The Concilium of Inner Wisdom VII - X
The Cambium Chapter 25
In order to evolve and grow,
we must be prepared to face the erosive aspects of life.
〰 Ruth Allen 〰
Raising an Inner Creature
To keep growing, you couldn’t disturb it any more violently
than by looking outside and waiting for outside answers
to questions that only your innermost feeling,
in your quietest hour, can perhaps answer.
〰 Rainer Maria Rilke 〰
In Chapter 24 you are invited to the Concilium of Inner Wisdom for a session with the first six Keepers of Integrity. In the session we use an adverse event as a trigger to gather clues leading to a specific immature inner creature (in the Acknow of a wild belief).
Of course, in the given example, we could also jump directly from the triggering event to the wild belief. If we did that, alas, we’d miss out on the clues provided by the first four Keepers in the Concilium, and all their wholesome nutritious offerings ~ to stimulate natural organic inner growth ~ would be missed in the rush towards some preconceived semblance of ‘health’.
There are many trails we can choose from to explore the inner world. The intention of following this particular sequence has a multicoloured spectrum of purposes:::
› meet an immature inner creature who has signalled some distress
› discover its dormant potential, including its entelechy
› foster the inner creature into becoming the mature version of itself
› fulfil its enetelechy to integrate it into the bright side of the inner world
› nurture the whole organism of Consciousness through the unfolding interactions
In the growing process of any living creature, you cannot skip developmental stages. Humans have a knack for trying to do so, attempting to enhance and accelerate certain gifts, while other aspects of their organism invariably suffer.
In Chapter 18 I introduced Jean Gebser’s five ‘structures of consciousness’ — archaic ∞ magical ∞ mythical ∞ mental ∞ diaphanous (or integral) Consciousness. Gebser understood these not as linear, developmental stages but as structures which grow out of one another and coexist with one another within human Consciousness.
In Synchronosophy, in the subjective experience of individual human Consciousness (IHC), we refer to these five modes as:: embryonic, infantile, juvenile, adult, and elder Consciousness. All five movements or vibrations are present within your organism, independently of your chronological age. You can access them through mental/ emotional memory, awareness, dreaming, body memory, and also via inner creatures frozen in the inner permafrost, or trapped in the inner wilderness.
Immature inner creatures often appear stuck in a ‘younger constellation’ ~ embryonic, infantile, or juvenile ~ relating to personal historic traumatic events suffered during that developmental phase.
At the same time, these inner creatures also carry dormant potential, buried and stupefied in the aftermath of the incident. For this reason, so-called ‘post-traumatic growth’ is not only a unique opportunity for individuals to awaken their own unique dormant potential, it also serves as an essential stimulus for the evolution of human Consciousness.
Every event of healing from trauma should include the nurturing of such dormant potential, which has been trapped by the traumatic experience. Unfortunately this connection is not yet understood by many who approach trauma therapy as a ‘restoration to health’ or a ‘recovery’ of a disturbed state of ‘homeostasis’.
There is no such thing. Health is not a ‘holy static state’, which is fragile and can be broken, and to which we can return. Health is a dynamic living process. For this reason, the term homeostasis has been replaced by homeodynamics. (In the healthcare system in general, which is work in progress, many are still catching up with their own terminology)
Health is a dynamic living process.
If we view ourselves as organisms of IHC born into a traumatised sea of collective human Consciousness, we cannot possibly assume that anyone is born and raised in a ‘perfect state of health’. Instead, we find ourselves immersed in, or at least connected to, a current of healing, flowing towards wholeness. Because all living systems are driven by innate self-healing forces. (Heal, whole, and holy are a word triplet born from the same rootstock and entwined by their identities)
The immature inner creatures we each carry within our own organism of IHC are our personal share in the suffering of humanity, while also holding our unique gifts, opportunities, and potentiality to contribute to the evolution of mankind.
