Beliefs, Drawing, and Final Review
Fieldwork Mapping Series, #8
Previous post in this series:
Next post:
We have almost arrived. In our last post, #7, Color, Movement, Sound and More, we finished capturing our observations of the virtual material properties of our feeling state experience. In this post, we will wrap things up by surveying the thoughts and beliefs connected to this state. (Just touching in here? Get oriented by reading the first post in the Fieldwork Mapping Series — #1: In-Depth Instructions for Rigorous Observation.)
Ready? Say the feeling state name to yourself to bring your focus to it, and continue taking detailed notes as you go.
General Beliefs and Thoughts
Every feeling state we map is an anchor for a particular component of our total conscious activity. We will get into this broader architecture eventually, but we’ll lay some of the groundwork for it here. This is the point in the mapping process where we turn our attention to the dimension of thought as they live in relationship to the feeling state we have been observing.
The purpose of the belief questions is twofold. First, eliciting belief statements serves as a record of your starting point. Most of the time when you are mapping a feeling state, it’s because there is an element of suffering involved and you are intending to shift it to a more resourceful state. Because the belief statements tie the feeling state to meaningful context, they can be helpful later in recalling just how distressing this state used to be. And that can add appreciation and continued motivation for the journey back to wholeness. Quite often you’ll look back and wonder how on earth you could have thought that way. I love those moments.
Another function of the belief questions has to do with the more advanced skills for mapping and moving all nine feeling states in a set. (We’ll get to that soon enough.) In brief, belief statements operate in the realm of thought, and thought is the connective tissue linking one feeling state to the next. A statement arising from one feeling state often demonstrates a link pointing to another feeling state that has not yet been identified. Following the trail of belief statements is one way to seek out the full configuration of feeling states.
For now, in the basic practice, hold the purpose of the belief questions as a useful record of the meaning and context for the feeling state you’re mapping.
Asking About Belief
Our goal is to invite stream-of-thought statements arising naturally from the place of the feeling state we’ve mapped. As before, either fill in the feeling state name for the marker phrase, or just read it as is.
How would you capture in words what seems most true, or real, or important, from the perspective of this [feeling state]?
As before, the phrasing of the question is key. Let’s take a look through the various components of the question sentence.
“How would you capture in words” invites us to access something that may not exist in language as its native form, and to use words to “capture” it for the record. An alternative phrasing is, “How would you express in words…”
What follows, “…what seems most true, real, or important…” invites us to probe into the heart of things, but to do so lightly, capturing what “seems” to hold that central status while acknowledging that the way things are held may or may not correspond to some larger or more objective standard.
The final phrase, “from the perspective of this [feeling state],” invites us to hold that what comes forth in this inquiry is the unique point of view held by or from this specific feeling state, not necessarily held by any of the rest of the whole self. This provides the freedom to string together statements that other parts of the self may not agree with.
What we’re going for her are simple statements that seem, from the perspective of the feeling state being mapped, to be so true as to be obvious, hardly worth stating out loud because they are so implicitly assumed. Statements at this level are gold for revealing the role this feeling state plays in the whole pattern under inquiry. (We’ll get to patterns, sets, and constellations further on.)
Sometimes you might draw a blank with such an open-ended prompt. If so, use the following possible sentence stems as prompts.
How might you complete the sentence:
I am, or I’m not…
I can, or can’t…
I have, or don’t have…
I need, or don’t need…
I want, or don’t want…
I should, or shouldn’t…
I have to, or don’t have to…
If it seems appropriate and useful, invite a substitution of “you,” “they,” “it” or “the world” for the initial “I.” If at any time you draw a blank with these more specific prompts, don’t push it. Move on. Sometimes you are working with a feeling state that took shape before language and has been suppressed ever since. It may never have developed a mature linguistic connection with other states in the form of articulated beliefs.
Pro Tip: Considering Point of View
When inviting statements of belief, you have the option to choose the broader perspective of “yourself” having or possessing or experiencing the feeling state, or the more narrow perspective of the feeling state speaking as itself, giving its unique slant on life. Let’s take a hypothetical feeling state, “withdrawn,” as an example.
A statement from the perspective of the full self having the feeling state as just one component of experience might sound like this: “I don’t want to get involved. I would rather keep to myself.” A complementary statement from the perspective of the feeling state speaking as the self might sound like this: “I want to keep you safe. You’ve been hurt before in situations like this.” In this case, “you” refers to the whole person while “I” refers to the feeling state which is protecting them by withdrawing.
I would recommend just going with what feels most natural at first. But as you get the hang of this, consider choosing to go with the feeling state speaking from its own perspective. Especially as you map multiple feeling states, hearing distinctly from each part playing its role within the whole pattern can lead to terrific self insight.
At first, this feeling-state perspective might seem more difficult to sustain. Or it can seem strange to have these parts speaking as if they were sub-personalities. Reassure yourself that this is natural, that all of us have these sub-parts of ourselves interacting with each other to create our experience. Bottom line, though: allow yourself to generate statements from either perspective. It’s all good.
When you have one to three clear statements capturing the general thoughts arising from the feeling state, you’ve done enough to move on. On the other hand, if more thoughts are naturally arising and you’re finding yourself wanting to capture them, go for it. Sometimes these loquacious parts can be treasure troves of insight.
