The Locus of Consciousness

Otto Scharmer describes four fields of being, or "structures of attention". His diagram makes sense to me because I've had personal experiences of each level. In level one my attention (aka my consciousness) is located solidly within my self. I experience myself as completely unique and located within my physical body. When I look out at the world I am looking through my filters, which are constructed out of my own experience, dreams, and expectations.

At field two my consicousness is resting at the edge of my self. I've pushed myself beyond my filters and can listen to others in a very neutral and objective way.

In field three I am having a deeply compassionate experience of another being. This is always, for me, an emotional connection. When I feel compassion and empathy for you, the electromagnetic frequencies of our two hearts are resonnating at a similar frequency and this allows me to temporarily move beyond myself and feel deeply connected to you.

Recently, and with more frequency, I've been experiencing field four, which is the field of presence. And this is why I'm writing, in order to attempt to further understand the field four experience. Near the end of the winter I experienced a somewhat abrubt shift in consicousness. I had the experience of spontaneously gaining access to information which was located beyond the boundaries of my physical self. It seemed completely out of context and even scary. Since then I've been practicing field four as often as I can, so that I may understand the space and feel more comfortable operating that way.

If you look at the diagram above you can see that unlike the first three fields where there is only one red dot representing the source of one's attention, or consciousness, field four shows multiple points. When I practice shifting to field four out in nature, I consider the boundaries of my awareness. I look to the horizon and identify the farthest points which I'm capable of seeing. I listen to the sounds and think about the area of the domain of which I'm capable of hearing. I also check in with other sensory perception, though the reach is not as far for taste, smell, and touch. From this state of expansion I then notice feeling as if there is not one "me" located firmly inside my body. I also notice that I have almost no thoughts, no internal dialogue... only the awareness of that which occurs within my domain of perception. Things like birds singing, or an airplane overhead, or the play of sunlight and shadow on the distant hillside. It's actually a quite peaceful state of being, and one which is strived for through a number of spiritual practices.

But when I've had this expansion among other people it has not been so peaceful. There have been several times in my life when my awareness has expanded into a domain which includes other people. It is as if the boundary of my perception is the edge of the room rather than the edge of my physical body. Usually when I'm at my most expansive state of presence I am aware of the emotions and attitudes of others in the space. Periodically, when someone is having a very negative emotional experience I have had the experience of feeling that emotion as if it belonged to me personally, and even having thoughts associated with the feeling that were distinctly not my own thoughts. For example, once on a week long river rafting trip I sat, for a few hours, next to a woman who was experiencing back pain and was really unhappy about being on the boat for several more days. During the time while I sat next to her I found myself having a stream of thoughts along these lines: What am I doing here? I never should have come. This is completely ridiculous. I am miserable and I want to go home. But I was actually having the time of my life and really enjoying the trip and the scenery, which allowed me to notice that these were not, in fact, my own thoughts.

There have been three distinct times in my life when, from this place of deep presence and expansion, I've experienced temporarily seeing and hearing other peoples thoughts. Experientially it was disturbing... particularly when the other person noticed that I was understanding more about them than should usually be the case. Intellectually it is exciting and makes alot of sense to me.

Physics is showing us how the particle/waves which construct our reality are also units of information, perhaps even consciousness itself. Conceptually I believe human systems each have a kind of sentience of their own. I am a sentient being known as Toni, but I'm also part of several other human systems which each posess their own domain. Perhaps field four is the map of a non-local, non-individual sentience in which I participate? Perhaps it is not Toni who can sometimes access information which is not usually available to an individual. Perhaps that which is Toni can be temporarily disolved into some larger form of sentience, and from that place each of us has access to the internal subjective experience of a collective in which we participate? I reckon I'll be gently groping about in this exploration for several months. Perhaps even longer...