Finding Treasure in Not Knowing

(Part IV - The Cambium, Chapter 23)

The eyes of the Future are looking back at us

and they are praying for us to see beyond our own time.

〰 Terry Tempest Williams 〰

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The Reality of Potential Reality

Invention, it must be humbly admitted,

does not consist in creating out of void, but out of chaos.

〰 Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley 〰

The Human Potential Movement (HPM) was a bright idea. Conceived in the fertile soil of the counter culture of the 1960s, fertilised by Abraham Maslow’s theory of self-actualisation, the HPM sowed and sprouted the belief that every human has extraordinary untapped potential, which can be sourced to drive positive changes in the lives of individuals, society, the whole world.

Jumping on the bandwagon of this proposal, swarms of HPM authors, teachers, and coaches promised their clients to help them awaken, develop, and fulfill this elusive resource called ‘potential’. Skeins of followers flocked to the western shore of California, the cradle of neo-wisdom and rumoured well head of knowledge about actualisation of untapped human potential.

Teachings of the HPM were focused on generic ideas of what humans could, in theory, develop or achieve ~ skills such as ›› telepathy ›› distant healing ›› aura reading and other ›› psychic gifts ›› teleportation ›› bilocation and more ~ because ‘everyone has that potential, potentially’.

Despite the fact that those early promises of the ‘human potential teachings’ were never fulfilled, the embers of the idea continue to glow, kindling imagination, hope, and enthusiasm in new parcels of followers, attracted by the glimmer of truth in the cinders.

In all the excitement, passion, enthusiasm sparked by bright flashes of the pure idea of potential and its actualisation, the key concept was never clearly defined. What does actualising potential mean?

The anthropocentric mindset continues to misread actualising potential as ‘a smart and easy escape route from the humdrum of ordinary life’. It continues to misbelieve that the HPM has dug up a magic wand enabling humans to bypass their own suffering, or showing a secret shortcut to enlightenment. And it often fails to mention the code word entelechy [“the condition in which a potentiality has become an actuality.” Aristotle], while using the word potential as a metaphor for ‘already fulfilled promises of self-realisation’.

In real symbiocentric life, dormant potential is intimately and inseparably entwined with the mycelium of frozen emotions, personal and ancestral trauma, negative self-images, and self-sabotaging beliefs. Here are two main reasons for this entanglement:

(A) As long as individual human Consciousness (IHC) holds unresolved trauma memory in its archives, the affected frozen inner creatures tend to interfere with the realisation (or actualisation) of personal potential. They may block entelechy, not least because nothing in the organism can grow and develop independently from everything else.

(B) All immature creatures, whether frozen or otherwise blocked in their development, are themselves carriers of potential. As long as we don’t release and nurture these creatures, their potential remains dormant or latent. You’ll never get the chance to find out what it might be, let alone actualise that potential.

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The Inner Genius

Before I can tell my life what I want to do with it,

I must listen to my life telling me who I am.

〰 Parker J. Palmer 〰

In the Noctarine map, Potential Reality is the territory of the Inner Genius (Inspiration). Viewed through the anthropocentric lens, ‘inspiration’ appears even more elusive than ‘potential’. We have been fed the idea that ‘inspiration’ is a rare gift, reserved for exceptionally talented creative individuals, lucky to be born that way.

While it is true that everyone is born with different gifts and talents, it is also true that everyone has access to this mental function called ‘inspiration’. All vital Faculties and their native functions belong to us ~ the hosts and owners of human Consciousness ~ by birthright.

In the Noctarine map of IHC, Inspiration is one of the vital Faculties, along with Intellect, Instinct, Imagination, Intuition etc. The Inner Genius grants us the gifts of curiosity, inventiveness, and wonder, among others. He enables us to learn new things, ask our own questions, receive new and original ideas. He encourages us to be skeptical, explore the world on our own terms, doubt old ways of thinking, and thereby helps us make up our own minds.

As explored in the last chapter, the Inner Guardian provides guidance based on inner knowing which lives within the territory of First-Notion Reality ~ in the form of trust, faith, hunches, superstition, loyalty, convictions, and other references to past events, memories, and cultural norms ~ along with self-sabotaging beliefs. Much of these intuitive Acknows have been passed down from the past, through our ancestral and cultural lineages.

