victory!”

A couple years after I worked with Peter, he sent me this note:

“Your work has truly changed my life. I now look at my life as before meeting with you and after. I am now more of the person I have always wanted to be because of our sessions. Thank you so much.”

The Difference Between Moving a State and Moving a Set

The example of Mike’s leaping forward out of a single hour of working specifically on the fear shows us that yes, it is straightforward to narrow our focus to releasing a single state. When we do, we gain wonderful agency for being able to cultivate that specific new state and deliberately return ourselves to that state when it serves us.

But that can take significant effort. In contrast, Peter’s example shows what is possible when we take the time to also work the interconnected parts of the entire set in which the anxiety is situated. When we do that, the shift is more comprehensive, and requires far less effort to maintain.

Let’s see how this works with Sam, who worked on a set that had to do with feeling thwarted and overwhelmed trying to go to school full time while supporting her two children. We worked together weekly over a period of about three months.

To give you a glimpse of Sam’s experience of this set, here is a composite drawing of all nine of its states. At the center of the belly is Vulnerable, a cold, churning liquid surrounded by Anxiety, like a tense anemone. On the outside of the body we have Overwhelm, “like radial explosions all over my borders.”

Really, really doesn’t look fun, does it? And finally, here is the composite drawing of the set after it was moved to its ideal state of natural wholeness:

This is how Sam described the shift she experienced after completing that first set:

“So the first set of feelings that I moved with Joe had to do with feeling really unsupported in my work. Feeling overwhelmed and exhausted, and just alone with it all. And within weeks, I felt a spaciousness in my life. I did not feel stressed out any more. I wasn’t getting overwhelmed. All of that just kind of stopped happening. Without any conscious effort, I was just living differently, naturally, without even having to think about it.”

So, this is what I’m talking about. This is what it feels like to thoroughly excavate the complete set of parts that governs a pattern of distress in your life, and to fully restore its natural functioning.

Some Context

Before we take a look at another example, let me share a further thought. We are large, we contain multitudes (to use the Whitman phrase). This set that Sam worked was one of many that participated in her experience of being. But this one was at the center of her drive to raise her children while pursuing her vocation, and when it was released, it stayed at the center for a time.

Within a few weeks, though, another part of her, another self with all its complexity, stepped forward and captured her attention. So we worked on that one next. I wrote about that one in chapter SO-6: Multiple Coexisting Feeling States.

Most of us have this external container to our lives — the responsibilities, relationships, and physical environments — that somewhat constrains our freedom to foreground the various selves that constitute our full being. And so working those key selves by using fieldwork to restore the natural functioning of the full set of parts can go a long way toward greater ease and effectiveness in pursuing our goals. Peter is a great example of this.

Some people, though, have either more spaciousness in that life container, or at least give themselves more freedom to wander internally. For those people, restoring the functionality of one self/set is likely to open the door for another to surface. This process of working one set after another can go on indefinitely, at least from a practical perspective. There is a limit to how many selves we contain, but it’s large enough to keep us busy for a very long time.

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I would like to wrap up this series on the science of first-level observation in psychotopology and set things in motion for the next phase. Here are the key discoveries from each chapter so far:

1. Validity - Establishes a foundational relationship between feeling states and their corresponding virtual material properties, along with methods to ensure our observations are accurate and reliable through validation techniques like the slider test.

2. Difference - Challenges our initial hypothesis that people experience emotions like sadness in similar ways, revealing instead a surprising diversity of virtual material properties across different individuals mapping the same named emotion.

3. Context - Overturns our tentative hypothesis of consistent “emotion signatures” within individuals, showing instead that context deeply influences how a person experiences the same named emotion across different situations.

4. Not Somatic - Reveals that feeling states frequently extend beyond the boundaries of the physical body, challenging the dominant theories that emotions are fundamentally bodily processes confined to physiological systems.

5. Body Schema - Explores how the virtual materiality of feeling states connects to our body schema and embodied cognition, suggesting our capacity to model extended embodiment may underlie our ability to experience feeling states.

6. Multiples - Demonstrates that feeling states exist not in isolation but as complex networks of coexisting states that interact in dynamic patterns, forming intricate structures in our inner landscape.

7. Beyond Emotion - Shows that virtual materiality extends beyond conventional emotions to include experiences typically categorized differently (like identity, awareness, or conceptual states), suggesting feeling is the foundation of all conscious experience.

8. Witness - Examines the actual experience of the self who observes feeling states, revealing that the witness function itself has virtual material properties and is subject to mapping and transformation.

9. Spiritual Teachings - Uncovers how transcendent experiences accessed through fieldwork correspond closely with states described in various spiritual traditions, suggesting these traditions reference a shared inner architecture accessible through observation.

10. Hell - Reveals the profound depths of human suffering typically hidden from awareness, showing how networks of painful feeling states underlie many aspects of personality and behavior, while suggesting this suffering is normal but perhaps not natural to human experience.

To summarize further, it seems that as far as our nascent science goes, we have broken new ground, but to be honest, we have no clear idea where we have arrived. All we can say for sure from our observations so far is that they do not match well with existing maps.

• The hypothetical “thingness” of sadness, for example, shows up as having an insufficiently stable pattern when we examine its virtual material properties across different people and even within the same person. We cannot say for sure what the “it” is that we are observing beyond a unique inner experience correlated with a unique name.

• Our observations of para-somatic feeling experiences that extend far beyond the body do not correspond with strongly somatic maps of emotion.

• The multiplicity of concurrent but distinct feeling objects is inconsistent with models of emotion grounded in a kind of integrative summation or interpretation of physiological states.

• Our observations of purely “mental” or “abstract” experience as having tangible virtual materiality similar to that of distinctly emotional experience contrasts with our current understanding of feeling as limited to emotion-centered phenomena.

At the same time, we can see a few possible bridges to existing maps.

• It seems there may be an overlap between our virtual material basis for feeling experience and models of embodied/extended cognition.

• There arise some intriguing overlaps with longstanding spiritual and esoteric traditions, validating our work through its connection to millennia of earnest efforts to master our complex inner lives.

• The complexity and depth of suffering we are able to observe resonates with our intuitions about the gravity and significance of human pain.

• The descriptions of connections between earlier life experiences and related states echoes certain theories of psychotherapy.

What should we do with this? Where do we go from here?

Beyond Passive Observation

At this point in our science, we have applied our new observation tool, fieldwork, to a relatively passive exploration of the territory inside. We’ve opened the door and tip-toed around, peering around corners, shining our light into crevices and under overhangs, and noticing further possible portals to the unknown.

What we have been able to observe so far gives us confidence for raising the level of our engagement. Our observations seem to validate both our intuitive sense of what it is to be human and our dissatisfaction with our current maps for navigating our inner landscapes. We have found both a resonance with prior attempts to understand this inner territory and clear divergences which offer intriguing possibilities for further exploration.

We have also established that our slider test for confirming the accuracy of our observations can be expanded into a full-scale interaction with what we are observing. It is time for us to apply this capacity to a more involved engagement with this mysterious territory of the virtual materiality that anchors our felt experiences of being.

As we prepare to do so, I want to establish an overarching principle for our continued investigations.

Prioritizing Structure over Content

Typically in conducting observations of subjective experience in service to scientific investigation, we prioritize collecting information about the contents of what it is we are observing. Data from this measurement, responses on this survey or that button push, reports about this or that memory, correlations between A and B. In the realm of inner human experience, our primary data has focused on the what of our thinking, feeling, sensing and perceiving.

In the realm of subjective experience, the “whats” we are typically able to collect can be made sense of directly. The memory of an experience, reports on a survey, the name of an emotion, the belief about a situation — all of these can be compared to similar phenomena in similar people. But this direct interpretation has its limits. For example, it tends to be culturally bound, which limits the universality of what is discovered. (See, e.g., discussions of WEIRD in psychological research.) Even more important, when we interpret such observations from standard cultural perspectives, we are unable to step outside the limited box we inhabit, complete with filters and blind spots.

