I took a walk last night past the park behind the school, and down by the river. It was 9:30pm, the sky was dark granite save for the bright light of the moon through wispy, fast-moving clouds. The light wind sweeps the streets in gentle curls, like the released lock of hair from a curling wand unwinds and bounces slowly before it settles into shape.
It was the first time I’d been out for a night-time walk in many months. The air was chilly and crisp. The scent of distant fireplaces wafted through the air and the chatter of dry leaves could be heard occasionally as the wind would bring some news of coming change, providing a new subject for the trees to chat about. As I walked past the creek the cool, humid air wafted from the river-bank bringing with it a decay of leaves and twigs.
I was anxious walking down this wooded alley – a cotton tail would zoom out of the bushes, sending a scurry of activity ahead of me, awakening my senses. Walking through the mausoleum of trees, with millions of small unburried bodies rotting in the night while the ghosts and groundsmen of this graveyard, the sentinels of the night kept watch over my journey. The scents of various trees gave away their personalities through scent as the night blindfolded me, and made me present to their formlessness. The essential smells of death surrounded me - A nutty oily burnt crackle, a mossy moist wet cigarette tobacco, a lemon-bright and crispy peat, a smoky mushroom-like rotten log. Richness, subtlety, spiciness, and essentiality.
As I crunched through the leaves I heard the sound of coyotes’ wailing in the distance, crying out towards the moon. The Halloween lights of the houses brought a warm orange glow, scattering the darkness. My throat, lips and mouth were getting dry, and my nose cold and battered by the crispness of autumn air. I put the hood over my head, becoming a shade with the rest of the night.
The spent structures of life lay all around in refuse heaps under the trees. As the essence is withdrawn, only the fiber and minerals remain to be moved by the waters to come into the depths to become possibility again in the spring.
Since the Metal element, and the balance between dryness and moisture determine what essences we absorb from the food, the air, out experiences, and facilitate the shedding of the inessentials through drying out the mass of content, and extracting the finest minerals – spiritual and mental constipation cause an excess of dryness, or a lack of dryness in the case of diarrhea, where we grasp for value everywhere we go, or cannot extract any value in our lives at all.
If people shed even the essential and only leave the structures of their lives in place, their lives would be as dry, mournful and barren as the autumn winds. Such people, lacking inspiration would become brittle, breakable, or hardened against life like the dry leaves and branches that lose the essences that give them life. Like dry bones, lacking essential miners to give them strength, these people would be as breakable, boring, and lifeless as an autumn branch. With complete dryness, their logic would lack space for emotion, whimsy, mystery and the imperceptible, and would instead define the world by ways of unemotional, cold, incisive logic born from analytical clarity. When the air is dry, we can see forever and can make out the small cracks and crevices of all life we behold. When we’ve dried out all the inspiration, emotion, and spirit from life, we can see all the structures that make life possible. To see the world so dryly our logic is impeccable, yet spirit and love are not logical. Through too much dryness we fail to see the things that make life worth living. Once a person has lost all inspiration for life, what would be left but to mourn existence itself.
The fall in some places brings mists and fog that cover the earth – obscuring the world in fantasy, the unknown. The fogs offer space for the imagination. The Metal element would thus live either in a space of wonder and awe at the meaning of the meanderings of life’s obscurations, or would live in an infinite state of anxious searching, longing to reach through the mist and grasp something solid, something firm, substantial – a point of reference for their lives. The dryness in the air can bring clarity to one’s life where one is bogged down by impurity that mists and confuses the mind. It is due to dryness that we can see the heavens and the earth clearly and without obstruction – but when dryness is all there is, the glaring reality of life ceases to inspire, and instead causes us to mourn the lack of mystery that gave us reason to quest in our lives for the essential in the first place.
The dichotomies of mysterious and ordinary, inspired and dry, beautiful and ugly bring into focus the duality of life, and within it, the oneness of the process of taking life in, and letting it go. No other element intercesses between the gates of life and death like the Metal element and no other season provides such poignancy.