The Inner Genius has access to knowledge beyond our individual bubble of Consciousness, and beyond past and present Acknows. He provides an essential connection between the individual cell of human Consciousness and the surrounding tissue of collective Consciousness. He has special inner scopes to allow glimpses into potential futures and transcend limitations of time.

The population conceived and sustained by the Inspiration are the Dæmonites [from Greek daimon* = creative spirit]. These creatures are inspirational acts of knowing (Acknows), including ideas, inventions, Aha- and Eureka moments, epiphanies, discoveries, innovative solutions, surprises, original insights, ingenuity. This clan of Dæmonites is relatively familiar, commonly associated with ‘inspiration’ in the conventional sense.

*Please note, daimon refers to the eudaimon = the good spirit introduced in Chapter 6, not to be confused with ‘inner demons’!

A complementary, equally important clan of this inner tribe is composed of curiosity, doubt, exploration, inquisitiveness, research, perplexity, quests, questions, skepticism, and wonder.

The Inner Genius and his tribe communicate in the inner language known as Epiphanese with its vocabulary of asking, exploring, doubting, finding, inquiring, inventing, learning, questioning, searching, seeking, wondering.

Functions and activities of the Inner Genius have been lumped together with the Imagination or muddled up in expressions of the Intellect. It is helpful (and relatively easy) to tell them apart.

In the Noctarine, the Inner Expert is responsible for processing, digesting, and assimilating experiences, information and knowledge. The Inner Artist projects, simulates, propagates, and illustrates information and experiences. The Inner Genius gives us the ability to invent, question, be skeptical, seek out new resources, wonder, innovate, amaze, and astonish.

Conventional perceptions associate creativity with fantasy, a core function of the ‘imagination’. In the Noctarine, creativity falls mainly into the domain of the Inspiration because true creativity implies creating something new and original. Imagination is the great shapeshifter, reproducing the same content in infinite ways and changing outer appearances. Inspiration, by contrast, has the power to regenerate, to breathe new life into the inner world through entirely new contents and perspectives.

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Conditions for Transforming NSEs

I’ve never seen any life transformation that didn’t begin

with the person in question finally getting tired of their own bullshit.

〰 Elizabeth Gilbert 〰

The habitat of the Inner Genius is a treasure island of inner gifts. One of the greatest contributions of this Faculty is the so-called ‘creative daimon’ (aka creative spirit, creative genius, or other personal titles). Elizabeth Gilbert , bestselling author of Eat Pray Love, Big Magic, and a list of other inspiring books, talks about this critical companion for creative writers in her TED talk Your elusive creative genius.

While this creature is indispensable in my writing work, and I credit him with all my so-called ‘writing talent’, I have also learned to appreciate him and develop a mutually beneficial relationship in everyday life. My creative daimon has helped me countless times to resolve inner conflicts which appear ‘unsolvable’ by suggesting unexpected ways of seeing.

The Inner Genius doesn’t ‘think out of the box’. Tied neither to the past or future, he doesn’t live inside any box in the first place. He doesn’t ‘think’ either. Boxes and thinking belong into the domain of the Inner Expert.

The Inner Genius has the capacity to sidestep all conventional boundaries and parameters. He is a free spirit, bound only by the laws of the universe, while communicating with and through the human mind. When engaging in creative work of any kind, including taking a creative approach to handling your own life, the Inner Genius readily slips into the role of the creative daimon.

One of the regular obstacles to understanding suffering and resolving conflicts within ourselves in everyday life is reconciliation with our own negative subjective experiences (NSEs). Here is a quick recap:::

The first hurdle is to recognise the NSE as a message (or series of messages) from immature creatures. This is not too difficult and can be achieved by engaging the Intellect.

The second task is to approach the NSE with compassion and loving attention. This is a little harder because as long as the experience is ‘causing suffering’ I might reject it. It’s a natural instinctive reflex. This response can be overcome by holding both sides of the Instinct in a loving space, where the waves of suffering can go through their natural motions until they find their own equanimity.

