The Concilium of Inner Wisdom I - VI

(Part IV - The Cambium, Chapter 24)

We live in an always unfinished world.

We live in a world endlessly unfolding,

a world groping through the dark not-knowing

toward what it is always yet to become.

〰 Renée Eli 〰

Ahmad Odeh on Unsplash

Dancing with Hidden Treasure

The human heart has hidden treasures,

in secret kept, in silence sealed.

〰 Charlotte Brontë 〰

During the final three years of the 20th century I dedicated the hour between night and day to the practice of writing Morning Pages. At the core of my daily writing at dawn I was holding two questions:

› What is the good reason for negative experience?

›› How does human Consciousness work?

The Noctarine Map of individual human Consciousness (IHC) as a living organism with 8 vital organs (aka Faculties) was the first big answer to these questions, received via inspiration in early 1999.

A second big follow up answer to both questions was the Concilium of Inner Wisdom. This response evolved gradually through daily practice with the Noctarine over the first couple of years of the 21st century.

The arrangement of the vital Faculties in a circle in a specific sequence with their titles and colours was all part of the Noctarine download, which came to me as a gift along the archetypal heroic journey. Receiving such a gift, however, and figuring out what to do with it, are two separate things.

Humans as a species are offered so many gifts in their lives. Not all are recognised.

Receiving, unpacking, and appreciating our gifts can be a much bigger challenge than the word ‘gift’ suggests. In my case, the unpacking involved responding to any NSE that happened to appear on my radar of awareness while going through ordinary daily life and present it to my Concilium of Inner Wisdom.

I envisioned the Concilium as a circle of elders residing within my own inner mindscape, ready to gather whenever I needed their presence to help me figure out and deal with some inner turbulence. As it happened, in my mental and emotional state at the time, this need arose almost daily.

The 8 wise elders in the Concilium are called Keepers of Integrity, each representing one of the 8 Faculties, ruling their own sphere of internal reality, producing their indigenous population, and communicating in their native language:::

› Inner Ally (Body), ruling the sphere of Incarnal Reality, populated by Incarnifolk, communicating in Incarnadian

›› Inner Expert (Intellect), ruling the sphere of Mential Reality, populated by Epimethians, communicating in Mentialese

››› Inner Healer (Instinct), ruling the sphere of Inner-Ocean Reality, populated by Harmonites, communicating in Emoceanic

›››› Inner Artist (Imagination), ruling the sphere of Fictional Reality, populated by Phantasians, communicating in Fictionese

››››› Inner Guardian (Intuition), ruling the sphere of First-Notion Reality, populated by Pronoians, communicating in Protospeak

›››››› Inner Genius (Inspiration), ruling the sphere of Potential Reality, populated by Dæmonites, communicating in Epiphanese

››››››› Inner Sovereign (Soul), ruling the sphere of Hierokhôra Reality, populated by Nawabes, communicating in Essentian

›››››››› Inner Wizard (Will), ruling the sphere of Volitional Reality, populated by Voluntians, communicating in Voluntese

Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Invitation, Temptation, or Opportunity?

Change is not a threat to your life, but an invitation to live.

〰 Adrienne Rich 〰

Over many years of working with the Concilium, presenting apparently unsolvable troubles to the Keepers ~ either my own, or those of fellow travellers who I accompanied on their inner journey through this process ~ I’ve had the opportunity to refine the questions for these wise inner elders… because I found that not every question is a true question.

I also learned that some Faculties/ Keepers are easier to access than others for different people. Especially the third one, the Instinct can be a challenge, because you ~ the Seeker of Inner Wisdom ~ will need to listen to your Inner Healer while she is spilling the beans on any unacknowledged painful emotions you may have successfully avoided until this moment.

On rare occasions I have not been able to complete a Concilium session with a client. In each of those cases the person blocked communication with their Instinct at that moment. Such a refusal is most likely a protective mechanism and needs to be respected. Don’t try to force yourself, please!

