Wilding the Inner Ecosystem
Kairotrophy for the Inner Ally
The wild nature has a vast integrity to it.
〰 Clarissa Pinkola Estés 〰
Endangered Inner Life
In wildness is the salvation of the world.
〰 Aldo Leopold 〰
Rewilding is a new buzzword among eco-activists and conservationists on a mission to ‘save the planet’. For farmers, and journalists writing for traditional publications, it may sound more like a looming curse. Rewilding could be dangerous. It might threaten to reduce green spaces to messy patches overgrown with brambles and knotweed… And what if treasured pets and valuable livestock become prey to packs of wolves?
“The word ‘rewild’ was coined in the 1980s by the American conservationist Dave Foreman,” Isabella Tree explains in her book Wilding: the return to nature of a British farm. “It first occurred in print in Newsweek, in an article titled ‘Trying to Take Back the Planet’ in 1990.”
A century earlier, Aldo Leopold, author of A Sand County Almanac and pioneering American ecologist and conservationist, reminded his readers that “Acts of creation are ordinarily reserved for gods and poets…To plant a pine, one need be neither god nor poet; one need only own a shovel.”
Echoing the writings and spirit of Leopold, biologists Michael Soulé and Reed Noss adopted the term rewilding to emphasise the importance of ecological networks and champion the role of so-called apex-predators (= predators at the top of the food chain).
“Yellowstone National Park has since become a flagship example of the rewilding movement in the States ever since it was seen that the reintroduction of wolves in 1995 led to a staggering increase in biodiversity – a phenomenon that has become known as the ‘apex predator trophic cascade’.” (Isabella Tree in Wilding)
The ecological concept of trophic cascade describes the impact of predators not only on their prey, but the domino effects throughout the entire ecosystem. The return of monoculture to a biodiverse landscape is essential to sustain the healthy equilibrium of nature, the soil and inhabitants of all species including humans.
In 2001 Isabella Tree, award-winning writer and conservationist, co-founded a pioneering ‘rewilding project’ in the grounds of Knepp Castle, an estate of 1,400 hectares in the South of England. Within 24 years, the former dairy farm has been transformed into a wildlife sanctuary for many rare species ~ an inspiring “fully functional ecosystem for the future of our planet.”
Lady Tree and her husband Sir Charles Burrell decided to drop the prefix ‘re-‘. They refer to their project as wilding because looking after wildland is not as simple as a ‘return to nature’, when the wilderness has been killed off for over half a millennium.
In the past 500 years plus, we have moved so far away from nature that creating a wilderness is not just a matter of ‘throwing the wheel of history into reverse gear.’ Wilding, when it comes to UK farmland, requires more than a shovel.
In parallel to the transformation of the outer wilderness, our ancestors have gone to great lengths to eradicate the inner wilderness too. As a result for the collective efforts to ‘make the world a safer place for humans’ ~ in pursuit the noble mission of protecting humanity from the ‘saber-toothed tiger’, dragged by its extinct tail into every other text ~ we have been removed not only from the natural spaces in our environment but lost touch with our own nature too.
What if the principles of ‘wilding’, which have successfully created inspiring wildlands in various parts of the world, might also apply to the inner world?
Remembering our Wild Nature
‘Wild’ means to be in relationship.
〰 Andreas Weber 〰
Cultivating the inner wilderness has long been misunderstood as a need for domesticating whatever behaves in an unruly manner. Character flaws, weaknesses bred by a wicked human nature, deviations from the ideal of the perfect human, must be beaten into submission.
Many efforts have been made to tame those wild inner beasts, monsters, dragons, demons, or whatever seems to populate our internal ecosystem.
What if any inner creatures who appear to threaten your peace, poise, and self-possession are endangered species themselves fighting for survival?
Attacking our own inner wilderness may currently be the greatest threat to human survival. It produces the vast spectrum of a so-called ‘mental health crisis’ ~ a euphemism for acute and chronic mental and psychological suffering spreading across the civilised world ~ inseparably entangled with the decline of physical health in wealthy and technologically advanced countries.
For this reason alone, anthropocentric thinking no longer makes sense. Anthropocentric thinking is result orientated, and it doesn’t lead to the desired results.