The third challenge is to track down a hidden underlying wild belief, which can be achieved through collaboration with the Inner Artist and the Inner Guardian, as shown in the last chapter.

Hot on the heels of the third one, a fourth obstacle instantly presents itself: The wild belief needs to be integrated. Genuine integration can only happen if you wholeheartedly accept this wild immature inner creature. Not just tolerate it to fulfill a formal requirement. Or go along with it as a grand gesture to prove your open-mindedness and magnanimity. No, genuinely accept it.

The entire process of transforming a negative experience into fuel for inner growth only works if and when we are 100% authentic. You can’t fake acceptance of a wild belief. You can’t half-heartedly put up with it and expect a real shift to happen as a result. You cannot trick it into believing some dishonest machinations.

In all communications with our vital Faculties authenticity is essential. In the practice of Kairotrophy no-one gets away with cheating themselves, for obvious reasons.

Authenticity and compassion are two crucial vibes to stimulate transformation from a negative, downtrodden synchronous event into a truly positive, uplifting inner sense of discovering unexpected gifts.

But there’s another essential clue on this treasure hunt, hidden in the eternal laws of the universe. This one is embedded in the deeper meaning of polarity, or enantiodromia, or nonduality ~ all wrapped into one another.

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The All-important Sense of Not Knowing

When working on Zen, the most important

thing is to generate the I chin.

〰 David R. Loy 〰

Thanks to the teachings of Buddhism and quantum physics, we have learned about nonduality, in theory. If you have read some of the work of Carl Gustav Jung, you may have come across enantiodromia too. Jung called it “the regulating function of opposites.”

In ancient Chinese wisdom, the same principle is captured in the dance of Yin and Yang, the pair of interconnected opposites within the wholeness of the universe, driving a self-perpetuating cyclical movement. Quantum physicist David Bohm called this universal phenomenon the ‘implicate order’ and described it as holomovement. (See also Chapter 12)

During my early adult years, ‘challenging the dualistic worldview’ became trendy, in some circles. People talked about nonduality casually, at social gatherings, as if they knew exactly what it’s all about. Too embarrassed to ask ~ ((not wanting to appear uncool)) ~ I made a note to self to figure out what was behind this mysterious phenomenon.

The main discovery I made is that experiencing nonduality in real everyday life is a whole other story than talking about it.

When you hit a roadblock at the mundane level of human existence… when faced with an NSE in the present moment… when swamped by intense uncomfortable emotions, and you can barely hold yourself together… when trying to accomplish an important project, and things go wrong, because a familiar old foe ~ disguised as a self-sabotaging belief ~ pounces on you from don’t-knowhere and drags you into a ditch… that’s where the holistic rubber hits the road.

This is where a practical understanding of nonduality, or holomovement, or enantiodromia comes in extremely handy and can actually help in very practical ways. So let’s take a peek behind the veil of this mystery.

Enantiodromia [from Greek enantios = opposite + dromos = running course] is a universal principle recognised in Ancient Greek philosophy, describing the phenomenon where polar opposites tend to flip into their counterpart, when pushed to their extreme.

C.G. Jung popularised the term enantiodromia in Western psychology and credited the Greek philosopher Heraclitus with its discovery: "Old Heraclitus, who was indeed a very great sage, discovered the most marvellous of all psychological laws: the regulative function of opposites. He called it enantiodromia, a running contrariwise, by which he meant that sooner or later everything runs into its opposite.”

The Buddhist concept of nondualism or nonduality goes a step further by challenging the dualistic worldview, which distinguishes between opposites in the first place. If there is no duality, apparent opposites are ultimately nonexistent.

No matter how true, it can be tricky to get your head around this idea. Even students of Zen Buddhism struggle with this, so we are in good company.

In his book Nonduality, David Robert Loy explains, how novice Zen Buddhists were taught to grasp this fundamental concept. “Ch’an masters used various unconventional and illogical techniques to awaken a student, which in this context means to make the student let go of any dualities that he or she still clings to.”