If you are curious and feel attracted to this work, the first task is to find out whether it is suitable for you at this time. What does it sound like to you?

Is this invitation a temptation or opportunity? Is it an offer which sounds too good to be true, or a dreaded obligation? An assignment to get out of the way, or another bottle of self-improvement snake-oil? Or is it the opening of a door you have been looking for?

Thanos Pal on Unsplash

Negative emotions are often related to frozen trauma, and retriggering trauma memory at the wrong moment can be counterproductive. On the other hand, it can be the greatest blessing in disguise.

In my personal practice I have thrown myself into this inner work with the enthusiasm, curiosity, and passion of an adventurer exploring unknown territory, partly because the field of ‘trauma therapy’ as we know it now was not yet developed, and partly because due to my upbringing I was very much used to figuring things out for myself and had the inner resources to do so.

Unless you feel called to follow this example and have the inner resources to sustain yourself along the journey and back all the way to a safe return, I wouldn’t recommend this approach. Having said that, on the inner journey everyone is called to be a pioneer. Nobody else can tell you what challenges you will encounter and what treasures you’ll discover inside yourself. Your inner world is truly your sovereign territory, and yours alone.

Gabe Pierce on Unsplash

A Triggering Event

Your pain is the breaking of the shell

that encloses your understanding.

〰 Khalil Gibran 〰

The most efficient and effective opportunities to begin your practice with the Concilium are events which seem comparatively small while triggering an unexpected, inexplicable emotional overreaction. In one of her books fellow substacker Tara Schuster quotes her therapist saying “if it’s hysterical, it’s historical.”

This saying captures in essence what we need to look out for. If I burst into tears over a broken plate, that would be an overreaction. The classic road rage, where a grownup driver has a tantrum in response to another driver’s error or misdemeanour is a ‘hysterical reaction’. Any emotional hyperreaction to a relatively small adverse event in any human beyond childhood age is most likely ‘historical’.

After dismissing such ‘hysterical behaviour’ for centuries, trauma therapists and researchers finally acknowledge what individual and collective human Consciousness have known all along::

Such ‘irrational and involuntary’ responses are signals from immature creatures populating the inner permafrost. They are directly linked to unprocessed trauma in the in the personal or ancestral history of the individual who suffers an ‘attack of hysteria’.

For this reason, using a deceptively small adverse event, which triggers a surprisingly monstrous emotional response within your NSE can be read as an invitation for a session with the Concilium of Inner Wisdom.

Jordan Whitt on Unsplash

Experience, Endoperience, Ektoperience

The harder we try to get rid of emotions and thoughts, the stronger they become.

This is because parts, like people, fight back against being shamed or exiled.

〰 Richard C. Schwartz 〰

In the last five chapters I introduced six of the vital Faculties of human Consciousness, in their function as Keepers of Integrity. I’ve explained the most essential character traits of these Faculties, while highlighting where and how the definitions in the Noctarine differ from contemporary conventional use of the labels body, intellect, instinct, imagination, intuition and inspiration.

The introductions of the six Faculties include mentions of their sovereign territories, indigenous populations and native languages ~ three important aspects, to give an impression of their unique functions and serve as distinguishing features.

This chapter is an initiation to the Concilium of Inner Wisdom (Concilium).

You may remember that there are eight vital Faculties and wonder about the remaining two… Don’t worry, they will be introduced separately soon.

Having met the first six Keepers you have sufficient foundational information to step into the Concilium for a kairotrophic practice session. (After all, what’s the use of a map, if you don’t know how it relates to the landscape?)

Here you’ll get a first hand impression of how to use the Noctarine map in order to navigate your own inner terrain, especially those zones which lie in the dark, beyond the pale of comfort and convictions. You will be guided safely to the event horizon of experiences which you might normally dismiss as no go, inner noman’s land, or avoid as a dangerous black hole.

