Spiritual RationalityBlog

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The Global Wayfinding Model

This section discusses the most important parts of the global wayfinding model in more detail.

See previous section for initial context.

Losslessness

Losslessness is a concept from information theory, it describes a representation from which an original input can be reconstructed perfectly, that is, without any loss of information.1 In the context of global wayfinding, Mark often claims that the mind, (barring traumatic brain injury etc.) is basically lossless, variously with respect to memory, at least of formative events, but more importantly with respect to its volitions, affective conditioning, and values.

First off I have to note explicitly that I expect the strongest version of this claim must be false. I haven’t discussed this with Mark, but etc. etc., the maximal version2 would flatly contradict most of what I’m vaguely aware of about the literature on human memory. Even with claims outside of wayfinding of eg. recovering traumatic memories, I expect these are a mixed bag: some of these are definitely fabricated under suggestion from therapists, some I expect are straightforwardly real, some mixed, etc.

I’m less interested in the claim about memory per se, and more interested in the claim about values and emotions. The latter I see as a fundamental crux between wayfinding and certainly all traditional contemplative lineages I’m aware of,3 as well as almost all modern therapy systems.

The basic claim here is that, as a general property of human minds, let’s say “volitional-affective structures” basically cannot be squashed, erased, or ripped out, and that those structures persist after even apparently effective attempts to do so, but now something like “swept under the rug.”

(By volitional-affective structures I mean something very general, so inclusive of eg. triggers, attachment bonds, felt status and social posture, tribal/religious loyalty or devotion, “trauma” very broadly, also basic social/emotional “needs,” sex drive, etc.)

This is not to claim that these structures never “naturally” decay or change, my understanding of Mark’s claim here in general is that minds have organic, “integrated” conditions for relinquishing values and intentions, as well as conditions under which they will be suppressed and collect as conflicted, unintegrated cruft in the body-mind, which is a very common pattern of technical debt.

Technical debt

Technical debt (often tech debt) is a concept from software engineering, where it refers to (among other things) common patterns of cruft and fairy-dust-and-duct-tape style complexity which tend to accrue in software systems over time. In actual software, tech debt is most often incurred when features are quickly tacked on, without respect to the “structural integrity” of the program—metaphorically one could imagine a house with an extension built on stilts jutting through the roof of the original structure, and with holes in the floor covered up with carpet.

The metaphor of debt here is that tech debt represents engineering work which has been postponed to the future, which both will eventually have to be “repaid,” and which continually impedes ongoing engineering work, hence on which an organization “pays interest.” Tech debt is basically pervasive in real world software, and Mark’s claim is that the same is true in human minds.

There are a bunch of claims here:

  • Ordinary life experiences often leave residue which something like “needs to be” metabolized and integrated. Until metabolized they distort one’s own, robust relationship to oneself, a domain of experience, an individual person, etc., and remain an encumbrance until thoroughly integrated.
    • Note that this is at least partially normative and partially descriptive, viz. descriptively there exists metabolism, and there exists something that looks like more “extensive” metabolism, which is what wayfinding consists of, but why this is desirable or correct is more nuanced and maybe underdetermined. See more on my takes on wayfinding, and on this question very broadly.
  • Tech debt compounds, in particular, various kinds of debt can build on existing strata, and more complex or entrenched patterns of tech debt both make new debt harder to pay off, and more likely to accrue in general.
    • Sufficiently snarled or compounded tech debt can make all integration impossible, manifesting in eg. meditation practice becoming stuck, or rigidity and stuckness in affect/perception/behavior in general.
      • (Mark is pretty extensive about this claim, eg. he thinks that cognitive decline associated with age is substantially about accrued debt.)
  • Some kinds of metabolism occur organically, but compounded debt is often intractable to default metabolic processes or at least to a person’s existing skills.
    • Many kinds of debt get paid off (that is, resolved, “healed,” processed, etc.) in normal life and with normal levels of introspective/meditative skill, eg. during sleep, stolen moments of reflection, sharing with others, etc. However, many patterns of debt are too complex or too intense, and so they will usually fester indefinitely.
  • Thorough integration is often hyper-idiosyncratic, fractal, and irrevocably particular to a person’s specific shapes of tech debt, and skipping this particularity blocks future progress.
    • Eg. Mark uses language like “million-moves long, ten thousand hour combination lock” to describe practice in his system.
  • Most adults have substantial outstanding technical debt.
  • Awakenings can be, and in practice often are, rolled in with pre-existing structures of debt. Furthermore, many apparent awakenings are entirely contingent on particular patterns of debt, often specifically inculcated by a given lineage.
    • In any case, depending on how one construes the goal of spiritual practice, in wayfinding, “complete” or “correct” practice eventually requires unwinding all debt. See more later on this.
  • Similarly, there are some kinds of apparent healing and integration possible which are built on and entrench existing technical debt, even if they have a similar contour and result to “correct” practice. Also similarly, in the wayfinding model, these proximal or incomplete kinds of integration eventually need to be unwound as well.