I’m reminded of the Metal point of the Kidney (Water) meridian - “Returning Current” – the lightning bold of inspiration, the return of the waters of life from the gate of death, through and out of the gate of life as the Sheng cycle completes and life returns to the void of possibility. The point itself occurs to me as the high priest, perhaps the demiurge that presides over the process of reincarnation itself. Metal returns us to the father – the void. Inspiration and spirit are beckoned to come through the gate of death to arrive and flow into the sea of possibility itself as a thunderous surge announces “Spirit has returned to incarnate as you!”
Friday, October 29, 2010
10/20/2010 – A Lesson in Superficiality
In Autumn, the trees adorn themselves with the most splendid coats of bronze, gold, silver, copper, and gradients of opulent color. One tree outside my condo window adorns itself with deep royal red on the inside, and bright sunny gold on the inside. The gradient unfolds smoothly through gold and oranges from the molten core of color to the cool, bright and royal purple exterior. With each passing day I see the gradient shift and change as the gold brilliance radiates from the inside of the tree out to its outstretched branches. The aspen trees that surround it rattle their perfectly round leaves like a rain of coins glistening and sparkling in the sun.
The wind shakes and agitates them and they soar throat the air – look at me, look at me – before sinking slowly, or plummeting to the ground to lay dead, motionless, and ultimately lifeless – their last sputtering flight a summation of the result of temporary stardom. You’re dead, boring, and you will be forgotten when the next wave of bright stars glistens through the sky.
While the tree visibly displays its splendor to the world, the lesson of what is essential and of true value is hidden in plain view. The splendor the tree displays on the outside, in the firmity of its year is only superficial and is destined to fall away, die, and turn into nothingness. The true treasure, the sap is widthdrawn from the leaves and traverses down through the vast network of branches into the trunk, finally sinking into the deepest part of the root system, where it is treasured and hidden away.
The irony is that the superficial splendor occurs when the deepest splendor is withdrawn and preserved. While the deepest vitality is hidden away, the brightness of royal color flashes like fool gold in a pan, and disappears in a matter of weeks. The tree lets go of its splendid coat because it knows that the true splendor is hidden in the depths. In this way, the tree inspires us by its display, but the display itself is a celebration of the wonder of the year that has gone by, and the readiness to plunge willingly into death. The tree knows how to live, and how to die. It need not be showy throughout its year of accumulating virtue, and just like the old sage at the end of his life inspires all by his celebration of the simple joy of life, he goes willingly to his grave, content in the knowledge that what is really essential is stored in the depths of his spirit.
In a society where beauty and splendor is prized above all else, superficiality and the quest to maintain external beauty belies the emptiness and void inside that indicates the ultimate worthlessness of external displays of splendor. Self-worth and self-esteem is the realization of the preciousness and appreciation of the essential that is within the heart, soul, and mind of the wise. To the wise, the external display of richness is of no importance, and many a sage will dress and keep themselves in such an external state that they look more like a shabby beaten down, gnarly old tree than a brilliantly clad rose or lily - for the sage knows that the rose and lily know that their beauty is oh so temporary. The effort to look brilliant one’s whole life, to look good, to avoid looking bad, to make people like you, adore you, respect you, admire you and appreciate you is ultimately exhausting of the essence of life itself. Admiration is fleeting. When you’ve run out of your showiness and display, people move on to give attention to the next brightest glowing star. When young and filled with external brilliance, the girl will be cast as the daughter, the protagonist – and all watch her in wonder. As she ages, she’s cast as the mother, and eventually the grandmother or the hag, and most lose interest in her – they all look to the next bright star.
The tree knows that it can look ordinary through the whole year, because its cultivating its essence, and it can look ugly and lifeless while it reflects on the wisdom of life in the winter. It knows that there are two appropriate times to expose its splendor to the world at large – in spring, where it demonstrates its creativity, providing a new vision for what is possible, and in autumn when it shares with the world what it has learnt, the wisdom it has gathered, and the essence of life that it has captured from being alive.