In the Concilium [from Latin conciliare = to call together, gather with friendly intention to overcome distrust and hostility], all eight Keepers gather for the purpose of understanding a specific incident which has triggered a negative subjective experience (NSE).

In earlier chapters (as well as my recent wordcast The Wilderness of Experience) we took a closer look at the word experience and learned that in the common vernacular meanings include external events, the entire spectrum of internal perceptions, plus a range of other interpretations.

It is important to keep in mind that in these gatherings of the Concilium we focus exclusively on the internal perceptions in response to an external adverse event. To communicate with greater precision it helps to differentiate this from the vague term ‘experience’.

For this purpose I have coined the specific new words endoperience [from Greek endo = inner + Latin per = though + ire = to go] and ektoperience [from Greek ekto = outer + Latin per + ire].

The ektoperience of an NSE in this case is the personal impression of an adverse outer event which acts as a direct trigger to the whole spectrum of endoperiences. The response of the Inner Ally covers both, ektoperience as well as part of the endoperience-spectrum, because the Body is one of the 8 vital Faculties, and her perceptions fall into the scope of ‘inner experience’.

The purpose of the Concilium is to synchronise the endoperiential reactions to an adverse event ~ or, this is what it looks like at first glance. In reality, all endoperiential reactions of the 8 Faculties are naturally already in synchrony, even if they appear to contradict one another.

How can that be?

If I have a negative belief sabotaging my positive intentions, are they not in dissonance?

Are they not threatening my inner peace, poise, and power?

I know this can sound confusing, but unravelling such confusions and contradictions is precisely part of this work.

Dinu J Nair on Unsplash

Inner Demons

The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance,

it is the illusion of knowledge.

〰 Stephen Hawking 〰

I cannot tell you about yours, but my inner demons (not to be confused with inner daimons!) are creatures born out of my own NSE. They are alive and scary at one level of mundane human perception of reality. At another, totally neutral level, I have to acknowledge and accept that a negative self-sabotaging belief (native of First Notion Reality, governed by the Inner Guardian) and a positive self-empowering intention (indigenous member of the Voluntians, born and bred by the Inner Wizard) can appear in the ecosphere of endoperience at the same time.

That is synchrony. They co-incide. They show up simultaneously. (We are not talking about ‘synchronicity’ in the sense of serendipity here, but about the pure neutral occurrence of different events without speculating about causality or making judgements of good-or-evil.)

The only thing to watch in this practice is what is happening at the same time. In essence, you are gathering facets of a simple neutral, highly personal observation, which cannot be disputed. Nobody can argue with your subjective experience, whether ekto- or endoperience.

1st clue Body ~ this bad thing happened to me. The Inner Ally describes the ektoperience.

2nd clue Intellect ~ this is my subjective rational assessment of the negative incident. The Inner Expert gives an explanation reflecting his thoughts on the ektoperience from a subjective perspective of rational endoperience.

3rd clue Instinct ~ these are my subjective negative feelings triggered by the incident. The Inner Healer spontaneously examines the emotional impact of the incident, which is the instinctive endoperience in response to the physical ektoperience.

Note that a trigger is not about causality. It is not a reaction to what objectively happened, but a reaction to the NSE. The deeper ‘causation’ for the emotional endoperience of the Instinct in this context already lives within the inner permafrost or inner wilderness)

4th clue Imagination ~ this is a dramatic personal image or tragic story I associate with the incident in my subjective fantasy or memory. The Inner Artist offers an illustration of the interaction between endoperience and ektoperience. Here an inner demon may emerge from the inner underworld, briefly. As long as you stay on the trail there is nothing to fear.

5th clue Intuition ~ this is a belief reflecting the essence of my NSE according to my intuitive endoperience. The Inner Guardian captures the core topic of the image or story offered by the Artist. This topic can be translated into a wild belief which already lives in the inner wilderness, behind the veils of unawareness.