To let go of ‘dualities that you still cling to’ is not as simple as it sounds. Ch’an masters already knew this and offered effective mental tools.

“Great doubt is necessary,” Loy explains, pointing out a fundamental difference between Zen practice and Indian meditation. “Great doubt here refers to a state of perplexity which becomes so intense that it is experienced physically as well as mentally, and which functions to block conceptualizing.”

Generating the I chin (= doubt sensation), according to Loy and other authors, is the most important thing in the work towards Zen. The English translation of I chin is doubt sensation, or a sense of not knowing.

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Diaspora of the Inner Population

The war between good and evil is in reality an imposition of

stupidity and simplicity over wisdom and complexity.

〰 Tyson Yunkaporta 〰

Dwelling among the principles of Yin-Yang, enantiodromia, nondualism, holomovement, has served me as a powerful catalyst to develop the understanding of human negative subjective experience I am presenting in the chapters of this book.

Contemporary Western Buddhist teachings suggest that the problem with all suffering is our attachment to it. An apparently logical conclusion is the attempt to ‘resolve suffering by non-attachment’.

Sounds good in theory but is incredibly difficult (if not impossible) to put into practice. How can we instruct the autonomous faculties to ‘detach’ from their own natural functions? And would we really want to do so? The Instinct cannot detach from the emotions she produces. (Would you want to ask the heart to stop beating, the lungs to stop breathing, the stomach to stop digesting…?)

So we end up detaching the Intellect from the functions of our Instinct and Intuition, sabotaging the pursuit of wholeness. That such efforts lead to ‘spiritual bypassing’, ‘toxic positivity’, and the continuation of chronic emotional repression shouldn’t come as a huge surprise.

Spiritual teachings claiming to support human healing and ‘return to wholeness’ have been used to separate us from our own indigenous inner world, to displace unwanted inner populations from their own natural habitats ~ following in the footsteps of the traditions of the Abrahamic religions.

In this way, we have collectively been trained to do to our inner world what anthropocentric civilisations have done to our outer world, as captured eloquently by Tyson Yunkaporta: “Most of us have been displaced from those cultures of origin, a global diaspora of refugees severed not only from land, but from the sheer genius that comes from belonging in symbiotic relation to it.”

No wonder our inner populations have suffered the same fate!

The holomovement and its predecessors teach that negatives and positives don’t exist without one another. Negative and positive experiences don’t exist out of context*. In the inner world, negative emotions, negative self-images, negative assessments of events, and negative beliefs coexist. They provide a context for each other. They cohabit and sustain each other within an internal ecosystem.

*I am referring here to subjective perceptions of everyday events as, experienced by individual human Consciousness aspiring towards wholeness (= universal non-duality).

I am not talking about pure evil, which does exist in the man-made world of duality.

That concept of ‘positive and negative’ would be what Yunkaporta defines as: “The war between good and evil is in reality an imposition of stupidity and simplicity over wisdom and complexity.”

The anthropocentric mind tries to eliminate negative events by identifying alleged causes and preventing those, or by superimposing random positive events. Here are two reasons why these strategies never work:::

(A) they bypass and ignore the principles of nonduality.

(B) they try to single out and blame an individual symptom for a dis-ease and to fix symptoms cut off from their natural environment.

The natural functions of Instinct and Intuition have the most profound and far-reaching impact on our so-called subjective experience. Given that negative and positive flip into their counterpart when pushed to their extreme pole of the spectrum, we can use the natural forces of the holomovement to support our inner-work-practice ~ combined with the practice of understanding and the all-important sense of not knowing. (I know, this sounds like a bit of a contradiction, so please bear with me)

When faced with a NSE, instead of trying to sever myself from the vital functions of my own Consciousness, I allow myself to truly experience (= explore while going through) the event from the perspective of each of my Faculties with a sense of not knowing.

This basic practice consists of keeping an open mind while giving undivided attention to the experience.

Viewing my NSE through different lenses enables me to see negative instinctive and intuitive Acknows (= negative emotions and negative beliefs) in their wider web of perceptions, impressions and sensations, without immediately nailing them down into a preconceived framework.

