Major Part of the Inner World

SEEMS: Major Parts of the Inner World

Before we look at the inner family of players inside us, it helps to have a simple map.

In Deepermind, one useful way to understand our inner life is through the SEEMS model.


SEEMS is a way of dividing our experience into a few major parts so we can begin to notice more clearly what is going on inside us.

 

These parts are connected and constantly interact, but they are different enough that we can learn to observe them.

SEEMS stands for Senses, Ego, Emotions, Mind, and Soul.

The Senses are how we receive the outer world. Through seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, and smelling, life comes into us.

 

The senses are our contact points with the world around us. They are the openings through which experience enters.

The Ego is the part that gathers experience around the feeling of me. It is concerned with my life, my story, my position, my image, my safety, and what belongs to me.

 

The ego helps create a personal self, but it can also become defensive, proud, fearful, offended, or easily shaken.

The Emotions are the feeling movements within us. They include fear, joy, sadness, anger, affection, hurt, hope, longing, and many other states.

 

Emotions give life color and force. They help drive behavior and let us know what feels important.

The Mind is the thinking system. It remembers, compares, imagines, reasons, plans, solves problems, and tells stories. It can be extremely useful, but it can also become noisy, restless, and full of unnecessary chatter.

 

The Soul is the deepest part of our being. In Deepermind, it is the quiet aware presence that can notice the rest.

 

It is not the endless thinking, not the emotional waves, and not the changing self-image.

 

It is the deeper seat of awareness, the inner witness that can observe what is going on.

These five aspects work together to create our ordinary experience of life.

At first they do not seem separate. Everything feels blended together into one stream of living. We think, feel, react, remember, and identify all at once. Because of this, most people never stop to see that the inner world has structure.

But when we slow down and begin to observe more carefully, we discover that the inner life is not just one thing. It is a system of different functions working together.SEEMS gives us the basic map of that system.

The Ordinary Understanding

Most people just call SEEMS just "me."  Most people pay most attention to what is bothering them.  They think this is something wrong with the outer world for the most part. If I was only more handsome or prettier.


If I had more money, if I was younger.

 

If I call myself "I" then there is nothing much to explore.

 

So if we break up what is in our inner world, we have a huge advantage.

 

We can change ourselves quite easily compared to changing the whole world.

 

So if we look outside all the time, have our attention focused on the news, the people around us, our job, how we look to others, our problems we cannot solve, we are just stuck.

 

Instead all we have to do is look inside us carefully. If we try to explore our inner world through religion, through psychology, or through other types of science such as neurology it does not work very well.

 

Religion wants us to believe. Psychology usually is based on a medical model of ourselves and uses words like mentally ill, and different mental pathologies.  Science is focused mainly on the outer word.

 

There are parts of religion, psychology and science that are very useful. 

 

Our inner life works like a system too.

 

 Inside us we have our senses which let us know about our body, and the outer world.  We have our ego that defines and defends who we are. Our emotions give us incentive for all the things we do.

 

Our observer is our soul, that part of us that observers and experiences life.

 

We also have a mind, that allows us to think using an inner voice.

 

We have thoughts that arise and fade.

 

We have emotions that have a life, of anticipation, rise and fall. 

 

We defend, compare and protect ourselves, and what we consider as ours.


We also have a soul that is the experiencer of life itself. The soul is our reference that gives us overall direction. There is something that sees everything.  It observes our thoughts, feelings, and what it means.

 

If we have a complex system, in order to fix it, and make it work really good, we have to break it down into parts, and see the roles each part has. So our inner experience is generated by a system.  It is not just me.

 

Instead of seeing the world from the vantage of "I", a ruler sitting on its throne, we realize our parts, our family of players, work together to make experiences happen.

 

This is a key discoveries of Deepermind.

 

The Ordinary Understanding

Most people simply call all of SEEMS "me." They do not usually separate thoughts, emotions, identity, awareness, and sensory experience into different functions.

 

Instead, everything feels like one thing happening to one person.

Because of this, most attention goes to whatever seems to be wrong in the outer world.

 

If only I were more handsome or prettier. If only I had more money. If only I were younger. If only people treated me differently. Life then becomes mainly a struggle with outside conditions.

But if everything is simply called "I," there is not much to explore. The great advantage of Deepermind is that it breaks the inner world into parts.

 

Once we do that, we can begin to understand what is actually happening inside us.

That gives us a huge advantage, because it is often easier to work on ourselves than to change the whole world around us.

If our attention stays fixed outward on the news, on other people, on our job, on our appearance, and on problems we cannot solve, we remain stuck.

 

But if we begin to look inside carefully, a different possibility appears.

Religion, psychology, and science all offer useful insights, but none of them by itself gives a complete and direct map of inner experience.