Anthropocentric thinking makes us believe that nature is dangerous, including our own nature ~ a belief which separates us from ourselves, with many devastating consequences.
Anthropocentric thinking has planted the idea in our minds that wildness is the opposite of civilisation and needs to be exterminated ~ an attitude now threatening our very survival.
Symbiocentric thinking helps to lead us out of this deadlock by revisiting the inner wilderness and discovering her treasures. So let’s start with the key question:
What is wilderness?
What does it mean to be wild?
“Asking truly ‘wild’ peoples we get a different answer.” Andreas Weber, German biologist and philosopher tells us. “We learn that ‘wild’ means to be in relationship, and to fulfil your part of the relationship in such a way that the collective of life does not unravel. Being wild means being involved in nurturing others – as those wild others also nurture us. Wildness is the drive of the world to generate persons and experiences through mutual nurturing.”
Wildness means to be in relationship,
and to fulfil your part of the relationship.
Wildness means being involved in nurturing while being nurtured.
Wildness is the drive of the life forces of nature to generate experience through mutual nurturing.
Wildness is being in relationship with all aspects of ourselves. To be truly wild, means our inner vital Faculties are free to be themselves, each according to their own nature, so they can be in healthy relationship with one another.
This is the essence of the practice of Kairotrophy [from Greek kairos = opportune moment + trophe = nurturing] wilding the inner ecosystem one opportune moment at a time.
The Body as a Faculty of Consciousness
The body is our general medium for having a world.
〰 Maurice Merleau-Ponty 〰
The human body ~ as we have learned to interpret this anatomical structure of bones, tissues, muscles, skin and organ systems with their physiological functions ~ is the physical manifestation of ourselves. We identify with it, take it for granted, curse it when it doesn’t ‘function properly’, causes pain, or threatens to ‘give up on us’.
It is probably fair to say that most of us have an ambivalent relationship with this anatomical-physiological manifestation, to which we are tied, for better or worse, from the moment of conception until our final breath.
When I received the Noctarine map of Consciousness, the Body made a striking entrance right from the start. She didn’t show up as a material object ~ an ‘it’ from which we as its human owner feel more or less detached, a ‘living thing’ with which we have an ambiguous relationship because ‘it’ never quite lives up to our ideals of perfection ~ but as a subject.
The Body introduced herself as my Inner Ally. The only visible and tangible one of the eight Faculties of individual human Consciousness.
Although I’d never thought or heard about the Body as a Faculty of my Consciousness, the definition instantly made so much sense, especially in the context of understanding Consciousness as a living organism.
I knew I wasn’t the first to meet the Body in this guise. Ancient Taoist writings have introduced us to the idea of wu-wei (= non-doing or effortless action), which includes listening to the body and following the bodies wisdom. Ayurvedic tradition teaches that the body is not something to dominate but to align with.
In Ancient Greece, Hippocrates proposed that the body is endowed with natural self-healing forces. This long-standing, well documented, and widely acknowledged fact became one of the cornerstones on which Samuel Hahnemann, founder of homeopathic medicine, based his understanding of health, disease, and beneficial ways to support the human body’s self-healing efforts in sickness, more than 200 years ago.
In the 1940s, French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty wrote, “the body is a natural self and, as it were, the subject of perception.”
Merleau-Ponty challenged the dominant Western philosophical schools, esp. the familiar dualistic view separating mind and body, when he introduced his idea of the lived body as the subject which enables us to experience and engage with the world.
While philosophers in the Cartesian tradition are still clinging to the body as something humans have, a physical object more or less analogous to a sophisticated machine, Merleau-Ponty boldly claimed that “we are our body. It is through the body and her perception that the world becomes meaningful.”
Perception and experience don’t happen as abstract events in the mental realms. They are always embodied.
While Merleau-Ponty’s philosophical theories may continue to be rejected by the diehard anthropocentric worldview ~ eight decades after he first published his seminal work The Phenomenology of Perception ~ proponents of the concept, resonating with his work and philosophy, knowingly or not, can be found far and wide in diverse fields from holistic medicine to quantum physics, and from ancient Taoist teachings to contemporary eco-philosophy, environmental studies, and anyone who understands the human body as our symbiocentric ally.
