DEVELOPING A SELF-REFERENCING SYSTEM: The Matrix†

Abstract

This article describes how to extend somatic awareness in new directions, through an alternating series of theoretical models and self-reflexive exercises. I use the term somatic awareness to imply a first-person, here/now, sensory perception: how we feel, and know ourselves on a process level rather than on an image or object level, inferentially. One can summarize this theory using the form of a matrix or grid, consisting of seven modes of intelligence along one axis and five modes of functioning for each mode of intelligence along the other axis. (See figure 1.) Sufficient familiarity with the content of the cells formed by the matrix can serve to remind us of undeveloped aspects, or other factors that might constrain our somatic awareness in the moment. In a workshop setting, it works best to have a facilitator to provide support and micro-guidance during the exercises. Without such support, we recommend reading through the entire experiment before commencing, and that you suspend your judgments for the duration of the experiment. The results of the Somatic Awareness[SM] experiments will manifest in the form of bodily sensations and feelings. Your somatic experience can guide you through new dimensions of perception when you relax and give up viewing it through the filter of old beliefs. Then the possibility of experiencing each moment as new and timeless becomes one less experience removed. Play with each experiment until you feel a shift of some sort in your feeling, sensing, or thinking, before resuming reading. Keep a journal of your observations. Look for ways to play with others on these and related exercises as partners and facilitators, in a process of mutualized sensing and learning which I refer to as Organismic Dialogue[SM]. Imagine the matrix as a control panel on a space ship in which you travel through meaning space. You could also imagine it as a scope, like a microscope or telescope, that enables you to see increasingly subtle and complex aspects of the process of attention. The many lenses, compasses, and barometers incorporated in the matrix provide feedback that you can learn to utilize in every aspect of your living. The horizontal axis of the grid references seven different modes of intelligence. The first five, much like Buddhism's nine levels of consciousness, consist of the five senses. However, each sense corresponds to a type of intelligence. They not only function passively as modes of perception, as connoted by the word sense, they also function actively as [TABULAR DATA FOR FIGURE 1 OMITTED] modes of evaluation, of judgment, or of response or action. All of these activities interact in each intelligence. Even animals that have a central nervous system without a brain have the capacity through their senses to perform all of these functions - perception, judgment, action. The seven modes of intelligence I list as smelling, tasting, hearing, seeing, sensing, feeling, and knowing. These distinctions arise as a product of our abstracting for the purpose of differentiating attention to the dynamics of awareness. The matrix can serve in exercising aspects of intelligence that need development. This will enable you to stop compensating for the undeveloped intelligences by using those further developed in ways where they function less effectively. For instance, often we limit ourselves by relying on visual intelligence, when proprioception or kinesthetic intelligence would prove far more useful. By distinguishing between the different modes of intelligence, their respective strengths and weaknesses, we can learn to draw upon them with great efficiency. This ability will empower you when you face a challenge by showing you how to cohere meaning in a new way. The matrix represents a self-referencing system for developing the capacity to extend presence on the edge of the unknown. When you can sense the points of maximum leverage in the stream of attention and the possibilities for extending presence there, you've begun to more consciously participate in your learning process. …