← Encyclopedia of Embodied Energy · lesson 39/164
Awareness centres
Three centres on the Embodied Energy Chart are awareness centres: they do not supply energy, they notice. Each notices in its own way and at its own speed, and the difference between them is one of the most practical ideas in the tradition this chart follows.
Three kinds of awareness
- The Instinct (the tradition's "Spleen") — awareness in the moment. Quick, quiet and unrepeated: a hunch, an ease or unease in the body, an alertness that something is off. It speaks once, and the moment passes.
- The Feeling centre (the "Solar Plexus") — awareness over time. Clarity arrives slowly, as an emotional wave moves through its highs and lows and something steady is left behind. This centre is also a motor; our chart files it with the motors because that role decides type, but its awareness is what decides its compass.
- The Mind (the "Ajna") — awareness in concepts. It compares, organises, remembers and explains. It can think about anything, including other people's lives, which is exactly why the tradition does not let it decide one's own.
The tradition describes these as layers of a long evolution — the body's instinct oldest, the reflective mind newer, emotional awareness still unfolding — and reads them as different instruments rather than better or worse ones.
Awareness and its unease
A sensitive instrument also registers what it does not like. The tradition pairs awareness with a characteristic unease: in the Instinct, a sense of being unsafe in the moment; in the Mind, anxiety about getting things wrong; in the Feeling centre, nervousness about what is coming. The gates of each centre are often read through the particular unease they carry. In our reading this is not a flaw to fix, but the cost of being able to perceive at all — and the unease tends to ease once it is noticed rather than obeyed.
Defined and open awareness
A defined awareness centre is read as a consistent way of perceiving. An open one perceives what others are perceiving, often more intensely than they do: an open Instinct feels other people's unease, an open Feeling centre amplifies the mood of the room, an open Mind can think in anyone's terms. That is where much conditioning lives — and, once noticed, much discernment.
Which awareness may decide
On the ladder of the inner compass (the tradition's "Authority"), two awareness centres appear and one never does:
- The Feeling centre comes first of all: when it is defined, the person has the Feeling compass, and decides with time.
- The Instinct comes third, after the Vitality compass: when it is defined and the Feeling and Vitality centres are open, the person has the Instinct compass, and decides in the moment.
- The Mind is never a compass. A chart whose definition runs only through Head, Mind and Throat has the sounding-board compass: the Mind is used to talk things through and hear what one says, not to settle the question by argument.
In your chart
The three awareness centres are the Mind (the triangle below the Head), the Instinct (the triangle on the left) and the Feeling centre (the triangle on the right). A filled shape is defined. Look first at the Feeling triangle: if it is filled, that decides the compass regardless of anything else.