When we use fieldwork to observe inner experience, however, we are forced to abandon that standard approach. We don’t get very far when we try to interpret the meaning of a hard, cold, dark lump of clay in the throat, for example, or attempt to compare such a lump to a stream of glowing electrical particles flowing upward through the heart. Oh, we can try. But it’s not terribly satisfying. We have no standing basis for such interpretation, and while in cursory observations we may see connections with lived experience, when we go more deeply in comparing these observations across larger numbers of people, it becomes much more difficult to identify any obvious patterns emerging.

This makes our slider power even more important. Passive observation alone will not move our science quickly enough to answer the many questions that emerge with our observations. The biggest question — what the hell is it that we are observing — begs us to engage with the “it” in order to learn more about it.

At first, we cannot even be sure what is possible. And so it can be difficult even to craft reasonable hypotheses. At the same time, we have been inhabiting our implicit and explicit models of inner experience (which may or may not match one another) for our entire lives. Much of those models remains outside our awareness.

What this means is that our first efforts are likely to be rather clumsy. That’s OK. Our job will be to stay alert for surprises. These startling moments will throw flags for us to pay closer attention. They signal that our implicit assumptions have been violated, and that our observations are revealing something truly new.

I had many such moments in the early years of developing this work. For example, I think I’ve mentioned the shock of facilitating someone mapping their experience of anger and having it show up as a green pair of stomping boots embedded in their feet. The fact that my own anger never looked like that, plus the gigantic stretch I had to make to imagine such a thing was even possible, encouraged me to accept the diverse uniqueness in every feeling experience and to set aside my expectations. As we move forward, we will encounter more such shocks, and they will point the way toward our further investigations and discoveries.

The shock of the green boots shoved me away from the expectation of a pattern centered on universality of feeling-name-defined configurations of virtual material properties. In place of that, I was forced to embrace a different pattern in which something like “sadness” lives very differently in different people. As I’ve described, over a period of accumulating further experience, I also had to let go of any expectation of similarity patterns even within the same person.

As you will see, as we begin to employ our slider superpower to directly manipulate these whatever-they-are entities we’re encountering that show up as virtual material objects that are free to transform their properties, we will encounter several significant shock moments that open doors to new discoveries. I’m looking forward to sharing those with you.

At the heart of these new discoveries is a very strong shift of our attention from the snapshot observational data — the specific configurations of virtual material properties — to the behavior of the underlying “things” that host these configurations. The patterns of their transformations, and the interactions between the transformations of one of these objects with other related objects, will begin to take shape.

As they do, we will find ourselves shifting from what might be best described as a topographic descriptions — the contents of our observations, the configurations themselves — to topological descriptions capturing a deeper structure of relationships among functional entites. We will shift from the topography of surface contents to the topology of deep structure.

One of the ways these new patterns will take shape has already revealed itself to us in our observations so far. Let’s take a look at the phenomenon of what psychotopology refers to as the field dimension of conscious experience.

Introducing Inner Fields

Throughout our observational examples, we have noted how the virtual material experience of feeling seems to occupy space. There is a distinct region within the total available space in and around the body within which the feeling experience seems to be located, outside of which it seems to not exist. Within that three-dimensional, spatial region, the experience carries distinct qualities that the observation practice illuminates.

We will find it very helpful to think of these feeling spaces as fields, similar to the electromagnetic and gravitational fields we find in physics. In this specific case within psychotopology, we will refer to these experiential spaces of feeling states as affect fields.

Let me acknowledge that this is a bold redefining of the term “affect,” which at this point in the sciences of mind tends to be used to name a very low-resolution, generic physiological activation. Affect is supposed to live on a two-dimensional scale with one axis defined from positive to negative valence from pleasure to distress, and the other from low to high intensity.

Over the course of continuing to roll out my presentation of psychotopology, you will see how it makes sense to separate the somatic dimension of emotion from this experiential field dimension. The two-axis concept of somatic experience might prove to be useful in the long run, but for now, I find it to muddy the waters and diminish the appreciation of the richness of inner experience. Our actual experience of affect, feeling — the experience of being — is vastly more complex than plus/minus, hi/low.

Let me make it clear up front that by assigning the concept of field to these experiences of feeling, I am not intending to infer that these fields are parallel to those of physics and that they objectively do occupy space in the way that a gravitational field does. I am saying merely that we experience feeling as if it occupies space and carries specific properties in a way similar to that of a field. How that actually intersects with the dimensions of physics and physiology, as well as its role in the generation of our personal and interpersonal psychology, must emerge from our continued investigations. I will have much more to reveal about this over time.

Clarifying the Term Fieldwork

In psychotopology, we are working with inner fields of consciousness. At this point, we have entered the domain of affect fields and will limit our focus to these for the moment. In the future, our work will expand beyond affect fields to explore related fields of imagery involved in the generation of thought.

The nascent practice of observing affect fields as we have noted at this point, along with more advanced practices of interacting with affect fields, and observing and interacting with other related fields, I call psychotopology fieldwork. I hope it is clear now where that name comes from and why it applies to this work.

Placing Feeling at the Center

Explaining feeling experience in science and psychotherapy has taken many forms:

• It doesn’t exist and/or is not important (behaviorism, materialism, logical positivism).

• It is a product of unconscious patterns anchored in the past (psycho-dynamic/psychoanalytic).

• It is a product of thoughts and beliefs (cognitive therapies).

• It is a product of neural activity (cognitive science and neuroscience).

• It is a product of interaction between our parts (parts therapies).

• It is a product of physiological activation (somatic therapies).

We are taking a radical new approach here. First, we are not explaining feeling experience in terms of other phenomena. For psychotopology, feeling is a thing in and of itself, not a “product of” something else considered to be more “real” than the actual experience. We are placing the experience of feeling at the center of our science rather than holding it as a secondary epiphenomenon.

Our goal is to create a map of this territory: the felt experience of being. This is an ambitious goal, but we have tools by our side that make this goal achievable. We will do this thing.

A Note of Care

Please do not expect to understand all of this right now. We have not established the basis for genuine understanding. All we have established is that the territory we are choosing to explore is indeed a frontier, and we are best served by continuing to honor the pioneering attitude proposed at the end of the Introducing the Science series, in IS-10: Radical Curiosity.

Also, please do give yourself the benefit of direct experience. It is impossible to understand what I am sharing here without it. Let me know if or how I can support you in that.

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In the chapter on multiples, SO-6, we explored the discovery that feeling states co-occur in groups of several or more. As we practice fieldwork mapping, this discovery nudges us toward asking, “What else are you feeling?” The results can be profoundly sobering, offering a more realistic view of the immense scale of human suffering.

Fieldwork opens up the deep interior of our conscious experience in ways that provide access to entire worlds of inner pain that have previously remained hidden beneath the surface, locked into what has been referred to as “the unconscious mind.” It turns out, much of what lies beneath the surface has been “unconscious” for good reason — because it is just too damned painful to endure.

The pain itself could potentially be tolerable in small doses. But this small pain turns out to be connected in sprawling networks of interrelated states of grief, rage, terror, agony, despair and all the rest. And because we have not developed reliable or effective methods for healing or transforming that pain once it is exposed, oftentimes when we uncover such pain it sucks us into intolerable and inescapable vortexes of darkness. So of course we avoid it with all the canny tactics we have available to us, and it remains deeply buried, outside of our everyday awareness.

Fieldwork enables us to crack open the basement door and to more safely enter these dark chambers with full illumination and agency. First, the mapping practice itself strengthens our natural capacity to hold a witness position to our painful states, holding them as something we have, not as something we are, grounding us firmly in a larger self. We have a place to stand as we shine our light into the darkness.

