M.A.P. : The Mindfulness Animating Process

M.A.P. : The Mindfulness Animating Process

Intuitive Flexibility, Lesson 2

Part of a series on Philosophical Wellness Tools—Powerful Application of Profound Theory

Disclaimer: Nothing in these articles is advice—only options to explore if you choose. I don’t present truth or facts; only pragmatic possibilities. If something works for you, then it’s true for you—or simply effective. And honestly, what more really matters?

For a more in-depth break down on this topic and related keep an eye on my Substack: spacecar.substack.com 

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What I’m presenting here is fundamentally a primer for intuitive thinking. In my previous article in this series, I talked about intuitive flexibility. This is basically not letting the body-mind become rigid so as to facilitate intuition. Rigidity hinders our ability to respond effectively in any given moment, which prevents our ability to be open to rapid pattern recognition. Note that I said body-mind; quality thinking is always felt in the body. During intuitive thinking, there’s a constant feedback loop between what you feel in your body and what you think in your mind. Intuitive thinking is much more possible when the body-mind is flexible—that is, when we aren’t stuck in the same feelings repeatedly and our state adjusts to fit new circumstances smoothly. Therefore, the system I’m outlining here is a tool that is, in part, intended to build up the capacity to think intuitively. Such thinking involves becoming what we think about—a complete fusion of identity, thought, and embodied feeling. In this experience of intuition, we feel our entire being as what we are thinking. Becoming is a key to advanced wellness practices—to traversing the stage between recovery and actualizing (animating) full potential.

We live in a society that has a tendency to focus on IQ to the exclusion of EQ, but an abundance of evidence shows the value of both. The work of the neuroscientist Antonio Damasio shows how we can’t avoid emotion in decision-making. The work of Eugene Gendlin shows there is always affect underlying everything done or experienced. Feminist philosophers have for some time called for an embodied, emotionally integrated view on thinking, and now it seems evidence points to this being exactly how the brain works. So, why do we live in a society that’s in denial of its feelings? Especially when it seems our feelings are exactly what make us competent and therefore strong?

There is a lot of history to cover if we want to come to truly appreciate how and why we ended up with the illusion of thinking that is divorced from feeling; such is beyond the scope of this article. For now, we can say this particular approach outlined in this article is anti-Cartesian and leave it at that. Not that Descartes is the sole cause of our decontextualization from feeling-body-environment, but it certainly was codified nicely by him when he failed to intuit what lay beyond “I think, therefore I am.”

If he’d gone further, he’d question whether or not he could even trust thought. He’d come up against the difficulty of doubting the very tool he was using up to this point. Then he might realize that not everyone comes to do the sort of thinking he is doing, and yet everyone thinks. If everyone is thinking, then what made Descartes different? Was it just methodology, just the way he was thinking, the sort of cognitive tools at his disposal? Then how did those cognitive tools come to be? Various people had to come to develop those tools. We could assume that some people are just inclined to make cognitive tools just as some are inclined to make music or pursue the culinary arts. Some people devote themselves to developing skills while others don’t. Why?

This is a question we can ask in peer support or any field where we help people realize their potential for growth and change. Why do some develop themselves and others not? We could also ask, if our peers are experts on themselves, and we peer supporters are experts on recovery, what exactly does that mean is the root of what we bring to the table for our peers?

What we peer support specialists bring to the table, at the most fundamental level—that something everything else comes back to—is that we’ve honed our awareness. How many times have you found yourself aware of the harmful patterns and cycles your peers are stuck in? Often the same or similar cycles to what you’ve worked your way out of in your past. Cycles you also were once unaware of, but now you see them—as if someone turned on the lights in a dark room.

