It’s Been a Year, and Now There’s a Book

Announcing Volume 1: Getting Real with Feeling

It’s done. Really. It’s really done. Here’s the front cover.

Here’s the back cover.

I made my first post here on June 20th last year. It’s still up as the intro post, Frontiers of Psychotopology. And it has been woven in, adapted, and smushed together with the first post in the Science series, One Facet at a Time, to become the book’s first chapter.

That kind of editing, rewriting and reorganizing was a big part of assembling the final manuscript. Many of the posts here found their way into the book with few changes, but many others changed a lot. And a lot of additional content was written and scrapped and written again (and scrapped again, more often than not). It was more work than I anticipated. But well worth it.

In completing this, I may reorganize this Substack over the next week or two, and place all the posts that eventually were incorporated into the book under a new category called Volume 1. It will have it’s own top-level table of contents / map post to make it easy to wander through. That will make space for me to use the Practice and Science sections to begin building Volume 2 later this summer.

Conversation Edition?

I’ve called this release the Conversation Edition. That is because my primary intention is to catalyze conversations with myself and among readers that unpack the realities within us, and the contrast between those realities and the ways we have structured our society. Here’s what I say in the first two pages of the book, immediately after the Table of Contents:

Why Your Involvement Is Crucial

I’ve been working on this for 30 years, and it still is not finished. I’ve had to face that I’ve bitten off way more than I can chew (and I’m losing my teeth). I keep trying to wrap this book up, but every time it approaches completion, new insights come, new ways of framing things, new dot-to-dot connections; and the whole thing begs to be reshaped.

At the moment, what I have to share with you will take a full three volumes of this size. This one is the beginning, just laying the groundwork. By the time I get halfway through Volume 2, I’ll probably want to rewrite parts of Volume 1. That’s how it’s gone from the beginning. And the whole thing will keep expanding in scope and meaning.

Psychotopology is not just a method. Nor is it just a theory. Or even a paradigm. It is a gateway, a portal into a new way of being with being itself, not just individually but collectively. By providing a tool for observing our deepest inner territory with fidelity and precision, we gain much greater access than we are accustomed to.

Our entire civilization is built on workarounds. Our social agreements, our relationships with one another, our own personal habits of attention are strategic compensations for our inability to fully and freely access this territory within ourselves. We live at the mercy of states of distress and shape our behaviors and awareness to minimize those to the best of our ability while attempting to build strong citadels of secure enjoyment.

Psychotopology enables us to let go of this compensatory framework and shift to one of empowerment. Instead of fighting against what we do not want, we gain the ability to first discover, then embody what we do want and to generate thriving within, through and around us.

Every time I try to describe what is possible, though, I run into the same wall. The compensation frame makes no space for what is offered here. Within what is familiar to us, this agency, this freedom does not exist. And so, no matter what I say or how I try to say it, the words land flat.

Words. They are beasts, guarding the citadel. Yet here I am, bound to language in order to convey to you this opportunity to step beyond what you know into something far more generative, far more life-affirming, far more empowering than what we have known in the past.

By definition — revealed by the discoveries of psychotopology that try to shine through here — this book is and will always be partial and incomplete. It needs to come alive in action, in doing, in being, in presence with ourselves and with one another. I beg you to look past this book’s inadequacies and to step into the practices it describes. Find out for yourself what lies within you, within us. Join in conversation with me and with others to begin to weave a living meaning-space among ourselves, a meaning-space which can carry us forward into a new world of possibility.

I believe there is literally nothing more important for us to do than to step into full access to our inner terrain and to begin to reckon with the consequences of having built a civilization founded on the impossibility of such access. Rational objectivity does not provide access to the world we actually inhabit. Only our essential presence of being can do that.

We must start at ground level, with ourselves, with one another, with our families and communities, to build an organic revival of life from the center outward. Only then can we begin to replace the obsessive, outside-in dysfunction we have been inhabiting. Only then can we begin to build a new world in which all of life thrives. We owe this to ourselves, and we owe this to the planet as a whole. Our conversations, in deep resonance with our essential being, can contribute to the emergence of this possible future that powerfully wants to be born through us.

How to Get a Copy

Here’s the link to the US Amazon.com page.

And the others:

• Canada: Amazon.ca

• UK: Amazon.co.uk

• Germany: Amazon.de

• France: Amazon.fr

• Spain: Amazon.es

• Italy: Amazon.it

• Netherlands: Amazon.nl

• Poland: Amazon.pl

• Sweden: Amazon.se

• Japan: Amazon.co.jp

• Australia: Amazon.com.au

Paperback is available in all markets, and some also have a hardback version. If you can get that, I’d advise it, because you’ll likely have this book worn out before long, and the hardback is much more durable. I’ve set these at the rock-bottom, lowest-possible price. That’s because I want as little as possible between you and having a book in your hands.

My expectation is not that I’ll be selling millions of these. Or even thousands. So there’s no point in my setting the price high enough to give me a couple bucks here and there.

Rather, my hope is that, for a few people, this book will speak to a deep longing for the re-centering of our lives in feeling and presence rather than thought and language. Many of you who will be drawn to this work inhabit the fringes of society, and will not have abundant resources to just grab a $30 book on a whim. So I’m hoping this lowest-price strategy will serve you.

In addition, I am more than happy to share a PDF version of the book with you for free. If need be, I’ll look into converting it into an ebook version for you as well. Just reply to this email if you received it as a newsletter, reach out through the Substack DM, or just email to frontiers at the obvious URL.

My vision is for you to get a copy of the book, and to sit with it, work through it, reflect on the discoveries as they sit within your own experience. Then, that you feel compelled to share it with others with whom you are close. Maybe you send them the PDF. Maybe you buy another copy of the print version. Or maybe you just ask them to buy their own copy so you can talk about it with them.

And then, you start to explore together, at first tentatively, one small dip-the-toes at a time. Gradually, as you get the hang of it, you start to see the power in the work, and you invite a few others to step into it with you. And the thing begins to grow.

It’ll be slow. But my hope is that we, together, will be able to begin weaving a network of people experimenting with how to facilitate that re-centering of feeling and presence, first in our own lives, then outward into our communities.

Here in Bellingham

Throughout the summer, I will be hosting a weekly drop-in for people to pick up a copy of the book, experience a quick dip into fieldwork, and ask all their questions. Then, as word gets around, my partner Spring and I will begin to host small inquiry groups. I’ll have more to share about those later.

It’s happening. I’m excited. And I am looking forward to all of the rich and inspiring conversations that emerge from all of this.