Move #6
The Explorers Wheel
Connecting Laughing Heart with Everything
The Explorers Wheel and Intertidal Thinking
Just as Laughing Heart can be a step down transformer, as explained in Move 5, so also it can become a step up transformer, increasing the creative voltage of everything it touches.
The first step on your journey is simply to click into the Explorers Wheel website—and to familiarize yourself with the exciting possibilities of the Wheel. I recommend that you simply hover your mouse over each “moon” and ponder the question it poses, beginning with the enso image in the middle. You might view the enso as a connecting channel between realms of consciousness. It invites you to explore. Every epic myth in the world has its heroine or hero encounter such passage ways.
You can test the system by writing an important question or idea inside the enso and then explore your question from the vantage of any of the eight (8) moons. (You are developing a kind of human/octopus awareness!) You may be especially drawn at first to some of the moons as opposed to others. Let your intuition be your guide.
Now start exploring the relationship of several of the moons to your question simultaneously. As explained in the audio, the Explorers Wheel will naturally guide you to the “innovators gold” which can be found in the “intertidal realms” at the points of convergence of some or all of these 8 moons.
How to Use the Explorers Wheel in a Nutshell
Explorer’s Wheel Printable Worksheet PDF
What might you discover or invent by this kind of stereoscopic or intertidal thinking?
Explorers Wheel audio:
Author’s commentary
Laughing Heart
Everything transforms when you infuse this process with Laughing Heart. You can test this proposition by presenting some version of the following question to the enso:
How can the Explorers Wheel help to enhance my vitality at every moment, in every situation?
Look for the points of intersection, the “intertidal zones” where Laughing Heart can infuse new life and creative insight.
You may enjoy recording and sharing your discoveries with fellow explorers. Simply click the blue moon before you and type in your insights and questions.
In the near future the Explorers Wheel itself will begin to spin and learn and provide additional useful insights to you and other explorers in your network. This process may have unanticipated beneficial side effects. An axiom of neuroscience is neurons that “fire together, wire together.” Here the Explorers Wheel process may not only foster a (re)connecting of nerve cells in your brain but also create new neuronal and energetic pathways between your brain, heart, solar plexus (roughly comparable to the Chinese dantian–the largest radiating nerve center in the body one point below your navel), and the qi field that connects you to all that is good and nourishing in the Universe. (1)
Now that you have the means to connect Laughing Heart virtually to everything, how might love enrich the process further? Might love even enhance your immune system, as suggested in Move 7?
Emotive Reaction Range? Hints: creative, innovative, inquiring, flowing, connecting, sparkling, mystery, inviting, wonder
Why and How are caring for ourselves, caring for others, and being cared for by the Universe intimately connected?
Moves # 6-# 10 are “inter-tidally” related: Each Move has a direct bearing on all the others. Might we extend this insight to the remaining Moves # 1-# 5?
Robert Hedaya, MD, DLFAPA
…………………………………………………………………
As I reviewed the Explorers Wheel I noticed that there are some striking similarities to the Kabbalistic “Tree of Life”. While I have been studying Kabbalah for several years now, it is very complex, and by no means do I consider myself to be an expert, or Kabbalist. Thus, what I am going to write is to be taken with a grain of salt. The Kabbalistic “Tree of Life” does have some variations, according to different Kabbalistic traditions, but I believe what I am going to write applies to the common thread among the different traditions.
First, let me provide some background: the Tree of Life is a description of the energies or forces which emanate from the creator; Within each force domain is embedded all of the other forces. The diagram of these forces is arranged in a similar manner to the Explorers Wheel, except there is an emphasis on the relationship between the different force domains (lines connecting each domain to those in proximity), and a general developmental ‘flow’ from the creator, at the top of the Tree, downward, to the creation. Additionally, the forces are arrayed in columns. The center column of forces represents the integration of the left and right columns of forces. These forces operate at all levels: the physical level, the cognitive-emotional level, the meta-physical level, and the timeless level beyond all of creation.
