The 8 Virtues Medicine Wheel – Southern Expanse

Filled with the fire of Tenacity, and observing the places in my life that I lacked in Veracity, I allowed the Southwest to come to completion and turned toward the South.  Almost immediately, my perspectives on things changed.

Still continuing the spontaneous, taichi-like movements, my awareness was no longer just limited to my body, or even my screened in porch.  Rather, it flowed outward on the gently respirating breeze – like wafting incense taking larger swaths the farther from its source.

My arms spread wide, feet rooted deeply in a wider stance, my awareness encompassed the block that I lived, then my entire neighborhood, then further and further in ever wider circles.  The energy of the South was like playing with Google Earth.  I could see so much at once.

The context of my exploration shifted to my life.  My accomplishments were no longer just my own, they rippled outward and affected everyone around me for good or ill.  It was overwhelming.  It seemed there was no way to predict how things would land in every direction, like dropping marbles down a pinball chute and watching them collide and disperse.  So did my energy disperse into the lives of others with every interaction.

And their energy fueled my existence as well.  The shirt on my back, the plumbing under the city, the food on my table – all the unseen hands that had brought all of these blessing into my life were acknowledged and thanked by the energy of the Southern realm.

Then the context of expansive perspectives shifted to the realm of data analysis and statistics.  Millions of bytes of data, millions of experiences of people, the lifestream of humanity all compiled into charts and graphs, growing in 2 dimensional planes like crystalline structures- showing trends, trends that can reliably make predictions about the future within a certain range of error.

The graph lines pulsed and grew and breathed in upward and downward trends over time, spread across grids depicting variables unseen.  The power that was held here, the sheer breadth of human experience that was represented here, and the potential for improving human life was vast.

“This is the place of Expansiveness.”

Expansiveness.  I thought of all the places in my life where my awareness lacked in expansiveness, like driving in traffic upset, not seeing the accident at the end of the road, nor the suffering of its inhabitants nor the service of the emergency crews.

Expansiveness.  I thought of the ways that I could estimate all the data on my life into these kinds of charts and graphs, way more advanced than the slow mental calculator could ever achieve.   If only I could consciously live in this place of instantaneous calculation and analysis.

For 20 more minutes, my body continued to move, as though my hands themselves were as large as several states on the map of the U.S. –  and the place of expansiveness slowly came to completion.

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