Second, the powerful moving process — essentially our slider test applied to a swift transformation of the state into a powerful inner resource — enables us to trust that we have a straightforward path through the pain into liberation. Because this is immediately available to us as we excavate old bones of pain, we can engage with curiosity rather than fear, and we find ourselves entering these dark chambers with a sense of empowerment.

In what follows, you get to look over my shoulder as I wade into the muck of my own inner life in a series of maps I made in 2012. We have not yet fully toured the moving practice here in Volume 1, so we do not officially have the tools and skills necessary to safely conduct an investigation like this. I do not recommend that you attempt such a deep dive on your own at this point. I offer it as a glimpse into what the simple practice of mapping makes possible. All of the following states were excavated and mapped over the course of three days, maybe five or six hours’ work in total, immediately following which they were cleared through the moving practice taking a similar amount of time.

For now, let us enter this particular dark chamber within my own torment, and take in the view from below.

One Small Chamber of My Own Inner Torment

To give you context, this journey was one of several I made during this period of my life. The chamber I entered after this one was even more intense, having been hidden from my awareness by the first. I’ll give you a peek at what that second one looked like, but we will focus this tour on the process of mapping the first set of states.

I offer these as examples of the kind of complexity and pain that lives in all of us. On the surface, my early life was not one of intense suffering. I grew up in the United States, in relative material and cultural privilege in a white, working-class family, with an added benefit of having a knack for academic performance. Under the surface, though, I accumulated the toxicity of that subculture, absorbed directly from my parents and my social surroundings.

Within our respective cultures and subcultures, we are taught norms for how to manage the inner torment. For my father, control and domination were the primary strategies. I rejected the crude form of these he inhabited but took them on nevertheless from an academic angle, pursuing intellectual supremacy. This landed me in the more elite environment of an Ivy League university.

Eventually, though, my unsustainable numbing strategies collapsed, mostly because of my isolation in a subculture with which I could not identify and from which I was unable to draw support. Over time, I found myself needing to devote ever-more intensive efforts to simply remaining alive. Psychotopology is a product of those efforts, and the examples below give you a small glimpse into the sheer weight of what I was carrying. I consider this a tiny core sample from the stratified subterranean bedrock of the human experience we all share.

“My Small Life”

On May 13th, 2012, I wrote this as the beginning of my inquiry into an inner pain. I called the focus of my inquiry “My Small Life” to capture the essence of what it was I was feeling.

I ache inside.
I ache inside for a place to be held.
Held, seen, mirrored, loved.
Held in a way that makes it easy to be, me.

At this point, I made the following list of distinct feeling experiences at the heart of and adjoining this ache.

• Ache/Longing

• Inundation/Overwhelm - too much sensory input

• Unconscious Assault (by Others) - random, harsh, oblivious

• Despair - the damage is done, there’s no turning back / going forward

• Abandoned/Alone - nobody else sees this, the insanity, the alternative truth

• Dangerous Chaos - the world

• Lack of Support - no place in which I am nourished

• Anger/Rage - I want them to stop, to wake up, and I want to destroy them if they don’t

• Withdrawal - Pulling away, a buffer or barrier, muffling sound, distance

On May 17th, I captured these additional feeling experiences.

• Fear/Anxiety - a sense of being tiny, in my mother’s arms, she afraid and I afraid, merged, in a way; my father as the threat/danger.

• Wanting to curl up and cry - strong, connected to the fear and wanting to be comforted, held.

On the evening of May 21st, I sat with a friend to do the Being With Practice described in FM-12 (taking turns identifying and briefly mapping whatever we were feeling). I identified and mapped two distinct states that I called Cringe and Hurt, as follows.

Cringe

Soft solid, 1/3 of core/trunk, contracting, twisting as if to avoid being hit; bluish gray; body temp or warmer; like putty/clay, porous, not real dense; whimper; a sense of curling into someone’s body. Primitive self-protection.

---

Hurt

Heart, like galaxy stuff, toroid shape, turning in on itself, as if imploding or being sucked into a black hole at the center; giant internal dimensions but only 6-8 inches external dimensions, spheroid.

An ache, longing. Impulse to cry. Something really important is missing. Loss.

---

On May 22nd, I wrote the following note about my experience from the previous evening, after mapping Cringe and Hurt:

There was a moment of physical inability to lie still, my body was climbing out of its skin, very uncomfortable.

I continued to note my state on this day as I began to work through my mapping process, starting with Bombardment and Overwhelm:

Now, today, it is as if a more unpleasant state is lurking. As if there is a deafening, body-smashing noise, but there isn’t. As if I am being beaten, but I’m not. As if the entire world is being fed into a galactic wood-chipper, but it isn’t.

This is the Overwhelm, the sensory overload. This is cacophony, this is strife, this is Bombardment.

---

Bombardment

Assault from the outside; Overwhelm, pain of overload. Two parts of this, the external Bombardment and the experience of Overwhelm as a result. Need to stop the Bombardment first, but the Overwhelm is what’s most distressing.

Loud sound, as if sound is massive and dense, surrounding me on all sides, expanding to fill all space, wanting to expand into the space of me and eliminate me from existence. Highly heterogeneous, multi-directional, random, intense bursts of aggressive expansion happening in all directions, like boulders scraping against one another as they expand into one another’s space; extremely dangerous, not safe; a synesthesia where sound = substance: sharp, hard, massive, unconscious; neutral temp; dark gray colors with flashes of red where sounds/boulders collide. The sound hurts it’s so loud; male voice sounds but they don’t fall into meaningful patterns - random, chaotic, meaningless, dangerous.

---

Overwhelm

Like a protective buffer between the outside and Cringe & Hurt {the two states I mapped the night before}; my whole body, from surface in, leaving space at the center; it is losing the battle, the encroaching Bombardment is too strong, and if it loses, I will be wholly sucked into Hurt and annihilated.

Frenzied, chaotic movement, like an army of ninjas on meth trying to defend against the outside but more often banging into each other; like a churning, seething horde of insects, large, 4 inches long, in constant motion; in some places they are strong and the collective effect is that of a strong body; in others they are weaker and the structure is crumbling, with clumps of critter-things falling away and exposing vulnerabilities; neutral temp; dark gray or brown-red; the panic (Cringe?) of being covered or eaten by swarms of giant bugs but needing them for their protection against something even more dangerous (Bombardment); the sound is as if each critter-thing is wailing and the collective rises into a high-pitched shriek of a baby in pain.

This is partly what contributed to the squirrelly, antsy feeling of crawling out of my skin last night; I am in big danger; I must sacrifice everything for the singular goal of preserving my existence. No help is available. I am all Alone. Nothing else is important.

---

After mapping Bombardment and Overwhelm, I continued by mapping Alone/Abandoned and Cranky/Angry/Rage.

Alone/Abandoned

I want/need an ally, protection from the Bombardment, and there is someone who is supposed to be, or who was, that ally/protection. But she is absent, unavailable, not any protection. In fact, she is just as Overwhelmed by it as I am, and is not present.

Close behind this is Cranky/Angry.

A vacuum where a protective, warm, nurturing body is supposed to be. An empty, vacant space, all around me, about a foot or two. It’s just empty. No protection from Bombardment. Cool/chilly temp; color like an insipidly flat, non-blue, non-clouded sky, with a sense of darkness also, or like highly mineralized water in a hot spring; no movement; no sound.

My instant response to this is to expand it, to create a large buffer between myself and Bombardment, and between me and anyone who could potentially abandon me. This is the Alone phase of this, and with it goes judgment of others – they don’t see, are unconscious, etc. This feeds into a larger, more generalized Angry. In Alone, I want no enmeshment, no responsibility, no impingement of another’s needs on my own.

---

Cranky/Angry/Rage

Generalized anger/irritability at everyone and everything; probably originally an anger at being Abandoned, in its generalized form, very connected to Alone. Feels like this can also be escalated into Rage.