When we encounter a Metal client, do we see richness and depth of spirit behind an ordinary exterior, or do we see lavishness and external manifestation of beauty? Do we see a client who loves life deeply and calls themselves and others to be their best, or do we see someone who finds no value in themselves or the friends and family in their life? Do we see someone knowledgeable, filled with valuable experience who attempts to instruct others in what the best way to life is while shunning those who don’t listen or agree with their self-righteous point of view, or do we see someone who quietly exudes wisdom, doesn’t require others to accept, value, or adore them, but teaches through example? Do we see someone who’s spiritually cut off and empty from themselves and their loved ones and gathers money, riches, and awards for recognition, or do we see someone who’s humble, inspired, connected to themselves, and who calls us to the essential? Do we feel down, and heavy in their presence, or are they a breath of fresh air?
Will we savor the essences of life and pass it on to future generations where our contribution will live on in the lives of others, or will we glisten in temporary splendor, and ultimately die, get buried beneath the ground, where our tomb stone will grow moss and over the ages the last engraved words to define who was laid down are long gone, erased by time, and forgotten?
The wind shakes and agitates them and they soar throat the air – look at me, look at me – before sinking slowly, or plummeting to the ground to lay dead, motionless, and ultimately lifeless – their last sputtering flight a summation of the result of temporary stardom. You’re dead, boring, and you will be forgotten when the next wave of bright stars glistens through the sky.
While the tree visibly displays its splendor to the world, the lesson of what is essential and of true value is hidden in plain view. The splendor the tree displays on the outside, in the firmity of its year is only superficial and is destined to fall away, die, and turn into nothingness. The true treasure, the sap is widthdrawn from the leaves and traverses down through the vast network of branches into the trunk, finally sinking into the deepest part of the root system, where it is treasured and hidden away.
The irony is that the superficial splendor occurs when the deepest splendor is withdrawn and preserved. While the deepest vitality is hidden away, the brightness of royal color flashes like fool gold in a pan, and disappears in a matter of weeks. The tree lets go of its splendid coat because it knows that the true splendor is hidden in the depths. In this way, the tree inspires us by its display, but the display itself is a celebration of the wonder of the year that has gone by, and the readiness to plunge willingly into death. The tree knows how to live, and how to die. It need not be showy throughout its year of accumulating virtue, and just like the old sage at the end of his life inspires all by his celebration of the simple joy of life, he goes willingly to his grave, content in the knowledge that what is really essential is stored in the depths of his spirit.
In a society where beauty and splendor is prized above all else, superficiality and the quest to maintain external beauty belies the emptiness and void inside that indicates the ultimate worthlessness of external displays of splendor. Self-worth and self-esteem is the realization of the preciousness and appreciation of the essential that is within the heart, soul, and mind of the wise. To the wise, the external display of richness is of no importance, and many a sage will dress and keep themselves in such an external state that they look more like a shabby beaten down, gnarly old tree than a brilliantly clad rose or lily - for the sage knows that the rose and lily know that their beauty is oh so temporary. The effort to look brilliant one’s whole life, to look good, to avoid looking bad, to make people like you, adore you, respect you, admire you and appreciate you is ultimately exhausting of the essence of life itself. Admiration is fleeting. When you’ve run out of your showiness and display, people move on to give attention to the next brightest glowing star. When young and filled with external brilliance, the girl will be cast as the daughter, the protagonist – and all watch her in wonder. As she ages, she’s cast as the mother, and eventually the grandmother or the hag, and most lose interest in her – they all look to the next bright star.
The tree knows that it can look ordinary through the whole year, because its cultivating its essence, and it can look ugly and lifeless while it reflects on the wisdom of life in the winter. It knows that there are two appropriate times to expose its splendor to the world at large – in spring, where it demonstrates its creativity, providing a new vision for what is possible, and in autumn when it shares with the world what it has learnt, the wisdom it has gathered, and the essence of life that it has captured from being alive.
