I consulted multiple sources, engaged in much deliberation and produced many iterations before settling on the embodied model pictured below.
Mind is represented by the horizontal plane and Body by the vertical plane.
Spirit is channelled via the Openness–Love–Groundedness trinity.
Dual torus image sourced from Michael C Grasso and decoloured | View source and read about Grasso’s Menorah Matrix
Be aware that mind-body-spirit is nothing more than a convenient fiction. Each one of us is an undivided whole, and the abstracted parts work together in ways we will never fully understand.It is important to maintain the awareness that the systems view itself is also just another map that, as Alfred Korzybski put it, should not be confused with the territory. We can reduce the world to a whole just as easily as we can reduce it to a collection of parts.
Daniel Christian Wahl, [6 Key Questions in] Whole Systems Thinking, an excerpt from this book, Designing Regenerative Cultures
Jump ahead
Read about the Now-to-New wayfinder’s:
Mind
Body
Spirit
The Now-to-New wayfinder’s mind
Mind is represented by the horizontal plane.
The comparison chart below is based in part on the work of Iain McGilchrist, a psychiatrist, neuroscience researcher and writer best known for his theory of how the brain’s hemispheres differ in the way they attend to the world.
His theory supersedes the debunked yet still prevalent split-brain theory developed in the 1960s by Roger Sperry and others.
Iain McGilchrist talks about two worlds without naming them. My names are mundane world (everyday world, default reality) and primal world (view rationale).
| MUNDANE WORLD Brought forth by brain’s left hemisphere | PRIMAL WORLD Brought forth by right hemisphere |
|---|---|
| Power and control are prevalent | We are in the flow of life |
| We seek certainties | Living in faith, we imagine fruitful possibilities |
| Everything can be named, described and situated on the arrow of time | As soon as we name something it becomes a thing and therefore part of mundane world “The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao” —Tao Te Ching There is no arrow of time, only the present moment |
| Our lives are experienced at one stage removed, like watching a video rather than the live performance | Life is visceral and experienced in the raw: unfiltered, uncodified and unconceptualised |
| We know the map | We know the territory |
| Abstract concepts are treated as actual things that can be created and manipulated | Abstraction, reductionism and reification are absent |
| Generative thought and action are constrained by a barrage of rules, norms, mores, codes, beliefs, dogmas, narratives and ideologies | Life is visceral and experienced in the raw: untamed, unfiltered, uncodified and unconceptualised |
| We are domesticated and apart from nature | We are untamed and part of nature |
| We deploy synthetic imagination | We deploy natural imagining |
Two forms of imagination
Read more
Iain McGilchrist and his theory of brain hemisphere differences
Jill Bolte Taylor, a neuroscientist who experienced her brain’s left hemisphere shutting down
Synthetic imagination and natural imagining
The Now-to-New wayfinder’s body
Body is represented by the vertical plane.
Now-to-New wayfinders have at their disposal seven powers, each of which is associated with a particular part of the body.
The three activating powers (coloured pink) combine to form a superpower named Transcend the Mundane.
The four creative powers (coloured green and gold) combine in pairs to form two further superpowers: Create the New and Enrich the World.
When Transcend the Mundane is activated, the other superpowers also become active with their constituent creative powers ready to be deployed.
| POWER | TYPE OF POWER | SUPERPOWER | PURPOSE | ASSOCIATION |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| OPENNESS | Activating | Transcend the Mundane | Connecting to the nonmaterial realm — ‘Heaven’ | Crown |
| IMAGINATION | Creative | Enrich the World | Imagining a world enrichment possibility and a way of actualising it | Third eye ¹ |
| CONCEPTUALISATION | Creative | Create the New | Devising something² that will generate the imagined value | Throat |
| LOVE | Activating | Transcend the Mundane | Experiencing an ever-present desire to enrich the world | Heart |
| MATERIALISATION | Creative | Create the New | Giving the creation² tangible form and introducing it to the world at large | Solar plexus |
| REALISATION | Creative | Enrich the World | Bringing the creation² to fullness and realising its value generation potential | PC muscles ¹ |
| GROUNDEDNESS | Activating | Transcend the Mundane | Connecting to the material realm — ‘Earth’ | Tailbone |
1. The mythical ‘third eye’ is located between the eyebrows. The PC (pubococcygeus or pelvic floor) muscles are the ones that control urine flow.
2. The new creation might be a product, a service, a facility or another form of value generator. When undertaking change or problem solving work, the desired state of affairs is the creation, which is brought into existence by means of an intervention or some other course of action.
The Now-to-New wayfinder’s spirit
Spirit is represented by the heart, where the horizontal and vertical planes intersect.
To be spirited is to have a force that brings you up, that animates you out of inertia.
Shabaka Hutchings, jazz musician and composer, in The Guardian | View
The heart is where we experience intent as love, specifically as an ever-present desire to enrich the world.Spirit is the animating force throughout creation. An unseen force that is life, the divine, the nagual, the light. To live a spiritual life is to identify oneself as the animator of creation, rather than as creation.
Allan Hardman | Visit website
Intent, love and spirit are associated with primal world and sensory experience, whereas labels, definitions and descriptions are abstractions emanating from mundane world.
Faith (“a critical but curious mind’s readiness to adopt a reality model — even if provisionally — for which there is less than absolute, empirical proof” – Jay B. Gaskill, The Dialogic Imperative) is the irreducible precondition for acknowledging, activating and deploying the seven powers.
Transcending the mundane
Transcend means to rise above or go beyond the limits of.
It also means to triumph over the negative or restrictive aspects of.
It does not mean to shun.
The Now-to-New wayfinder transcends the mundane by:
Feeling connected to the nonmaterial realm (power of Openness)
Being in faith with an open heart (power of Love)
Feeling connected to the material realm (power of Groundedness)
When we transcend the mundane, the creative faculties of Imagination, Conceptualisation, Materialisation and Realisation (of potential) become fully activated and ready to be deployed.
Mundane world.
Primal world.
Synthetic imagination.
Natural imagining.
Each has an equal part to play.
Primal world is not the place to be when completing your tax return or shopping for groceries.
Read the article: How might we transcend the mundane and activate natural imagining?
Read more
External sources
Creative Practices Embodied, Embedded, and Enacted in Architectural Settings: Toward an Ecological Model of Creativity
by Laura H. Malinin, Director, Nancy Richardson Design Center, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, USA
How Radical Is Embodied Creativity? Implications of 4E Approaches for Creativity Research and Teaching
by Laura H. Malinin (as above) | Frontiers in Psychology, 2019; 10: 2372
Embodied Innovation by Tirza Hollenhorst
This website
Iain McGilchrist and his theory of brain hemisphere differences
Jill Bolte Taylor, a neuroscientist who experienced her brain’s left hemisphere shutting down
Synthetic imagination and natural imagining
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