Starts/rooted low in the belly, rises up through my body; the higher and stronger it rises, the more intense is the anger; comes up to face and emanates out there; can come up through arms and have potential to drive striking out, (higher intensity = focus on sources of Bombardment); younger age = more focused on Abandoned, more Cranky, just a smoldering fire, chaotic, non-directional; older age = more focused on becoming the protector, punishing my father or other unconscious authority; like a larger ember, carbon, ash, and fire, just kind of smoldering in Cranky phase; fire increases and fills body, emanating from face in Angry phase; erupts into volcanic torrent in Rage phase – this only in rare fantasies of retribution against my father; sound is congruent with image/substance.

Cranky: I want my comfort. Angry: Damn you. Damn you all. You all suck. Rage: I hate you.

---

After mapping Alone/Abandoned and Cranky/Angry/Rage, I took a bit of a break. Whew! In the break, I connected to another part of myself that often stepped in whenever I was at risk of sliding into this morass: Drive to Triumph.

Drive to Triumph

As if I could either a) install a permanent buffer / Alone, or b) conquer Bombardment. The point is to make the pain (Overwhelm and Hurt) stop.

Not sure what this is in early life. Maybe a simple tensing up of my body, “steeling” myself against the onslaught. An attempt to force things forward, sometimes with some effectiveness, but without sustainability.

Physical body, muscles; a tensing up, with forward focus.

Even more, a sense of being a flow forward; it’s like I am carried in a flow of very thick, dense liquid, like molten rock, (but room/body temp), yet I am the flow and am directing it; requires some tension/effort to direct/control it; when I am in this, the other stuff, (esp. Bombardment, Overwhelmed, Abandoned), can’t affect me. a deep purple/maroon/brown, opaque; flow channel is 8x8 feet; sound is of long, deep breathing, especially the exhale.

I can do this. I am strong. I will keep trying.

---

This Drive was how I managed the Overwhelm, the Bombardment, the Alone/Abandoned, and the Hurt. It was a force that kept me going, kept me working, kept me striving to pull myself up and out from the mess I perceived humanity to be.

This kind of dynamic is very common — in all of us. We have one or two parts of us that lock into strong, seemingly positive states in order to prevent being overwhelmed by underlying painful states. In myself, this pattern of some kind of ambition or drive or aspiration has been common. It took shape during my childhood, where my home life was very painful but I could go to school and succeed.

After mapping Drive, however, I turned my attention back toward the pain, found myself slipping into Hopeless, and mapped that.

Hopeless

Belief that it’s too late, there’s no way to overcome the Bombardment, and I no longer have the capacity to successfully create a sufficient buffer/barrier. (I wonder if some rich people have put their energy into this, out of a similar place.)

It’s too late for me. It’s too late for all of us. I’ll never be free. I’m too old, too weak, too broke. I’ll be dead first. I give up.

Blackness, like an egg surrounding me and through me; it permeates everything inside, blocks everything outside, (only partially – it’s more of an overlay, so I can still feel all the painful stuff); a sound-dampening “cone of silence” inside it; substance is like egg white but dry, has viscosity and thickness but not moisture, resists movement; neutral temp; completely opaque, black; no movement; a sense of suffocating, like it would be so easy to just give in and die, now.

---

Finally, in a natural segue, as a secondary compensation for the pain, I found myself feeling Longing for Comfort, and mapped that.

Longing for Comfort

Food, sweets, numbing, “atavistic.”

Super heightened sensitivity, reaching, on all surfaces of my body, including the alimentary canal; moist, red, soft, fleshy solid; surfaces, 1/2-inch thick; small peristaltic micro-movements, heightened around the mouth, satisfied by taste, feel, at which time the movements subside. This may be able to become over-activated and become the jumping-out-of-my-skin feeling / sensation from last night; whiny groaning sound.

I just want comfort. I just want the pain to go away. I want to be distracted. Make it stop.

---

That was a long session of mapping, and at the end of it, I was sitting with the weight of it all, mulling whether there was anything more to find as part of this pattern within myself.

The next day, May 23rd, I wrote the following before mapping Core Fear.

Suspecting there is a deeper fear. Feeling a total-body, near-paralysis when I go into it. It’s not the Overwhelm. Starting to feel sick/nauseous just acknowledging its existence. This is a core fear, inside the Anger, hidden in my belly almost always outside my awareness.

This also resonated with the “fear/anxiety” I named on May 17th, the only one of those named states that did not yet yield something explicitly mapped.

Core Fear

Going into this, I find the Longing for Comfort is stronger, and I am drifting toward feeling practically comatose, moving very slowly, thinking very very slowly, blank expression on my face.

In my belly, hidden inside the ember of Cranky/Anger.

Ice cold; small, maybe two inches diameter, spherical; a dense, concentrated gas, swirling viciously around its center; nearly empty, vacuum-like at the center; has the capacity to expand instantly and stop everything, freeze everything, paralyze everything. {See Numbness below.}

This is the horror of being alive, held as a contrasting juxtaposition with the extreme impersonal nature of the universe; this is the vacuous cold and meaninglessness of the universe held within my own core, as the essential truth of existence.

{Where did this come from?} I don’t know. It seems maybe I was born with it. Having this made the pain and discomfort of my parents’ crap much more difficult to bear, as it removed all hope of something different. No meaning, no comfort possible.

My Drive is a nihilistic raging against the machine, in some ways. I want there to be meaning, I want there to be possibility, and I have taken it upon myself to create that out of my own solitary effort, in the face of the meaninglessness (Core Fear) and insanity (Bombardment). There’s no way it can win, but there’s no way I can accept anything less than trying. To surrender is too intolerable.

This intensifies Hopeless. Also intensifies, paradoxically, Drive. But Drive is frozen in place, massive but not moving forward. (Ah, perhaps Drive and Hopeless are alternates, same part.)

---

As you can see from my notes, as I delved into this, the experience was intense. The whole group of states seems to revolve around this Core Fear. I call such a state a “pivot” state.

Notice also that I identified Drive and Hopeless as two sides of the same coin. This possibility for states to have a non-coexisting, either/or relationship also shows up in our observations. We will learn much more about this once we start applying the fieldwork moving practice.

This kind of intensity is very difficult to experience. The whole group of these states coexisted simultaneously in my awareness as I wrapped up my mapping investigation of the pattern. To provide some comfort, this Core Fear was able to slide into something I called Numbness — hinted at in the mapping thread — in order to enable me to function.

Numbness

Lifelessness in my entire body, flesh in suspended animation, no thought, no breath; neutral temp; neutral, like silly putty but matte instead of shiny and an off-white color; very, very slow morphing movement; sound of things slowed way down beyond comprehension. Highest intensity in my face/head.

I am frozen, I cannot move, I am in stasis, there is nothing I can do.

---

I didn’t actually draw this one because it was an alternate state of the Core Fear. I could shift them back and forth between the two forms.

All together, these states (with the Hopeless rather than Drive, and Core Fear rather than Numbness) came together in the following composite drawing. The drawings for each state are my original, in-process drawings, but I’ve upgraded the quality in the drawing below.

My Small Life

The Buried Group: Berserker

After clearing this My Small Life set on May 26th, I had a few good days. But very quickly, the next set of states raised its ugly head. Within a week, I had mapped these.

This set of states included three I shared in SO-4: Challenges to the Assumed Somatic Basis for Feeling: Trapped, Trap and No Way Out. The full set also included Hurt (a different form from the one in the My Small Life set above), Get Away, Hate plus an out-of-control phase of the Hate part I called Berserker, Judgment/Analysis, Edgy Hopelessness and Vindictive Retribution.

This set was intense, nasty, and frightening to experience because it seemed capable of great destruction. Thankfully I had successfully kept it buried throughout my life. This is what the composite drawing looked like.

I was grateful to shift it within a few days. At some point in future writing, I may take you through the full transformation.