Five Vibrations of Growth
Growth begins when we start to accept our own weakness
〰 Jean Vanier 〰
Having been appropriated for economic increase, personal/ professional improvement, technological/ scientific progress, accumulation of assets and financial wealth, as well as proliferations of disease tissue and carcinogenic neoplasms, it is tricky to save and retrieve the term growth from all the abuse and identity theft it has suffered. Therefore, in Synchronosophy we add the adjective holorhythmic, to distinguish between living growth processes and their dead, parasitic, or degenerative counterparts.
Holorhythmic growing describes the powerful vital force which animates every living organism, no matter how traumatised. Holorhythmic growing drives IHC, and every living creature populating the inner world, along their journey through life. Moreover, in the human organism of Consciousness, holorhythmic growing follows the developmental sequence of the five vibrations, embryonic, infantile, juvenile, adult, elder.
In personal/ spiritual-growth/ development-literature we often find metaphorical analogies to the metamorphosis of caterpillar into butterfly. This captures only a slither of the human process of holorhythmic growing. We must be careful not to confuse metaphorical tropes with our literal experience and events.
Never forget that humans are neither larvæ nor winged insects. The complexities of the human organism and its evolution are more accurately represented in the five structures of Gebser’s philosophy and history of Consciousness as outlined and explained in his magnum opus The Ever-Present Origin.
As humans, we have the unique capacity to interact with our own organism of IHC. Our complexity is presumably one of the reasons why we ~ unlike most non-human sentient beings ~ regularly find ourselves in fragmented states of mind and become confused about our identity.
On the other hand, we also have the ability and opportunity to engage with the living processes within our IHC, identify our fragments of suffering ~ which present as fractals of lost identity ~ and nurture those fractals into becoming whole.
To interpret this as ‘return to health’, based on an assumed archetypal ‘state of wholeness’, is rooted only in some mythical confabulation produced by the human mind itself. A more realistic and healthier perspective is the ancient Vedic science of mind, which suggests that Consciousness is the essence of existence itself, which in turn is an evolutionary process driven by an urge to evolve into more mature forms.
Contemporary Western humans have lost connection to this ancient wisdom, but we have gained the insights of quantum physics and chaos theory to help us find our way ‘back’ (or ‘forward’, it doesn’t matter which way you want to look at it in an infinitely spiralling movement) to the ever-present currents and origins of life.
In the kairotrophic practice, this implies that by focusing on one fractal of our subjective experience ~ one immature inner creature ~ and by nurturing its maturing process through the five developmental vibrations, we are supporting the entire evolutionary process of Consciousness.
Each of the five vibrations requires a different interaction (or mental attitude). I have mentioned on several occasions that immature inner creatures require compassionate attention. But that’s not enough.
Every developmental vibration of human Consciousness responds to a specific mental impulse to stimulate its holorhythmic growing. Here are the five vibrations of individual human Consciousness and the impulses or attention they require.
Embryonic Consciousness ∞ allowing | incubation
Infantile Consciousness ∞ acknowledging | awareness
Juvenile Consciousness ∞ responding | responsibility
Adult Consciousness ∞ accepting | acceptance
Elder Consciousness ∞ transcending | transcendence
In every session with the Concilium of Inner Wisdom we engage with all five vibrational movements and stimulate them with the appropriate impulses:
1st clue Inner Ally + 2nd clue Inner Expert ~ here we ask questions and elicit answers to stimulate incubation and nurture the vibration of embryonic / fetal Consciousness with a mental attitude of allowing (with compassionate tolerance and patience).
3rd clue Inner Healer + 4th clue Inner Artist ~ the Q & As give impulses to acknowledge the awakening of awareness, nurturing the vibration of infantile Consciousness. These are the most painful clues, comparable with a frozen limb coming back to life, which require emphatic acknowledging with considerable compassion.
5th clue Inner Guardian + 6th clue Inner Genius ~ these Q & As give impulses to stimulate responsibility, which in turn nurture juvenile Consciousness, in a mood of compassionate responding.
