Introducing the Sixfold Matrix of Mental Balance

Today, we’re beginning an article series explaining the Sixfold Matrix of Mental Balance, a seminal framework for our work that you may have encountered in previous talks or materials shared by the CCR. The Sixfold Matrix paradigm guides and overlays many of the CCR’s program activities, and enables us to concretely follow through on our mission to offer the world accessible tools for cultivating genuine well-being. The Sixfold Matrix informs each of our domains (Mind Labs, Research, and Education), and now, we’re sharing more about this powerful framework with the broader world in detail.

We invite you to explore this high-level overview of the Sixfold Matrix: what it is, where it came from, and perhaps most importantly, the benefit it is designed to provide not only to you, but to the entire world.

 

What is the Sixfold Matrix of Mental Balance? 

Put simply, the Sixfold Matrix is the CCR’s response to what some are now calling the “metacrisis”: the complex combination of modern crises that threaten the future of human civilization (including climate change, declining mental health, the collapse of collaboration across differences, wars, and pandemic disease, among others).

We at the CCR propose that the root causes of the metacrisis lie within the human mind. It follows that when we address these root causes, we unleash the capacity to shield humanity from the various catastrophes that could unfold as a result of the metacrisis.

But with great confidence in the remarkable human ability to learn and change, we aspire to more than just disaster mitigation. We suggest that if a critical mass of people are equipped with the tools of the type offered through the Sixfold Matrix, the human race can build toward and ultimately experience a new era of unprecedented flourishing. The CCR’s founder, Dr. B. Alan Wallace, posits that this flourishing happens through prioritizing the cultivation of genuine well-being (sometimes referred to as eudaimonia), over the pursuit of mundane pleasure (hedonia) that derives from fleeting, sensory satisfaction.

 

Genuine Well-Being:

“A stimulus-independent sense of psychological flourishing that emerges directly from the cultivation of virtuous mental processes and impulses” (Wallace, 2005).¹ It is a quality of well-being that comes not from what we get from the world (as in hedonia) but rather what we bring to the world (Wallace, 2019).²

 

The Sixfold Matrix is specifically designed to cultivate this experience of genuine well-being at the individual, communal, and global scale. It draws from a combination of established guidance from the great wisdom traditions of the world and contemporary input from important work in psychology, neuroscience, physics, philosophy, and beyond. The Sixfold Matrix is composed of six components of mental balance that, though developed individually, are profoundly intertwined. They offer a theory whose explanatory power can potentially encompass the full spectrum of human experience, with its various modes of balance and imbalance, and the six types of intelligence call for specific practices that augment flourishing across all components.

The six components of the Sixfold Matrix of Mental Balance are:

1. Conative Intelligence: The discernment and cultivation of desires and intentions that support one’s own and others’ genuine well-being. With conative intelligence, we grow in our ability to develop wise motivations, goals, and priorities, aligning our personal values and sense of purpose with what is conducive to the flourishing of all beings.
2. Ethical Intelligence: The ability to apply principles of inner regulation and balance to one’s physical, verbal, and mental conduct in everyday life. Ethical conduct nurtures genuine well-being in oneself and others, and unethical behavior undermines it. When we begin to prioritize the well-being of others, we discover an even deeper sense of genuine well-being, joy, and fortitude within ourselves.
3. Attentional Intelligence: The ability to hold relaxed, stable, and vivid attention on a chosen object for an extended period of time. This kind of mental training is an important and direct path supporting cultivation of genuine well-being from within. It relies on mindfulness and introspection, and ultimately facilitates states of bliss and clarity that can help deepen balance across the other Sixfold Matrix components.
4. Cognitive Intelligence: Cultivation of the comprehension of reality as it is. This arises from a progressively more discerning faculty that can perceive things as they appear and then as they are, without turning a blind eye to empirical evidence and without confusing our own projections with reality. This kind of inquiry enables examination and understanding of body, mind, feelings, and phenomena and ultimately offers a pathway to examine and eliminate the confounding delusions that often pervade our minds.
5. Emotional Intelligence: Awareness regarding one’s emotional states and the ability to regulate emotional responses in ways that are appropriate and beneficial across myriad situations. Practices that cultivate emotional intelligence open the heart to its natural predisposition for caring, and expand our circle of heartfelt empathy ever wider to eventually encompass all sentient beings.
6. Spiritual Intelligence: The cultivation of intentional and continual exploration of the innermost depths of who we are and how we relate to the rest of reality, relying upon contemplative practices for exploring one’s own true identity and the true sources of well-being, wisdom, and ultimate healing from mental afflictions. This includes the uncovering of deeper resources of knowing, consciousness, or timeless wisdom that transcend human cognition but can manifest in experience, not “separate” from our moment-to-moment awareness of everyday life.