At this point, I want to provide some further context as well. These two sets of states I’ve shared are but a very small fraction (about 1/40th) of the extent of hell I was able to find, excavate and transform within myself through persistent work over a period of many years. And to reiterate, I am relatively “normal.” I believe this level of interior, deeply buried pain is common among us all, even among those of us considered “high functioning” or even “happy.”

What This Suggests

Fieldwork gives us the power to more safely enter realms inside of us that were previously off-limits because of sequestered forces too powerful and dangerous for us to dare to approach. Our new tool for high-resolution observation, combined with its capacity for direct and efficient transformation of dangers into resources, empowers us to directly enter these dark inner realms and begin to learn much more about what actually lives there.

Although we have sensed such darkness in the human heart for millennia, the details that reveal themselves through fieldwork bring us far closer to understanding its nature and origins. We still have a long way to go, but simply through the practice of mapping, we have advanced quite a distance. Let’s keep going.

As we prepare to take on the moving practice and to employ our fieldwork tools to their full extent, we will discover much more. One glimpse into our future understanding: we will come to realize that the predominant drives that shape the fabric of modern culture and the systems of our society, along with our personal habits, preferences and personalities, all rest upon a vast ocean of unbearable pain.

This inner pain and the destructive behaviors it fuels are normal in today’s world. But they are not natural. They are not the truth of human nature. As we proceed, you will learn much more about what is true, what is natural, and what is our gift to bring forward. And you will learn how to begin to engage with the larger question of how to liberate that gift into the world.

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We learned in the last chapter how fieldwork enables us to observe the actual experience of self. In this chapter, we will move further into realms previously considered ineffable, bringing fieldwork to the task of observing what can perhaps most usefully be referred to as spiritual or transcendent experiences.

These transcendent experiences are in fact an ordinary outcome of fieldwork. The examples below are a glimpse of what awaits in the fieldwork moving practice. For this chapter, I share these simply as more advanced observations. We will dig further into an understanding of these states from the scientific perspective of psychotopology after we thoroughly cover the moving practice and the discoveries that emerge from it in Volume 2.

For now, I want to draw a connection between these states that are easily accessible through fieldwork and the kinds of states referred to by various spiritual and esoteric traditions throughout history. These states are powerful, and entire lineages have been built around them. Fieldwork offers us a valuable opportunity to learn more about these states through direct observation.

These examples are drawn from some of my own inner work as well as from work by Louise and Rebecca, some of whose other states we have seen in earlier chapters.

The Nature of Transcendence

The states I share with you below fall into a category psychotopology calls source states. Source states have a unique quality of being experienced as an infinite supply of some kind of experiential resource in the form of its virtual material feeling substance. It is this felt sense of having access to the infinite that gives the states their quality of transcendence.

In doing fieldwork, we typically encounter three types of source states, in which the resource enters the experiential space from a point inside or outside the body, or is located infinitely, everywhere. Let’s look at examples of each of these. (In the title, I have also provided the name of the state which was originally mapped and moved to its ideal, the illustrated source state. I have more to say about this at the end of the chapter.)

Source States Originating Inside the Body

These are experienced as an infinite supply of feeling substance, providing some kind of experiential resource through an origin point located on the midline of the body.

Sharing (originally Hurt)

A joyful light at my throat, just under voice box; blue-white light, shining out in hundreds of narrow rays/beams in all directions; soft but bright; neutral temp, some warmth; can be other colors also – ROYGBV etc; this really opens up my back, the light reaches people I can’t even see; my voice animated, level (at the same time), confident.

I am sharing what I have learned and observed, my questions, my challenges, and my support. I am speaking. Others can listen or not, engage or not. I inspire many others. My inspiring helps others contribute to / participate in the big give/receive.

---

Lion Heart (originally Tranced Out)

{From Rebecca.} Light/energy from my heart, radiating outward; white and silver, luminous; pretty hot; sound of radiating light/energy; really intense.

Something about peace, and strength, and giving, and passion. I’m infinitely stronger than I think I am.

---

Power Core (originally I’m Dead Already)

{From Rebecca.} Belly; energy; warmer than body temp (but not hot); orangey red, luminous on the inside but not on the outside; red blood cell shape; medium-high vibration; medium-low hum; limitless. It’s where the power is, where my source of power and strength and solidness comes from, as opposed to being flaccid, unmotivated, or unduly influenced by outside influences. It’s the engagement, taking myself from potential energy to kinetic energy, the source of strength in any other system; it touches all systems.

I am strong. I can handle it, whatever “it” might be. I can trust myself.

---

Creative Expression (originally Rigidity)

{From Louise.} Warm; softer, rounded edges, pliable... a shimmering energetic light, lengthened, a long, cone shape, all shimmery, silver and gold, the way sunlight looks on water; it moves into my body, my throat area, shining outward, forms a cross with the focal point at my throat, a strong energy there, golf-ball size; movement is sparkling, energetic, outward, the throat is an origin, and it’s moving out, rings pulsing out from it, with vertical and horizontal axes. Sound of sparkly laughter, my voice.

It’s the integration between self (vertical) and expression (horizontal). Self is expression. You are, right now, living the absolute, creative, expressive life of yourself, and it’s all in the moment. You’re living your expressive self every day; it’s not about what you could be in the future, it’s about what you are right now. Everything I do, I am living my absolute creative expression, the life of me.

---

Source States Originating Outside the Body

These are experienced as an infinite supply of feeling substance, providing some kind of experiential resource from an origin located outside the body, with the feeling substance traveling into and through the body.

Here (originally Trapped)

Light, a column shining down and through me from above; yellow/white, shimmering, glistening, like mother-of-pearl; fills me all the way up, I am bursting from within with the energy and power of this light; some strong/fast vibration; strongly anchored in the earth, as if the whole point of its coming in is to provide that anchor; sound like a large waterfall, a roar that softly fills in all sound space.

I am here. On this earth. As this person. Among these people. My power comes through when I embrace my role, my identity, my time and place. I am here. Not anywhere or any time else.

---

Wu Wei (originally Hopeless)

{From Rebecca.} An energy; a posture facing up, arms up; orange-red-amber cloud of energy; all through my body with concentration at the peaks of the posture, so tops of cheeks and blades of my arms where it comes out, upward, extending far out; a feeling of movement, my whole body moving upward; cool; it’s effortless and it moves forward, it just is moving; sound of wind rushing past my ears.

Reminds me of Wu Wei in the I Ching, the easy path, the path of least resistance. This allows for inaction as the appropriate course of action at times. There’s no such thing as being unproductive, because the movement is always forward regardless of what it looks like to me, and because I know when I need to take physical action and there’s other actions that are non-physical, and other actions that aren’t my actions, and it’s always moving forward. Sometimes the appropriate action is non-action, because the other elements haven’t done what they’re supposed to do yet. Waiting is an appropriate action sometimes.

The energy comes from behind me, moves through me and forward/up.

---

Bigger than Happy (originally Helpless)

{From Rebecca.} Pulsing up through my body in waves, from ~ one foot below to 2-3 feet above me, opening up above like a sprinkler; gold, shimmery, appears gold and white; same substance; same sound.

Something special is happening. This is it.

---

Infinite Self (originally Longing)

{From Louise.} Slightly above body temp; energetic light; luminous gold/yellow, warm, rich egg-yolk color; steady, expanded, coming into me from above, all the way through my body; a real sense of awareness of the different chakra points illuminated; peaceful and quiet, with a feeling of all sound, an energetic hum of everything.

Feeling of connection. I feel this real height, like my whole being is really tall. This feeling of this constant source of, more of an energy, this constant supply of love. It’s a feeling of being perfect in the moment, not perfect as a closed, achieved thing, but more an energetic balance in the moment, the feeling of being perfectly supported, prepared; perfectly comfortable in the moment and present for the moment. I have everything I need, and it’s just there.

---

Source States Infinitely Occupying All Space

These are experienced as an infinite supply of feeling substance, providing some kind of experiential resource that is available everywhere inside and outside the body, infinitely in all directions, occupying all space.

