Just the other day, as i’m driving East on the long stretches of highway connecting Colorado with Kansas and Missouri, I listened to Josh Shrei's “The Emerald Podcast” on the episode “Animism is Normative Consciousness,” [1] where he makes several compelling points, summarized here with some "Key Takeaways" [2]:

• Animism is the normative consciousness for the majority of human history and across various cultures -- 98% of human history was characterized by animism
• Animism was not a theory, philosophy, or idea; it was a felt experience lived in bones, blood, and everyday interactions
• Postmodern culture often interprets animism through the lens of abstract belief systems rather than as a somatic experience

Animism (from Latin: anima meaning 'breath, spirit, life') is the belief that objects, places, and creatures all possess a distinct spiritual essence (a soul). Animism perceives all things—animals, plants, rocks, rivers, weather systems, human handiwork, and in some cases words—as being animated, having agency and free will. [3] The cover image is an artistic representation of Taino symbols for the sun, an example of indigenous animism, clearly showing eyes conveying an animate sun. [4]

If animism is indeed normative consciousness, then our maps, and models of the Self and the psyche should contain elements of animism. In this essay, I will show how a subset of NVC and Wild Mind can seen as pointing to Animate Consciousness, in particular in focusing on the South and West facets of the Self where the windows of knowing are “Full-Bodied Feeling” and "Deep Imagination" respectively.

BACKGROUND

For several years, i’ve been pondering the similarities and potential integration of Nonviolent Communication (NVC) by Marshall Rosenberg Ph.D. [5] with the Eco-Depth psychology of Wild Mind (WM) by Bill Plotkin, Ph.D. [6], searching for a simple way to describe their synthesis. Those two communities of practice are complimentary, and need each other — they are conveniently brought together in the Ceiba Connection Tree of Life - A Relational Metaphor of the Human Psyche [7].

In prior essays, I showed how NVC’s four components are subsets of WM’s four windows of knowing [8], using Plotkin’s Nature-Based Map of the Human Psyche [9] which maps them to the four cardinal directions. When used to describe our conscious experiences, we can see the four directions of the Self as a “Wheel of Knowing,” as a conscious guide to wholeness as we actively cultivate the facets that we discover need development. This cultivation of wholeness also supports self-healing and maturation as adults, to be explored in a future essay.

The wheel of knowing can be seen as a model for how we humans gain knowledge about ourselves, others and what David Abram calls the “more-than-human” world [10]. Western culture emphasizes thinking (North) and sensing (East) at the expense of feeling (South) and imagination (West), which are the facets that are essential to animism.

Given that animism is so experiential, you might wonder why go to the effort to create models for it — which is what the default Western Culture seems to do.

My take on the value of exploring models, maps, and metaphors: they serve as a means of becoming conscious of what supports learning, growing and living to our full potential — helping to guide us toward wholeness, healing, maturity, connection to all beings and the “more-than-human.” Useful models will assist us in making better choices for living in relation to all beings.

SUMMARY OF NVC FEELINGS, NEEDS

We’ll start with a summary of the NVC relevant components because it is simpler than Wild Mind, and it reveals essential elements that can be immediately leveraged for animate connection to others, and for self-connection.

In NVC, universal human needs are seen as pointers [11] to “resources life requires to sustain itself”[12], including physical needs such as water, air, shelter, and needs related to well-being such as autonomy, freedom, connection, community, contribution, meaning, inscendence, transcendence, etc. In NVC, needs are independent of strategy. All of human behavior is motivated by an attempt at satisfying our needs through the strategies we select.

Strategies are the means that we employ to meet our needs, specifying the Person(s), Location, Action, Time or Object (PLATO) that we hope will satisfy our needs. Conflict happens between strategies, not needs. All needs are in harmony with each other — i.e. there is no conflict between needs. If you detect a conflict, you may be confusing strategies with needs.