7th clue Inner Sovereign + 8th clue Inner Wizard ~ the Q & As of these steps offer impulses for acceptance to nurture the vibration of adult Consciousness. True, genuine, wholehearted compassionate acceptance is only possible at this developmental stage.
9th clue Inner Ally + 10th clue Inner Expert ~ the session ends by returning to the beginning at a higher level with an impulse of transcendence to stimulate the vibration of elder Consciousness. Transcending happens through compassionate integrating the whole endoperience of the event.
Yarning in the Circle of Keepers Part 2
It’s tempting to think you can just march into
foreign territory, take the prize and leave.
〰 Christopher Vogler 〰
Here you can see that the practice of Kairotrophy does not follow a linear trajectory. Evolution of human Consciousness, according to Synchronosophy, is not focused on seeking and finding a path to enlightenment. (Although you’ll find yourself and your life gradually getting lighter, and your inner world becoming brighter with this practice).
Transcending, in this context, means primarily that you enable your immature inner creatures to transcend their suffering in their immature level of existence (in the permafrost or wilderness) by becoming more mature versions of themselves, growing into who they are born to be, unfolding their unique potential and integrating into the holorhythm of your IHC.
You must not approach these immature inner creatures with any preconception of their evolution, or of a final outcome. At any present constellation of Consciousness we cannot possibly know what the understanding in the next one will be. Here we are called to practice the all-important sense of unknowing.
Holorhythmic growing is a natural process which happens spontaneously. All you can do is provide beneficial conditions, a favourable environment, and the right nourishing impulses at opportune moments, which is the practice of Kairotrophy.
The healthy development of one fractal ~ one immature inner creature ~ will have the most beneficial effect on healing the whole organism. All are one, and each one represents, impacts, and nurtures the whole.
With this intention and understanding in mind, let’s continue our session with the Concilium…
The answer(s) of the Inner Genius (6th clue) provide you with the dormant potential of your wild belief (5th clue). The discovery of the dormant potential of a wild belief triggers a spontaneous sense of relief, perceptible throughout the entire organism. In this moment you now longer feel the emotional pain of the triggering event, the mental stress drops away.
It is tempting to end the kairotrophic workout with these revelations, because the instant vanishing of negative symptoms (emotional pain & mental strain) bestow an illusion of health in ektoperience. It is also true that this practice stimulates the healing process. Yet with all these realisations the inner immature creature has only reached the vibration of juvenile Consciousness.
There is a simple explanation for this. When IHC discovers dormant potential, our mind instantly fills in the missing part ~ entelechy (= the actualisation of potential). However, realisation in endoperience and realisation in ektoperience ~ in the dualistic world of human material existence ~ happen at two different levels of reality.
For all these reasons, we now need to complete the cycle by fully integrating the juvenile inner creature through the next four clues.
Note: The steps and instructions themselves are simple, but I have added some key explanations to remind readers of the fundamental differences in the definitions of the key terms used in Synchcronosophy (marked by ‘block quotes’)
7th clue Inner Sovereign ››››››› What is my personal symbol?
Tune into your Soul.
Before you can do so, here is a brief reminder of what we mean by Soul in the field of Synchronosophy, according to the Noctarine.
In the anthropocentric mind, soul is a mystical, spiritual, or religious concept. Soul is defined as human life force, or animating principle, the immortal identity of a human being, the psyche, or sometimes identified with the self and ego. Different religions have their own concepts of soul, including beliefs in reincarnation, or death of the soul with the end of physical life.
According to the Noctarine, Soul is one of the vital Faculties of the organism of IHC, representing the Consciousness of wholeness, identity, and essence. Inner Sovereign is the title of the Soul. She governs the Sphere of Hierokhôra Reality (= sacred space reality), provides a home for the population of Nawabes (= natural ways of being), and communicates in Essentian (the language of being, becoming, belonging, calming, centering, contemplating, existing, integrating, stilling and yearning).
