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Next post (coming): Substance Qualities and Temperature
OK, let’s get this show on the road! In this post, we will dig into the first two fieldwork mapping questions. (Just touching in here? Get oriented by reading the first post in the Fieldwork Mapping Series — In-Depth Instructions for Rigorous Observation.)
As we begin, let’s quickly review what we’re doing here and make sure we’re getting the most out of the fieldwork practice.
First, we take charge of our sophisticated attention apparatus for the purposes of observing our actual feeling experience. (Read Introducing the Structure of Attention.)
In doing so, we seek to direct our field of awareness into the more subtle dimension of feelingmind. (Read The Subtle Dimension of Feelingmind.)
To help us do that, we observe feelingmind experience through a series of carefully structured questions. (Read Question Structures for Directing the Field of Awareness.)
These questions guide us to collect information about the virtual material properties of our feeling experience. (Read A New Method for Observing Inner Experience.)
In conducting these observations, we step into the role of a pioneering, first-person scientist of subjective experience. In taking on this new role with these new tools, we gain greater agency in navigating our own inner world.
Ready? Return to the experience and/or context you have selected, paying particular attention to your felt sense of the feeling state you have chosen to map. Say the feeling state name to yourself to bring your focus to it, and write it down at the beginning of your notes.
Starting with Your First Impression
The First Impression question provides an opportunity for you to begin turning your field of awareness toward the feeling state. It’s not so important what comes out of this question, only that you make an attempt to answer it, and through that attempt you become more aware of the actual felt experience of the feeling state.
Describe in general terms, in a sentence or two, what it feels like to be you experiencing this [feeling state], as if you were telling a good friend.
Start to sink into the actual feeling of that, the way it feels to you in and around your body. Imagine how you would describe this inner experience to a friend. How would you tell your friend what it's like to have this feeling? What happens in your body? What happens in your mind? What kinds of things does it make you do (or want to do)?
Jot down some of these things in your notes. This will become your 30,000-foot map of the territory that includes this feeling state.
Location, Size and Shape
Take yourself through the following question briefly, just to get the general sense of it. Then we’ll break down the language and you can run through it once more in earnest. Substitute the name of the feeling state you’ve chosen to map for the marker phrase in brackets.
If you were to say that the actual, felt experience of this [feeling state] is located somewhere in or around your body, where would you say that seems to be?
Let’s break this question down.
First, as we covered in the previous post that described the structure of our questions, the phrase, “If you were to say…” invites you to open up, relax, and just take your best guess at the answer to this question. There is no right answer. We’re not requiring you to go on the record here, but “if” you were going to say this feeling might be located somewhere, what might you say?
To reinforce this giving permission to take your best guess, we finish the question with, “…where would you say that seems to be?” Here we are not requiring you to be definitive, we are allowing for the possibility that appearances might be different from some underlying reality, and we are saying that we are actually interested in those appearances above all. So go ahead and take a shot at naming those.
Inside this container of permission, we have two more key phrases. The first, “…the actual, felt experience of this…” directs your attention once again to a real, in the moment, direct experience, inviting a felt-sense kind of filter to be in the foreground of your attention scan. The tail end, “…of this [feeling state]…” anchors you back to the feeling state you named at the outset of our process.
“…in or around your body…”
The next key phrase is unique to this question, and is very important, “…located somewhere in or around your body.”
You will discover in the course of exploring fieldwork that the discrete states of feelingmind are not necessarily confined to the space of the physical body. The actual experience of feeling states often extends outside the body, and on occasion can be found to exist entirely separate from the body. The phrase, “…in or around…” gives explicit direction to cast your scan beyond the boundary of your body if that turns out to be necessary or helpful.
Go ahead and run through the question again, allowing the language of the question to direct your attention in ways that can surface an answer that feels accurate for you.
Focusing on Feelingmind
Keep in mind once again that we are paying attention to the channel of awareness beneath sensation and beneath thought. We want to step beyond our ruminations and interpretations connected to this feeling, and to allow the somatic sensations to fall away.