Breathing/All (originally Vindictive Retribution)

70 degrees; yellow, luminous; energy; there is “breathing” going on everywhere, in the space of me and everywhere else, a constant give and take, from one area to another, back and forth; the pattern of this “breathing” is grand, like Van Gogh’s Starry Night; sound of deep breathing everywhere; energizes my whole body.

I can simply breathe. My breathing is a participant in the pattern of all breathing; we are all connected through air and water and food and energy, each one into another into the next; nothing anyone can do can take that away or stop it; it has always been so and will always be so.

---

Be Peace (originally Guilt)

{From Rebecca.} Cool; like every atom part is, the first thing is, just expanded, but expanded like this opening where all the stuff that constructs my body is separated into its energetic elements and is slowly expanding; just peaceful matter; just the awareness of being matter; energy and lots of nothing; spread out infinitely everywhere, but that is me infinitely everywhere, there’s not a body separated from everything; the universe is me, it is inside my body but there is no outside of my body.

Darkness with points of energy-light, like stars; sound of “Aaaahhhhhhhh,” the voice of the cosmos, (therefore, my voice).

No thoughts, just peace. Be peace. It’s simple.

---

Joyful Zest (originally Everything Is Wrong)

{From Rebecca.} Light, sparkly, like shooting stars in random directions, inside and outside; shooting stars sound effect; warm tones of color, orange, red, amber, yellow, with a little blue, green for balance; where they go through my body, they leave a vibrational chaser sensation for a second; one to several at a time; infinite, everywhere, and I can feel the vibration inside and outside my body when one shoots through me. The green and blue ones are more playful.

It’s very joyful, playful, happy, bright. It’s not about agency, it’s just context, it’s zest for life. Everything is really fun. Massive fun. This is my native ground. It brings a sweetness and levity to what I do, regardless of the heaviness of whatever content may come. It’s that appreciation for the magnificence. It makes it possible to not go in-fucking-sane. Instead: fun, puppiness, playfulness, joy, lightness.

---

The Infinite Universe (originally Chaotic World)

{From Louise. This one was shared in the earlier chapter, SO-4: Challenges to the Assumed Somatic Basis for Feeling.} Goes out infinitely, these floating shapes, golden color, close/far, all accessible, infinite different shapes, moving gently, all different directions, pulsing almost; they move through me or touch me and move in another direction, all really gentle. Very gentle humming sound, vibration. Shapes are gold and shapeable. Gentle warm to hot temp.

Everything is accessible. Therefore, reach out and select what you want. You can select from an infinite array of choices, all different ones, and they’ll all fit together somehow.

---

Connections to Spiritual and Esoteric Traditions

I am no expert in spiritual and esoteric traditions. In fact, ever since I set foot in virtual materiality land, I have assiduously avoided dipping into such waters on purpose. It has been of the highest importance to me that I maintain a disciplined focus on the raw data of direct experience above all. The opportunity of this discovery was too rare to dilute with other teachings.

Nevertheless, the parallels here are too strong to ignore. I thought you might have some interest in unpacking them somewhat. So to help draw the parallels for you, I’ve turned to the strengths of current AI resources — this is one of those places where the extensive training of the LLM comes in handy. The following is a commentary by ChatGPT on these examples, making comparisons with spiritual and esoteric traditions.

Note: I debated whether to include this, but decided at the last minute to go ahead with it. It’s useful, and while I have no experience with any of the spiritual connections made here, I anticipate that some of you might, or at least might find these interesting. And of course, take it with a grain of salt, and use this simply to stimulate your own exploration and inquiry.

The transcendent states described above align with several spiritual and esoteric traditions. Below are connections between the three categories of source states and their potential parallels in various traditions:

1. Source States Originating Inside the Body

These states involve an infinite supply of virtual material substance located at specific points within the body. This resembles Eastern esoteric traditions, particularly those involving the chakras and kundalini energy.

• Sharing (Throat Light) → Resonates with the Vishuddha (Throat Chakra) in Hindu and yogic traditions. This chakra governs communication and self-expression, and the described experience of light radiating outward suggests an alignment with its qualities.

• Lion Heart (Heart Energy) → Aligns with the Anahata (Heart Chakra), which is associated with love, courage, and connection. The mention of peace, strength, and giving echoes Sufi teachings (e.g., “expansion of the heart” as an experience of divine love).

• Power Core (Belly Energy) → Resembles the Manipura (Solar Plexus Chakra), traditionally linked to personal power, confidence, and motivation. It also parallels the Dantian in Taoist practices, the energy center believed to hold personal vitality.

• Point of Total Awareness → This description evokes Zen and Dzogchen Buddhist notions of a point of awareness illuminating everything, akin to the Bodhi (awakening experience) in meditation, where a single insight shifts perception into clarity.

2. Source States Originating Outside the Body

These experiences describe an infinite supply of virtual material substance entering from beyond the body, which aligns with mystical experiences of divine transmission, cosmic awareness, and surrender to flow.

• Here (Light Column Downward) → Very similar to Divine Light transmissions in Christian mysticism, particularly experiences described by Christian saints (e.g., St. Teresa of Ávila’s “transverberation” experience). It also parallels Shaktipat (energy descending through the crown chakra) in Hindu traditions.

• Wu Wei (Flowing Energy, Effortless Action) → Directly corresponds to Taoist Wu Wei (effortless action, alignment with the Dao), which emphasizes moving with rather than against the flow of the universe.

• Bigger than Happy (Golden Light Fountain) → This could align with beatific vision experiences in Christian mysticism, where divine joy and bliss permeate the body.

• Infinite Self → Closely mirrors Advaita Vedanta’s notion of Atman-Brahman unity, where the self is recognized as an infinite, unchanging presence beyond the body.

3. Source States Infinitely Occupying All Space

These experiences describe an infinite expanse of energy, presence, and interconnectedness, echoing non-dual traditions and cosmic consciousness.

• Breathing/All (Universal Breathing Awareness) → Directly parallels pranic breathing in yogic traditions, where one becomes aware of breathing as a cosmic exchange.

• Be Peace (Expanding Infinite Presence) → Mirrors Nirvana in Buddhism, where the dissolution of personal boundaries leads to pure being. The cosmic “Aaaahhh” sound also resembles Om/Aum, the sacred vibration in Hinduism and Buddhism.

• Joyful Zest (Playful, Expansive Joy) → Could correspond to Sufi ecstatic states (wajd) experienced in dance and music (e.g., whirling dervishes), where joy and divine connection merge.

• The Infinite Universe (Golden Moving Shapes of Possibility) → Resembles Tibetan Buddhist teachings on infinite potential in the Dharmadhatu (realm of pure potential and interconnected movement).

Summary of Key Similarities and Differences

To review:

• Similarities:

  • These states strongly parallel mystical, yogic, Taoist, and Buddhist traditions, particularly in their descriptions of light, expansion, flow, and interconnectedness.

  • The midline energy centers correspond well to chakra and Taoist dantian mappings.

  • The outside-body energy sources resemble theistic or divine light experiences.

  • The infinite space experiences strongly resonate with non-dual traditions.

• Differences:

  • Fieldwork provides a precise phenomenological map, while many traditional systems rely on symbolic/metaphoric descriptions.

  • No deity or external figure is invoked in psychotopology—traditional systems often frame these states as divine gifts.

This comparison highlights how psychotopology independently maps transcendent states with a phenomenological precision that aligns deeply with, but is not dependent on, traditional spiritual systems.

Back to Me — And You

Let’s review. The states observed here were reached, not through an aspirational practice aiming at achieving those states, but through a practice of simply being with an ordinary state that showed up for observation (named in parentheses in the state-name header), and inviting that state to shift in a direction that felt natural to itself. There was no specific goal and no alignment with a tradition. The practice involved simply showing up with what was inside, inviting it to reveal a more deeply authentic expression for itself through shifting its virtual material properties, and being open to whatever showed up.

