Towards a heart centered cartography

For as long as I can remember, I have held onto the misguided notion that absolute objective reality was certain to be held by God or science.  On the one hand, mistrusting my own interpretation of reality was ego syntonic as it was a consistent message that was engendered in me by cultural norms that invalidate children’s and women’s perspectives to maintain hierarchical and imbalanced structures of power. On the other hand, the deference to God and science worked to displace my own modes of knowing and created internal psychological conflict inside myself that eroded confidence in trusting my own intuition and internal felt sense.

In my adulthood I shed the belief that God is omnipotent, and I beckoned towards science as a place to construct a model of reality and causality. The Buddhist notion of karma served to provide some mode of understanding cause and effect however I feel less drawn to that philosophical viewpoint as the air of morality and self-righteousness taints my favor.

Throughout my experience of receiving and integrating Process Relational Philosophy I grieve the lost notion that absolute truth is possible to know and define.  Alfred North Whitehead’s metaphysical model of experience, as defined in his Process Relational Philosophy, presents the iconoclastic notion that truth exists as process, a temporary experiential lived process that concresences only to change and be transformed in the next subsequent moment. Truth is subjected to the weathering evolution of the continuous flow of interrelationality. The shoreline of experience never stops, for as soon as we construct and interpret our perceptual prehensions, the temporal flow elapses and expires into the next unique temporal signature of that specific perspectival moment. The next moment arrives, unfolds and flows open into the next composite set of new conditions that converge and are encoded in the record of universal experiences.

What I walk with is how there might be a pervasive elusiveness to locating and occupying the abiding companionship of perspectival truth. Inspired by James and Whitehead, I am considering that truth is mosaic composite of all experience in nature and I recognize that each experient in the composite holds their unique perspectival truth.  The experient maps their perspectival position and adds this to the collective identified as the pluriverse. 

For Whitehead, nature is everything. Most of our experience is not conscious. Whitehead says we can understand causality through the body. This tracks closely with my experience as a somatic therapist. I am deeply committed to studying how embodiment and cognition operate reciprocally to inform my heuristic understanding of the physical and emotional impact I experience in the natural world.

To engender new possibilities for sensate living we need to reconcile the damage and trauma that the misuse of power has made to our bodies.  It's no mystery why philosophers such as Charles Taylor and Richard Kearney refer to the current time as the age of excarnation. Cyber experts promote a future that can liberate us from embodiment.  We are both entranced by and complicit to being reconfigured by digital media platforms.

 I wonder how my process relational understanding is impacted when my body is defended and not able to receive embodied data. The defenses can be due to chronic emotional defensiveness, depersonalization and numbing, overuse of painkillers, mind altering substances, conditions such as alexithymia, mental and physical health conditions etc. How has the transfer to technology served to function as a decoy for human interaction?  

When my sensory and cognitive perceptions are narrowed in felt scope by the infusion of bodily states of fear my ability to skillfully interpret reality is reduced to distorted duplicative reenactments of the past. I endeavor to create a heart centered cartography that references the wisdom of beginner’s mind and the alchemical embodiment of graceful humility.

Stengers, Isabelle. 2023. Making Sense in Common: A Reading of Whitehead in Times of Collapse. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Whitehead, Alfred North. 1968. Modes of Thought. New York: Free Press.

Anacarnation and returning to the lived body with Richard Kearney

Links to an external site.  Brian TreanorLinks to an external site. & James TaylorLinks to an external site. (eds.)  New York, NY: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group (2023)    

Heuristic understanding of Consciousness (Copy)

My heuristic understanding of consciousness is braided from the intersectional influences across different disciplines.

There is the study of consciousness derived from my subjective self-inquiry using the lenses and tools applied from the annals of psychology, the experiential practice of contemplative practices, personal dream study and the insights gained through mentalization and the interior sensory and visceral exploration referred to as interoception.

I include also the observations gathered in my understanding of the nature of consciousness gleaned from the direct experience of being the gestational carrier of my eldest child and in the subsequent role as a parent, “withnessing” the development of a human being from conception onwards. I have thought about the mystifying effects of microchimerism on my mind/body since carrying and giving birth to a child.

Intertwined with those experiences is the unique dyadic perspective I receive from serving in the role as a psychotherapist for over 23= years. Practicing as a therapist and being immersed in the intimate chamber of a client’s inner world requires conscious attention and attunement to what is happening both in my intrapsychic and somatic landscape and intersubjective landscape known as “analytic third” conceptually introduced in 1994 by Thomas Ogden. The analytical third represents to me what James refers to as the transition and possibly, although I am not certain, might be referred to in the concept known as emergence.

