The Awareness of Awareness, Essays

Transitionnal Space and Relatedness

By Rudolph Bauer, Phd Sat, Aug 27, 2011 Transitional Space and Relatedness 1. Today I will focus on transitional awareness.or what is also called by some, the intermediate area of experience or even potential spacetransitional space or non conceptual experienceexperience beyond words and letters and yet, can be at times, articulated in words and lettersthese are private experiences that can shared and communicated. 2. Winnicotts understanding of transitional space was elaborated by him throughout his life, and also by his students. This area of intermediate experience is also elaborated by continental philosophy and phenomenology through Heidegger and Merleau Ponty, as well as some the meditative traditions such as Dzogchen Tibetan Buddhism, certain forms of Chinese qi gong, and Hindu Shaivism. 3. You may wonder whether Winnicott discovered this dimension of human experience or invented it...this is always a question, what is invented and what is discovered...this paradox of discovery and inventionthis is always a question. 4. For Winnicott and as expressed by his student Masuda Khan, the sense of subjectivity floatssubjectivity is a floating metaphor... for many, subjectivity is located in the mindor even functions of the mind such as thinking, feeling, sensation, fantasy, and memory. Subjectivity is located in the ego functions as well as the internalizations as representationsrepresentational internalizations.internal object schemas. 5. Nonetheless, in time, a person may become aware of their own minda s mind. For Winnicott, without such awareness, much change may be impossible. Without such recognition that I am not the function of the mind and become aware of my own mind...ones own thinking, fantasizing, memory, affective statesthis experience of awareness creates transitional space and shifts the sense of subjectivity to awareness itselfso one is in awareness but focused on the mind...this intermediate area of experiencein the meditative traditions this would be called mindfulness. One is in awareness, but focuses on the functions of the mind. Beyond witness consciousness 6. For Winnicott, this awareness of mind can make a further and dramatic shift wherein a person becomes aware of awareness itself, or one enters more deeply into transitional awareness transitional space.in between thinking and feeling, sensation and memory, reality and fantasy. This intermediate area of experiencein a word, a person has become aware of awareness itselfor within transitional awareness

one becomes aware of the transitional space and its corresponding states of relatedness. Transitional is not only within me but between me and you. The importance of transitional space and intermediate area of experiencing is foundational for experiencing a basic sense of self and sense of continuity of self. The father of phenomenology, Husserl, would often say, What is the wonder of all wonders? Pure awareness and the doorway is our own subjectivity. 7. Transitional space is not only an internal experience but actually extends beyond the internalized state into the world, into otherness, so you have not simply an interpersonal experience or objective interpersonal relationship, but transitional states of relatedness, or intersubjective states of relatedness. These states can enhance the sense of oneness and stabilityof self and oneness and continuity of self over timethe in between is not only within but outside between us. Cognitive style orients us 8. Sometimes this transitional relatedness is languaged actually, this intimacy with ones own self can be facilitated by being in the company of anotherwho functions as a transitional object, or to use the language of self psychologist, a self object.in this context, language helps in meditating the relatedness but the actual experience is beyond words and is essentially non-conceptualor prereflective..silent; and not essentially affective.. 9. In the meditative traditions there is a remarkably similar process of entering intermediate states in the beginning, a person is located within the mind and functions of the mind and then the next step a person becomes aware of mind, and then becomes aware of awarenessand within this experience, the sense of awareness of awareness is expressed as a field phenomena...that goes beyond the body mind continuum.these are the different phases of meditation 10. I would like to describe the space of transition as this dimension appears in our life experience...whether in therapy, meditative awareness, or even cultural aesthetic experience...or in the experience of play in its many forms. Each phase of mind and awareness continuum makes contributions to the transformation and continuity of experience. 11. The spaciousness of the experience provides a sense of the base that is not simply cognitive or representational..this base is a prereflective or nonconceptual knowingness.a felt sense .not necessarily affective, but the languaging within this experiential near place assists us in creating a...frame that helps one hold the non- conceptual place or space. This speech is often metaphorical and has poetic tones. At times, it is very imaginable and even archetypicalformulations or spiritual. 12. To be in the awareness lets you view experience of functions, lets you work within them, brings forth the self soothing functioning. The sense of self arises in the

