The Four Depths of Cosmos, Psyche, and Soma
The primary view in Aletheia Coaching is called The Four Depths of Cosmos, Psyche, and Soma. This view articulates four depths of contact with the present moment. We can experience the four depths of the external world or cosmos, the internal world or psyche, and the body or soma which reciprocally embeds the experience of the internal and external worlds within each other. Working within these depths and deepening the clients’ access to them is the chief method in Aletheia Coaching for effortlessly leveraging memory reconsolidation as will be illustrated in the transcript below.
Briefly, the Four Depths are defined as follows and listed in order from shallowest to deepest:
- The Depth of Parts – Experience at this depth is dominated by the sense of separation. We experience ourselves as separate from other people and things. Inwardly, we experience many separate ego parts of ourselves (e.g., an ambitious part, a cautious part, a rejected part, a playful part, etc.) that have separate intentions, strategies, behaviors, and emotions (Schwartz & Sweezy, 2019). Each person has a unique configuration or constellation of ego parts that function as structurally consolidated emotional learnings. Ego parts can be understood as object relations (Kernberg, 1993), ego states (Watkins & Watkins, 1997), schemas (Young et al., 2003), or as winning strategies (Goss, 2015). These ego parts are the target for memory reconsolidation with experiential mismatches created by consciously accessing deeper depths of self-experience.
- The Depth of Process – Experience at this depth is a flow of felt meaning that is accessed through bodily felt senses (Gendlin, 2007) and/or imaginal felt images (Corbin, 1976; Hillman, 1997; Bosnak, 2007). Felt senses and felt images reflect the subtleties of currently lived relatedness. Therefore, all process phenomena are unique to the moment. Accessing this depth creates many partial experiential mismatches with existing emotional learnings because what is arising freshly in the unfolding process of the present moment never exactly matches existing structurally consolidated emotional learnings, which exist at the Depth of Parts. Process phenomena are only accessible in real-time in the present moment.
- The Depth of Presence – The hallmark of experience at this depth is the sense of innate wholeness and completeness. Presence is a field of awareness that can manifest as various virtuous qualities, for example, acceptance, contact, courage, equanimity, generosity, intelligence, intimacy, joy, kindness, love, passion, peace, perseverance, strength, trust, and value (Almaas, 2008). Accessing this depth usually creates complete experiential mismatches as the prevailing sense of ego deficiency is contrasted to the sense of innate capacity and sufficiency experienced at this depth. Like the Depth of Process, qualities of presence at this depth can only be accessed in the present moment within the sense of oneself as a field of conscious awareness.
- The Depth of Nonduality – Experience at this depth is of non-separate and entirely unconditioned awareness (Fenner, 2007). In every way, experience at this depth contradicts and therefore mismatches with emotional learnings consolidated at the Depth of Parts where separation is experienced. This is the depth of profound spiritual realizations of unity consciousness and the domain of the deepest unfoldment of human development.