The Wild Web of Individual Human Consciousness
Rewilding
— giving nature the space and opportunity to express itself —
is largely a leap of faith.
〰 Isabella Tree 〰
As a vital Faculty of the living organism of individual human Consciousness (IHC), the Body ~ your Inner Ally ~ has her sphere of responsibility and range of functions. The same applies to each of the eight Faculties, in analogy to the organ systems of the physical organism.
The Inner Ally holds the Consciousness of evidence, boundaries, and agency. Unlike anthropocentric concepts and theories, where organisms and ecosystems are artificially segregated and divided into apparent separate parts, the Noctarine model of the inner ecosystem of IHC recognises that all Faculties are intimately interconnected with one another. They are literally an entangled web.
In the Map of the Noctarine this interconnected entanglement is represented as a Web of Consciousness, where each Faculty holds and contributes a so-called autonomous property:
Faculty › Title › Autonomous Property Will › Wizard › Language Soul › Sovereign › Essence Inspiration › Genius › Power & Potentiality Intuition › Guardian › Clan, native Population Imagination › Artist › Sphere of Reality Instinct › Healer › Sentience Intellect › Expert › Perspective Body › Ally › Function
The autonomous properties are not only expressed through the corresponding Faculty. Each of the vital organs of IHC has its own Function, Perspective, Sentience, Sphere of Reality, native Population, Power, Essence, and Language (shown in the diagram below)
This means, the Inner Ally provides us with a multifaceted lens of her experience through 8 different facets ~ Monitor (basic Function of the Body in IHC), Evidence (Perspective of the Body in IHC), Sensoriality (the Body’s Sentience), Incarnal Reality (the Sphere of embodiment), Incarnifolk (native Population of embodied action), Entropy (the Power of embodiment), Synergy (the Essence of the Body in IHC), Incarnadian (Language of the Body in IHC).
These properties have been introduced briefly over several chapters in my book Synchronosophy: A Rough Guide to the Feral Side of Life. You can find them at the end of chapters 11-18 (see links at the end of the Introduction to Synchronosophy)
Some definitions of terms are available in the Glossaries (see links at the end of the list of chapters)
The introduction of so many new terms all at once may feel more than a little overwhelming. — Tell me about it! This explains why it’s taking me so many years to figure out what it all means, a process of ongoing questioning and receiving new glimpses of insight ….
It also reveals how little we know about Consciousness in general, and about our own IHC in particular. If it is true that individual human Consciousness is a living organism ~ and until now, a few outliers aside, this fundamental premise has not even yet been widely acknowledged in Western fields of studies ~ wouldn’t this discovery alone catapult us naturally into a whole new world of research?
If IHC is a living organism with 8 vital organ systems which we may call Faculties, it shouldn’t come as a huge surprise that this organism is at least as complex as the living human physical organism multiplied by 8.
Time and again human explorers of the inner world describe their personal experiences, finding their life’s purpose, and the ‘humble goal’ of gaining self-knowledge, as the adventure of a lifetime.
Instead of simply gathering information from some fictitious ephemeral library, we embark on a most challenging journey of discovery with no map, and only a more or less reliable inner compass to navigate by, while consistently berating ourselves for taking too long, getting lost, failing at every turn, chased by the fear of running out of time and missing the point entirely…
Well, in the light of a complex web of living human Consciousness, such an endeavour doesn’t look too shabby after all.
We should congratulate ourselves for having the courage to try, against all odds!
So that’s what we’re doing here. I’m not promising that I’ve found all the answers, or any answers for that matter. What I can offer, after several decades of journeying along the solitary and treacherous tracks of self-discovery, are questions.
The right questions contain glimmers of hope to unearth meaningful answers. The right questions are the most useful guides, every question carrying the seed of its own answer. If you struggle to find an answer, move on to the next question…, or formulate your own.
Where do you start?
Let’s start with the (more or less) visible, tangible parts of who and where we are.
A Game of Self-Inquiry
Some of us will rewild our hearts.