 

Religion often asks us to believe. Psychology often approaches us through diagnosis and pathology.

 

Science usually focuses on the outer world. Each of these can help, but our inner life also needs to be observed as a living system.

Inside us, the senses inform us about the body and the outer world. The ego helps define and defend who we think we are.

 

Emotions provide force, feeling, and motivation. The mind thinks, compares, remembers, imagines, and talks in an inner voice. The soul is the aware presence that observes and experiences life.

Thoughts arise and fade. Emotions build, crest, and fall. Identity defends, compares, and protects what it calls mine. And behind all of this is the one that sees.

If we want to understand a complex system and make it work better, we must first break it into parts and learn the role each part plays. Our inner experience is generated by a system. It is not just one single me.

Instead of seeing ourselves as a little ruler sitting on a throne inside, we begin to see that a whole family of inner players works together to create experience.

This is one of the key discoveries of Deepermind.

 

The Inner Family

So let us treat these parts as pieces of ourselves. Each part has its own function. Each has its own job.

 

At first, the names may seem a little childish. People have names, so why not the sub-people within us?

In a way, that childlike quality is actually helpful. When we treat these parts as people, they become easier to understand.

 

That is a real advantage. It makes things feel simpler. It is easy to get lost when ideas become too abstract.

Try reading an advanced paper on psychology.

If we become too technical and abstract, even the author can get lost in a web of words.

We are going to explore new ideas, and being overly abstract would not help. It would only make things harder to follow.

 

The architecture of the inner system

So now, let us meet the family.

 

Indy (Idle Mind)

Indy is our idle mind. It is what the mind does when it has nothing important to do. It starts thinking on its own, usually without any clear purpose.

This is Indy, someone who can jabber all day long and become very annoying.

Indy is fed by the primitive subconscious mind.

If we have fears, confusion, or worries, Indy loves it. He busily comments on what is happening, worries about what may come, and replays the past. In his imagination he carries on conversations, criticizes, compares, judges, predicts, and invents all sorts of things, whether they make sense or not.

Yes, Indy runs on automatic pilot and usually goes nowhere.

He is not evil. He is not broken. He is simply active. He is the background mental machinery that keeps generating commentary whether we ask for it or not.

If you want to feel crazy, just believe everything Indy says. He reacts to almost anything that happens. If Indy watches the news, gets into an argument, or feels pain, he may quickly imagine disaster and think everything is going terribly wrong.

Indy is a leftover from our evolution. In caveman times there were always dangers and many things that could go wrong. There were floods, rockslides, disease, dangerous tribes, and constant uncertainty.

So in today's world, if we make a small mistake, Indy may act as if the world is ending. Indy is often loud and can make us feel tense and shaky.

If we drop something, Indy tells us we are clumsy. In this way, Indy tries to overprotect us. He can make us fearful and even paranoid.

If someone criticizes us, Indy gets very upset.

But Indy has a twin sister who is much better at thinking

Mindy (Directed Mind)

Mindy is the directed mind, and she does a wonderful job of thinking. When something comes up that requires thought, she is ready. Mindy has purpose.

She focuses, reasons, solves problems, studies, plans, and understands. She likes to sit down, work on things, and make them clear.

But as soon as Mindy has figured something out, Indy often takes over again and the chatter starts back up.

This is a big discovery. When we understand that there is a huge difference between Indy and Mindy, and that we really do seem to have two kinds of mind activity, we can begin to stop believing everything Indy says.

So we have two distinct mental functions, one that is beautiful and useful, and one that chatters endlessly. Indy is like a roommate who will not be quiet, while Mindy is the one we rely on when something actually needs to be figured out.

Mindy can also examine her own thoughts and rethink things. She can think about thinking.

Most computers operate only in a Mindy-like way.

When nothing is going on, an idle program simply waits for a signal from a mouse click, mouse movement, keystroke, or some interrupt from the cloud. If it had an Indy, the screen would always be jumping around.

The reason Indy exists at all is probably rooted in our past. Back in caveman days, almost every moment could bring danger, so the mind had to stay constantly on guard.

Nowadays, it is often better to relax between tasks.

We can quiet Indy through chanting, meditation, and training. With practice, there can be times when Indy becomes much less active.

When Mindy takes over more often, life becomes more intelligent.

Another player in the family is equally important.

Emo (Emotions)

In order to do anything, we need motivation. If we run out of food, we feel something that makes us get up and go to the store.

The player that gives us our drive is called Emo. Emo is not a talker, but Emo creates feelings.

Emo is moody and produces all sorts of emotions such as sadness, joy, fear, anger, excitement, hurt, affection, longing, frustration, and tenderness.

If you consult March's Thesaurus and Dictionary of the English Language, where words are grouped by meaning instead of alphabetically, you will find many words connected with emotions and desires.