The first thing I noticed was the triad of Future, Wisdom and Beauty. In Kabbalah, the force domain of wisdom (Chochmah) is the highest level of our awareness: it refers to the flash of insight which enters into consciousness. This spark needs to be fleshed out so it can be operationalized. This is done through development of understanding (Binah)–fleshing out the spark of insight–and then, knowledge (Daat) which is the process of intimate involvement as one operationalizes the spark of wisdom, and one’s understanding. It is interesting that the Explorer’s Wheel has domains for wisdom and discovery/invention/innovation, which are obviously related to Chochmah, Binah, and Daat. Furthermore, I found it interesting that wisdom was placed on the upper part of the explorer’s wheel (even though in a sense, being a wheel, there is no upward direction), as it is in the Kabbalistic tree.
Additionally, I was struck by the fact that beauty was in the upper part of the wheel, as in Kabbalah, beauty is in the upper part of the Tree. Beauty is considered to be the integration of kindness (chesed) and limits (gevurah), and is in the central column of the tree (see below).
As I saw these similarities, my inclination was to see if I could continue to overlay the tree and the wheel. Here, I began to stretch a bit. For fun, and interest, I will lay it out for you. The central ‘column’ of the wheel is future (at the top), and past (at the bottom). In a loose way, these correspond to parts of the central column (top and bottom) of the tree. In the tree, at the top is the unknown/unknowable and it stretches from the will, to the emanations from the creator, and ultimately, the creator. In my mind, these loosely fit with the concept of future, which in part is shaped by will, but also the emanation from a larger plan, which we cannot see. And of course, as quantum physics and kabbalists both agree, the future and present are dependent on the infusion of a ‘presence’ (the G-d particle, the creators ‘attention, intention and goodness’). In the Explorer Wheel the bottom of the wheel corresponds to the past. In the same position, and interestingly, at the bottom of the tree is the existing world (malchut), the material world having been brought into existence by the downward flow of the forces.
In sum, I think it interesting that some of the same ‘forces’ which are laid out in Kabbalah are also on the Explorers Wheel, and to a limited degree in a similar orientation. While the wheel obviously has no ‘up or down’ or hierarchy, the tree of life does, and I believe this difference has significant implications for our world, but that is another discussion. Yet even in the tree of life there is a movement of forces in all directions at all times, with each force having dimensions of all others, each force interpenetrating all others in different degrees.
………………………………………………………………
Dear Bob,
I am very grateful to you for your thoughtful comments. A few additional notes:
• The Explorers Wheel first came to me as an inspiration fully formed. I did not research precedents beforehand. I was curious thereafter to explore a bit of the mandala tradition in which the number 8, identical with the moons, figures importantly. The placement of the moons in the Explorers Wheel was largely intuitive.
• The Kabbalah tradition is fascinating, and it would be most wonderful to engage in a dialogue with Kabbalah masters around practical applications of the Explorers Wheel and the Kabbalah for some of the great challenges facing the world today.
• An important reference cited elsewhere in this work is Roger Cook The Tree of Life—Image for the Cosmos 1998.
Thank you for your contribution,
Julian
Consciousness plays a critical role in what we believe we “see” in our encounters with the external world. In other words, our consciousness creates a ‘gestalt’, a replica of what we understand something is or means. Lenticular painting and optical illusions, which encourage these alternative perceptions of “reality,” demonstrate this principle in basic terms.
The following alternative portraits of a man and woman in the Galileo Museum in Florence may be among the first examples of lenticular painting.
BHI colors perception and widens the aperture of discovery to be more inclusive of the views in play. In this day and age of extreme political polarization, where neither side can understand, or is even curious about the other side’s point of view, in fact one side usually ridiculing and reviling the other. The development of “big heart competency” opens an opportunity for more constructive and interesting dialogue, precisely because BHI confers an expanded capacity and patience to walk the path and to see the world through the eyes of the other.
The following links provide a rich portfolio of illustrations of lenticular painting and optical illusions. One way of testing your progress with the Explorers Wheel, enhanced by heart (the point of Move # 6), is to run “before and after” scenarios over the next few week period to see if you can notice any subtle changes or differences in your powers of perception.
Optical Illusions with Alternate Views
Lenticular Painting
Rainer Maria Rilke–Letters to a Young Poet
Be patient to all that is unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves….Live the questions now. Perhaps you will gradually, without noticing it, live along some day into the answer.