An Ensomatic Moment

Sudden Integrative Clarity

You have likely had this experience. You are in a new town, on a short visit for business or pleasure. You know the stretch between your hotel and the train station, but the rest of the town is unknown -- a blank space in the fog of your mind.

You leave your hotel and decide to wander, taking in the sights. You meander from street to street until, turning a corner, you find yourself at the rear of your hotel. Suddenly, puzzle pieces fall into place. Your awareness of the surrounding geography, now expanded, settles into a wonderful newfound cohesion.

As a frequent traveller, I have had this moment many times, in many places. I wanted a word for this qualia but could not find one. Personally, I have taken to describing this mental cartographic consilience as an Ensomatic Moment, a sudden integration whereby a murky sense of something becomes permanently illuminated.

The Ensomatic Moment is connected with genius: the ability to draw bridges across spheres of knowledge which appear disparate to others. It manifests where a crucial piece of information makes the rest suddenly make sense beyond the obvious.

Such moments are found in peak experiences, times which are so intense in their splendour that our meaning of the world changes permanently in response. Childbirth, psychedelics, a brush with death, the traumatic integration of a long-suppressed memory.

A mind expanded so shall never shrink again.