Some broad categories of debt, not necessarily exhaustive:

  1. Content at the surface
    • This would be more like straightforward grief, horror, fear, anger etc., along with associated thoughts/imagery/etc.
      • (So re the stylized depiction of content in the link above, here by “content” I mean more like the “gunk” that’s excised and uh “emoted” out, rather than more ingrained patterns of belief, perception etc.)
    • Often content comes to the surface as a more complex structure of debt is unwound, so this ordered list here is sort of in reverse order of how practice commonly progresses.
  2. Encysted unmetabolized content, usually with downstream behaviors and perceptions
    • Central here will be examples I discussed in the sections on trauma and trauma smells.
    • (Note that strictly speaking behavior itself is not debt, but generally speaking trauma-smelly behavior/perception is generated by some debt etc.)
  3. Gross and subtle layering (see below)
    • Briefly: compensatory or occlusive structures, often added on top of types #1 and #2 above.
      • (Note that trauma smells are often specifically layering)
  4. Complex tangles (see below)
    • Impacted, snarled, overlapping, or knotted structures of volition, intention, affect, and perception.

This list of course in great part overlaps with other models, and anyway these models are all at least substantially describing the same territory of healing and transformative practice. Tech debt and losslessness, as concepts together, are then partially analytical distinctions, but also theoretical ones which bear on what the structural constraints are (see more below), and what techniques we expect to work.

In particular, many practice frameworks look at some “problematic” set of behaviors etc. in a practitioner, and prescribe practices which implicitly view the generators as simple or flat, whereas for the same cases, wayfinding will often predict that the generators are complex and snarled, with a lot of debt to be unwound before getting to the heart of the issue.

Debt often has unmetabolized gross content at the root, but not always, or in some cases at least not in a way which ever becomes distinctly available. Some kinds of debt are purely perceptual, cognitive, or somatic tangles without much valence or emotion. Again, see the sections below.

Layering

Layering refers to structural contortion, dislocation, and suppression, used to achieve a specific configuration of psychology and behavior, generally at the expense of integration.

(Unfortunately ‘layer’ evokes discrete strata occluding others, which was ish how it was meant in the model Mark originally took the term from, but it’s meant more loosely and broadly in Mark’s usage.)

These kinds of “contortions” can be spatial, and very often specifically somatic, with common patterns in their presentation and in their resolution. However, both layering and debt in general are not just somatic, and Mark is often insistent that meaning, being, and perception are all interwoven, with debt sometimes worked all the way down to the visual quality of space, the boundary of the body, object permanence, etc.

Gesturally, some examples:

  • Dissociation, generally “active dissociation” (see link)
  • Resisting specific beliefs
    • Eg. affirmations, secondarily practices like CBT, etc., also often more stereotypically neurotic or “rigid” patterns of pushing down thoughts/beliefs
  • Blockages
  • Internal demands for positive affect, productivity, presentable-ness, etc.
    • (Though, not all such are exactly layering.)
  • Often, spiritual practices of “cultivation,” especially often those framed as “cultivation of virtue”

The claim here, at least implicitly, and claims which rhyme with this are often made by hippies as well, is that “by default” (oy) there are flows of information through a person’s psyche which are afforded by attention, emotion, energy, thought, belief, expression, etc., and that layering structurally disrupts some or many of those flows. Then, often both “traumatic content” and just information are not able to come to the surface, and are stymied in participating in “the conscious mind.”

Moreover the claim is that layering is always adding a compensatory structure, and that occluded or obscured generators are still structurally and causally present, even if apparently introspectively absent, or only present at the fringes.

