Discovering an Internal Environment

There was a time when I didn’t think about having an internal environment.

Things simply happened inside me.

A thought.

An emotion.

Stillness.

A physical sensation.

Later, energy.

They were experiences, and I experienced them.

But after years of meditation, and eventually Kundalini and Reiki, something gradually changed…

Those experiences began developing location.

Movement.

Familiarity.

Relationship.

What had once felt like separate things happening inside me slowly began to feel more like territory I was becoming familiar with.

Things started happening somewhere

As my awareness developed, I began noticing that internal experiences weren’t all happening in one undifferentiated space.

Something could become active around the crown. Another experience might occur through the spine. The heart could become prominent. The brow could feel completely different again.

At first, I didn’t think of any of this as a map. I was simply noticing what was happening.

But location mattered.

If something occurred repeatedly in a recognizable place, I could compare it with what I had experienced before.

Eventually I wasn’t only noticing:

Something is happening.

I was also noticing:

Something is happening here.

That small distinction opened quite a lot.

Then things began to move

Kundalini made this considerably more obvious.

Energetic activity didn’t always remain in one place.

I could experience movement through the spine. Activity around the crown. Processes that seemed to move upward or downward. Sometimes one area appeared to participate with another.

Again, I wasn’t trying to build a system around it. I was trying to understand my own experience.

Something could begin in one place and seem to move somewhere else. If it happened enough times, I could recognize the route.

Eventually, what had once been a collection of energetic events started developing a kind of internal geography.

Years later, some of those observations would contribute to what I came to call Internal Transit.

But the name came much later.

The movement came first.

Not everything had a location

Other experiences taught me something different.

Sometimes what was present didn’t seem confined to one particular place.

An emotional condition could seem to occupy much more of the internal space. Stillness could do the same. Anxiety could appear almost like an atmosphere.

That eventually changed some very ordinary language for me.

There is a difference between saying:

I am anxious.

and noticing:

An anxious atmosphere is present.

The anxiety hasn’t disappeared. But my relationship with it has changed. There is suddenly a little room between what is present and who I am.

That became increasingly important in my practice.

I could move within it

As different parts of my internal experience became more familiar, attention became more useful.

I could stay with one area. Move attention somewhere else. Notice an energetic process without immediately interfering with it. Return to somewhere familiar.

Sometimes I could approach the same territory differently and notice that the experience changed.

This began feeling less like observing a series of disconnected internal events and more like learning how to move within something.

I don’t mean that literally.

I don’t believe I’ve discovered some hidden anatomical landscape inside the body. I’m describing how the experience gradually organized itself from where I was sitting.

There were places I recognized. Movements I recognized. Atmospheres I recognized. And increasingly… relationships between them.

Reiki allowed me to participate

Reiki added another dimension.

Until then, much of my development had involved noticing what was occurring.

Reiki gave me more deliberate ways of participating.

Attention. Intention. Symbols. Different ways of approaching energy.

That made the internal territory even more interesting.

I could encounter a familiar region through a different practice and notice another quality within it.

Sometimes the same general area could feel quite different depending on how I approached it.

I became increasingly interested not only in where something was happening, but in my relationship with what was happening there.

The pieces began connecting

Over time, experiences that had once seemed separate began revealing relationships.

Thought could influence atmosphere. Attention could change an energetic experience. Stillness and movement could exist together. Something happening energetically could create a physical response. An emotion could be present without becoming the whole internal environment.

None of this gave me a perfect map. I still don’t have one.

What it gave me was familiarity.

I was beginning to recognize an internal life that was much more detailed than I had understood when I first began meditating.

And importantly, it didn’t disappear when I opened my eyes.

It was already there

Eventually I could recognize parts of this environment while walking.

Working.

Sitting at Essy.

Talking with someone.

Moving through a difficult moment.

Living an ordinary day.

That may have been the biggest change.

I stopped thinking of the internal environment as somewhere I went when I meditated.

Practice helped me notice it. But the environment itself was already participating in life.

That realization changed what I wanted from practice.

I wasn’t always trying to reach somewhere else anymore. I became more interested in developing a relationship with what was already here.

Looking back at Arrival Field

Years later, Arrival Field would eventually use a very simple description:

A place for developing a living relationship with your internal environment.

For me, internal environment isn’t simply a phrase. It points toward something that took years to become visible.

First there were experiences.

Then locations.

Movement.

Atmosphere.

Recognition.

Return.

Eventually, relationships between all of them.

The language came afterward.

It usually does for me…

I encounter something first. Spend time with it. See whether it returns. And only much later do I begin wondering what to call it.

Maybe that’s why I still prefer beginning with what can actually be noticed.

Not:

What should be happening inside me?

But something much simpler…

What’s here?

Jason —