Feelings are pointers to somatic experiences that describe the effectiveness of the strategy in satisfying our needs, through a resonance or dissonance. If a particular strategy satisfies our needs, we might feel happy, grateful, pleased, or any of the feelings which convey a sense of celebrating our fulfillment — i.e. the strategy resonated with our needs. If a strategy does not satisfy our needs, we might feel sad, disappointed, annoyed, or angry — i.e. the strategy did not resonate with the needs we were hoping to meet. Feeling words give an indication of the character and intensity of the satisfaction level of our needs.

ANIMATE CONSCIOUSNESS IN NVC

Marshall Rosenberg shares: "In Nonviolent Communication, we try to keep our attention focused by answering two critical questions: 'What’s alive in us?' and 'What can we do to make life more wonderful?'” [13]

Rosenberg’s question “what’s alive in us?” is another way of asking “what’s animated in us?”, and thus NVC is trying to support our becoming consciously aware of this animation, so that we can fully understand ourselves, get curious enough to understand others, and find strategies that “make life more wonderful” for us. Furthermore, he shares that needs are “divine energy in each of us that makes compassionate giving natural.” [13]

My previous favorite definition of needs came from NVC Trainer Julie Greene: "needs are life energy in us seeking fulfillment" explored in a previous essay Feelings Flow Naturally From The Satisfaction Level of Needs. [14] Marshall Rosenberg goes further in describing needs as animate without directly using the word animate: "I see, in the needs, this living force within me that's connected, that's interdependent with life. It makes me feel at one with a leaf. I am a leaf... We are part of this beautiful universe. And look at all of the living phenomena in the universe--they have needs. Trees have needs. Bees have needs." Rosenberg continues, the word need, "word-wise, it's not a beautiful enough description. What is a need to me? It's a present manifestation of divine energy within us. It's a life force." [15]

As mentioned before, if we believe like Josh that “animism is normative consciousness,” we can extend our understanding and redefine feelings and needs (corresponding to the South and West facets of the Self in WM by Plotkin):

• Needs are words, pointers that bring into consciousness a universal elemental animate life energy in us seeking fulfillment. Needs are universal to humanity and living beings. [16]
• Feelings words are pointers that describe the somatic experience corresponding to the effectiveness of our strategy in satisfying the animate life energy in us seeking fulfillment (pointed to by our Needs). In other words, feelings tell us how well our strategies were in satisfying our needs.

The full expression of our feelings/needs can take many forms, and are unique to each person. Experience shows that having a known inventory of feelings/needs provides a lexicon to support learning, self-connection and connection to others, without mixing in evaluations and judgments. Here are some useful links.

• Click here for a Feelings Inventory
• Click here for a Needs Inventory

ANIMATE CONSCIOUSNESS IN WILD MIND

Archetypes first discovered by Carl Jung are a concept from psychology that refers to a universal, inherited idea, pattern of thought, or image that is present in the collective unconscious of all human beings, such as the Mother, Child, Teacher, Fool, Trickster, etc. [17]

Given that archetypes describe patterns of behavior, each employs strategies with the hope of meeting universal human needs, which are more elemental. So, universal human needs arise from the same animate energies remembered as the archetypes.

Wild Mind (WM) defines the Self in terms of archetypes for healthy mature adults — of “wholeness,”[18] and protective/survival archetypes called subpersonalities/subs (like IFS parts, fragments) [19]. All of the archetypes of WM are organized in a “nature-based map of the human psyche” (the “map”) following the four cardinal directions (the model goes further in adding the directions of up, down and middle for a 3D-Ego).

The WM map is useful in identifying archetypal energies which may be activated/animated, to support self-healing — a conversation between one’s archetypes of wholeness with one's subs. Healing is achieved by allowing the subs to fully express themselves -- i.e. by animating them -- while having the archetypes of wholeness actively listen and communicate in their unique ways. The animated psychic energies of the subs eventually are welcomed and integrated by our animated facets of wholeness. Wholeness is cultivated over time by developing the facets of the Self that are weakest. Healing (when the subs relax, and no longer run things) occurs once enough wholeness has been cultivated, and the archetypes of wholeness hold the psychic energies previously held by the subs.

