A short essay on the subtle architecture of our inner life

[Bindi]

I have come to see the psyche not merely as a mind in the psychological sense, but as a layered energetic system populated by subtle forces. At the heart of this view are the subconscious emotional and mental currents, and deeper still, two complementary unconscious currents that I’ve come to think of as the Shiva aspects and the Shakti aspects.

 

The emotional and mental currents we’re all familiar with, but the Shiva and Shakti currents are less obvious, so I will go into some detail about them.

They can be recognized through many vivid symbolic pairs:

 

• Wildfire / Fireplace
  The dynamic blaze that consumes and transforms.
  The hearth that holds the fire safely, giving it purpose and warmth.
• Fish / Fishbowl
  The darting, elusive vitality moving through hidden depths.
  The clear bowl that contains, supports, shapes, and protects its motions.
• Cat / Dog
  The graceful, sensitive, easily startled nature that seeks comfort.
  The loyal guardian that stays close, watching over and calming.
• Fearful / Protector
  The trembling instinct that recoils from perceived danger.
  The steady presence that stands firm, offering safety.

 

These pairs are not idle poetry. They illustrate how the unconscious houses instinctual forces that must evolve together. The Shakti aspect represents a dynamic, vital current — the drive toward life, transformation, emotional vitality, subtle creativity. The Shiva aspect provide containment, the instinctive intelligence that knows how to protect, restrain, channel, and nurture what would otherwise be chaotic.

In each pairing:

• The dynamic life-force is untamed, vital, transformative.
• The caring containment is protective, shaping, enabling that energy to flourish without harm.

 

They are co-arising: the wild needs the safe space to exist meaningfully; the container finds purpose in cradling the life within.
If one seeks only to awaken the dynamic energy (as in a blind kundalini pursuit), without fostering the complementary instinct to contain and guide it, imbalance is inevitable. The system can flare into anxiety, delusion, or emotional overwhelm. This is why so many teachings stress that cultivation is not merely about amplifying energy, but purifying and preparing the mental and emotional channels first, so the deeper forces can safely develop.

 

To purify the emotional and mental currents tangled by personal history, they must be witnessed and brought into greater flow. They are the first terrain of inner work, and through methods such as shadow work, dream exploration, deep feeling and understanding etc, their dysfunctions can be gradually resolved. Only then can the deeper unconscious forces, the Shiva and Shakti layers, find their ground. Importantly, it is the Shiva aspect that must awaken the Shakti aspect, otherwise containment will not occur, and the Shiva aspect in its turn has to first be activated by the flowing current of the emotional and mental currents. 

 

Recently, my dreams have begun to show me that when these two deep unconscious instinctual layers find each other and start to mature in their interaction, something new emerges. In symbolic terms, this is represented as a smaller, independent vehicle that will one day travel on its own. This resonates with images from Daoist Neidan (inner alchemy) where an alchemical child is born - an autonomous subtle body that eventually can separate from the main system. This smaller independent vehicle or child is the fruit of a long interplay between mature containment (Shiva) and vitality (Shakti).

 

But the picture does not end here. Overseeing all of this is the witness self, the faculty of clear seeing that stands apart from the energies it observes. This witness is the part that learns to trust that the humble, instinctual containment field is capable of guiding the system more wisely than the anxious grasping of the conscious mind. It slowly informs the conscious mind, which may then serve as the executive agent, ruling not by force but by insight.

 

In the end, I see the conscious mind, gently taught by the witness, becoming the wise steward of the system - allowing these deeper layers to do their work, neither interfering unnecessarily nor abandoning responsibility. Thus the entire architecture of psyche - subconscious, unconscious, witness, and conscious mind - becomes integrated. Each layer performs its unique role, culminating in a new life, an independent vitality born of the interplay between our deepest instinctual forces.

 

                   A compact visual map

 

                        (Divine / Mother/ Highest Source)

                                                    ↓

                                          Witness Self

                        (objective seeing, clear awareness)

                                                     ↓

                                  Conscious Mind (steward)

                 (makes decisions based on witness insight)

                                                     ↓

                             -----------------------------------------------

                                    |                                    |

                   Emotional Stream          Mental Stream      
                      (Subconscious patterns & biases)

                                                      ↓

                   ----------------------------------------------------------------

                            |                                                 |

          Dynamic Vital Force               Containment Field

          (Shakti aspects)                         (Shiva aspects)

      - wildfire, fish, cat, fear               - fireplace, fishbowl,

                                                                  dog, protector

                                                       ↓

                                    Interplay gives rise to:

                               Smaller independent vehicle

           (new independent ‘entity’ directed by the conscious mind)

 

 

 

Edited 13 hours ago by Bindi

[Lairg]

In the Castaneda writings Don Juan refers to the mind as "a foreign installation".   That statement needs some context

 

It is useful to distinguish the elemental substances of the mental space from the intelligences that coordinate those substances into usable organs.   Still other intelligences may provide external purpose to the usable organs.

 

Don Juan's statement refers to an external intelligence that commandeers the personal frequencies of the mental structure.  It takes a lot of work for the human spirit to establish functional ownership of the personal and transpersonal mental structures - but that is the most obvious precondition for first stage enlightenment.