When we encounter a Metal client, do we see richness and depth of spirit behind an ordinary exterior, or do we see lavishness and external manifestation of beauty? Do we see a client who loves life deeply and calls themselves and others to be their best, or do we see someone who finds no value in themselves or the friends and family in their life? Do we see someone knowledgeable, filled with valuable experience who attempts to instruct others in what the best way to life is while shunning those who don’t listen or agree with their self-righteous point of view, or do we see someone who quietly exudes wisdom, doesn’t require others to accept, value, or adore them, but teaches through example? Do we see someone who’s spiritually cut off and empty from themselves and their loved ones and gathers money, riches, and awards for recognition, or do we see someone who’s humble, inspired, connected to themselves, and who calls us to the essential? Do we feel down, and heavy in their presence, or are they a breath of fresh air?
Will we savor the essences of life and pass it on to future generations where our contribution will live on in the lives of others, or will we glisten in temporary splendor, and ultimately die, get buried beneath the ground, where our tomb stone will grow moss and over the ages the last engraved words to define who was laid down are long gone, erased by time, and forgotten?
10/13/2010 – Bakersfield & Pismo Beach
I visited my friends Aaron, Tanja and Jose in Bakersfield. I hadn’t seen Tanja or Jose since I left Bakersfield some 10 years ago. Bakersfield hadn’t changed much climactically since the last time I had been there save for the increase in smog, decrease in visibility, and smell of rotten and burnt meat in the air. The increased methane in the valley due to cattle ranching has also affected the area tremendously. The smell is reminiscent of that of Greeley, CO where the smell of the slaughter houses permeates the area. I drove into the dust bowl of San Joaquin valley in the early afternoon.
Despite the cool foggy winter season, this fertile land gets hardly any water and maintains its dusty barren terrain for most of the year, save for the irrigation systems that give this dusty, polluted valley the infamy of being the bread basket of California.
Bakersfield’s energy is reminiscent of a Kidney point, IV 2, Blazing Valley. This valley does not lack heat – the usual indication of this point, however. Quiet the opposite, the valley is burning through the resources it has. Bakersfield is at once opulent in the richness of the oil reserves which feed the few, but is deficient in wealth of resources which make people work extremely hard to scrape a living. Most people that live here wish to escape in some way or another but cannot overcome the inertia of depression, poverty and hopelessness. Instead they squander their precious resources on drugs and alcohol. Many dream of leaving for greener pastures, and the few who have left look back on their time in Bakersfield with relief that they found it within themselves to overcome inertia once and for all.
As the methamphetamine capitol of California (if not of the US), the drug-production and distribution culture is rich and bustling. Frequent murders and shootings occur across the city. The city is populated by haggard, tweaked out faces who exhaust all of their innate Jing and energy in that which makes the trap of Bakersfield barely palatable. Burning their Kidney essence, the Water element can no longer restrain their Fire. Most engage in hyper-sexuality where their physical valley blazes with uncontrolled sexual and hedonistic urges. A sub-culture develops which lacks self-control, willpower, and money to escape its self-gratifying desires. The result is “lets party our lives away as hard as we can, because we’ll never escape our bondage”. It is for this virtue that Blazing Valley is known to calm sexual, emotional and hedonistic desire by cooling the blazing fires and restoring wisdom, innate willpower and resources back to the parched individual.
Likewise the point’s most familiar use is the warm up a cold, frigid and frozen person who’s emotional anxiety and fear of survival prevents them from enjoying all that life has to offer. This point, coupled with IV 3, Greater Mountain Stream, or IV 7 Returning Current could send down the floods to quell the burning and exhausting fires and cool the valley, once again restoring balance.
Aaron and I took a road trip to Pismo Beach, a town about 3 hours southwest of Bakersfield. I love road trips for the reason that you can see the effects of elevation and water completely transform the landscape and what is possible. Water: pure potentiality manifested through Wood as the child element. Metal: inspiration and heavenly guidance, which directs the highest purpose of growth around the central pivot, the Earth.