Emo does not deal only with emotions. Emo also connects with desires, wants, and feelings. So Emo has a whole spectrum of ways to keep life interesting. For example, if you are just a little hungry, you might say you feel peckish.

Emo gives us a huge range of ways to experience life.

Emo creates pulses of emotion, such as the pleasure of eating a delicious dinner. Once you are full, that pleasure fades. Emo also contributes to long-term dispositions, temperaments, and emotional states.

In this way, Emo is like a weather maker, producing storms, sunshine, pressure, warmth, heaviness, or release.

Emo also helps decide what is important. We subconsciously sense many unimportant things, such as the pressure of the chair we are sitting on. But Emo knows what is important and lets us know quickly.

Emo has depth and responds in personal ways to events, relationships, disappointments, hopes, threats, and connections.

Indy is often responsible for generating stories that Emo then picks up on. Emo can be overwhelmed with fear, for example, by the scary stories Indy creates.

Many mental problems can develop in this way.

By understanding these players within us, we can see ourselves in a new light and learn how to make life much better.

The next player concerns who we think we are.

Ed (Ego)

Ed is the identity manager, the part of us concerned with self-image, reputation, pride, social standing, personal importance, and the ongoing story of who we are.

He pays close attention to how things reflect on us, whether we are being respected or criticized, admired or ignored, included or rejected.

Ed is not all bad, because identity has a real function in life. We need some continuity of self in order to move through the world, make decisions, maintain relationships, and hold our life together in a workable way.

The problem comes when Ed becomes too dominant and too protective. Then everything starts to feel personal. Every disagreement seems like a threat, every criticism feels like a wound, and every social situation becomes a test of worth.

Ed often acts as if he is the whole family, as if all of life revolves around defending and maintaining this one image of self. But Ed is not the whole family. He is only one player among many.

The inner world also contains something that many people forget to include when they try to understand themselves..

 

A blue flower against a brain.

The Sage (Soul)

The Sage is the observing presence, the quiet one within us, the soul in its role as witness.

The Sage does not chatter like Indy, solve problems like Mindy, surge with feeling like Emo, defend identity like Ed, play and delight like the Joker.

He does not explain in scientific language like Professor Snodgrass, or comfort with warmth like Holly.

The Sage does something different from them all. The Sage observes.

The Sage is not tangled up in the activity of the inner world but stands apart from it enough to see it clearly.

This is one of the great keys to understanding ourselves, because if a person truly wants to know what is happening inside, that person must learn to step into the role of the observer.

We cannot be fully lost in the game and at the same time understand the whole game.

It is like watching a football game. A player on the field is caught up in the action. He sees only part of the field at any given moment because he is busy reacting, straining, pushing, and participating.

He is inside the movement of the game, so he cannot easily see the full pattern of what is happening. But a person sitting in the stands has a very different view.

From there, the whole field can be seen, the movements of the players become clear, and the larger pattern of the game begins to reveal itself.

The same principle applies to the inner world. If you are completely caught in thought, you cannot clearly observe thought.

If you are completely caught in emotion, you cannot clearly observe emotion. If you are completely caught in identity, you cannot clearly observe identity.

The Sage is the one in the stands. The Sage watches the whole field.

This is why meditation is so important. Meditation is not mainly about forcing the mind to stop or about trying to crush thought by willpower.

It is about stepping into the stands and learning to watch the game without being dragged into every play.

Thoughts arise, and they are noticed. Emotions move, and they are noticed. Identity reacts, and it is noticed. Stories form, and they are noticed.

Through all of this, the Sage remains steady.

This way of approaching the inner world is far more scientific than simply believing our thoughts or drowning in our reactions.

 

Observation comes first. Interference is reduced. Patterns begin to show themselves. The more steadily the Sage observes, the more clearly the whole inner system can be understood.

 

The Inner Guides

Alongside the structural elements of SEEMS, many people discover that the inner world also contains gentler influences that seem to guide the system toward balance, wisdom, and harmony.

 

These influences are called the Inner Guides.

 

The Inner Guides do not operate like the main systems of the mind.

 

They are not separate divisions like the senses, the ego, the emotions, or the thinking mind. Instead, they function more like a unifying atmosphere within the inner world.

 

When they are present, they create a tone, a mood, and a sense of direction that encourages the different parts of the system to work together rather than struggle against one another.

 

In this way, the Inner Guides influence the entire system at once. They do not command or control.

 

They gently shape the environment in which the other parts operate. When their presence is felt, thoughts soften, emotions settle, and the ego becomes less defensive.

 

The system begins to move toward cooperation rather than conflict.

 

These guides often appear as uplifting qualities within experience. They may show themselves as compassion, insight, humor, creativity, curiosity, patience, or a quiet sense of grace.

