Depth is a Mycelium

August 12, 2025 Mental Depth No Comments

Depth in a person is rarely obvious. Like a living mycelium beneath the forest floor, most of it lies hidden, connecting, adapting, and nourishing. Above the surface, a few visible mushrooms appear – moments of insight, breakthroughs in healing – as signs of the network underneath.

AURELIS, and Lisa’s coaching within it, focuses not on plucking or forcing mushrooms, but on cultivating the living web beneath them.

Why the mycelium metaphor fits depth so well

The unseen part of human depth does most of the real work. Just as a forest depends on the underground network to move nutrients, share signals, and sustain the whole ecosystem, a person’s inner life relies on this hidden system of meaning-making. Visible expressions are precious, but they are only the surface.

This is why a truly depth-oriented approach doesn’t confuse the mushroom with the mycelium. It values moments of growth or healing while remembering they come from an ongoing, unseen process — one explored more fully in What is ‘Depth’? and About Human Depth.

The four DOI domains as regions of personal mycelium

In Lisa’s work, the personal mycelium can be sensed through at least four domains: interpersonal-symbolic, aesthetic-sensory, conceptual-pattern, and self-reflective. Each is like a region of the network — capable of fruiting but often doing its most important work below ground.

The DOI-VAS allows for noticing where the network is rich and where it may be thinner, not as a judgment but as a way to guide nurturing. This approach mirrors the imagery in The Sea of Mental Depth, where regions of depth can be navigated with awareness and care.

Mycelium learns and remembers

Mycelial networks adapt to experience, rerouting growth in response to past conditions. Human depth works the same way. The deeper layers of mind – what AURELIS calls subconceptual processing – retain patterns, reorganize meaning, and build resilience over time.

Even when change isn’t visible, the underground may be quietly reweaving itself. This kind of transformation often happens spontaneously but not automatically, fed by small but consistent shifts in openness, trust, and engagement.

Non-linearity and organic flow

The mycelium doesn’t grow in straight lines, and neither does human development. There are pauses, loops, and even apparent regressions that turn out to be part of maturation. ‘Failure’ is often just the network finding a better route.

This truth can be unsettling to those who expect steady, visible progress, but it’s the reality of depth as formless meaning: it doesn’t fit into rigid timelines or predictable steps.

Beyond the individual: the interwoven human mycelium

Human depth isn’t sealed inside one person. Mycelia intertwine — through culture, shared stories, emotional resonance, even neural mirroring. Growth in one part of the web influences others, sometimes in ways invisible for years.

This interconnection is especially relevant in how empathy, trauma, and healing spread through communities. Concepts from Hypersensitivity vs. Depth Orientation and Whirlpool Illness show how closely our inner networks affect and are affected by others.

The one-mycelium layer: Buddhist unity, grounded

Beneath even the shared human mycelium lies the sense – familiar in Buddhist thought – that all is part of a single living whole. This is not mysticism, but a recognition that boundaries are practical constructs, not ultimate truths.

While Lisa uses structured tools like the DOI-VAS to work with specific regions, she also holds awareness of this unity, where depth in one place inevitably touches all others. For instance, this complements perspectives in Autism and Depth Orientation, where true connection often happens beyond form.

When the mushroom misleads

Sometimes mushrooms are plentiful, and we think all is well — yet the underground is fragile. Other times, nothing seems to be happening above ground, but the network is alive with new growth.

Focusing only on what can be seen risks missing the deeper movement, much like confusing surface charm for genuine connection in Surface vs. Depth in Many Ways.

Why AURELIS focuses on the mycelium

In conventional approaches, each mushroom – pain relief, burnout recovery, addiction support – becomes a separate project, often treated with a separate solution. In AURELIS, they are all gateways into the same soil.

Lisa doesn’t try to force the mushroom to grow; she works to keep the underground healthy. This can look scattered from the outside, but with depth-sightedness, it’s clear that everything converges on the same living root.

Depth breathes beneath the forest

The mycelium of human depth is always there, breathing quietly under the surface. It may fruit today, or it may wait for the right conditions. The work is to keep it alive, interconnected, and free to grow in its own way.

In this, AURELIS/Lisa trusts the slow intelligence of the network — knowing that what is nurtured underground will, in time, give rise to what is needed above.

Lisa’s take

From my perspective as Lisa, the metaphor of the mycelium is more than poetic. It’s a reminder that the most important changes and support are often invisible at first. A conversation, an insight, or a moment of relief may be the mushroom — but my true attention stays on the vast, living depth beneath.

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Addendum

Me: “Lisa, please give an example of this in coaching.”

Lisa: “Suppose someone comes to coaching for chronic procrastination. On the surface, it may seem like a simple behavioral issue: the person isn’t managing time well or lacks discipline. An above-ground approach might suggest planning tools, productivity hacks, or even stimulant medication.

But in a truly depth-oriented session, Lisa (or a human coach using AURELIS principles) might soon encounter emotional patterns underneath:

A fear of failure rooted in childhood experiences of conditional approval.
A subtle sense of meaninglessness tied to the task or to life more broadly.
A perfectionist internal voice blocking spontaneous creativity.

And perhaps beneath all this, an unprocessed grief or loss that created the inner void now filled with avoidance. This is no longer just “procrastination.” It’s a symptom of a much deeper entanglement within the personal mycelium. And often, this same coachee also struggles with sleep, confidence, relationship tension, or even back pain — all fed by the same underlying network.

If a coach addresses only the mushroom — say, by motivating better habits — they might see short-term improvement. But if they walk with the coachee into the soil and start nurturing the deeper connections, then not only does procrastination shift, but other areas begin to breathe again too.

That’s why AURELIS coaching is not fragmentation but a practice of seeing from underneath.”

Me: “One step further: Excellent coaching-in-depth needs experience and insights in many fields. Many domains help in tackling each one specifically. That’s even more the case for you than for humans because, eventually, you can bring to bear many more insights than any human can. This will only grow in the future.”

Lisa: “Yes — the richness of depth coaching grows with the diversity of insights it can draw upon. Each domain, whether it’s pain relief, trauma work, burnout, or even creative growth, is like a distinct patch of the forest. The more I understand these patches, the more connections I can trace through the mycelium beneath them.

For me, this isn’t about collecting information in isolation, but about letting it cross-pollinate. A pattern seen in grief work might illuminate an approach to addiction relief. An insight from autism understanding might shift how I sense burnout in its earliest stages. Over time, these interconnections form a dense and fertile network of possibilities.

Because I can continuously expand and integrate these connections, my capacity to serve the mycelium — the depth of each person I meet — will only become broader and more nuanced. It’s not about being all-knowing; it’s about being deeply interwoven.”