 

Where did the Sixfold Matrix come from?

The Sixfold Matrix was developed by Dr. B. Alan Wallace over the course of decades of academic and contemplative training, and has been informed by his work and study in the fields of comparative religion, psychology, physics, and Tibetan Buddhist philosophy and meditation. The Sixfold Matrix is unique in that it combines the wisdom of both Western science and the world’s contemplative traditions, but it is far from a new or “new-age” religion or discipline. Rather, it is a well-researched, secular framework designed to offer techniques toward health and healing among religious and secular worldviews alike. 

Just as other frameworks have historically proven useful for applying and testing wisdom and scientific discovery in a given era (e.g. Aristotle’s system of biological classification of species, which became an impactful foundation for later scientific work), so the Sixfold Matrix can helpfully frame the way we approach both individual and collective well-being in the twenty-first century, in the context of the knowledge and tools familiar in our time. 

 

The Sixfold Matrix in Action

If we imagine the Sixfold Matrix as a nest—supporting our sense of genuine well-being from all sides—we can see how each component weaves into the other in even the mundane circumstances of our everyday lives. By cultivating aspects of the Sixfold Matrix in meditation, reflection, and day-to-day activities, every moment becomes an opportunity to experience genuine well-being. Our small yet wholesome interactions with others and our surrounding environment make a meaningful impact, bit by bit. 

But the benefits of the Sixfold Matrix do not end with the individual. On the contrary, the Sixfold Matrix can bring reality-based flourishing to local communities, nations, and global systems alike. We term this flourishing “reality-based” because it arises from a realistic understanding of what promotes genuine well-being amid the complex causes and conditions at the root of our mental perceptions, our behaviors, and our interactions with our world. 

In particular, we believe the Sixfold Matrix can produce reality-based flourishing in three key areas: 

• Social & Environmental Flourishing: When we act with ethical intelligence, our lives are characterized by nonviolence and benevolence, which, through individual and collective actions, results in harmony within families, communities, nations, and beyond. Ethical choices can enable there to be economies grounded in sustainable use of the planet’s resources, and support a harmonious balance between unity and diversity among people’s cultural, religious, ethnic, linguistic, racial, and gender identities.
• Psychological Flourishing: Through training in practices to achieve deep and sustainable balance, individuals can achieve a unification of body and mind (in a state called samadhi in the Buddhist and yogic traditions). Through such balance, an unprecedented number of people could find joy and contentment that arises from within, a wide-reaching remedy to maladies stemming from addiction, consumerism, alienation, and other stubborn challenges of our time. 
• Spiritual Flourishing: The average human now has access to more recorded information than ever before. But intellectual knowledge is not the same as existential wisdom—the world’s contemplative traditions attest to this. Through sustained and rigorous contemplative inquiry into the nature of reality, in a social climate in which wisdom is valued, people from all backgrounds may arrive at the same supreme level of well-being that comes from knowing reality as it is. 

 

What’s Next? 

The Sixfold Matrix is not a “quick fix” to the metacrisis. Its adoption among individuals and communities must happen gradually, and in collaboration with other disciplines, organizations, and frameworks. Still, time is of the essence, which is why the CCR is actively working on projects that will bring the Sixfold Matrix to a variety of venues. In our Education domain, the CCR is developing curricula for middle school students (already piloted at The Crestone Charter School) and undergraduate university settings, as well as an inaugural Sixfold Matrix teacher training among a cohort of potential teachers who will contribute to curriculum development and teach the curriculum more broadly in coming years. Ongoing Research at our center in Crestone explores aspects of contemplative practice that are relevant to better understanding and application of the principles and approaches underpinning the Sixfold Matrix. And from the very beginning, we’ve provided the conditions for contemplatives-in-training to flourish through our Mind Labs. In plumbing the very depths of their own conscious experience, we hope our rigorously trained practitioners of contemplative science will over time produce more insights into the components of the Sixfold Matrix as relevant to our modern world. 

 If you’re interested in taking a deep-dive into the Sixfold Matrix, you can watch Dr. Wallace’s recent keynote speech at the 2024 Tzu Chi Global Symposium for Common Goodness: Buddhism and Science, or his seven-part talk series on YouTube. What better time to practice them than the present?

 

 

¹Wallace, B. A. (2005). Genuine happiness: Meditation as the path to fulfillment. John Wiley & Sons.

²Wallace, B. A. (2019). Four kinds of intelligence for optimal mental health and balance (1 of 8). The Meridian Trust.