The “feeling state” we are referring to is something beyond body sensation. While it exists in space relative to the space of the body, it is not confined to the body and has no direct connection with the physical sensations of breathing, heartbeat, digestion, muscle tension, etc.
You may find it helpful to close your eyes, and to eliminate the various sensory channels from your attention, one at a time. Release visual images. Release sounds. Release kinesthetic and tactile sensations. Notice that without those primary senses, and even without thought, you are still conscious. What is left is feelingmind. (See the post on feelingmind for a more extensive facilitation of this exploration.) This is what you are mapping.
You are looking to identify a space in or around your body which the feeling you have named seems to occupy, at least to a greater extent than it occupies the rest of the infinite space of reality you inhabit. This will be a space which seems more “alive” or more “present” with the essence of this feeling.
Extra Help
In some cases, for some of you, answering this question for the first time may feel like fumbling in the dark. That’s OK. The following sections provide some extra assistance to help you guide that field of awareness in ways that hopefully support you in locating your feeling state experience.
Systematic Scanning
If you are finding it difficult to identify a specific location, give this a try: do a deliberate, systematic scan of your body and the space around it until you find the desired presence. Start at your feet. Substitute the name of your feeling state for the marker phrase in brackets. Ask the following:
Does any part of the actual, felt experience of this [feeling state] exist in your feet or legs?
As you take in the direction of this and the following questions, consciously place your field of awareness in the region specified by the question. Confirm yes or no. Whether yes or no, move up systematically through the following specified locations:
“feet or legs”
“hips or pelvis”
“waist or abdomen”
“chest or back”
“shoulders or arms”
“neck or head”
If it feels important, modify one or more of these to zoom in or out until you find the location.
Special Case: Outside the Body
Occasionally you will be mapping a feeling state that cannot be located anywhere in the body. If you still come up empty after scanning the entire body, use the same question structure to inquire into the spaces around your body.
“Does any part of the actual, felt experience of this [feeling state] exist in the area in front of your body?”
If no, continue with, “behind your body,”
“to the left side of your body,”
“to the right side of your body,”
“above your body,” and
“below your body.”
In most cases of a feeling state being located outside the boundary of the body, it is actually making contact with the skin, often penetrating the skin into the body to a certain depth. Very occasionally, a feeling is entirely disassociated, and may be as far as several feet from the body. This is rare, but entirely possible.
Special Case: Whole Body
Sometimes we may be mapping a feeling state experienced as filling the entire body space. If that seems to be the case, confirm with finer-resolution questions:
Does this [feeling state] fill your whole body?
Is there any part of your body which does not have this [feeling state] in it?
Does this [feeling state] extend outside your body, beyond any part of your skin?
The feeling state could occupy the full body and beyond, extend outside the body a few millimeters on all sides, or as far as many feet or farther in specific locations and directions. Or it could occupy the full body but stop just inside the boundary of the skin by a few millimeters or more.
Special Case: Everywhere
As we will see when we get into moving feeling states to their ideal expression, some states will expand infinitely. These are often experienced as what may be referred to in other traditions as unity consciousness, divine mind, infinite presence, and other designations. In psychotopology, these are a standard part of the structures we uncover, one type of function within the nine that comprises the experience of self.
It’s unusual for us to map one of these ideal states right away, but certainly possible. So be open to it if you find yourself heading in this direction with the experience of the feeling state you’re mapping. In a state like this, the location might be described as inside and around the body, extending infinitely in all directions.
Special Case: Multiple Locations
On occasion, you might find yourself noticing that multiple locations seem to hold an active presence as you scan for your feeling state. Sometimes this can be a single feeling state that extends through several parts of the body. At other times, though, you may be picking up two or more distinct feeling states which have come into awareness at once. To help bring clarity to your experience, ask the following questions:
Are [ location A ] and [ location B ] distinct and separate regions, or does one extend or merge into the space of the other?
Do the feeling states at [ location A ] and [ location B ] seem like they are two areas of the same feeling state, sharing similar qualities or essence, or is it possible they are two distinctly different feeling states?