The Soul also provides the Essences as vital properties for all 8 Faculties of the organism (see Glossary part 1). The Essence of the Soul herself is called Holonoia (= the knowledge of wholeness)
Holonoia implies that the Soul, as a vital Faculty, has the power to transmit and receive information in the format of symbols. A symbol [from Greek sym = together + ballein = to throw] is an object or sign, which stands for something else. It literally contains a lot of information ‘thrown together’ into the representative object, which can be a physical thing or a pictorial depiction (drawing or photograph).
Tune into your Inner Sovereign and ask her to reveal a symbol for the dormant potential provided by your Inner Genius. Make a note of that symbol.
8th clue Inner Wizard ›››››››› What is my VIBE?
Tune into your Will.
Again, here is a brief reminder of what we mean by Will in the context and interpretaion through the lens of Synchronosophy.
In the anthropocentric mind, the will as a mental faculty is defined as willpower (in philosophy). In psychology, the will is called volition and defined as a cognitive process by which a human decides and commits to a course of action. In both fields the will enables deliberate action and freedom of choice.
According to the Noctarine, Will is one of the vital Faculties of the organism of IHC, representing the Consciousness of willingness, willpower and purpose. Inner Wizard is the title of the Will, he governs the Sphere of Volitional Reality, births and sustains the population of Voluntians, and communicates in Voluntese (the language of choosing, consenting, desiring, intending, willing, wishing, wanting).
The functions of the Will in Synchronosophy overlap largely with conventional definitions, with the slight divergence that the emphasis is placed equally on willingness and consent as on freedom of choice, intention, wishes and deliberate volition. In other words, one side of the Will is more proactive (willpower, yang) while the other is more receptive (willingness, yin).
The Inner Wizard provides freedom of expression (Inner Languages) to all Faculties of IHC, and a vital part of his job is to ensure that all voices are heard, respected, and responded to. In return, he also has the power to call on all other Keepers in the Concilium to help fulfil his wishes.
To gather this clue, ask the Inner Wizard for a VIBE ~ a Very Important Boost of Energy. To activate the VIBE the Will calls on the collaboration of the Inner Genius, Artist, and Healer.
The Inner Genius provides the information of the dormant potential = your answer to the question: What is the dormant potential of my wild belief? while also sharing the knowledge of the entelechy (= actualisation of potential).
The Inner Artist provides a simulation in Fictional Reality = your personal answer to the request: Imagine yourself experiencing the fulfilment of this potential in your life.
The Inner Healer provides an energising and uplifting emotional wave in response to this simulation (= your emotional sensation in response to the question: What does it feel like when this potential is fulfilled?)
Capture your emotional experience in an evocative phrase (e.g. I feel inner peace). This emotional experience is your VIBE.
9th clue Inner Ally ››››››››› Perform a personal ritual.
To integrate this experience in the Sphere of Incarnal Reality you must fulfil two physical tasks:
(A) perform a personal ritual to capture the VIBE, and
(B) acquire a physical representation of the symbol received from your Inner Sovereign.
(A) Requirements and objectives::: A personal ritual only needs to be performed once. It must be an activity which you can perform easily by yourself within your everyday life. The main objective is to anchor the emotional experience of your VIBE through embodied action in everyday life. In other words, the VIBE must be transferred from the mental web into the entire physical nervous system
Choose an activity which fills you with the emotional experience you described in response to the question above (e.g. watch a sunset).
The performance of a personal ritual must spontaneously trigger the emotional experience you have identified through the VIBE. For the duration of the performance of a personal ritual you must be fully present (a couple of minutes of mindful attention and intention!) with your awareness fully focused on your positive emotional experience. This is a moment of ultimate self-care and compassion. The enjoyable sensations in Body and Instinct activate a new endoperience and will flood the entire organism.