Note this is subtly mixing both descriptive and normative claims, about the structure of human minds, and about what configurations are desirable, “original,” correct, or inevitable. Again I’ll return to these questions later. This is obviously besides big questions I discuss later re introspective epistemology.

Again I want to stress the point that layering by no means mostly operates at the level of “belief” or “thought,” and is claimed to operate on ~all features of phenomenology. On belief in particular, often there are layering structures which occlude the existential impression of some experience, which otherwise would have had a diffuse influence on perception, verbal claims, or introspectively superficial “beliefs.”

These structures again very commonly centrally revolve around somatic patterns which occlude the somatic instantiation of felt meaning. Some reports involve finding layering structures which are exclusively somatic, with no apparent “content,” imagery, memory, etc.; on the other hand there are many reports of patterns which initially present """cognitively""" or behaviorally, which are found to be tightly woven in with blockages or other somatic layering structures.

Often layering is partial or incompletely effective, my sense here is that eg. some shapes of sexual fetishism, and paraphilias otherwise, come from partially layered sexuality twisting itself to fit around some layering, and spilling out the sides. Similarly, IIRC I’ve seen reports of anger which is blocked from its direct expression, which finds expression and influence indirectly, eg. in self harm or (sometimes simulated) sexual violence, but also eg. tilting thought and expression, and constricting or distorting the expression of positive regard, affection, etc.

Layering, shadow, and losslessness

Sexuality in particular is a theme I’ve kept returning to, and is central (though often tacit) in Mark’s writing. Sexuality is really the taboo par excellence, and turns up again and again in reports from practitioners in modern Western therapy/adult development/alternative spirituality cultures. Sexuality is no less salient in “traditional” cultures, and I’m not aware of a religious tradition which doesn’t involve a substantial system of taboos and rituals surrounding sex and gender.

A very common take here4 is that some structures of taboo around sexuality lead people to layer over it in general, or from some associated energies, or aspects of its expression. Again these come up often in healing/transformative practice reports as a stuck energy or calcified blockage which at some point unravels in the course of practice.

I think it’s instructive to look at the relationship with sexuality in renunciative or uh “semi-renunciative” traditions. This of course means celibate monastic traditions, but I also think of much of Islam or socially conservative forms of Christianity and Judaism, which may be variously pro-sex within marriage, but strongly proscribe any sex outside of marriage, and generally all masturbation or erotic fantasy.

In many cases they explicitly teach this as a persistent struggle and temptation, especially for men, that must be fought vigorously and faithfully. Layering, right there!

The distinction here is that they don’t (mostly) teach that desire for proscribed sexual expression will usually wither and cease with appropriate devotion, or that it can be cleanly excised; I claim this is a straightforward instance of losslessness.

There’s a concept which Eliezer calls a terminal value (there’s a variety of other names in other discourses), which refers to inexorable, atomic values of an agent. Sexuality is in some respects a mixed case here, partly because of menopause/low testosterone/etc., but also because of asexuality. I’ll discuss sexuality, including asexuality, in more detail later, but the point is still easy enough here that the overwhelming majority of humans continue to desire and usually pursue sex regardless of their culture’s beliefs about its propriety, or their meanwhile doggedly trying to subdue or erase it.

In some respects this is begging the question, if you’re unconvinced re sex then feel free to consider this case only illustrative.

Again, the claim here (agnostic necessarily of sexuality in particular) is that some structures and patterns of affect/perception/behavior are something like “inherent,” such that attempts to remove them arbitrarily will fail because the system treats them as inviolable.

A slight generalization of this point also applies for what are called instrumental values. These are goals or values which are, indeed, instrumental with respect to other values, presumably forming some chain or network which grounds out in terminal values, for whose sake the instrumental ones were adopted.

Any given example might be contentious or nuanced, and these examples are obviously contrived, but gesturally:

  • Desire for money
    • as instrumental for status, or power, or ease
  • “Finally have that conversation with Josh”
    • perhaps grounding out in some combination of need for connection, integrity, self-esteem, or love
  • Not crying in front of one’s parents
    • made up, but perhaps instrumental for love, safety,

(There’s more I could say about the proposed corresponding terminal goals as prototypical, but won’t here.)

we might want to include things like desire for money (), or “finish recording that album I started last summer” as perhaps grounding out in values

So, the more general claim is that instrumental values broadly persist in the system, [besides decaying over time ]

[this point is also re instrumental goals, so even if things aren’t inherent, you can’t just rip out an instrumental goal if its generators persist.]