Sure, everyone is aware, but you’ve honed that awareness such that recovery—the road to recovery is, like any development path, one that goes against the grain of lethargy, apathy, and instant gratification—toward challenge, difficulty, and affirmation of life. This isn’t just being aware; it is deliberately, actively applying our awareness in such a way that we enhance how aware we are of our overall situation, inside and out. Often when confronted with challenge, we either become more alert or we become rigid and reactive. In the face of difficulty, we become more competent or less so. This is what made Descartes’s thinking different; his ability to maintain high levels of discerning awareness in the face of challenge was quite good. After all, the sort of thinking Descartes engaged in—challenging his beliefs around what is real—could destabilize someone’s sense of wellness. This ability to maintain high levels of sober awareness comes from attempts to maintain mindfulness in the face of the situations that would normally rob us of our presence of mind.

It wasn’t that Descartes should trust his thinking more than his senses or feelings—it was that he should trust his honed awareness above all else. From beginning to end, his meditations were a process guided by and in the service of developing awareness. Many mystical religious traditions lead to the same ultimate realization: that the spirit is awareness—the true self is awareness. Think about what you define to be true about yourself, and I guarantee that awareness is at the bottom of all that. We often say we don’t know our true self until we reach mental health recovery, but why is that? That is because the pain, the trauma, the lies we’ve come to believe—all of them create a fog in the mind, blinding us from knowing who we are. We think we are the pain; we think we are our parents, or the trauma inflicted upon us. We think we are victims. Every mystical tradition, and every philosophical tradition worth anything, leads eventually to the realization that all the labels we identify with are temporary anchors—like flotation devices we cling to in an ocean of consciousness. Until, one day—probably gradually—we come to realize we are what we consciously choose.

This also removes some of the pressure to do something special to be worthy of life. You are worthy simply because you are aware. All meaning, and therefore worth, is like refracted awareness.

I am aware, therefore I am.

Of course, we want more—and why not have it? That said, to have more requires valuing what you have, and the most fundamental level of having is simply being. Being is only possible if you are aware.

That is why today I’m talking about how to develop mindfulness that leads to feeling more animate—more alive. This is a process, not an action plan. Plans begin and end, and maybe get new plans added later. This is a process that you become, as you are becoming. As you use this process, you become the process, and it helps guide you in becoming your potential—a never-ending journey. By the time you’ve gone beyond recovery to actualizing your potential, this methodology has likely been so thoroughly personalized it is no longer what I originally gave you, but something deeply yours.

Overview of the Process

I can’t cover all the steps and stages of this method in one article. Don’t take that to mean this process is complicated—it is actually deceptively simple.

So simple I’ll give you the whole thing right now:

Pay attention to how you feel while you go through the motions of your life. Stop every now and then to pay close attention to how your feelings change moment to moment. Experiment with doing different things to produce different changes in your feelings. If you are thorough in experimenting with producing different feelings, then you may be surprised by your realizations.

If this explanation isn’t quite sufficient, then this one may help:

Go more slowly through a portion of your life—maybe it is 10 minutes, or even better, a whole day. Take a day on the weekend, and make sure you’ve got nothing else you have to do at all that day. Pay attention to how basics like walking up stairs versus walking on a flat path change how you feel.

Don’t assume ahead of time that you know anything about what your feelings will be! This is super important. A major hindrance here is projecting previously formed ideas onto our current experience. We have to act like proper scientists and create a space to encounter ourselves anew.

Try breathing slower for a minute, then try deliberately breathing faster. Try various breathing speeds. Do this with different facial expressions and bodily postures.

Walk for a few minutes with an extreme slouch—more slouchy than anything you’d normally fall into the habit of. Then walk very upright for a time, and alternate back and forth. Try standing next to something way taller than you, then something smaller, then atop something really high, then lying on the grass looking at the sky. This process of alternating—sometimes slowly, sometimes rapidly—while attending closely to how we feel can be applied to thought, emotion, or your body.

There is an element of meditation and sensory grounding technique to this, combined with self-observation. This is akin to the Buddhist practice of Vipassana.

Keep a journal of the different feelings and thoughts that occur during this. Reflecting back on the process is itself a part of the meditation.

