SACRED WHOLENESS · EXISTENTIAL ARCHITECTURE
THE ANIMATE VESSEL
A COGNITIVE MODEL + PSYCHIC-SOMATIC FRAMEWORK FOR UNDERSTANDING YOUR LIVING TECHNOLOGY
SCROLL DOWN TO ENTER QUESTIONNAIRE ↓I · ORIENTATION
READ THE MOVEMENT, NOT THE IDENTITY
The Animate Vessel understands the human as a living ecology whose intelligence moves through seven interdependent functions.
A cognitive model: the seven functions offer a language for understanding how you operate: how you perceive, organise information, process experience and bring ideas into form.
A psychic-somatic framework: the same functions explore higher consciousness through embodied participation, recognising the human as integrated organic technology in which perception, body and creative intelligence move together.
You can enter through practical self-understanding, psychic-somatic inquiry or both. These are connected dimensions of one living architecture.
This questionnaire is an entry point into that architecture. It does not assign you a type. It asks you to observe which movements are presently available, which are carrying excess load, which become quieter under pressure and how your procession changes across different states.
Your responses create a provisional map of the system you can presently recognise from within your own experience. They are not a final statement of blueprint.
SCROLL DOWN TO ENTER QUESTIONNAIRE ↓II · EXISTENTIAL ARCHITECTURE
THE ARCHITECTURE BENEATH THE SCORE
The seven functions form only one layer of the inquiry. A living human also has characteristic ways of sequencing, moving through time and meeting the conditions of an environment.
FUNCTIONAL ARCHITECTURE
The availability, sensitivity and relationship of Topography, Cartography, Translation, Metabolisation, Synthesis, Systematisation and Creation.
PROCESSIONAL ARCHITECTURE
How movements lead, overlap, recur, wait, interrupt, hand over and complete within the ecology.
RHYTHMIC ARCHITECTURE
The tempos, intervals, latency, immersion, oscillation, recovery and rest through which procession becomes possible.
ECOLOGICAL ARCHITECTURE
The relational, sensory, spatial and material conditions that alter what the system can receive, move and return.
The blueprint is revealed in motion: through how the functions meet, sequence, recur, respond and create within a living ecology.
III · THE QUESTIONNAIRE
START THE FREE QUESTIONNAIRE
Answer from your lived experience rather than from the person you believe you should be. The usefulness of the map depends on observing what actually happens within your ecology.
THE ANIMATE VESSEL · COGNITIVE + PSYCHIC-SOMATIC INQUIRY
Introduction
How does intelligence move through you?
Cognitive model: understand how you perceive, make sense of information, process experience, organise and act.
Psychic-somatic framework: explore higher consciousness through embodied participation, the human as integrated organic technology, receiving and moving information through bodily, sensory, symbolic and psychic experience.
Use this inquiry through either approach, or both together.
Answer from your experience during the past six months. Consider how you operate across thinking, work, relationships, creative life and bodily or psychic experience. You do not need to recognise every statement in every setting.
For each statement, ask: When there is an opportunity for this movement, how often is this true for me?
“Not sure” leaves that statement unscored. A quieter movement is not an inferior function. Frequent use is not automatically excess use. Slow processing, needing support and returning to an inquiry do not by themselves indicate a problem.
Availability: how readily a movement can be recognised or entered.
Recruitment: how often life, habit or circumstance calls on a movement.
Costly recruitment: a movement continuing or taking on load in a way you experience as restricting rest, choice or other needed movements.
Ecology: the bodily, relational, sensory and practical conditions around you.
This is a functional self-inquiry. It describes your present self-recognition; it does not establish cognitive ability, psychic capacity or a fixed blueprint.
The seven functions
Topography
Locating what is present, changing or distinct.
Cognitive expression
Noticing changes, relevant details and the conditions around you.
Psychic-somatic expression
Sensing bodily signals, atmosphere and subtle shifts while retaining your own position.
I notice changes in a situation, environment or relationship before they are explicitly pointed out.
I can distinguish what I notice around me from my own thoughts, feelings or bodily responses.
I can direct attention between my surroundings, another person and my own experience.
I keep monitoring my surroundings when I want to rest or focus elsewhere, and this uses capacity I need.
I receive so many details, sensations or impressions that it becomes difficult to locate what matters now.
Relevant changes in my surroundings or relationships are difficult for me to notice until they become pronounced.
