OPINES and CARJ - A response
This entry was written by Maggi Adamek
Craig makes some very interesting points here. If you go back and read the Gilden article on Burrows and Behnke, he describes a similar phenomenon. Rather than using the CARJ/OPINES rubric, he describes these styles of embodied awareness as 'ditentive' and 'cotentive'.
A ditentive style of awareness describes Craig's CARJ stance and includes that stance of separation and detachment - a form of consciousness that leads the knower to experience and make conclusions about a phenomenon in a particular way.
Ditention privileges vision and audition over the other senses, which do not really play a relevant role (taste, touch...). Another author - I have to go back and find out whom - describes this as 'rational consciousness.' It can also be understood as a separative style of knowing.
Likewise, a cotentive stance - the OPINES corollary - relies on a receptive, pan-sensory (all senses engaged at a relatively equal rate), kinesthetically involved stance. This style of awareness is deemed by the as yet unknown author as 'perceptual consciousness' - a style of relational noticing that fully, explicitly and relationally engages the bodymind of the knower in the investigation. It can also be known as a relational style of knowing.
Primary reliance on a rigorous subjectivity = OPINES/Cotentive. Primary reliance on a rigorous objectivity = CARJ/Ditentive.
What is your style of awareness? What are you learning from the style of awareness we use in our embodiment workshops? How does it affect your experience? What types of questions arise as a result of locating your awareness in this more sensually-oriented, perceptually-based stance?