 

Their presence reminds the inner system that life does not need to be driven entirely by worry, struggle, or control.

 

When the Inner Guides are active, rigid thinking relaxes, emotional storms calm more quickly, and the different parts of the inner world become easier to understand and work with.

 

In the language of the Inner Neighborhood, these qualities may appear as characters such as the Bard, the Scholar, the Heart, or Grace. These figures are not imaginary beings. They are simply ways of recognizing the uplifting forces that can arise within us—forces that help the inner world move toward clarity, kindness, and alignment.

 

In theory, we could create a character for every mood and every experience that appears within us.

 

The inner world is rich enough to hold countless possibilities. But the Inner Guides represent something special.

 

They are uplifting modes of the system—qualities that help restore balance, warmth, creativity, and cooperation.

 

When these guides appear, the inner neighborhood becomes calmer, kinder, and more alive. They help the whole system move toward harmony.

 

The Musician

Among the Inner Guides there is one who brings rhythm, joy, and creative life into the inner world. In the language of the Inner Neighborhood, this guide is called the Musician.

 

The Musician understands life through melody, laughter, and play. While the thinking mind tries to explain everything, the Musician simply feels the rhythm of the moment.

 

A soft tune can ease sadness. A burst of laughter can release tension. A playful song can remind the whole inner family that life is meant to be lived, not just solved.

 

When the Musician appears, the inner atmosphere becomes lighter. The mind relaxes. Emotions begin to flow again.

 

The different parts of the system remember how to move together, like instruments in a gentle orchestra. The Musician brings warmth, creativity, and the quiet joy of simply being alive.

The Joker (Humor)

The Joker represents play, humor, music, surprise, lightness, spontaneity, and creative joy.

Without the Joker, the inner world can become far too serious, so that everything turns into management, analysis, defense, or emotional struggle.

The Joker reminds the family that life is not only about solving problems, protecting identity, or getting through difficulties, but also about laughter, rhythm, beauty, fun, movement, and delight.

The Joker has a special power because he can break rigid patterns and loosen the grip of Ed when identity becomes too tight and controlling.

He can interrupt Indy's endless commentary, help Emo move energy through music, laughter, or dance, and bring life back into a system that has become too heavy.

The Joker is not foolishness in a negative sense. He is the part of life that keeps the whole system from becoming dry, frozen, and joyless.

Another player helps us understand the system in a different way

.

Professor Snodgrass (Scientist)

Professor Snodgrass is the scientific explainer, the part of us that wants to understand how the system works in a clear, rational, and observational way.

He is interested in patterns, mechanisms, relationships, and causes. He does not merely react to what is happening. He studies it.

Professor Snodgrass does not replace Mindy, because Mindy handles directed thinking in a broad sense.

Professor Snodgrass represents a more specialized role, the voice of careful explanation, analysis, and system-level understanding.

When the family becomes confused, Professor Snodgrass helps by making clear what is happening.

He might say, in effect, that Indy is generating automatic commentary, Emo is carrying a strong emotional wave, Ed is taking the event personally, Mindy can help sort things out if given a chance, and the Sage needs to observe the whole event calmly.

This character is important because Deepermind does not want to be vague. It wants to unite direct experience with clear understanding.

The inner world also includes a warmth that is deeper than passing happiness.

Holly (Warmth)

Holly represents the heart. She brings kindness, care, warmth, gentleness, compassion, affection, encouragement, and a kind of emotional holding that helps the whole inner family feel more human.

 

Holly is not just happiness, because she is deeper and steadier than that.

 

She is the part that comforts, softens, accepts, embraces, and helps the system remain tender even when life is difficult.

 

When Emo is hurting, Holly is the one who comes near and brings comfort, almost as if she is saying that everything will be all right.

 

When Ed becomes harsh, defensive, or too hard on the self, Holly softens him. When Indy becomes cruel in his endless commentary, Holly introduces kindness.

 

When Mindy becomes too dry, detached, or overly analytical, Holly brings back warmth and feeling.

 

Holly does not deny pain or pretend that suffering is not there.

 

Instead, she helps pain be held in a healthier and more loving way.

 

Without Holly, the system can become intelligent but cold, observant but disconnected, and well organized but unkind.

 

Then there is the most important player of all for understanding the system.

Grace (Alignment and Harmony)

Grace occurs during special times when the person is in deep alignment.  It emerges on its own when the conditions become just right. Here all parts of the person seem to be reinforcing each other. Grace cannot be forced, manufactured, or commanded into existence. .  Grace is a subtle inner harmony that appears when conflict softens, awareness deepens, and the inner system begins to work together in a healthier way. It is not just happiness. It is more like a gentle presence, a blessing, or a state of inner rightness.