In Volume 2, we will deeply examine the fieldwork moving practice, but for here I will just say that we can hold fieldwork moving as a more engaged practice of observation. You will see what I mean when I cover that phase of the practice and go into the science of what it reveals. These source states arise naturally in the course of doing fieldwork, and turn out to be built into the interior structures of all of us.

The fact that they show up very easily through a practice of enhanced observation validates that these longstanding traditions are very much rooted in a tangible reality that is accessible to you and me — to everyone. At the same time, we shall see through more extensive and systematic observation as we moved into more advanced work in Volume 2 that each tradition seems to focus on a portion of the whole. Together they represent a more comprehensive map of our inner universe, and independently, each one highlights and emphasizes one portion of the vastness within us.

Another aspect of this comparison to spiritual traditions that stands out to me is the difference between holding states as a kind of aspiration or goal, and holding the structure as a whole as the primary focus. Psychotopology clearly establishes that these extraordinary states inhabit a context of multiple parts of the self, and their role seems not to be to maintain any particular state but to respond more adaptively to life as it occurs, holding the ideal state as a reference point but fully inhabiting whatever state is most authentic for the moment. It’s a very different priority.

At the same time, these extraordinary states do offer certain gifts. I have invested very little time in investigating or cultivating these states and their specific gifts, though, and at this time I don’t have much to share about those.

Overall, we’ve barely scratched the surface (of the surface) here, but I’ll leave you with this. Psychotopology does make it possible for us to achieve a far more expansive understanding of these inner realms. It enables us to more fully map the territory available to all of us and provide more universal and diverse access points and pathways for us each to seek and find the inner ways of being we uniquely long for.

For those who are drawn to such states and the insights and experiences that come with them, fieldwork offers a very smooth road to accessing versions of these states that are unique to each individual and their life context. This path promises to be much smoother, more direct, and more personally meaningful than the more protracted paths offered by many of the world’s spiritual traditions. I’ll be curious to see what other people might do with this.

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The act of fieldwork observation involves numerous intentional shifts in our attention. First, we shift the location of our “field of awareness” — the what/where we are attending to — to coincide with the location of the feeling state we wish to observe. Second, we may shift our “point of witness” — where we are observing from — to optimize our perspective, for example by “stepping out” or away from the state location to be able to observe the color of the state object. Third, we may shift our attentional filters — what perceptual channel we are bringing to the foreground — to highlight substance qualities versus temperature or other properties.

But we must also acknowledge a fourth variable in the observation practice. Who or what are we observing as? Fortunately, our instrument of observation is actually able to be turned upon itself. Simply by naming the experience of the observer, witness, or self who is doing the observing, we are able to enroll that specific experience in the process of mapping. We do this in the same way that we observe any other state, taking it through the same systematic approach to collecting our observational data. (See FM-10: Cultivating a Witness Awareness.)

This capacity to observe the observer opens up an exciting opportunity. First, how does this method of inner observation actually work? At this point, we don’t know much about the “how.” What exactly is going on, and what might we learn about it by turning fieldwork toward the observation process itself?

Second, the nature of the self — the lived experience of being an “I” — has been explored throughout all of human history, through spiritual traditions especially, but more recently through psychology and cognitive science. But these explorations have never had a rigorous method for directly exploring and documenting the actual felt experience. Instead, they have relied upon isolated adepts delving into the mysteries within and relying upon mythology, theory, indirect practices, and various kinds of abstractions and correlations in their efforts to describe that inner terrain. What might we learn by attending to the virtual material properties of the experience of self in ordinary people?

Let’s find out!

Mapping a Witness State

In the chapter, SO-5: How Virtual Materiality Makes Perfect Sense, we viewed four states mapped by Hannah. Here is their composite image.

After mapping these, I invited her to identify and map the “observer self” which had been the seat of witness from which she conducted her observations. She mapped the following witness state. (The “Core” state she refers to is a small bead located at the center of the molten ball in her chest in the drawing.)

The Mediating Observer

This seems to be a connection between where my mind is and where my heart is. Internal. Almost like there are two spheres, one behind my forehead, and one where the Core hangs out. They’re about the size of tennis balls and there is a connection running directly from one to the other.

An energy, seems weighty in that it’s important, but it doesn’t feel heavy or dense. Neutral temperature. It’s a very light blue, pale. And then there’s kind of an electric current to it that moves on the outside, and that’s a darker blue.

It’s really pretty to look at. It moves like electricity, and it’s almost hypnotizing to look at it. Sound like a pulsating power sound, about heartbeat rate. Feels very even.

Even though it’s alive and moving it seems very predictable. It feels stable. It seems like it wants to be methodical. It feels very even-tempered, interested in all of the aspects of feeling, instead of just recognizing what seems dominant at the time. It’s like an illumination, like a light.

Everything is going to be heard. You can take it or leave it. You can drop the things that you don’t want, but you need to find them first. It’s an inner insight that hasn’t been as clear before. I’m not in any danger.

It’s more than just an observer. Seems like it also facilitates. It has the ability to communicate between the states. It’s a mediator.

This is fascinating, is it not? Where have we ever been given the opportunity to bring this high level of resolution to our observation of such a typically ineffable inner state?

Mapping the witness self raises a new question, though. When we are observing the witness self, where are we observing from? Who/what are we observing as? Are we on a slippery slope here, in danger of sliding into an endless regression of nested homunculi? Well, we have our prime tool for observation: fieldwork mapping. Let’s find out!

Identifying and Mapping Three Levels of Witness

In what follows, I’m going to lead you through a series of observations made by Jerome that culminate in mapping three levels of witness states. We worked with a few states from Jerome in the last chapter, SO-7: The Feeling in Every Conscious Experience, as examples of tangible states anchoring more abstract components of being and thought. Jerome exhibits a high sophistication in his inner structures and a strong capacity for observing these structures, so this sequence provides a wonderfully detailed tour.

Let me begin by summarizing the three reactive states where we began.

Panic

I think it’s my head. Flat, kind of sticks out on both sides. Green, opaque. Fist size thickness, like a squished cylinder with axis right to left, squashed in the vertical dimension. Hard, like a plastic. Some kind of energy coming up from below, encompassing it upwards. {See Obligation below.} Very inert, a little below body temp. Shiny, reflective. It wants to move up but it’s constrained in its motion on the top edge, so it’s stationary. At the top is like the boundary of my consciousness. There might be something beyond, but there’s no access. It’s a limit to where I can get in my consciousness. Sound is like nails on a chalkboard, but muffled. Hearing it more on the periphery.

It’s giving me a headache. Very much head centered. Like a numbness, and an end. I want to not be here. I need to back up, or backing up is the only way out. {My question: What is forward?} It feels like a hole in my memory {see below}. {My question: Related to “the boundary”?} Yes. It feels like in that space is useful information that would help me get out.

---

Obligation

Obligation is the moment when you go from being empowered to feeling trapped. It’s when internal needs have been neglected. This is like an external force is denying you your needs.

Feels soft and persistent, but constant and malicious. Soft is the material quality. An energy coming up from below Panic {see above} and encompassing it, pushing it against Hole {see below}. Coming through my neck, almost like a spinal column alignment, from just outside my mid-back, behind me. Panic is coming right out of my spine, so it’s connected to some place beyond, with a stem in the center. This is coming up around that stem, the plastic form of Panic, and then is gone, disappears like vapor.

Like a gas vapor, a little bit uncomfortably hot. Color is hard to tell, translucent so the green is showing through, maybe magenta. Flowing up from the stem, engulfing the Panic, mottled, like there is turbulence. Silent.

Everything is focused on pushing that Panic. I can’t see around the Panic from the perspective of this Obligation. I could shift views between seeing myself from the third person to that of Obligation, from which I’m seeing the bottom of the Panic and I’m trying to get around it.