I recognise that a situation has affected me only after its effects have accumulated.
Please respond to all seven statements, or choose “Not sure,” before continuing.
The seven functions
Cartography
Mapping relationships, patterns and context.
Cognitive expression
Seeing how parts of a problem relate and where a useful intervention belongs.
Psychic-somatic expression
Mapping relationships between impressions, symbols, bodily responses and the wider field.
I recognise how an experience or piece of information relates to a larger situation.
I notice patterns across events, people, ideas or systems.
I can locate my position, role or a relevant point of intervention within a situation.
I keep mapping variables after I have enough context for the next step, and this delays movement I want to make.
I repeatedly revisit the same pattern without gaining useful orientation or being able to set the inquiry aside.
Relationships between relevant events or pieces of information are difficult for me to see.
I struggle to locate where I am within a situation or what part of it I could work with.
Please respond to all seven statements, or choose “Not sure,” before continuing.
The seven functions
Translation
Moving information between language, symbol, sensation and other forms.
Cognitive expression
Finding words, diagrams or examples that make an idea understandable.
Psychic-somatic expression
Giving an image, bodily knowing or subtle impression an appropriate language or symbolic form.
I recognise when information needs a different form, for example words, an image, a gesture, a diagram or sound.
I can find a form that carries the meaning of an experience or idea, even if that form is not yet polished.
I recognise that the same meaning may need a different expression for a different person, context or medium.
I keep explaining or expressing something after I want to stop, and the repetition drains me.
I feel pushed to name or communicate an experience before I have had enough time to understand or inhabit it.
I recognise something internally but struggle to find any form that conveys it.
Important meaning is lost between what I experience and the words, images or other forms available to me.
Please respond to all seven statements, or choose “Not sure,” before continuing.
The seven functions
Metabolisation
Processing experience, information and charge through the embodied system.
Cognitive expression
Digesting a conversation or experience until it can be used, integrated or released.
Psychic-somatic expression
Allowing psychic and somatic information to move through sensation, processing, transformation and completion.
I notice experience changing within me as I spend time with it, rather than remaining exactly as it first arrived.
I recognise which conditions help me process information or experience, for example movement, rest, conversation, solitude or time.
I can sense when something has completed enough of its movement for me to set it down or use what it has become.
Processing continues beyond the time I want to give it and interferes with rest or other movements I need.
I take in more information or experience than I have the conditions or capacity to process.
I move into explanation or action while the experience itself remains difficult to feel or process.
An experience feels stuck or inaccessible, and I struggle to find a way for it to move through me.
Please respond to all seven statements, or choose “Not sure,” before continuing.
The seven functions
Synthesis
Bringing multiple streams into a coherent whole without erasing their differences.
Cognitive expression
Combining different perspectives or bodies of knowledge into a useful understanding.
Psychic-somatic expression
Allowing sensory, symbolic, psychic and bodily information to converge into coherent recognition.
I can hold more than one perspective while recognising what each contributes.
Separate experiences or bodies of information begin to form an integrated understanding within me.
I recognise a connecting thread without needing every detail to become the same.
Connections keep multiplying when I need to narrow attention, and I struggle to let them recede.
I force information into a single explanation before its differences or relationships have had enough space.
Relevant pieces of knowledge remain separate, and I struggle to bring them into relationship as a whole.
I can recognise individual pieces of information but struggle to see what they become together.
Please respond to all seven statements, or choose “Not sure,” before continuing.
The seven functions
Systematisation
Organising intelligence into workable structures, methods and rhythms.
Cognitive expression
Turning insight into a practical process that can be used and revised.
Psychic-somatic expression
Creating an embodied or relational structure that supports how information and energy actually move.
I can recognise or develop a structure that helps an idea, activity or relationship function.
I notice when a structure needs to change because the person, purpose or conditions have changed.
I can organise steps, resources or rhythms in a way that supports the movement I want to make.
I keep organising or optimising after the structure is sufficient, and this costs more than it supports.
I maintain a method or arrangement after I recognise that it no longer serves the situation.
I repeatedly meet the same practical difficulty but struggle to establish a structure that supports it.
I understand an intention but struggle to organise the steps, resources or rhythm needed to carry it.
Please respond to all seven statements, or choose “Not sure,” before continuing.
The seven functions
Creation
Bringing intelligence into expression, action, choice or material form.