Noticing an Inner Voice
As you go through the process of capturing statements of belief, you might notice that the phrases and sentences arise as if spoken within yourself. These inner voices can lead to further insight. Take a look at some of these qualities in particular.
Voice: Is the inner voice your own or someone else’s? If it’s not yours, what gender is it? What age? Is it someone you know? Is there just one voice, or are there more than one?
Attitude: Tone of voice and any meaning conveyed by tone; this can sometimes be a pointer to other feeling states.
Words spoken: These can be quite significant, often things like judgments, chastisement, laments. Record verbatim what you hear.
Vocal qualities: Rate, pitch, intonation, inflection, loudness (these are usually important to note only when they seem particularly significant, not so important to ask about).
Well, that wraps it up for our mapping inquiry. Take a look through your notes, fill in any gaps, make any updates to get your notes faithful to your inner experience. Now it’s time to draw.
Drawing Your Feeling State
In a similar way to that of answering the questions, drawing functions as a kind of interactive dialog between your observing self and the parts of you being observed. You’re testing things out, whether it be the color of the pencil you’re choosing to draw your feeling state or the precise location along the terrain of your body outline. Often, you will discover new things in the process of drawing.
Because drawing is an opportunity for greater clarity and depth in your observation, I encourage you to go all in. If you’re in a hurry or just less attracted to the drawing experience, it’s just fine if you go with the simplest solution possible and just sketch a rough body outline and pencil in your feeling state. At least do that. But you’ll get a lot more out of it if you set yourself up with colored pencils or other art materials, or use a digital app, either on your phone or a tablet. Whatever you’re most comfortable with.
If you’d like some body outlines to use in your drawings, make sure to visit the Fieldwork Quick Start post for links to download either digital PNGs to insert into your drawing app or a PDF with templates you can print.
Whether or not you have colors or an art tablet to use, go for being both creative and precise in your drawing. Try to capture the feeling state as you described it. This is your visual representation of the feeling state you are mapping, and it will serve as a literal map to assist you to returning to this state, whether to prepare for moving it or to understand it more thoroughly.
One advantage of going with a digital solution is the opportunity to use layers to draw separate but coexisting feeling states and then combine them into a composite drawing that shows their relationships. You’ve probably seen a few of those composite drawings here, and I can say it’s very satisfying to put those together.
At some point, I’ll provide more involved instructions for drawing, whether with digital apps or on paper, including ways to deal with certain challenges like drawing a white state on white paper, for example. If that’s something you’d like to see sooner rather than later, let me know.
Again, the most important opportunity in drawing is to stay open to discovery as you draw. Whether it is fine-tuning the state you’re mapping or noticing one or more new states related to this one, you’ll find it serves the process well. Good luck.
Final Review: Any Changes?
Finally, now is a good time to go back through your notes and make any adjustments needed to sync up with new observations you’ve made in proceeding through the full series of questions, digging into thoughts and beliefs, and drawing. And take a look to see if there are any strong hints of yet-unmapped states connected to the state you’ve mapped here.
How much time you spend making sure your notes are aligned with your experience will depend on your own propensities for detail and the purpose you’re bringing to your mapping of this particular state. If you’ve got limited time and it’s important to blast through a set of interconnected states, go for it. You can trust that even the most basic notes, along with the fact of the states’ interconnections, will very likely enable you to return to this part of you when it’s time to move them all.
On the other hand, if you’re wanting to be as disciplined as possible in studying some experiential phenomenon, take whatever time it takes to get it right. As I’ve said, this is a new opportunity to build a new class of science, and we do need to bring some rigor to that effort.
Where We’ve Arrived, and What Is Yet to Come
Well, that covers the essentials of the fieldwork mapping practice. I hope you were able to make your way through easily enough, and that you have successfully mapped (or are in the process of mapping, or anticipating doing so) one or more feeling states.
In the next post in this mapping series, we will go just a little bit deeper into how best to support the observation process within a more scientific frame, making sure we are capturing what is actually there in this proto-language realm of virtual materiality. We’ll learn more about our inner personal diversity, and how to test our observations to make sure they are valid.
In the last post in this series, we will look into how to handle mapping multiple, coexisting feeling states. And we will go beyond related states to identify and map the witness experience more deeply.
Beyond that? Well, there’s a lot. Just staying within this mapping phase of the fieldwork practice, I’ll be sharing a powerful interactive practice called Being With, and I’ll offer a couple of posts taking you through the mapping portion of an actual session I facilitated with a volunteer explorer.
In the months to come, we will apply our fieldwork practice to the investigation of this new territory of the virtual materiality of feeling states. In doing so, we will truly launch our new science. We will discover characteristics of feeling experience that strongly suggest that the experience of feeling is something significantly different from what we have come to believe in our common knowledge, our therapeutic practices, and our mainstream sciences.
After that, we will come back to learn what we need to know about how to use fieldwork to “move” already-mapped states. Doing so greatly expands our powers of investigation, and what we will discover gets our science more fully underway, as you will see.
Reflections
In the course of this series on fieldwork mapping, I would like to ask for your feedback about how well you are able to put these instructions to work. Where do you struggle, what comes easily, and what suggestions do you have for improving how this series supports you and others in doing the mapping? Thank you!
And of course, if you have not yet subscribed and would like make sure to keep up with this series and beyond, please do subscribe. Consider signing up for a paid subscription to participate in the live Engage meetings, where you’ll be able to get your questions answered and more.