Last week I had the opportunity to speak with my partner Spring Cheng for an audience at Humanity Rising, a Daily YouTube Show powered by Ubiquity University. The occasion was a five-day launch announcement for Resonance Path Institute’s Living Resonance Leadership degree program starting at Ubiquity. One module offered in her program is on “psychotopology coaching,” and on the fifth day of the launch, we gave an intro to psychotopology.
This excerpt is a brief look at one session I conducted with a volunteer a number of years ago in the context of a small training. She gave full permission to share her session. The transcript of my presentation is attached to the video above, and also inserted with relevant images below.
Transcript
I started working with Susan, and we immediately went into it. She says something that's really up for me right now in general is receiving, allowing myself to receive, and specifically to receive love. And the first feeling state that we identified was something that she called No!.
I asked her a series of questions about what No! actually feels like, asking about its location and heart level, mid chest, maybe up to my jaw, so in front of her chest. And I asked her about the substance, and it was more solid, A hard solid, a heavy hard solid, like a steel plate.
And I asked her about the temperature. It's like not freezing cold, but cool compared to body temperature. And color was like stainless steel. And so then we would, when we drew it, this is what it looked like. Right? So this is the experience of No! for her.
From that place, we went a little further into some of the other states, and Shame came up. This is what Shame looks like. It's like a little porcupine with spikes out of it.
And when we inquire into Shame, those spikes look like they're protecting something. Is there something inside there?
Oh, actually, yes. There is this Love inside the Shame.
And this, the No!, this is a barrier. Right? There's a barrier between what's in front of her and what's inside of her. So the question is, well, what's inside of you? What is it protecting?
And what it was protecting is something she called Fearful Fear.
So there in the course of, you know, 45 minutes to an hour, we had unpacked her resistance to love into these four clear, distinct feeling experiences that together look like this.
The Love is buried and protected by the Shame. The Fear is guarded and protected by the No!, keep away from me. Right?
The Proto-Language of Material Stuff
The interesting thing is what we're doing with these questions is we are we are unpacking the nebulous ineffable experience of feeling, translating it into what I call the proto language of materiality. We're born — even before we're born — we are bodies surrounded by material stuff. Right?
We have this fundamental experience of embodiment, of stuffness, of solids, liquids, gas, light, energy, warmth, cool. And it becomes sort of the basis for all of our existence. And feeling seems to be made of this stuff. And when we ask questions inviting us to make that connection, like this this No! that you experience, where is it?
Oh, it's like right here. And what what kind of substance? It's like a steel plate. Okay.
It's definitely, when you do this work, it's very clear and it's very tangible. It's like you're turning a light on in a dark basement and, “Oh, wow, there's a box over here. What's in that? Oh, my goodness. I didn't know I had this.”
Shifting All Four States
So this virtual material stuff that makes up our feeling, we can actually interact with it. We can shift it on purpose. We can change that coolness of the steel plate, and and it starts to warm up. Let's go back to this session here, and and let's just see altogether, there they are.
And so the next steps, we're gonna decide, we're gonna shift these. And when you shift the temperature, when you shift the substance, when you shift the color, there's one direction you'll shift it that it feels worse. “No. I don't think I wanna go that way.” And another direction where it feels better.
And that's like a compass needle. You follow the compass towards your North Star for that part of you.
And so we start out with shifting the Shame. The Shame seems to be sort of the center of all of this. Right?
So, when we move the Shame, we set a frame first of, “What would this part of you most want to be in a perfect world, if it had all of its needs met, fully and completely, exactly the way it wanted, what would this part of you want to become? What would it want to feel instead?
There's, this is where the topology comes in. There's an underlying modularity. There's a thingness to what is giving rise to the feeling, to what is being expressed through this feeling, and it has its own purpose. It has its own function and ideal way of being. And so we're inviting it to reconnect with that ideal. And so it goes back to…
So this Shame, started out we we asked, “Okay, substance wise, if you were free to become harder, softer, bigger, smaller, warmer, cooler…?” No more porcupine quills, it would change color, it would be yellow like a glowing sun and really soft, and it becomes pure light or energy. Interesting. And it becomes like a 100 degrees or so. Interesting. And this sort of like egg yolk yellow.
And and so this — shimmery or sparkly — so it becomes this very different feeling that she called Receiving.
Okay? And and then the Love, which was bound up inside the Shame, then it becomes free to move. And so the Love expands, and it becomes Infinite Love.
So let's just… the Fearful Fear becomes Spaciousness, and the No! becomes Exquisite Safety… let's just look at what each of those looks like.
Here's the Exquisite Safety. Remember that steel plate in front of the chest? It becomes this base that is solid for her to stand on. Right?
The Spaciousness that’s sort of surrounding her with this security, this comfort. Right?
The Infinite Love is everywhere inside and around her, infinitely.
And, and this is the, what the the Shame became, this golden what is that called, Receiving. Right?
So interesting that Receiving is there in place.
So let's switch over to the other view where we can see Shame becomes Receiving. And this whole system of these four parts, this block to Love, this obstacle, this No! that is sort of fed by the Shame that is guarding the Love that has been wounded at some point in the past.
We didn't need to go into that. We're just paying attention to what it actually feels like and magical things get to happen.
So, the shift involves how this place of being utterly open to receive an Infinite Love that's available everywhere, always. And from a place of standing on this Exquisite Safety, inhabiting this spacious place. So this is this is what psychotopology looks like. This is what fieldwork does.
Impact: One Month Later
I had an opportunity to followup with Susan a month later, and we talked about the impact of her session. Here are some gems she shared with me.
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.”
The Full Session
Susan shares much more in my interview with her after the session. I am considering posting the full session here, with audio and transcript, along with that full followup, broken into manageable chunks for you. Let me know in the comments if you would like that in the near future.
If you’re eager to access this sooner, please consider becoming a Paid Subscriber. In the Engage section, where I host community interaction for paid subscribers, I’ve shared the password for my online archive of many years of psychotopology gems. For this full session, with video, transcript, and my commentary, here is the link.
Reflections
Here’s your chance to influence how I move forward by adding your reflections in the comments below.
How does this video presentation land for you?
What in you feels like it is being spoken to in this post?
What questions are you left with? What are you most curious about?
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Comments are open to all, and I do hope you will consider also subscribing so we can stay in the loop with one another as this evolves.
Thank you.
Thank you for being here, thank you for reading, and thank you for sharing your thoughts in the comments below. I look forward to meeting you soon.
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