Intentional States of Being

The Hidden Architecture of Experience

What if change didn’t begin with effort, but with sensation?

Before thought, before belief, the body is already listening.
This is an invitation to explore how sensory experience, creative awareness, and attention become the architecture of the life you embody

Metta-Programming: The Hidden Instructions of Experience

Metta-programming (meta-programming in psychological terms, not just computer science) refers to the patterns and rules that organise how the mind and nervous system operate. In psychological frameworks like Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), “meta-programs” are habitual, often unconscious patterns that influence how we perceive, decide, and act — for example, whether someone focuses on problems vs. possibilities, or whether they approach life with routine or exploration. These patterns run above basic cognition, guiding how sensory data and beliefs are filtered into experience.

An Everyday Example of Meta-Programming in Action

Imagine walking into a room where you once had a stressful experience. Even before you consciously remember what happened there, your body might tense up, or your breathing might change. This is your nervous system running a program that associates that environment with threat — and it does so outside of conscious thought. Over time, that pattern becomes automatic: your body responds first, your mind follows.

Now suppose you deliberately return to that space on your own terms, perhaps with calming music, slow breathing, and a comforting scent. Over repeated encounters, the body begins to update that internal program: the room no longer triggers stress. This is how meta-programming shifts could be supported not through willpower alone, but through patterned experience that rewrites the system from the bottom up.

Perception & Somatic Seasoning: Re-Coding Sensory Input

Somatic Seasoning  beautifully describes how sensory environments shape the nervous system even before conscious thought kicks in. Whether through scent, taste, colour, or ambience. This is sensory meta-programming in action: the body’s regulatory systems are constantly reading cues for safety, novelty, comfort or threat, and these cues determine how we perceive every experience , from eating a meal to entering a workplace.

Directed Sonic Seasoning for Perception

An important extension of somatic seasoning is sonic seasoning  the study and intentional use of sound and music to influence perception. Research shows that music can actually change how we perceive flavour,  for example, high-pitch tones can make a food taste sweeter, and sound valence (positive vs. negative) can shape perceived texture and enjoyment.

Benefits of Sonic Seasoning for Perception

  • Enhanced sensory integration: Sound can guide the way taste and other senses are “interpreted” by the brain.
  • Regulation of nervous-system state: Music entrains rhythm, heart rate, breath, and arousal, helping the body shift from stress to calm without effort.
  • Cross-modal salience: Layering sound with food or environment deepens presence and embodiment creating coherent sensory flow rather than fragmentation.

By intentionally pairing sound with sensory experiences (e.g., mindful eating, rituals, relaxation practices), you re-code not just what you experience but how the nervous system responds. Sonic seasoning thus becomes a tool for meta-programmatic change, potentially loosening deep patterns of perception from the ground up.

Intuitive Creation: Exploring Your Inner World Through Creative States

Once perception is understood as something embodied and programmable, we can use intuitive creation to navigate the inner landscape. This means engaging with the world through non-linear, sensory and symbolic modes. From painting, drawing, movement, dream imagery, or sound, not with a goal in mind, but with felt experience as the guide.

In these states, the usual filters (self-criticism, linear logic, judgement) lighten. Attention becomes absorbed; sense of time may dissolve, and what arises feels coherent with inner world and outer perception. This is not “forcing creativity,” but participating in a flow state where unconscious, embodied intelligence and conscious awareness harmonise.

The Creative State as Embodied Meta-Programming

  • No agenda: Instead of achieving, you attend to what arises.
  • Emergent patterns: Insights and shifts come from the experience itself rather than from analytical effort.
  • Embodied resonance: The creative act becomes a dialogue between inner sensation and outer expression.

This visceral form of exploration reveals patterns — emotional, perceptual, symbolic — that would otherwise remain unconscious.

Attention: The Anchor of Change

Attention is the currency by which the nervous system strengthens patterns. Whatever we reliably attend to, a musical ritual, a mood board, a mindful breath, a creative image could becomes neurologically reinforced.

From the earlier somatic context: attention isn’t just cognitive choice. It is shaped by embodied cues: safety signals, rhythm, environment, expectation. When attention is anchored, through writing, visual fields, or habit it creates pathways that hold potential to become default responses in everyday life.

Anchoring Practices That Shift Meta-Programs

  • Reflective Writing: Externalises internal flows, making patterns visible and malleable.
  • Mood Boards / Visual Anchors: Offer a field for attention that reflects inner values and images that evoke embodied meaning.
  • Sound and Sensory Rituals: Pair states with predictable sensory contexts so the nervous system learns new responses automatically.

Together, these forms are not superficial tools but channels for embodied re-programming, because attention determines what the system “runs” most often.

Important Context & Disclaimers

This work draws on neuroscience‑informed principles, somatic psychology, sensory perception research, and creative practices. It is offered as an educational and experiential framework designed to support self‑inquiry, awareness, and embodied exploration.

These practices are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any medical or mental health condition. They are not a substitute for professional medical, psychological, or therapeutic care. Individuals experiencing ongoing or severe physical or mental health concerns are encouraged to seek support from qualified healthcare professionals.

Terms such as “programming,” “re‑programming,” “rewriting,” or “energetic alignment” are used metaphorically to describe subjective, lived experience and nervous‑system learning processes, rather than literal neurological or scientific mechanisms.

Responses to sensory, creative, and attentional practices vary between individuals. These tools are invitational rather than prescriptive, honouring personal autonomy, individual nervous‑system differences, and lived context. There are no guaranteed outcomes, only opportunities for exploration, reflection, and embodied insight.