Reading the writings of William James “A World of Pure Experience” specifically on his reflection that “all experiences have their conditions” and the concept of “transition” (James, 1904, p6) as a way of bringing two things into contact, I immediately thought about how transitions remind me of neuronal synapses. This inspired me to pull Portraits of the mind, visualizing the brain from antiquity to the 21st century  off of my bookshelf. I revisited the first known drawings of an entire neuron by Santiago Ramón y Cajal in which he used Camillo Golgi’s staining method. I was curious about the timing of the drawings of a neuron and whether the drawings preceded the writings of William James which as it turned out to be nearly synchronous and contemporary with the discoveries by Golgi and Cajal. Golgi believed that the brain was a continuous single mesh as it was understood in the organization of the nervous system called Reticular theory. Cajal, his rival, argued that the existence of a neuron as a self-contained entity supported the view of the brain as a network of distinct interconnected units which led to the establishment of the Neuron Doctrine, and the founding of modern neuroscience (Schoonover, 2010). 

Strong intuitions of how science and philosophy ought to approach the topic.  I feel lifted by the invitation to feel into and articulate the cascade of thoughts:  networks of electrical/chemical/ brain wave oscillations synchrony/ transference of energy/ roots and trees/breath/air/alveoli/ C02 and O2 exchange. Complexity and systems theory.  The transmission/communication of the elements that make up the earth, electricity/waves. Coordinated Brain wave resonance or Interpersonal Brain Synchronization and Interoception as launching off points.

Weekes, A. “Consciousness as a Topic of Investigation in Western Thought.” Process Approaches to Consciousness (2009).

Schoonover, C. E. (2010). Portraits of the mind : visualizing the brain from antiquity to the 21st century. Abrams.

Ogden, T. H. (1994). The analytic third: working with intersubjective clinical facts. The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 75 ( Pt 1), 3–19.

The Blind spot cogitations (Copy)

In the book, the authors set out to “recover the deep connection between science and human experience” that was affected by a set of conditions that have culminated into what they refer to as the Blind Spot. The Blind Spot as defined by the authors is “a demolition of concrete experience through the elevation of ascending cycles of abstractions” situated in how classical physics created the ontology of nature.

              The faulty scientific frameworks posited by classical physics upholds an idealization of reality which fundamentally relies on misguided notions such as the bifurcation of nature, orthodox physicalism and the degradation of lived experience as being “just sensations”, “just psychological states” and trivialized to “just epiphenomenon”.   The bifurcation of nature artificially separates objective reality from subjective reality and falsely assumes that absolute knowledge exists and can be extracted through mathematical abstractions rather than direct subjective experience.  Four main pathologies of the Blind Spot were woven in throughout the book; the amnesia of experience, surreptitious substitution, the fallacy of misplaced concreteness and the reification of structural invariants. 

              While reading about these pathologies, I found myself curious about how the framework espoused by classical physics may have influenced the birth of Freud’s psychoanalytic method in the 1890’s. Freud, Jung and Whitehead all being contemporaries appear to be holding different viewpoints on the nature of consciousness. Freud located consciousness within the individual which is different from how Jung’s collective unconscious and Whitehead’s Process Relational Ontology viewed the nature of consciousness.  In Freud’s psychoanalytic method, the ideal analytic stance was to be objective and neutral, to revealing low affective and somatic information to the analysand to reduce interference with the analysand’s psychological exploration. This idealized objective stance reminded me of the role of the scientist in the scientific workshop and the amnesia of experience. The amnesia of experience happens “when we forget that direct experience is the implicit departure point and constant requirement of creating knowledge.” 

              I would like to summarize a few of the primary ways that the authors contend to move beyond the blind spot. First, “we must inscribe ourselves back into the scientific narrative as creators.” To achieve this, we need to recognize the primacy of direct experience and develop methods that integrate our lived experience in the production of scientific knowledge. I am particularly struck by the ideas set forth by enactive cognitive science (ECS). ECS prioritizes “embodied experience as the unavoidable reference point for understanding the mind”. “Enactive cognitive theorists embrace the irreducible primacy of direct experience, and it strives to create a science of perception that does not bifurcate nature”. ( p202)

              Another approach to moving beyond the Blind Spot is to recognize the primacy of embodiment. The authors suggest that there here is no way to step out of embodiment. “Even meta-awareness, the ability to mentally attend to and monitor your awareness, originates developmentally from your having internalized an outside perspective on yourself when you were an infant interacting with others.’(p189)

              The primacy of consciousness, “we cannot step outside of consciousness because everything we investigate, including consciousness and its relation to the brain, resides within the horizon of consciousness.” (p1866) Consciousness is the horizon of the world’s disclosure, it is the precondition of the world’s disclosure. Most scientists do not look at consciousness this way. Instead, they think of consciousness as just another phenomenon in this world and assume that it can be distinguished from other phenomenon. Consciousness is the horizon within which any phenomenon we can talk about or point to is present. Merleau-Ponty writes that “ the body is the vehicle of being in the world. The body is the medium of the world’s disclosure via consciousness”. (Phenomenology  Of Perception, 2013)

              In closing, I will highlight specific points from the author’s discussion on neurophenomenology. Neurophenomenology is based on the idea that a deep investigation of consciousness requires working with individuals who are skillful at meta-awareness of experience. It involves using precise qualitative methods of interviewing individuals about fine grain characteristics of their tacit experience.