[or is this begging the question?] [similarly someone might consider anger just bad, wrong, needs to be removed. but it’s a functinoal part of the system etc?]

[this sort of rounds to what’s meant by shadow, though there’s more in that concept which I don’t necessarily need to bring in here] arst

[something about like, in some cases the claim is that you have to keep fighting it, and they have some way they conceive of this, and ] [briefly about buddhism/awakening here etc?]

[something about “structurally and causally present” re like, ]

[[2026-07-14 this is older, the thing i want ot get across here is like, what’s the relationship betw layering and shadow, waht is this about terminal values vs instrumental contingent configurations of debt, just like, structures whatsoever vs etc. and to some extent perhaps this is uncertain, and maybe we don’t need to answer this question to be like “well indeed you’re occluding an existing structure which persists” — like, was that instrumental or terminal? but then like, normatively, telically, it’s not clear if we want to be like “well maybe that is layered, but ultimately the thing is [bad?] anyway” — even that descripiton is sort of askew etc.] [and maybe I don’t want that in layering]

[similarly for what is regarded as deep parts of the mind and can’t just be erased] [something about stuff in shadow] [and then ]

part of the distinction also is re like, what “undesirable patterns” are actually uh """inherent""" parts of the mind which you’ve put into shadow, and what is like, “something which can be resolved” etc. but eg. some ppl + traditions try to layer over sexuality. maybe layering over anger just uh “generically”, where I’m like, well I’m not even sure you can “resolve” anger, besides whether it would be desirable to. ]

[what about weirdos? how common is this? how do I make these concepts more accessible?]

Complex Tangles

This is really the bread and butter of wayfinding, more specifically making these patterns salient is what most distinguishes wayfinding for me from other practice systems.

[something like “to continue on the evocative exmaple I gave above”]

[This kind of shape, whether multiple compounded snarled brambles of layering, or simpler structures, if still often intense and overwhelming, is ]

[that’s a big part of why this distinction matters. so to very unfairly stereotype, the “simple” healing mode for this case might prescribe a bit of controlled catharsis, a heavy dose of equanimity, and maybe loving-kindness meditation to… uh, sorry, try to be nicer? ] [again, this is unfair but I’m actually only exaggerating a tiny bit from cases I’ve seen.]

[ Re “quagmires,” there are reports (I see this more commonly among wayfinding associated people, but peripherally in other circles) of structures which look like:

  1. Some persistent clump of content which is intense or intolerable
  2. Layering obfuscating or dissociating from 1.
  3. Imbalance, or emotional/relational “absenses,” due to both 1. and 2.
  4. Further compensatory structures trying to perform the absent emotion/behavior/etc.
  5. …Further somatic tangles from many competing energies and blockages in all of the above

This kind of pattern might present at the beginning of someone’s practice as nebulous difficulty and dissatisfaction with some aspect of relationships, or often only in terms of visible second-order effects of that, etc., and then several of these clusters interacting… To be fair this is a bit exaggerated, but I’ve definitely seen reports of tangles just like this.

]

Refactoring

”Structure-preserving transformations”

Wacky phenomenology

Wayfinding and awakening

[something like, and then awakening pops out for free? etc]

Painting some pictures

Footnotes

  1. Er, rather, that the encoding doesn’t lose any information, if the encoding is lossless then indeed there is an inverse function blah blah blah. ↩

  2. And Mark does seem to be making really extreme claims, so eg. here “the mind is practically lossless (in that any distinguishable sensory memory can be ultimately recovered)” ↩

  3. So the exception here is plausibly some theories of karma kind of end up equivalent to this claim. Mark actually uses the term ‘karma’ a lot to mean something like “tech debt + conditioning,” this feels like an annoying misuse of the term and I don’t think is close enough to the traditional models for it to be appropriate. Anyway, the crux here with traditional systems is really more about tech debt + losslessness rather than losslessness alone, but this flowed better. ↩

  4. Having nothing to do with wayfinding, but in its terms. ↩