〰 Lidia Yuknavitch 〰
The Noctarine Web of Consciousness can be used as a Game of Self-Inquiry. Like any game, there are certain rules. On first impression, this grid with its numbers, colours, the ∞ symbol, and 64 more or less unfamiliar words looks like a mysterious map.
Before you can use this map for the formulation of personal questions you need to become familiar with the keywords and the meanings they carry.
‘Doesn’t sound too difficult,’ you may think. ‘All I need is a wordlist with the meanings, so I can look them up…’
Well, if it only were that simple. There’s an additional obstacle, to which I don’t hold the key: Your Consciousness, your Faculties, your mindset will change the meanings by interpreting them according to associations, experiences, memories, beliefs, emotions, doubts, etc. living within your inner world.
You might not be aware of those yourself, yet.
Like life itself, this game leads you along an adventure trail, where new information reveals itself as you follow the path. Trying to figure it all out without engaging in this game is like wanting to learn to swim on dry land. It doesn’t work.
The best way to learn the game is by playing. Here are the basic rules:
The 64 nodes shown in the Noctarine Web of Consciousness can be used as windows to enter the inner world. The numbers at the top of each window refer to the Faculties /their Titles and their autonomous properties (AP). [8 is the number of the Body/ Inner Ally and Function. (7 is the number of the Intellect/ Inner Expert and Perspective. etc.]
You can see two numbers in each field connected by the infinity sign (∞). The number before the ∞ always refers to the Faculty/ Title, while the second number after the ∞ relates to the AP.
In addition to the two numbers, each window has a keyword. This keyword literally opens the window to reveal a key question (or a choice of key questions depending on the issue you are working on).
For example, 8 ∞ 1 is the window of the Body/ Inner Ally’s Language. The key word Incarnadian opens the window to reveal a question related to this particular language.
When you open this window (by focusing on the field in the top right hand corner marked as: 8 ∞ 1 Incarnadian) it reveals a question in relation to an experience you would like to inquire about.
To be able to identify this question you need two pieces of information ~ (1) the general vocabulary of the Incarnadian language, and (2) your personal subjective experience.
(1) The vocabulary of Incarnadian can be summed up in three main verbs doing, happening, and having.
Doing covers physical acting and behaving as well as all voluntary and autonomous physiological activities, movements and functions.
Happening refers to incidents the Inner Ally experiences, including witnessing occurrences, suffering accidents or adverse events, and enjoying pleasurable situations.
Having includes anything the Inner Ally owns, possesses or adopts in terms of physical objects, skills, competence, agency, resources and power.
(2) Personal experience can be drawn from anything you want to bring to the game as a topic. In theory. In practice, self-inquiries about negative experiences often bear treasures from the most profound wells.
It is good to practice with small incidents, events that feel a little unsettling while almost too insignificant to mention. Such apparently trivial synchronicities can hold big surprises.
Around the Wheel of the Self-Healing Body
What makes the desert beautiful is that somewhere it hides a well.
〰 Antoine de Saint-Exupéry 〰
In anthropocentric thinking and allopathic medicine, disease symptoms must be eliminated in order to ‘restore health’. The definition of ‘health’ according to the WHO is the absence of symptoms.
According to homœopathic philosophy, symptoms of dis-ease are signals of the living and relatively healthy organism to indicate a deeper disturbance within the organism, while also being the best efforts of the Body (and all other Faculties) towards a healthy equilibrium.
In the field theory of Synchronosophy and the associated Kairotrophic practice, we resonate with the latter and take it a step further:
Every negative incident can be read as a symptom [ from Greek sym = together + piptein = to fall] a departure from normal function or form as an expression or evidence of a disease, a happening, accident, coincidence; a signal of deeper disturbance triggering efforts of the organism towards self-protection and self-healing.
After all, every negative emotion, every accident, every clash with a fellow human, every misfortune, affliction, loss, attack to our integrity, interference with our intentions and desires, every adverse event triggers a sense of dis-ease.
Sometimes the dis-ease resolves itself through the self-healing forces of the organism itself. At other times this dis-ease lodges itself within the web of IHC. This is especially true when the host of the inner eco-system is unable to appreciate, understand, and support the efforts of the vital self-healing forces.
