Participation and Possibility

You are already a participant.

You enter a conversation with a body, a history, a way of attending, and an organization of experience. How you listen, what you recognize, the decisions you make, what you say, and what you leave unsaid all contribute to the encounter. The other person contributes their participation. The situation develops through that relationship.

Within the MythoSelf™ model, a participant is an embodied, situated individual whose involvement helps organize the reality they encounter. The participant is part of the situation, and the situation also acts upon them. They remain a distinct individual while participating in something that includes other people, material circumstances, and unfolding events.

Participation is how that involvement takes form: somatically, perceptually, relationally, through decision, expression, action, and the withholding of action. Waiting, withdrawing, remaining silent, and continuing an established pattern are ways of participating too. Each contributes to what follows.

The MythoSelf Process™ works with the organization of the participant’s experience because that organization shapes how they can participate—and what can become possible through their participation.

Participative ontology: being within the encounter.

Ontology concerns being and existence. In the MythoSelf™ account, participative ontology concerns how reality takes form through participation, including what becomes extant as a possibility for engagement.

The participant’s organization is part of the conditions of the encounter. Their perception, stance, and decisions contribute to what exists as available there. Other participants and circumstances contribute their own conditions. What becomes real through the encounter takes shape in that participation, with consequences that continue beyond the immediate moment.

This is why changing how someone participates can change the reality they encounter. A different organization of being can bring a different conversation, a different relationship, or a different course of action into existence. The person is involved in bringing it about, and is also affected by what emerges.

The connection is direct. The participant participates from a particular organization of experience. That participation constitutes a relationship with the situation. Affordances name the possibilities that are extant within that relationship.

What is an affordance?

Within the MythoSelf™ model, an affordance is a possibility for participation that exists in a particular relationship between a participant and a situation, as organized through embodiment, perception, and decision.

An affordance becomes extant when that relationship makes it available. It ceases to be extant when the participant’s organization or the conditions of the situation make it unavailable. A subsequent change can make it available again.

The word extant matters: it means existing now. We are describing what exists as a possibility within the participation taking place, including how the participant is organized to engage.

A tree stump, a decision, and a changing reality.

A tree stump does not afford sitting to an organism that cannot sit. A human’s physical capacity alone also does not establish a sitting affordance within the MythoSelf™ account. The stump must be perceptually available as somewhere to sit, within the person’s present organization of participation.

Consider a person who encounters a stump as a place to rest. As they approach, they notice it is teeming with termites. They decide: “I could, but I won’t.”

The words “I could” acknowledge a capacity or a possible different participation. The decision “I won’t” organizes their participation now. In that moment, sitting on the stump is unavailable within that relationship. The sitting affordance has ceased to be extant.

A moment later, the relationship may change. The person might revise their decision. They might decide to remove the termites, changing the situation in which another decision becomes possible. When sitting becomes available again through that changed participation, the affordance becomes extant again.

Another person may organize a different participation with that stump at the same time. What is unavailable to one participant can be available to another. The affordance belongs to the particular relationship, in the particular moment.

Decision is part of participation.

A decision can change what exists as available. “I won’t” closes a participation in the present. A changed decision can reopen it when the conditions permit.

Availability does not require an action to have already occurred. A person can be organized to engage several possibilities before acting. The distinction in the stump example is the decision that excludes sitting from the participation taking place. That exclusion has consequences even though the person retains the physical capacity to sit.

The decision may be spoken. The organization can also be preconscious; a verbal declaration is not required for a participation to become available or unavailable. It may be evident in the person’s orientation, readiness, withdrawal, or continued way of acting. In MythoSelf™ practice, we attend to the organization through which a decision is lived and enacted.

This brings the participant back into the account. The question becomes: Who are you being in this encounter, and what does that organization make available or unavailable through your participation?

Consequence changes the next possibility.

Participation changes conditions. Clearing the termites changes the stump as encountered. Walking away changes where the person goes next. Waiting allows events to continue. Each course opens and closes possibilities beyond the immediate decision.

The relationship is reciprocal. Perception and decision organize participation; participation encounters and changes circumstances; consequences become part of the conditions of further perception, decision, and participation.

The participant’s body, other people, and material circumstances all contribute. What becomes available to engage and what follows from engaging it are questions to examine together. The response of another person, an unexpected event, or the result of an action can reorganize what is available next.

Consequential modeling follows this unfolding relationship. It asks what a participation brings about, what that consequence makes possible, what it closes, and how the participant can perceive and respond as the situation develops.

INTENT! and the organization of the participant.

In the MythoSelf™ model, INTENT! names an embodied organization of being from which perception, choice, and action emerge. It is distinct from a particular goal or a conscious intention to produce a particular result.

Through the somatically elicited experiences of Generalized Desired State (GDS) and Greater Than Self (GTS), and their oscillation, the Third Harmonic of INTENT! emerges. The work develops the participant’s capacity to recognize and re-access that organization directly.

Its relevance here is foundational. The participant’s organization shapes the relationship from which they perceive, decide, and engage. As that organization changes, different participation can become available. Different affordances can become extant, with different consequential trajectories.

The practitioner therefore works with the person’s organization of experience and their capacity to participate. A proposed strategy becomes useful when the participant can actually engage it from the organization they inhabit.

From the stump to a consequential conversation.

Consider an illustrative encounter. Someone enters a difficult conversation organized around defending their competence. A question is encountered as a challenge. Their attention gathers evidence for a rebuttal, and their decision is to protect their position. Their participation helps organize the conversation that follows.

As their somatic and perceptual organization changes, the question can become available as an invitation to understand something together. Asking a sincere question of their own becomes a possible participation. The conversation they can enter has changed.

The other person’s response matters. They may engage, withdraw, clarify, or introduce something unexpected. Shared possibilities emerge through both people’s participation, and each response becomes part of the situation they encounter next.

This is the connection between participant, participative ontology, and affordance in practical work: developing the participant changes how they can participate; that participation helps constitute what is available; and what follows changes the conditions of further participation.

MythøGenX works at the level of how human experience is organized because this is where the participant’s relationship with possibility takes form.