The flat lands of the valley housed the cotton fields and almond groves – all land perfectly organized, parceled off and planted in linear rows for expedient harvest. As the hills rose out of the smog, the deadness and barrenness of the landscape truly showed its lifeless belly. The clay and dust lay about – pure potential, unanimated, and unactivated by Water and Wood. The winds blew up eddies and sand devils that danced in the lowlands, evoked by spirits which traverse the mournful and desolate flatlands with the sound of weeping as they passed – crying for the lifeless.
The closer we wound to the ocean, the greener the hills became. Plant-life acclimatized to low water becomes resilient, hard, gnarly, and stubby. Soon the hills change from gray-beige to lush dark green. We have been diving in a cloudless sky and we escaped the smog-covered valley. Approaching the next valley where Pismo beach can be found, we encountered a strange weather phenomenon. The heated ocean air lifted a fog of the water which covered the entire valley and beach front in a thick mist. For a normally sunny California beach, I felt like I could have been in a cloudy, wet and cold New Jersey in winter. The air was frigid, fishy, mixed with seaweed and the metallic smell of seagull droppings. I had exchanged my shorts and t-shirt for a sweater and pants.
Despite the cool foggy winter season, this fertile land gets hardly any water and maintains its dusty barren terrain for most of the year, save for the irrigation systems that give this dusty, polluted valley the infamy of being the bread basket of California.
Bakersfield’s energy is reminiscent of a Kidney point, IV 2, Blazing Valley. This valley does not lack heat – the usual indication of this point, however. Quiet the opposite, the valley is burning through the resources it has. Bakersfield is at once opulent in the richness of the oil reserves which feed the few, but is deficient in wealth of resources which make people work extremely hard to scrape a living. Most people that live here wish to escape in some way or another but cannot overcome the inertia of depression, poverty and hopelessness. Instead they squander their precious resources on drugs and alcohol. Many dream of leaving for greener pastures, and the few who have left look back on their time in Bakersfield with relief that they found it within themselves to overcome inertia once and for all.
As the methamphetamine capitol of California (if not of the US), the drug-production and distribution culture is rich and bustling. Frequent murders and shootings occur across the city. The city is populated by haggard, tweaked out faces who exhaust all of their innate Jing and energy in that which makes the trap of Bakersfield barely palatable. Burning their Kidney essence, the Water element can no longer restrain their Fire. Most engage in hyper-sexuality where their physical valley blazes with uncontrolled sexual and hedonistic urges. A sub-culture develops which lacks self-control, willpower, and money to escape its self-gratifying desires. The result is “lets party our lives away as hard as we can, because we’ll never escape our bondage”. It is for this virtue that Blazing Valley is known to calm sexual, emotional and hedonistic desire by cooling the blazing fires and restoring wisdom, innate willpower and resources back to the parched individual.
Likewise the point’s most familiar use is the warm up a cold, frigid and frozen person who’s emotional anxiety and fear of survival prevents them from enjoying all that life has to offer. This point, coupled with IV 3, Greater Mountain Stream, or IV 7 Returning Current could send down the floods to quell the burning and exhausting fires and cool the valley, once again restoring balance.
Aaron and I took a road trip to Pismo Beach, a town about 3 hours southwest of Bakersfield. I love road trips for the reason that you can see the effects of elevation and water completely transform the landscape and what is possible. Water: pure potentiality manifested through Wood as the child element. Metal: inspiration and heavenly guidance, which directs the highest purpose of growth around the central pivot, the Earth.
The flat lands of the valley housed the cotton fields and almond groves – all land perfectly organized, parceled off and planted in linear rows for expedient harvest. As the hills rose out of the smog, the deadness and barrenness of the landscape truly showed its lifeless belly. The clay and dust lay about – pure potential, unanimated, and unactivated by Water and Wood. The winds blew up eddies and sand devils that danced in the lowlands, evoked by spirits which traverse the mournful and desolate flatlands with the sound of weeping as they passed – crying for the lifeless.