Cognitive expression
Making a decision, completing an action or producing something from an idea.
Psychic-somatic expression
Allowing integrated perception and embodied intelligence to become a living expression in the world.
When I choose to create or act, I can begin giving an idea or perception a definite form.
I can recognise an expression that fits the intention, an action, choice, object, communication or offering.
I can recognise when a particular expression is complete enough to release, without needing it to contain every possibility.
I keep producing or initiating when I want or need to pause, and this drains capacity.
I give something form before the information or experience needed for that expression has had sufficient space.
I have an intention or developed idea but struggle to begin bringing it into a concrete expression.
I struggle to complete or release an expression because choosing one form feels too limiting or exposing.
Please respond to all seven statements, or choose “Not sure,” before continuing.
Four distinct perspectives
What calls on each movement?
Refer to the function definitions as you answer. Select one, several or “Not sure” according to each prompt. These four perspectives are kept separate. These quick selections are optional.
Naturally spacious movement
When you are well supported and do not need to prove, protect or perform, which movements feel naturally available or enlivening?
Select up to three. These responses remain separate from costly recruitment.
Habitually recruited movement
Which movements do your daily circumstances, responsibilities or other people call on most often?
Select up to three. Frequent recruitment may be supportive, demanding or both.
Costly recruitment
Which movements tend to keep operating when you want to pause, or take on more than your available capacity can hold?
Select up to three, or “None apparent.”
Quieter or condition-dependent movement
Which movements currently feel quieter, difficult to enter, or available only under particular conditions?
Select up to three, or “None apparent.” A quiet movement is not counted as a recruited movement.
Your observed sequence
Which movement comes first for you, and what follows? Add functions in the order you experience them. Any function can begin or follow any other: Systematisation may come before Topography, Synthesis or any other movement.
This is optional. You can repeat functions, record only part of a sequence, or leave it empty if your order is not yet clear. The order in which the functions are introduced above is not a required sequence.
No sequence recorded yet.
Your visual profile + starting sequence
See your living functions
Your responses create a seven-axis radar chart. Each spoke represents one function; the plotted shape shows your reported experience. Read it through cognitive functioning, psychic-somatic experience or both.
Answer the statements and reveal your profile. Select “Not sure” for any movement you do not yet recognise.
Your score-based starting sequence
A practical route through the functions, beginning with the movements you currently report as more available and moving towards those that need more support. Follow it as a starting experiment in thinking, embodied perception or psychic-somatic practice.
This is a suggested working order from your availability responses, not a declaration of your native sequence. Any function can appear in any position, including Systematisation first. Equal scores stay together and do not imply an order within the group. Functions can overlap, recur and change their order as you work. Your recorded sequence is kept separately, exactly as you entered it.
Two ways to read your sequence
As a cognitive model: your sequence offers anchor points for how you notice information, map connections, find meaning, process experience and move towards decisions or action. Begin with an available movement and observe which function helps the information continue.
As a psychic-somatic framework: the same sequence can be explored through bodily sensation, subtle impressions, image, symbol and higher-consciousness experience. Notice how perception arrives in your living human technology, how the body participates in processing it, and what allows it to become integrated expression.
For example: if Topography leads into Translation, first notice what is present, then give it words, an image or a gesture. Cognitively, this might be naming a detail before explaining an idea. Psychic-somatically, it might be noticing a bodily sensation or subtle impression before allowing its meaning to take form.
Finding your native sequence: return to these anchor points across different situations. Notice which movements feel familiar and spacious when you are supported, which are recruited by circumstances, and which order helps the whole system move. Your starting sequence gives you somewhere to begin that inquiry; your native sequence becomes clearer through lived relationship with the functions.
Try one small movement
Begin with the first function or shared group. Notice that movement in one ordinary moment: a thought, task, conversation, bodily sensation or subtle impression. Let the next movement become an invitation rather than a requirement. You do not need to force all seven into a single sitting.
IV · INTERPRETATION
A PROFILE IS A BEGINNING
A score can describe present recognisable movement. It cannot, by self-report alone, distinguish enduring blueprint from current state, adaptation, compensation, load or the effects of ecology.
The deeper work is longitudinal: noticing what remains characteristic across seasons, what changes when you are resourced, what becomes recruited under pressure and what conditions restore movement without requiring you to become a different kind of human.
THE CENTRAL INQUIRY
What does this particular living ecology require in order to remain available to its own movement?