6th clue Inspiration ~ this is the dormant potential of my wild belief according to my own creative daimon. The Inner Genius has a knack for identifying latent potential of the most obscure and repulsive wild beliefs.

These six clues identified on an inner treasure hunt are not causally related. They coexist in the inner mindscape in synchrony at the moment of the NSE [syn = together + chronos = time].

The moment you discover the dormant potential of a wild belief, inner demons lose their threatening power and transform into accomplices. An agonising emotional endoperience spontaneously shifts into a sense of relief. The healing process begins.

Liana S. on Unsplash

Keeping the Focus on the Ball

The successful warrior is the

average man, with laser-like focus.

〰 Bruce Lee 〰

A session with the Concilium is designed to guide you, the Seeker of Inner Wisdom, to your inner treasure. The path leads from a relatively superficial irritation in the apparent outer world › straight to an unresolved trauma in your inner world ›› beyond the boundaries of current self-restrictions ››› to transforming that painful event which was overwhelming in the past ›››› by discovering its precious dormant potential ››››› all within the inner world, reaching an entire new level of understanding.

To ensure that this ‘treasure hunt’ leads you safely to that inner destination and back out it is crucial that you STICK TO THE TRAIL. The inner world is a jungle. The risk of getting lost and being swallowed by inner wildlife should not be underestimated.

The inner landscape can also easily present as a labyrinth, home of the Minotaur, a dangerous creature representing the dark side of human nature. To save Theseus from getting entrapped in the mythical structure of the labyrinth, he was provided by Ariadne with a certain famous thread, spun of love and hope.

Ariadne’s ball of wool not only saved her love interest from being devoured or slain by her beastly half-brother. It has become a symbol for guidance and superior intelligence to find solutions for the most complex problems and dangerous challenges. The iconic mythical symbol is used here to help us find our way into and out of the labyrinthian inner world, disguised in the word clue [newer spelling of the older English word clew = ball of thread or yarn]

Each of the Keepers of Integrity holds one clue ~ one piece of thread ~ in the form of a special question to elicit your own kairotrophic answers.

Obligatory disclaimer: I am not making any promises that this practice will change your life, resolve all your troubles, or save you from your inner demons. This information is for ‘educational purposes’.

You may learn a few things which are rare and hard to figure out all on your own. Although nothing I’m offering here has not been said before ~ albeit presented in different languages, taught in more mystical styles, embedded in obscure ancient cultures, or entangled with spiritual paths ~ you might find it easier to bend your mind around the dog legs and T-junctions of the archetypal labyrinth of human inner life by following honest contemporary language without religious strings attached.

Council of Inner Wisdom © Veronika Bond

Yarning in the Circle of Keepers

The path of sorrow and that path alone

leads to a land where sorrow is unknown.

〰 William Cowper 〰

For the purpose of this introduction to the practice of Kairotrophy I suggest a generic ‘adverse event’. Recall a situation when you experienced a personal rejection, and the incident triggered an instinctive emotional reaction of suffering.

If this happens to you regularly, pick a specific adverse event. If this never happens to you, pick a comparable adverse event where you feel triggered in a social setting.

You may need to adapt some of the Q & As in the following sequence according to your trigger. The questions are formulated in the first person, because you are effectively ‘speaking to yourself’.

Have a journal and pen ready to take notes, and it’s a good idea to switch off your digital devices for the duration of this session.

1st Inner Ally › What happened to me?

Tune into your Body and let her describe the incident purely from the perspective of Incarnal Reality.

What physical sensations do I have when recalling this incident?

Where do I feel this in my physical organism?

2nd Inner Expert ›› What do I think about this incident?

Tune into your Intellect and let him give you a rational assessment of the event. Find out what happened in your Mential Reality.

(Reminder: Keep your focus on this one adverse event! Don’t let your Inner Expert wander off and tell you all the other things he might know about. If he offers speculative explanations of ‘why this happened’ or starts thinking of other similar situations thank him for the information. Tell him you’d love to hear about it some other time, right now you must stay on this trail!)