If you identify that these seem to be two or more distinct states, ask which location seems more important to work with. Check in to see if that location corresponds to the feeling state name you chose to map. If not, come up with a more suitable name for the new feeling state before proceeding. Either way, make sure to note the other locations for future mapping.
Double Checking If Necessary
If after this thorough scan you have still not discovered the location of the state you have named, go back to your memory and notes, and explore alternative feeling states, or alternative names for the same feeling state, searching for something that seems strong enough to invite a successful identification. You want to work with a feeling state that feels palpable, tangible, perhaps something that actually affects your body sensations because of the relative intensity of emotional activation.
Identifying Size and Shape
Hopefully, you’ve landed on where your feeling state seems to be located. Let’s complete the location scan by getting more precise.
And in this location, what kind of size and shape does this [feeling state] seem to occupy?
With this follow-up question, we are inviting your attention to zoom in and specify how big and what shape is the space occupied by the feeling state you’ve located. If it seems difficult to identify the size, offer some comparison objects. It is often much easier to answer a yes or no question asking about a specific size than to arrive at the correct size out of nothing. Start with a comparison object about the size of a loaf of bread, and work your way up or down from there depending on whether the state seems smaller or larger.
Is the actual, felt experience of this [feeling state] smaller, or larger, than [an egg, a loaf of bread, a watermelon, etc.]?
In the case of a whole-body feeling, you will want to find out specifically where the feeling ends.
Does this [feeling state] stop precisely at your skin, or does it stop somewhere beneath your skin or extend beyond your skin, outside your physical body?
If stopping before or extending beyond the skin, ask how far.
If you have difficulty identifying the shape of the feeling state, look for hints in how you have described the location and size so far, and expand upon those. Also imagine how you might describe it to someone else, and pay attention to spontaneous physical gestures that might arise. Gestures are wonderful indicators for location, size, and shape. (Keep this in mind when you facilitate this process for someone else.)
Does this “square” feeling state seem flat, or more like a cube?
Does this “round” feeling state seem spherical like a ball, flat like a dinner plate, or more extended like a cylinder?
Be prepared to elicit some unusual shapes. Anything is possible in the form and structure of the felt sense. Some possibilities to be aware of include the following:
Hollow objects — These may include spheres, cubes, ovoids, cylinders and other shapes. Other forms may be inside these or they may be empty.
Doorways, gateways, and extra dimensions — Doorways or gateways can be of any size or orientation, and seem to open or connect to “other dimensions,” other people, or some experience of energy. Extra dimensions show up when a feeling-state object which seems to occupy a specific space relative to your body also seems to occupy a different space, perhaps much larger, when examined from inside the shape. If this kind of idea or perception arises for you, don’t worry for now about trying to understand it. Simply accept that these perceptions correspond to some aspect of your feeling experience that is important, and use whatever words seem most useful to refer to the experience.
Multi-part shapes — These are sometimes connected and sometimes not. If you continue the questioning process and discover that they have different properties, then you are probably working with two different feeling states and should probably do the complete mapping process with each. If they have highly similar or identical properties, they are more likely to be apparently separated forms of the same feeling state.
Make sure to also notice things like the orientation of the shape relative to the body. For example, is a flat round disk oriented vertically, parallel or perpendicular with the side-to-side plane of the body, horizontally as if lying on a table, or sitting at some other angle?
How much detail?
Feelingmind perception can be very sensitive in some people, allowing for a level of detail that can be surprising. For others, answers to these and other questions have a much lower resolution. At both ends of the spectrum and everywhere in between, working through these questions will strengthen your feelingmind awareness with many benefits.
If you are one of those with high sensitivity, don’t take too much time to get overly specific. The overall gist of the state will be sufficient to get the results of the work.
If you are one with a lower sensitivity, no worries. Many times, shape will become more clear after some of the other questions, and when you draw the feeling state later on.
Make a few notes to record what you’ve discovered, and when you have a pretty good description, it’s time to move on to substance and temperature, which we will cover in the next post.
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.