(B) acquire a physical representation of your symbol and keep it in a place where it reminds you regularly of its presences (e.g. bedside table, wallet, wear as jewellery). The symbol can be a physical object, or a drawing or photograph of the object or phenomenon.
10th clue Inner Expert ›››››››››› Gather your inner wisdom.
Write down your insights from this session with the Concilium of Inner Wisdom. I can highly recommend a proprioceptive writing session (introduced in the Kairotrophy worksheet 1) for this purpose, to further stimulate the deepening of your new understanding.
These final two steps integrate the new mature inner creature in your current structure of Consciousness. They literally bring a desired future into the present ~ if only for a moment. This relatively simple practice is deceptively powerful.
The personal ritual and writing exercise don’t need to be completed within the same session as the previous six or eight clues, but it is best to follow up with them as soon as possible, while the endoperience and new information are still fresh in your mind.
Holoperience and Symbioperience
The great thing about getting older is that
you don’t lose all the other ages you’ve been.
〰 Madeleine L’Engle 〰
In chapter 24 I introduced the differentiation between ektoperience and endoperience. In this chapter I am adding two further levels, which are essential for navigating this wild and mysterious ride we call ‘experience’.
Although ektoperience may tell us that we are separate, isolated beings, having a unique individual ‘experience’, and endoperience can even give the impression as if the perceptions, sensations, and functions of our vital Faculties operate in isolation from and opposition against one another, this is not the case. It is never the case!
Endoperience enables us to gain this impression because we have the ability to view ourselves ~ including our inner world in all its facets and complexities ~ from different vantage points.
Not only do we have the 8 vital Faculties, each with 8 different properties and functions, human Consciousness also has the ability to experience itself from the outside (ektoperience) and the inside (endoperience)
In addition to these two complementary ways of travelling through the events of everyday life we have access to a further two vehicles for mental exploration ~ holoperience and symbioperience.
Ektoperience courses along the orbit of individual subjective experience viewed from the outer material perspective.
Endoperience cycles around an inner orbit with the capacity to see subjective experience from the inside through the lenses of the 8 Faculties.
Holoperience travels on the higher course of the holorhythm, providing a holistic overview of the whole world as one. We can access this vista by contemplating a single fractal of the whole ~ a grain of sand, a budding flower, or one incident in everyday life triggering a negative emotional response ~ because every fractal contains the pattern and essence of the whole.
Symbioperience rides on its own orbit, cutting across all three others, picking up information from all of them, taking into account a multitude of diverging needs, skills, and capacities of understanding at any moment.
Human Consciousness is complex. Far more complex than the simplified creative explanations offered by the Noctarine map of the inner world. This complex web of phenomena, vibrations, and properties, of which we attempt to make sense via multifaceted acts of knowing, while inadvertently adding new complexities to the entangled web, happens to be our natural habitat, our rightful home, into which we are born, and which serves as our vehicle to navigate this precarious and precious life.
The Trail just Taken
The map of what we call reality is an ever-shifting mosaic of ideas.
〰 Marcelo Gleiser 〰
The 8 vital Faculties with their 8 categories of vital properties create a ‘Web of Consciousness’ with 64 nodes, which serve as portals to enter the inner world whenever you may need or want to gain insights and discover something new about an endoperience.
Any NSE that triggers confusion, inner turmoil, or curiosity
can be taken as a call from an immature creature in the inner world
yearning for deeper understanding.
The 64 nodes which make up the 8 maps of self-awareness offer many options to explore a specific NSE. The trail introduced in these last two chapters follows the nodes where the Faculties cross over with their own native properties ~ these nodes form a diagonal spine through the Web of the Noctarine from the bottom right to the top left.
