The Vision
Awakening is coming into contact with the truth of all the aspects of being; who you are at the deepest level, what the Universe is at the deepest level, and where these two synthesise into a non-dual experience.
My framework describes how, on an individual level, each of us is a living Body, Heart, Mind and Soul ecosystem, and how, on a transpersonal level, this corresponds to the Universal Body, Universal Heart, Universal Mind, and Universal Soul.
The 16 Elements of Experience map describes the non-dual aspects of experience; it is a bit like a periodic table for experience. Through introspective practice, you can get in touch with these elements, which will connect you to true nature creating more capacity for aliveness, joy, care, and truth.
The approach combines Buddhist emptiness practices, shadow work, tantric embodiment, the archetypal realm, mysticism, individuation, a radically new way of relating to the heart, and more.
If you would like a more in-depth introduction to the model, I did a 40-minute introductory presentation on the Stoa, which you can watch below or here.
The Course
The course will be an introduction to the 16 Elements of Experience. Each step of the course will be a rich window into one of the elements.
It will also introduce practices that help you get in touch with each of the elements in your direct experience.
The course is designed for:
- Contemplative practitioners who are interested in adopting or transitioning to a holistic practice
- Spiritual teachers who want to understand how their teaching fits into a wider eco-system of experience and practice
- People who work in fields related to human flourishing (e.g. academia, healthcare, social enterprise) who want to gain an understanding of how awakening can support people and systems to become more oriented towards wholeness, integrity and well-being
The aim of this introductory course is:
- To introduce each topic and share the importance of its role in the ecosystem
- To give people a flavour of different practices that they may be interested in exploring further
- To demonstrate how these different aspects of experience weave together into a cohesive whole
The Map
Explore More
In Spring 2023 I recorded a 30-minute introductory conversation with some of the course contributors to explore how each topic intersects with the wider map. You can listen to them on Youtube here.
I have written about the Shadows and Golden Shadows of each of the aspects of experience and how to practice with these in mind. You can read that here.
In March 2025, Sam Hinds and I recorded a conversation with an update on the course through the lens of Cosmic Intelligence, which you can listen to here.
Contributors
As well as demonstrating the multi-dimensionality of experience through the framework, I also want the course to share different perspectives from a range of teachers who are experts in their particular subject.
Some of the core values of this model are truth, wholeness, connecting to something bigger than you, empowering people to open to the full richness of their inner world, and weaving all this back in with the collective. All of these teachers embody these values and are sharing the richness of their lived-in insights from a place of grounded and inspiring presence.
The Path
The path can be approached in a number of different ways, and the course layout and structure will reflect this.
Below are three key ways of laying out the path that will be included in the structure:
- Individuation path: Body, Heart, Mind, and Soul practices in daily life
- Enlightenment path: connecting with the Universal Body, Heart, Mind, and Soul during retreat and dedicated practice time
- Synthesised path: living as an expression of the cosmos, the map is based on the nervous system with bottom-up, middle-out and top-down starting points
To give an example of how a flexible layout of this might look for the course, here’s a cool, interactive User Interface designed and built by Eli Pleaner.
Technical & Creative
The course will be an expression of both intellectual rigour and creative expression. Both of these are true: experience is already right in front of you and the deeper and more efficacious your practice, the richer and more whole your immediate experience will be.
For the technical side, we will share detailed and specific information that includes things like stages of development. For the creative side, we will invite you into an inclusive and immediate approach with practices such as meditating to music.
Pre-Requisites
The course is designed to show people the different aspects of human experience that is it possible to awaken. If you are on a contemplative path and want to use this course to deepen your own practice, you will need to develop a foundation practice before starting the course.
You will need:
- a meditation practice – you need to able to sit in contemplative silence in a meaningful way
- a transformative therapy modality – you need a way of working with challenging emotions
You can read more about my recommendations for building a foundation practice here.
Music Meditation
An example practice
Choose a playlist for a topic that you would like to get in touch with. Find a comfortable place to sit or lie down and start by taking a couple of deep breaths.
When you start the playlist, pay attention to how the music inspires feelings, thoughts and energies in your inner world and creates the shape of your experience as you journey with it.
As a concentration object, feel how your body, heart, mind and imagination are creating an artwork or story in your inner world that is inspired by the connection with the music.
Example music meditation playlist for Spaciousness
“Colours and shapes appeared behind my closed eyes.
Just the tip of my finger was so full of bizarre life,
I stroked it along the arm of the chair
And tears of overwhelm sprang to my eyes”From my poetry book Fierce Grace
Frames
The map has come from my direct experience of the underlying nature of experience. It is the infra-layer of experience rather than the meta-layer, which means that the map is emulating the underlying essence of experience rather than zooming out to give multiple perspectives.
One of the coolest aspects of this is that the map emulates the Indra’s Net quality of experience – each of the elements can contain all the other elements.
Depending on which elements is held as primary inflects how the larger landscape is experienced. Here are a few examples:
- When you experience through the realm of the Subtle Body each of the elements becomes something that you can feel directly through energetic embodied experience
- Through the frame of Present Awareness, each of the elements are things that you can notice in your present moment experience
- Through Absorption, each of the elements becomes something that can flood the entirety of experience
- Through Mysticism, each of the elements is a portal into the Universe connecting more deeply to itself
I’ve used AI to create 16 draft versions of the map, one through the lens of each element. The images demonstrate how holding each element as primary creates a landscape with an entirely different shape and feel to it.
Part of the purpose of having different teachers contribute to the course is because each of them holds a transmission and worldview that reflects their expertise.
Outcomes
This path is about understanding the true nature of both the Universe and yourself. You are awakening to being a part of a participatory Universe, where you are an expression of an alive and intelligent cosmos.
Here’s how this looks on each of the layers of the map:
- Universal Body: feeling embedded in the rich flow of life itself in both the physical and energetic realms
- Universal Heart: surrendering to truth, love and death
- Universal Mind: experiencing the atemporal intelligence that reveals itself fresh in each moment
- Universal Soul: feeling all life as an expression of meaningful cosmic emergence, including you
What Does That Feel Like?
How this awakened experience manifests will be subtly different for everyone – your awakening is in part realised by embracing your unique vibes.
Here are a few more creative expressions of some things you may find along the way:
- This Twitter thread, created by River Kenna, is a nice allegory of the path. The thread depicts a version of the path in story form, like a cute somatic-imaginal infused version of the ten ox-herding pictures from Zen Buddhism.
- This illustrated guide (PDF) brings to life some of the aspects of experience that you will be awakening.
- These vignettes of people with an awakened experience give an insight into integrated realisation and what it can look like for different people.
- This article by Joost Vervoort describes how everyone is a mystic poet and how this fits into systems change
Related Models
My framework can be modelled a number of different ways. Here is the most simple expression of it, with the qualities that are being cultivated through this practice.
You can read more about this and the other ways of understanding the framework on my maps and models page.
Updates
I am currently writing my book, ‘Being Buddha Nature’, which will provide the foundational knowledge for the course. We will develop the course after this has been released.
Follow me on Twitter, for updates.
This course intersects with The Imaginal Realm Project – a collaborative project exploring how the imaginal realm can be unlocked on a global scale.