The Six Portals
Many years ago, long before public adoption of AI tools, people met to discuss a new theory: is there a Recommended Daily Allowance for emotions? We all know that people require a certain amount of protein, Vitamin C, and carbohydrates every day. What about feeling-states? Is optimum well-being enhanced if one experiences affectual peaks regularly?
A group of us, including psychotherapists, social workers, spiritual teachers, and a neurologist or two decided this was worth exploring. They experimented with themselves and with colleagues, clients, friends, and patients.
Around 2017, a pattern started to emerge. It seems that people DO benefit from going through certain core experiences every day (we called them 'core experiences' instead of 'peak experiences' because peak seems to imply they are not immediately accessible or normal). BUT– there doesn't seem to be a template that works for everyone. Most humans require 0.8 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight per day, but there is no universal standard for how much laughter, awe, gratitude, or curiosity, experienced regularly, leads to optimal well-being.
That seemed like bad news at the time. But it's not, because although no one can predict the affectual requirements of a GROUP, what IS possible is to find out which are the core experiences which most benefit YOU, as well as how often you should invoke them.
And it's not hard, given modern tools like social media and AI, to evoke these core experiences regularly. Every time you do, you get better at doing it.
The basic feeling-states our procedures induce have changed over the years, and probably always will. They depend on not only what psychologically meets people's needs, but also on which easily available internet, AI, and social media applications are available to make them easy and accessible.
Just now, the ones we inculcate regularly are gratitude, awe, laughter, the Hero's Journey, brainstorming (often through group mind-mapping) and micro-experiments.
Basic to what we do is the AHA checklist. At the beginning, people make a list of core experiences that they know from their life history help them grow, thrive, and enjoy. They often include some of the ones mentioned above, plus others particular to the person.
Then throughout their day people ask "What does my body-mind most want to experience right now?"
The answer they get is usually– nothing, at least at the beginning. The psyche is not used to this question, and ignores it. We have not been trained to believe we can be responsible for our own affectual states.
But with practice, we find that parts of ourselves actually WELCOME these core experiences. Eventually we don't need the checklist any more, because the mind-body just announces what it would most like this minute, and naturally takes action to implement it.
In tomorrow's post, we'll take an example to show how this works. We'll choose one core experience common to most humans, and describe how it can be intensified, refined, and produced regularly. From that you will be able to extrapolate how this works with the others.