In this session we start at the bottom with the Function of the Body, aka Inner Ally. In other words:::
The 1st clue ~ description of the ektoperience ~ comes via the Function of the Body| Inner Ally: 8.8 Monitor
The 2nd clue ~ rational assessment of the situation ~ is found in the Perspective of the Intellect| Inner Expert: 7.7 Speculation
The 3rd clue ~ negative emotional reaction ~ shows up in the node of the Sentience of the Instinct| Inner Healer: 6.6 Sensitivity
The 4th clue ~ dramatic illustration of the endoperience ~ is readily available in the Sphere of the Imagination| Inner Artist : 5.5 Fictional Reality
The 5th clue ~ wild belief reflecting the endoperience ~ is found among the Clan of the Intuition| Inner Guardian: 4.4 Protokin
The 6th clue ~ dormant potential and its actualisation ~ reveals itself through the Power of the Inspiration| Inner Genius: 3.3 Entelechy
The 7th clue ~ symbol representing the actualised potential ~ is offered through the Essence of the Soul| Inner Sovereign: 2.2 Holonoia
The 8th clue ~ Very Important Boost of Energy ~ requires the voluntary action in the Language of the Will| Inner Wizard: 1.1 Voluntese
If you follow the trail, as shown in the diagram of this map, you can see that with the first six steps, only the nodes from 8.8 through to 3.3 are shown against a white background, representing the light of awareness and attention, while all others within the same sphere lie in the shadows (inner darkness) of unawaring.
With the activation of the final two nodes 2.2 and 1.1 the entire spectrum of Essences and Languages ‘light up’ spontaneously, activated through the internal impulses of all 8 clues and their subsequent interactions.
This basic diagram is an attempt to illustrate what is happening within IHC through an internal conversation with the Concilium.
The final two clues involve two nodes each:::
The 9th clue ~ perform a personal ritual ~ calls on the Language and the Essence of the Body: Incarnadian & Synergy
The 10th clue ~ gather your inner wisdom ~ requires the engagement of the Language and Essence of the Intellect: Mentialese & Synopsis
There are other trails, many alternative sequences of nodes you could choose, to explore your inner world in response to particular bewildering and nagging issues. This central path along the spine, cutting across the entire map of the Noctarine, is a good one to start and experiment with. It can be applied in countless situations as specified in the introduction to this kairotrophic practice, triggering a multitude of beneficial effects.
As with any map, you must remember, of course, that this is not the landscape. The treasure and inner wisdom you’re looking for ~ the inner creatures and their dormant potentials longing to be found by you as much as you are yearning to find them ~ are hidden within your own inner world. The map of the Noctarine, and this initiatory trail with the Concilium of Inner Wisdom, are offered to serve as a wheel to help you spin your own thread.
A magic thread of nodes to light your path as you touch them with intention and compassion, giving impulses for insights, to lead you safely into inner darkness, across patches of inner permafrost, in and out of the inner wilderness, and through the transformative journey of becoming the one you have been waiting for.
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, Chapter 24, The Concilium of Inner Wisdom I-VI
There is a lot to take in and chew on here, Veronika, chiefly because we humans through the auspicies of the medical system have been conditioned to look at our minds and bodies as two seperate distinct entities. Moreover, healing is also viewed as distinct, that there are different modes of healing for the body and for the mind.
Even though there is much tall about holistic medicine and there is much talk of an integrative approach, the medical practioners still resort and fall back on the old ways, with similar results. I know this from both decades of personal experience and from what my wife, a nurse training to be a nurse practioner, recounts to me.
That you turn many of these ideas and ways on its head, I find a positive trend. We know that healing the mind through pharmaceuticals are terribly limiting and often harmful, chiefly because our minds are not machines. like computers are.
We humans are living beings, with consciousness, memories, traumas and, yes, potential; and so much of what you described in this excellent, thought-provoking essay.
Again, our observations and connections to Nature will help us become the human beings we were always meant to be.
Such is my simple understanding.
Oh my! Why does knowing this as the final chapter excite me, and also fill me with a “what’s next ?” - please don’t stop nervous gut drop? I will spend today getting lost in all of the spaces between the words. Under the words. Inside the words. Exploring. Thank you so much Veronika!