The closer we wound to the ocean, the greener the hills became. Plant-life acclimatized to low water becomes resilient, hard, gnarly, and stubby. Soon the hills change from gray-beige to lush dark green. We have been diving in a cloudless sky and we escaped the smog-covered valley. Approaching the next valley where Pismo beach can be found, we encountered a strange weather phenomenon. The heated ocean air lifted a fog of the water which covered the entire valley and beach front in a thick mist. For a normally sunny California beach, I felt like I could have been in a cloudy, wet and cold New Jersey in winter. The air was frigid, fishy, mixed with seaweed and the metallic smell of seagull droppings. I had exchanged my shorts and t-shirt for a sweater and pants.
9/30/2010 – The Ripeness of Late Summer…
It is 3:49pm on a cool late summer afternoon in Gregory canyon. It’s been several weeks since I’ve been here last. The rhythms have grown quiet. The colors are in full force exhibiting reds, oranges, greens and browns. Grasshoppers make small distant sounds. It’s no longer loud, but soft and quiet. It’s cool and humid. Here in the coolness of the valley, the water collects into little ponds. It hasn’t rained for a while, but you can smell the putridity mixed with the smell of wet dog fur, mixed with sweetness of the decaying fruit and grasses – offering a bouquet of rotten fragrant putridity. Some of the leaves hang low on the trees, weighing down. The sap withdraws and the leaves begin to wilt, becoming yellow as vitality declines. Now things start to return back to the earth through ripening, rotting, and integrating back into the depths.
Gregory Canyon now looks more ragged, downtrodden, wilted, yet ablaze in color. Things start to hang limp, looking a little shoddy. Fruit are decaying in dark brown masses. All the apples have fallen. The bears have been in here and have left their scat. Only the sound of occasional dropping leaves and quiet munching of something somewhere deep in the ravine can be heard.
Even as the plants die and their big pointy stalks hang laden with food, they give up their life, they give their all to nourish others. Such is with all mothers. The Earth will nourish all, saving the self for last, even if it has to give up its life to do it, it will do it without question. The Earth gives equally to all and does not pick favorites. All the animals can feed at her breast. Even though her children may bicker and flight over food, she will make sure that all are nourished equally.
This reminds me of the Stomach point, XI 9, People Welcome. The Earth constitution takes care of everybody, giving them what they ask for. But because she wishes to avoid conflict at all costs in asserting herself and asking for what she needs in return, she feels compelled to give and give. Over time she becomes resentful of any request that’s asked of her. This starts to manifest as quiet servitude because of lack of communication. This resentment of people in her life, and a lack of harvest derived form a lack of asserting one’s boundaries soon turns into ingratiation. Through people pleasing, manipulation, hoarding, stinginess and secretiveness she retreats from the world. Because she’s not asserting her needs, she begins to hoard onto everything the gets. Soon she’s “had it up to here” and no longer welcomes them into her life, but withdraws into her inner world. People Welcome can open up the Windows to the Heaven and welcome people back in her life through proper communication and assertion of her needs. In so doing, she finds she’s surrounded by an abundance of people who are willing to help.
Gregory Canyon now looks more ragged, downtrodden, wilted, yet ablaze in color. Things start to hang limp, looking a little shoddy. Fruit are decaying in dark brown masses. All the apples have fallen. The bears have been in here and have left their scat. Only the sound of occasional dropping leaves and quiet munching of something somewhere deep in the ravine can be heard.
Even as the plants die and their big pointy stalks hang laden with food, they give up their life, they give their all to nourish others. Such is with all mothers. The Earth will nourish all, saving the self for last, even if it has to give up its life to do it, it will do it without question. The Earth gives equally to all and does not pick favorites. All the animals can feed at her breast. Even though her children may bicker and flight over food, she will make sure that all are nourished equally.