intermediate areasense of beingness of ones own beingongoing continuity of the beingness of beingwhen one is only in the mind or part of the mind, continuity is difficult and fragmentation arises. 13. Sustaining transitional, innermost awareness or self creates sense of continuityongoing continuity of relatedness...to ones own inner self as well as the inner self of others inside to inside experience. 14. Transitional space creates a container for experience. Transitional openness assists us in holding states of mindholding affective states, cognitive states, memories 15. Awareness metabolizes experienceassimilates experience see authors such as Judith Miriani, Erving Polster, Bessel Van Der Kolk. Because awareness metabolizes experience, theres less damage if one is in awareness 16. Awareness is a base for holding affective states and intensity of experienceso that feelings do not become ego states. 17. Transitional space indicates the importance of formlessness manifesting in human experience and the integration of that experience which emerges from the disintegration of that experience. 18. In order to have reaching out take or inner extension of self to take placetransitional space, formlessness is base Between unintegrated and integration there must be the space of formlessness, which brings forth the sense of potential space and allows extension or reaching out or extensions from within. The sense of unintegration can, of itself, become the resting state of formlessnessthis formless experience allows for the eventual assimilation and metabolizing of experience and events that are not so easy to think or hold in the mindthey are so saturating and stunningthey can not be thought but can be intuited, known directly or simply feltin timelanguaging may become possible or invented.formlessness is a kind of timeless state next to timethis timelessness can hold time. This timelessness appears through the doorway of the transitional moment. 19. Sometimes, a person has not experienced the relaxation of unintegration in their early life and will refine or rediscover this experience of being in a non-purposive state, resting and relating within the unintegrated state a formless place of beingthat is rejuvenating both in depth and breath of experience, a fixated formlessness continuum. Being in these formless states of experiencing can be useful in passing through and assimilating seemingly unbearable existential ago nieslike death, and loss. 20. In the meditations that focus on becoming awareness of awareness (entering deeply and fully into transitional space, potential space, unformulated experience).this

formless meditative awareness is considered by some to be the most direct and powerful of meditation statesobjectless forms of meditation...but such awareness is not always easy to hold or enter into because of its very formlessness. This awareness, objectless forms, appear and disappearlike glimpsesexperiencing the beingness of ones being is glimpsed but not easily held or embodied. 21. Within the formless state there is a manifestation of qualities of spaciousness or openness, unformulatedness that manifests as clarity and a sense of oneness within body mind continuum. The transitional space is considered the medium between body mind communicationoften one is stuck in mind and hyper mentalistic or in the body and is alexithymic, without the capacity to language embodied experience. 22. This formless state is considered a state of resting and of play...the state of awareness is potential both within and without.both internal as well as external. So the very same transitional moment can arise as one approaches an inventive moment in the real.where there is space or void or openness of experience in unformulated way and one meets the unformulatedness of the situation with ones self. 23. Fundamental anxietys are dissolved and metabolized through the capacity to enter the transitional space where in there is a growing comfort as one embodies these states of potential and actuality. Therapy as well as meditation brings one into new areas of experiencethe creative edge is not only within but withoutwhat happens next. The self is not simply the representational self or internalized representations of experience, but the very base of the self is the primordial sense of awareness manifesting in particular mind body configurations. This self is the unfolding innermost field of awareness. Disintegration leads to integration 24. Disintegrative states are natural and happen naturally through life as the different development phases impact us. At times there can be a state of primary unintegrationoften froze n and highly contained as false self.a lack of the sense of beingness or realness. And, as events unfold both internally and externally, the lack of integration becomes less frozen and we experience disintegration or falling apart. In the disintegration phase of maturation we must rest in formlessness. This formlessness is the potential space manifesting in us. Primary unintegration becomes the resting sate, or formlessness. In becoming aware of awareness, which is spacious, you experience a formless field.at times this can happen when you are alone and can also happen when you are alone in the company of another. This can happen in meditation as you rest in the formlessness through which the formlessness field of the self becomes basethe sense of forml essness is the beingness of being which does manifest within forms of experience.then disintegrates and reintegrates and greater levels of coherence arise.

Often, the mind in its resistance to unformulated unpredictable incessant flows of events and relentless surges does not go along with the disintegration reintegration process and becomes frozen in time.a death like stuckness. One must at times work and at times rest.transitional space in its depth is timelessness .timeless awareness. Winnicott would speak about the indicator of health is being able to be alone in the company of another...not isolated, not cut off, but alone. 25. Transitional space is the place of the manifestation of archetypical experiencesometimes; fantasy is a dissociated statethe imaginable within transitional awareness. Fantasy then becomes an organ of perception (of the mind)a visionary or apparitional dimension of human experienceSpirituality is transitional space and transitional phenomenavisions and apparitions. Which is different then belief states of mind with its concrete operation orientation. 26. Difference between fusion and transitional relatedness. Written by: Rudolph Bauer, Ph.D.; Edited by: Mimi Malfitano