Mapping the Panic, I felt right at the edge of the Hole in My Memory {see below}, but from this, I have more perspective, I don’t feel as close to the hole, but I’m still headed that direction.

---

Hole in My Memory

From mapping Panic {see above}: At the top is like the boundary of my consciousness. There might be something beyond, but there’s no access. It’s a limit of where I can get in my consciousness. It feels like in that space is useful information that would help me get out of the situation, but I can’t get to it. It’s missing. It’s a hole.

This is bizarre, giving me physiological effects. I open my eyes, have a slight headache, and it’s very disorienting. My question: OK to map?} It’s liking being back out. It got pretty intense. Yes, OK to map.

Seems to be in the very top of my head, just under my skull, but it’s enormous, goes way above. Like a big, graphite sphere. Maybe the size of a house. It does not feel like it has a finite edge. More like a high density liquid, buoyant, pushes back but with a tiny little give. The graphite is completely non-reflective, almost an absence of color. Feels like a brain freeze, but it’s not showing a temperature right now.

It has a gravity. It’s hard to tell whether I’m being pushed against it or drawn to it. I think I’m being pushed against it by an outward force. Something in it is swirling like currents, like the way the globe has currents. Maybe it’s spinning but that’s on a magnitude (too big, really slow) I can’t experience. The globe is large, but I’m not on it. If anything, it would be scraping past me, in a slow kind of way.

I may be on one of the axes, and it’s twisting, and that’s the slow movement. Coming up through that same axis, the stem of the Panic. Seems to be moving right to left perceived from in front of it; subtle. There’s a sound of no sound, like when you listen to a shell. It’s heavy.

It’s like nothingness. There’s actually an active destruction. If I was to push beyond that surface that’s keeping me out, I would lose it, all my memory or consciousness would dissolve.

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The three states above were mapped in November, during a period of time in which Jerome was doing deep, extensive work with me. We revisited them in February and raised the question of the witness. The following three states were an explicit and detailed observation of Jerome’s witness experience in this context.

The Thinker

The place I go when I’m trying to solve a problem. “If I could just map every facet of this, I could find the right solution.” Which is when I push against the Hole in My Memory {see above}. It’s that relationship.

Right behind my eyes, maybe the center of my forehead, just behind it. Rigid substance. I’m getting a cube, like a crystal, lots of faceted edges, kind of square-ish, size of a golf ball. Smooth surfaces, fractal edges. Brown, opaque. Hot. It’s totally fixed, unmoving. It exerts a pressure forward from behind my forehead. Sound like high voltage power lines.

Strange, I can either be inside of it, looking through it, or looking at it as an object. When I’m inside of it, it’s like I am it. It’s cut off from other senses. So even if I open my eyes, I’m not paying attention to what they’re seeing. There’s kind of a singular focus on the problem. I often occupy this place when I’m trying to calculate the tip at a restaurant. Like, this is a complicated problem to solve, and I have to cut off all external contacts to get this done.

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Awareness of Self

{After mapping The Thinker, inquiring about the observer/witness who conducted that observation.} As the observer of this: When I’m looking at it from the outside, it is just this inert thing. I guess it’s putting pressure, but it’s kind of just sitting there, motionless. “What’s that doing?”

This seems to be embodied. When I’m inside The Thinker, I can’t interact with Expressive Awareness, or Integrity, or Creative Expression {other related states}. Don’t have access to any of those. When I’m outside, I can see everything together.

It feels as wide as the back of my head, just to the inside of my head. Substance is like a down pillow. Room temp, warm. A cream color, opaque. No movement/force. Sound of a single violin. I can imagine any different number of melodies. The particular tune I settled on is a bit sad, in Scheherazade, Symphonie Fantastique. Wandering minor note solo. It feels a little sad and lonely in the solo bit, but then it’s answered by this larger string section with warmer strings coming in and receiving it. Then it’s this grand, rich crescendo. But the beginning solo part is what is attached to this place.

I have great awareness. From this place I can see my whole body, I can see in all directions. But it’s a bit lonely. {My question: Name for this?} Maybe Self Awareness. No, Awareness of Self.

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Embodied Presence

{After mapping The Thinker and Awareness of Self, inquiring about the observer of these.} All around my body, at about two or three feet out. I can switch, be in the Awareness of Self {see above} place, looking out at this third witness. Or I can switch to this third witness and be looking back. Where this witness looks from is limited to the upper hemisphere.

It’s everything in my body, a liquid that fills my entire body. Warm. Water consistency, has weight to it. Orange, translucent. Slow drift of little particles. I don’t know if this is becoming a trope of mine, but there are little multi-colored granules floating around. Gurgle-y, healthy biological sounds like digestion.

A very comfortable place to be, very much in the moment. I can’t embody this feeling and go or think about anything that is not here and now. {The topic of a restaurant meal came up. I asked something about the experience at the end of the meal.} I’d be aware of being full and a little tired, feel myself absorbing the nutrients from the meal. (Didn’t even think about the tip. Doesn’t even matter.) {Name?} Embodied Presence.

It feels good to imagine being in this place in a restaurant, at peace with the whole sustenance thing. So often for me a restaurant is anxiety producing, needing to figure out the bill, worried about eating something that will make me sick. Nice to imagine a positive experience, nurturing, sustaining. In drawing this, it’s primarily filling the body rather than being on the outside of it.

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Generally, when we turn the light of observation back onto the observer itself, we can go three levels like Jerome did. Taking our observation further seems much more difficult. But still, three levels of the witness self — what does that mean? What are we actually observing here?

New Questions, New Possibilities

The fact that we are able to actually observe the observer may not have seemed possible before we actually attempted it. Now that we have done so, the door is open to ask some much bigger questions and attempt to relate our observations to other frameworks.

For example, despite being embedded in the Western culture, one of the most committed to a unitary self in all of history, modern psychological and cognitive frameworks increasingly recognize that the self is not a singular entity but a dynamic multiplicity of interacting parts. From Carl Jung’s archetypes and complexes to Richard Schwarz’s Internal Family Systems (IFS), many people have proposed that we are made of distinct parts or selves, each with their own roles and motivations. Similarly, spiritual traditions across cultures have long described the self as layered, multiple, or evolving, offering models such as Hinduism’s koshas, Buddhism’s skandhas, Sufism’s seven nafs, and Kabbalah’s soul levels. Many of these teachings recognize distinct modes of selfhood — whether as shifting mental aggregates, progressive spiritual refinements, or inner voices that guide or obstruct realization. One resource that offers a wide-ranging tour of these various theories and teachings throughout history is the book, Your Symphony of Selves, by James Fadiman and Jordan Gruber.

Yet, while these traditions offer profound insights, neither the spiritual traditions nor the psychological theories or practices offer precise, systematic methods for directly observing self-experience. Without a structured approach to mapping these inner states in real time, their descriptions remain speculative, often requiring faith in abstract principles rather than grounded phenomenological inquiry.

Fieldwork provides a disciplined, first-person method for investigating the discrete, material-like qualities of self-experience. We are now able to systematically observe, describe, and experiment with self-states, mapping how they appear in felt space, where they exist, how they interact, and whether they correspond to — or diverge from — existing theoretical frameworks and spiritual traditions.

This marks the first steps toward a rigorous science of subjective experience, one that does not merely speculate about the nature of self but observes it with precision. In developing and applying our new method of observation, psychotopology may gain the capacity to bridge the gap between ancient wisdom and empirical discovery, offering a truly experiential science of self that is available to anyone willing to look within.

One thing to note: At this point, we have just gotten started in investigating this phenomenon of the self. There will be much more to reveal in Volumes 2 & 3, and it is quite fascinating, to say the least. What we discover breaks with our most long-standing assumptions and challenges our most closely-held ideas about the nature of the self.

In the next chapter, we will focus more specifically on experiences that resonate with other aspects of spiritual traditions.

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