The embodied Now-to-New model

Human beings are built for creating the new by means of mind, body and spirit.

Mind, Body and Spirit correspond with Thinking, Doing and Being

Models are useful but they are maps, not the territory we experience.

If the Now-to-New Project Model is to resemble the real world more closely, there has to be a corresponding one that lives in the body, as depicted below.

This is the relationship between creative power and Now-to-New Project Model component:

The relationship between each creative power and each chunk of work

The integrated model is the result of the extensive research, deliberation, experimentation and real world testing I undertook over the course of 45 years.

In the next image you can see that the embodied Now-to-New model incorporates mind (horizontal plane), body (vertical) and spirit (magenta items), channelled via the Openness–Love–Groundedness triad.

Be aware that mind-body-spirit is nothing more than a convenient fiction. Every 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 wayfarer’s:

Mind

Body

Spirit

The Now-to-New wayfarer’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, neuroscientist and writer best known for his brain lateralization hypothesis. This supersedes the debunked yet still prevalent split-brain theory developed in the 1960s by Roger Sperry and others.

Each hemisphere brings forth a distinct world or perception of reality.

Iain McGilchrist talks about two worlds without naming them.

Carlos Castaneda calls them the tonal and the nagual.

I use the terms mundane world (everyday world, default reality) and primal world (nonordinary reality, an indescribable place of pure perception).

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 — the ability to proceed despite uncertainty — we imagine tantalising 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

Jill Bolte Taylor, a neuroscientist who experienced her brain’s left hemisphere shutting down

Synthetic imagination and natural imagining

The Now-to-New wayfarer’s body

Body is represented by the vertical plane.

Seven powers

Now-to-New wayfarers have at their disposal seven powers, each associated with a particular part of the body.

These are outlined in the table below.

How I identified the Now-to-New wayfarer’s seven powers

Three superpowers

The three activating powers (coloured magenta in the previous image) 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	PART OF SUPERPOWER	PURPOSE	ASSOCIATION ¹
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 ²
CONCEPTUALISATION	Creative	Create the New	Devising something ³ that will generate the imagined value	Throat
LOVE	Activating	Transcend the Mundane	Experiencing an ever-present desire to be of service and to enrich the world	Heart
MATERIALISATION	Creative	Create the New	Giving the creation ³ tangible form and introducing it to the world at large	Solar plexus ⁴
REALISATION	Creative	Enrich the World	Bringing the creation to fullness and realising its value generation potential	PC muscles ⁵
GROUNDEDNESS	Activating	Transcend the Mundane	Connecting to the material realm — ‘Earth’	Tailbone

1. This refers to a metaphorical association, not a literal location.

2. The mythical third eye is located between and just above the eyebrows.

3. The new creation might be a product, a service, a facility or some other form of value generator.

4. Situated below the diaphragm and above the navel.

5. The PC (pubococcygeus) muscles are what we use to control urine flow.

From possibility to actuality

The powers located above the heart (Openness, Imagination and Conceptualisation) are for envisioning possibilities, conceiving high potential ideas and elaborating the ideas into concepts.

The powers located below the heart (Materialisation, Realisation and Groundedness) are for evolving concepts into fully-formed value generators, introducing them to the world, bringing them to fullness and realising their value generating potential.

The Now-to-New wayfarer’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

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

The heart is where we experience intent as love, specifically as an ever-present desire to be of service and to enrich the world.

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.

Read about the imperative of faith and believing without believing

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 wayfarer transcends the mundane by:

Feeling connected to the nonmaterial realm (power of Openness).

Being open-hearted (power of Love).

Feeling connected to the material realm (power of Groundedness).

Once we have transcended the mundane, the creative powers of Imagination, Conceptualisation, Materialisation and Realisation (of potential) are fully activated and ready to be deployed.

Mundane world. Primal world.

Synthetic imagination. Natural imagining.

Each has a vital 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?