3rd Inner Healer ››› How do I feel when this happens?

Tune into your Instinct and let her share the emotional reactions to the incident. Allow yourself to actually feel the emotions, if only briefly. This is not about a ‘cathartic cleansing of negative emotions’!

The goal of this kairotrophic practice is that you become aware of all your inner voices, including the wailing and crying of the Harmonites in their native Emoceanic. If there is a turbulence in your Inner-Ocean Reality it is crucial for you to know what’s going on in there. You want to know the intensity of your emotions, and you can only find out by feeling them.

The Harmonites are the most effective and valuable messengers of the living organism of your Consciousness. Listen to them with compassion and patience until you ‘get the message’.

4th Inner Artist ›››› Where do I see myself when I am in this emotional state?

Tune into your Imagination and let him share the drama from his perspective. Now you can let the story of your endoperience take centre stage. If visualising comes easy, you can close your eyes and let a mental image emerge spontaneously on your inner screen. Watch this inner scenario unfold until you get a clear picture or story of the tragic event. (write it down in your journal before moving on)

If visualisation is not your thing, you can access the same information in essence through the following questions:

What associations do I have in response to this emotional experience?

Where have I felt like this before? (In response to this question look for a situation unrelated to the current incident!)

You can translate the emotional endoperience into a fictional endoperience by letting the Imagination express it in his language in the form of a story, fantasy scene, series of images, single image, or association.

Either way, the impressions of the Imagination of the incident set in Fictional Reality will give you a snapshot of your own self-image. Thank your Inner Artist and make a brief note of his valuable contribution.

[Eg.: I see myself abandoned on a remote island, while all the other people around me have boarded a ship and sailed off, forgetting about me.]

5th Inner Guardian ››››› What is my title for this inner selfie?

Tune into your Intuition and let her show you a part of your personal pattern, of which you have been unaware until this moment. Ask her about the central theme of the inner scenario (story, movie, image, association) produced by the Imagination.

What title would I give this scenario (story, movie, image, association)?

The title represents the incident from the perspective of your Inner Guardian, letting you know what is happening in your inner sphere of First-Notion Reality. You can translate this title directly into a belief, followed by a wild belief.

[E.g.: My title for this fictional story is Outcast.

The belief is I believe that I’m an outcast.

The wild belief is I believe in being an outcast.]

Make a note of your wild belief and your counterintuitive response to this wild belief. Write it all down in our journal.

6th Inner Genius ›››››› Why do I want to hold this wild belief?

Tune into your Inspiration with a sense of not knowing. Ask yourself, why on earth would I want to hold this wild belief?

The Inner Genius loves this kind of crazy and ’non-sensical’ questions. Here you have the opportunity to witness your endoperience from the perspective of Potential Reality.

The vocabulary of the Inner Genius is Epiphanese, which includes questions. These are not just ‘interrogative statements’ but true living questions. They are existential questions which don’t always have simple and quick answers. (Unless they do. It depends on your current level of understanding.)

Given that all wild beliefs are per definition immature inner creatures, here are some potential questions the Inner Genius might ask them:

What is your natural habitat?

What is your dormant potential?

Who would you become, given the right care and support?

The moment you receive a satisfying response to a wild belief you will experience a spontaneous sense of relief. How do you know?

Your Inner Ally will take a deep breath and heave a sigh of relief. In the same breath, your Inner Healer will detect a noticeable feeling of release of emotional tension. All of a sudden you feel lighter, as if a heavy burden has dropped off your heart, stomach, shoulders, or wherever else you have carried this inner baggage.

Thomas Allsop on Unsplash

If you are unable to finish a session with the Concilium of Inner Wisdom in one go, don’t worry about it. You can come back to it later and pick up the thread where you left…

to be continued next week…

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, Chapter 23, Finding Treasure in Not Knowing