Frank, A., Gleiser, M., & Thompson, E. (2024). The blind spot: why science cannot ignore human experience. The MIT Press.

Merleau-Ponty, M. (2012). Phenomenology of perception (; D. A. Landes, Trans.). Routledge.

William James: The pluralistic Universe (Copy)

 Wiliam James is upending foundational precepts such as those that promote an absolute objective reality as in science or those found in religious ontologies. He is offering a perspective on reality that levels the playing field by eliminating the hierarchy that places human experience as a more valid truth than the perspective of other experiencing beings on the planet.

James recognizes myriad contributions to the “continuity of experience”.  Experience is felt as “pulses of perception”. He uses phrases such as run into one another and a continuous procession when referring to these pulses of perception. There is no momentary pause to catch an inhalation of breath or close a fist in the contraction of the heart muscle when describing experience. When I read his writings, I feel as though I am lagging behind.

He calls into question the existence of such a thing as the singularly of a 'passing' moment, qualifying a moment both as past and present in one field of feeling (p63).  “All real units of experience overlap”.  If the yearning inside of me to experience the hypothetical relief in arriving at a clear destination or to feel contented in reaching a moment of piercing truth, I would not find shelter in James’s pluralistic universe. He writes,

“We realize this life as something always off its balance, something in transition, something that shoots out of a darkness through a dawn into a brightness that we feel to be the dawn fulfilled. In the very midst of the continuity our experience comes as an alteration”. (ibid)

As soon as one may feel the satisfaction of interpreting an instance of experience and fainting grasping a whiff of the construction of a subjective reality, the ricochet of a new pulse of perception infinitely arises again and thwarts any such reprieve.

I find myself contemplating my own somewhat futile search for truth.  Applying process thinking to defining something as obscure as truth I lament that truth is not a static destination to arrive at nor is it something to chisel out of marble into a finished sculpture. He is inviting us to embrace a more process oriented collaborative ontology. One that is iconoclastic to any sense of safety I may feel in self-righteously congratulating myself on subscribing to a particular political affiliation. My version of defining truth is no more real or valid than another’s truth.  James recognizes the perspectival truth each being possesses.  Where my mind travels towards next on my personal quest to find purpose and meaning is contemplating how to incite interest in preserving the sustainable future of the Earth and all the beings who inhabit the planet and the crises we face ahead.

James, William. A Pluralistic Universe. 1909. 

Isabelle Stengers and Alfred North whitehead (Copy)

In Isabelle Stenger’s readings she calls upon key takeaways in Whitehead’s works on challenging the assumption that there exist universal laws of physics governing nature and the lofty notion that a ‘so called omniscient point of view” is possible. While I have encountered these Whiteheadian ideas before, I still experience an iconoclastic combustion that rattles and disorients me from a childhood construction of reality. The omniscient point of view has long been occupied by God or so it was presented to me early in my Catholic upbringing. More than this God’s eye view feeling watchfully comforting, I experienced it as an externalization of an intrusive critic leaning over me. Couple the ever-observing omniscient point of view with the disavowal of the validity of the subjective perspective, and it is not hard to imagine how it became so that embodiment lost relevance being replaced by the objective knowledge discovered by Science. Stengers reminds of Whitehead’s  “bifurcation of nature” which polarized the objective and subjective relegating the former,  referring to human,  as inferior possessing “the ceaseless bustle of beliefs and value judgments are considered arbitrary, for ultimately, humans alone are deemed responsible for them”.

Reading the actual first hand writings by Whitehead creatively opened up my mind up to imagining what different “Modes of Thought” I am aware of.  In the spirit of process thinking, I attempted to discretely observe experiences of prehension (Whitehead’s term for currents of unconscious feelings) in my own meta-cognitive awareness to attempt to notice and trace a map of the directionality of my thoughts. Could I observe the toggling filament of discernment involved in the selection process?  What is involved in the process of going towards what is important?

A point for me of elongated contemplation fawned over the sentence in Whitehead’s Modes of Thought  “it has its origin in the thought of ourselves as process,  immersed in process beyond our­selves”.  The waves of concrescence require our subjective embodiment to translate the process of selection and defining importance. 

Stengers, Isabelle. Making Sense in Common: A Reading of Whitehead. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2023.
Whitehead, Alfred North. Modes of Thought. New York: Free Press, 1968