This broadening of perspective alone can move the needle on the negative-positive polarity spectrum and lead to a spontaneous shift from negative to positive perception WITHOUT suppressing, or denying, or trying to kill off any vital aspects of myself. As a result, the whole organism instantly activates her innate self-healing forces. This can alleviate acute situations of suffering.

Chronic conditions ~ such as dealing with ancestral trauma ~ require a more extensive exploration of the inner mindscape. That is where we are challenged to make friends with our wild beliefs. These companions look strangely familiar even though we have never seen eye to eye.

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The Natural Habitat

A degraded habitat will produce degraded humans.

〰 Thomas Berry 〰

When meeting wild beliefs, and approaching them as immature inner creatures with a sense of not knowing, it is easy to recognise that every one of them possess dormant potential of their own. Nurturing wild beliefs awakens this potential spontaneously and stimulates their healthy development towards their own entelechy (= realisation of potential).

The healthy growing process is not something we need to think about. Like any living being, every wild belief contains all the seedinformation and seedpower of her own life within herself.

The reason for any belief to become a negative destructive self-belief is the separation of this living creature from her homeland. Along with this displacement comes what Yunkaporta calls “the severance from the sheer genius that comes from belonging in symbiotic relation to the land.”

Synchronosophy and the Noctarine have taught me how to heal this severance. Many displaced wild beliefs have the innate capacity to grow their own indigenous homeland, and we ~ as the hosts of IHC ~ can nurture them through this developmental process.

Every wild belief is basically a lost creature struggling to survive in the inner wilderness. Negative emotions, negative self-images, negative thoughts ~ and also negative events in our physical, apparently external world, which we call the Sphere of Incarnal Reality ~ all hinge on and are connected to so-called negative beliefs.

This doesn’t mean our negative beliefs are causing NSEs! And it definitely doesn’t imply we should try to eradicate them!!! It simply means that all these negative events are in a symbiogenic relationship with one another. This implies further that nurturing the root beliefs will have a beneficial impact on the entire organism with all its various expressions.

Analogies from gardening may help to comprehend how this works. When a plant is sick, treating it with pesticides and artificial fertilisers is rarely the best remedy. Plants miraculously heal and thrive when they grow in their natural habitat and are rooted in nutritious healthy soil.

If I can identify the natural habitat of my wild belief it will slot into its own ecosystem. Wild beliefs within their natural habitat instantly become ‘self-empowering beliefs’, positive intuitive Acknows who grow into their own power and make their unique contributions to the symbiosphere of my inner world.

A natural and beneficial side effect of this transformation is the sought after ‘detachment from suffering’. By uniting my wild belief with her natural habitat (or nurturing her ability to create her own), the old suffering drops by the wayside like dead leaves falling from my inner tree of life, to become fertile humus for my inner soil.

Further explanations, exercises and resources in the attached downloadable worksheets.

The Practice Of Kairotrophy 5

1.43MB ∙ PDF file

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Missed the earlier chapters? Click the links

The Rootstock of Synchronosophy

Chapter 1 The Mycelium of Synchronosophy, Chapter 2 Sub-Soil of Synchronosophy, Chapter 3 Nutrients for Synchronosophy, Chapter 4 Adjustments to an Unnatural World, Chapter 5 Loss of Self and Identity, Chapter 6 The Destructive Trail of Trauma

The Heartwood of Synchronosophy

Chapter 7 Emotional Messengers, Chapter 8 Love Thyself, Chapter 9 The Birth of the Noctarine, Chapter 10 Subjective Experience, Chapter 11 The Inner Wilderness, Chapter 12 Polarity and Wholeness

The Sapwood of Synchronosophy

Chapter 13, Symphony of Senses, Chapter 14, The Rainbow of Consciousness, Chapter 15 Ancestral Will, Chapter 16 Acts of Knowing, Chapter 17 Powers of Knowing, Chapter 18 Structures of Knowing

The Cambium of Synchronosophy

Chapter 19, Growing a Human Life, Chapter 20, Experiencing Moments of Living, Chapter 21, Translating Inner Languages, Chapter 22, Understanding Acts of Knowing