Further Breakdown

You could very well begin with what I’ve already given you. You could discover the more in-depth breakdown of this method on your own. Still, I’d like to make sure I’m giving you the best start possible without taking away the joy of discovery. The pleasure of realizing that you not only get to learn about yourself, but also discover and create your own Mindfulness Animating Process.

In many ways, this methodology is very organic. It is sort of like relearning how to live. You already know how to live, but now pay closer attention and experiment with the details. This sort of learning is deeply life-affirming as it helps you appreciate the subtle nuances of your life. Often we think we need more of this or that, not realizing that simple things like the feeling of walking from our bedroom to our bathroom are integrally important forms of enjoyment. Take something painful and experiment with how you might find pleasure from it. You’ve got something you love doing—but what is the limit of how you might alter that while still enjoying it? When you do variations on what you love, will you find new ways to love it? Once you’ve fully internalized this appreciation of the little things and attention to detail, it becomes much easier to know how to build a fulfilling life.

Now, within what I’ve said so far, there is something implicit—something important that might go unnoticed. And I can hopefully streamline its discovery.

Creating a space and learning to be with yourself.

All the other instructions implicitly begin with a subtle inner distinction that I hinted at earlier when I talked about what Descartes got wrong. This distinction is that we often believe we are our sense of identity. This self is made of thought that appears to be something else—like a father, a son, daughter, good, bad, etc. Sure, you could say that you are in the role of father, but father is a mere word. Your mind is identified with what the word father means to you, and that meaning behind father contorts how you feel and perceive. This is true of all identification: it is useful in some ways, but it hinders a deeper clarity.

So this method begins with paying attention to our inner world. The simple act of attending to our inner world immediately creates a temporary space between what we normally identify with and the part of us that is observing. Usually, even while observing, we still assume some thought-constructed identity. It is the consistent mindfulness we develop by bringing ourselves back to observation over and over despite numerous distractions that gives us the leverage to realize ourselves as awareness itself.

While we pay attention inwardly, feel whatever is happening and allow it to be there. Don’t try to change anything you’re experiencing. Give no meaning or motivating power to anything. Allow it to be there “for-itself.”

After you can consistently observe fairly easily without distraction, try to get a full picture of everything you experience. Get as much detail as possible. Keep this up until you can maintain this relatively easily and consistently. You want it to be easy to do this no matter what emotions you’re feeling, no matter the level of stress or unhappiness.

You may begin this practice while sitting still with your eyes closed. Then try scanning around the room. When you look at different objects, try to spend equal time on everything—whether it is a family photo, a crack in the wall, or your own foot. Notice the difference as you open and close your eyes repeatedly. Watch your feelings and sensations without adding or subtracting anything from them—beyond getting past your judgments of them.

Do this while standing on one foot, while hopping, while running, while walking extremely slowly. The same mindful attention to nuanced changes in feeling described earlier—all the while not adding, subtracting, or changing those feelings.

In Conclusion

Again, keep a journal of how all this goes, and try to be very detailed. Take your time recapping all of it. Recall it and write it down without bias, passion, or prejudice. I can’t stress enough that this isn’t just tracking the process; it is itself an important part of the process. Re-membering the parts of our experience is crucial to cultivating mindfulness. Going back over it dispassionately helps deprogram our relationship to our past, allowing us to move forward—as I said, we are relearning how to live.

You can also create something akin to a pocket WRAP with this approach. As you experiment with different stimuli, you’ll discover some of these experiments have stress-relieving potential. Then, in keeping with the spirit of M.A.P., we don’t use these newly discovered wellness tools to avoid the stress, but instead to confront stress in a way that helps us gain a modicum of relief. Also, these experiments can reveal more clearly what wellness tools fit best with which stressors. This is because these experiments reveal a language your body speaks through preverbal feelings. With the M.A.P., we are navigating through how our body-mind creates meaning—more on this in a future installation.

Hidden within what we take for granted in our mundane daily life are the tools to navigating our experience—directions to a more fulfilling sense of meaning. We are thrown into a world of endless change. Rarely are we taught how to navigate—now you have the M.A.P.