When we stoically brush negative events under our doormat without integrating the information, the internal dis-ease remains. Over time the level of the doormat rises and the dis-ease spills over the threshold, metaphorically speaking, fills the whole house, and begins to ooze out through all cracks, seams, and fissures.
I believe Western human Consciousness is collectively drowning in some level of negative event overload (NEO). All repressed and suppressed ‘adverse events’ from centuries of oppression are actively present within us. All unprocessed negative and unwanted experiences of our ancestors are flowing through our veins, dispersed via our emotional aquifers.
Denial doesn’t help. Toxic positivity makes it worse. Cutting the malignant onkosomas (= mass of abnormal swellings) out is impossible.
The only thing that does help when we experience NEO is authenticity. Facing situations as they present themselves with compassion and the basic understanding that everything we experience as negative is immature, yearning to unfold its potential, and make its contribution to the whole.
This understanding, which promotes healing, is not something we can do, or implement, in the sense of replacing negative bits with positive ones. It starts with the fundamental attitude that what we experience as ‘negative’ is the immature form of our entelechy ~ our actualised potential.
I have written about this topic in Chapter 17 of Synchronosophy, Powers of Knowing. Reading about the theory, however, is one thing, a small step, a brief introduction. Putting it into practice is the whole rest of the story.
In this chapter you have the opportunity to take a stroll through your own inner wilderness with the Inner Ally as your guide. Find the practice session in the attached download.
Hi Veronika,
This soooooo resonates with the inner work I have been guided to by the team and finding the “treasures” in the wounds, the ancestral traits that can be harnessed to heal, for all of us. It just keeps coming. Your work offers people a way to visit what they resist — their “wilderness”.
“Attacking our own inner wilderness may currently be the greatest threat to human survival ... Symbiocentric thinking helps to lead us out of this deadlock by revisiting the inner wilderness and discovering her treasures.” Yes 🙏 💚
“Wildness is being in relationship with all aspects of ourselves .... The Body introduced herself as my Inner Ally.” Thank you 🙏
My own inner work with my team has taught me that my body is first responder, the authentic messenger. I filter my thoughts through my body, this largely came about because this is how I communicate with the team, it sort of just evolved that way. You bring such clarity in showing us how we are interconnected. Truly, a gift. Thank you 🙏
“All unprocessed negative and unwanted experiences of our ancestors are flowing through our veins, dispersed via our emotional aquifers ... Denial doesn’t help. Toxic positivity makes it worse ... The only thing that does help when we experience NEO is authenticity.”
Yes... again 😊. I struggle with external labels and expectations when people project they know what is best for others. Are you so sure of yourself that you are so sure of me? This was a question John dropped in early in my existence on this platform, when a reader went on a bit of a toxic positivity rant, telling me what I should be doing to get over my grief. 🤣
I had to laugh when I read this line, “The introduction of so many new terms all at once may feel more than a little overwhelming. — Tell me about it!”
Because this is why I have started reading from the beginning (currently on Ch 12), I knew your work resonated, so I have needed to come back so I can grasp it. Clearly, this will need multiple visits, that’s all good. I love learning , so that I may apply it — which I did this morning after reading this post, using your guide for practice.
I used a recent example that I mentioned in the post I sent out last night:
At brunch I shared the context of a recent unease with Di, some of the people who have known me the longest in this life know me the least because they view me from a past time perspective — one that best suits their construct of ... other … in self?
It seemed a good example for me to use as it is my most recent negative experience that also sheds light on the anthropocentric thinking that so wants to categorise and box everything. Working through the guide, I was able to reflect how my initial response was received through the solar plexus, a resistance rather than an intuition. And this was directly related to an automatic thought response. When I was able to shift this through identifying my role in the initial reaction, I was able to find synergy through filtering my initial response through the heart, which changed the energy around it. This invites compassion of course, for self and the other person. The final resting place being that the dissolving of this friendship was without personal judgement, at its core. If you like to see the notes for each step let me know and I will make a word document of my scribble.
Thank you Veronika 😊 🙏 💚
I'm wondering who is the "apex predator" in the inner wilderness, who then triggers a "tropic cascade" of regenerative healing. Maybe it's the originality of the original mind-shifting question?