The Animas Valley Institute has many offerings which support animating/cultivating the facets of wholeness, and animating the subpersonalities [20].

CONCLUSION

While not completely fleshing out the thread, this essay showed how animism is represented in Nonviolent Communication (NVC) and in Wild Mind, opening up to the possibility of consciously relating and connecting to the world as if it were indeed alive! The Ceiba Connection Tree of Life invites us to give ourselves empathy (by consciously following the Wheel of Knowing while focused on ourselves), which organically opens the door to empathic curiosity of the world— the human and “more than human.” And then, perhaps, we might choose to actively engage the animate world through the Ceiba's crown of connection, deeply rooted in the Earth through an invisible underground web. If we consciously accept the invitation of the Ceiba Tree of Life, we will rise up fully human in harmony, love and connection to the world.

End Notes and References

1. Josh Shrei, Animism is Normative Consciousness, The Emerald Podcast, Animism is Normative Conscious - The Emerald, January 12, 2020, Podcast notes available here.
2. Podcast notes on the Emerald Podcast "Animism is Normative Consciousness", Key Takeaways summarized here.
3. Animism Wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animism
4. Artistic rendition of animistic Taino symbols for the sun, from https://www.tainoage.com/meaning.html
5. Marshall B. Rosenberg, Ph.D., Nonviolent Communication - A Language of Life, PuddleDancer Press, Encinitas, CA, 2005
6. Bill Plotkin, Wild Mind – Field Guide to the Human Psyche, New World Library, Novato, California, 2013
7. Jaime L. Prieto, Jr., Ceiba Connection Tree of Life - A Relational Metaphor of the Human Psyche, Compassionate Connecting, November 27, 2024, available here https://www.compassionateconnecting.com/blog/ceiba-tree-of-life
8. Jaime L. Prieto, Jr., Extending the Wheel of Knowing with Plotkin's Wild Mind, Compassionate Connecting Blog, Aug 15, 2023, available here.
9. Bill Plotkin, Wild Mind – Field Guide to the Human Psyche, Ch. 1 The Nature-Based Map of the Human Psyche, pp. 11 - 30, New World Library, Novato, California, 2013
10. David Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous
11. Eckhart Tolle emphasizes that words are tools, not the ultimate truth, and that they are used to point towards something, not to define it -- i.e. words are pointers to something real. Tolle suggests that words reduce the complexity of reality to something the human mind can grasp, but they are not the reality itself.
12. Marshall Rosenberg, We Can Work It Out: Resolving Conflicts Peacefully and Powerfully. Encinitas, CA PuddleDancer Press, 2005.
13. Marshall Rosenberg, Practical Spirituality: Reflections on the Spiritual Basis of Nonviolent Communication. Encinitas, CA: PuddleDancer Press, 2004
14. Jaime L. Prieto, Jr., Feelings Flow Naturally From The Satisfaction Level of Needs, Compassionate Connecting Blog, May 19, 2023, available here https://www.compassionateconnecting.com/blog/feelings-flow-naturally.
15. Marshall Rosenberg, Experiencing Needs as a Gift, Workshop. Corona 2000 Recording Series. Corona, CA, November 2000.
16. Needs are universal in the same way that archetypes are universal -- they are remembered between generations somehow through what Carl Jung called the collective unconscious. Needs are more elemental than archetypes; it could be said that archetypes are trying to meet needs through their prefered strategies.
17. Jungian Archetypes, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jungian_archetypes
18. Bill Plotkin, Wild Mind, Part I. THE SELF, pp. 33 - 122.
19. Bill Plotkin, Wild Mind, Part II. THE SUBPERSONALITIES, pp. 125 - 234.
20. The Animas Valley Institute offerings are listed here (https://www.animas.org/offerings/).

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