This reminds me of the Stomach point, XI 9, People Welcome. The Earth constitution takes care of everybody, giving them what they ask for. But because she wishes to avoid conflict at all costs in asserting herself and asking for what she needs in return, she feels compelled to give and give. Over time she becomes resentful of any request that’s asked of her. This starts to manifest as quiet servitude because of lack of communication. This resentment of people in her life, and a lack of harvest derived form a lack of asserting one’s boundaries soon turns into ingratiation. Through people pleasing, manipulation, hoarding, stinginess and secretiveness she retreats from the world. Because she’s not asserting her needs, she begins to hoard onto everything the gets. Soon she’s “had it up to here” and no longer welcomes them into her life, but withdraws into her inner world. People Welcome can open up the Windows to the Heaven and welcome people back in her life through proper communication and assertion of her needs. In so doing, she finds she’s surrounded by an abundance of people who are willing to help.
9/10/2010 – Whispers of the Earth…
I’m at a lake near my home looking out at the mountains. The time is 6:50 and the sun is starting to set. It will soon crest behind the top of the mountain. There is a lukewarm breeze blowing, and the rays of the sun are warm. The leaves chatter in the tree next to me and the grass hoppers spin out their rhythms – slowly turning thoughts over and over and over. I feel the mildness of the weather – how comfortable it is, as I lay down on the bench. After the heat of the summer – this is pure comfort. It is this comfort that is reminiscent of the Earth element’s all embracing care for all. It provides just whatever you need. I love late summer.
As I dictate this into my phone I notice my voice has grown slower, calmer, contented with a singing quality to it – “there, there small child, I will give you what you need, as it is my nature to give myself to you”.
As I dictate this into my phone I notice my voice has grown slower, calmer, contented with a singing quality to it – “there, there small child, I will give you what you need, as it is my nature to give myself to you”.
9/6/2010 – The Colors of Fire…
A wild fire rages in the foothills above boulder. Spreading from it is a fast plume of smoke. This huge plume of smoke, the color of which is the gray dark ash that is not gray, not blue, but a greenish, brownish, brackish color. This is the color that one sees on Fire constitution’s faces – the color of smoke.
The fire rages out of control. As I drive closer to examine the cloud, the colors now undulate and change to warm browns. There’s this lifelessness, this kind of dark containment of all elements – of all the colors, reds, greens, and blues within the plumes of smoke that originate from it. It’s as if the whole kingdom is burning as the fire consumes all the elements, burning the wood and the minerals therein, lifting them high into the air. This graying mass of undulating colors is what can appear as this deadened corpse-like look of the people who have this element as their constitutional factor - as this fire rages through their anatomy burning up their insides through excessive overheating.
The fire cloud is mushrooming is shades of bluish purple and clear red and rusty orange as the earth element is consumed within in. Driving underneath the great cloud of fire, shadows of red, gold and yellow cover the whole land as the sun is partially obscured. The sun is red through the cloud directly above and the smell is that of brunt grass and tree limb, of bonfire and leaves. It’s sharp and forward in the nose, scratchy in the throat, high, elevated, wiffy.
The fire rages out of control. As I drive closer to examine the cloud, the colors now undulate and change to warm browns. There’s this lifelessness, this kind of dark containment of all elements – of all the colors, reds, greens, and blues within the plumes of smoke that originate from it. It’s as if the whole kingdom is burning as the fire consumes all the elements, burning the wood and the minerals therein, lifting them high into the air. This graying mass of undulating colors is what can appear as this deadened corpse-like look of the people who have this element as their constitutional factor - as this fire rages through their anatomy burning up their insides through excessive overheating.
The fire cloud is mushrooming is shades of bluish purple and clear red and rusty orange as the earth element is consumed within in. Driving underneath the great cloud of fire, shadows of red, gold and yellow cover the whole land as the sun is partially obscured. The sun is red through the cloud directly above and the smell is that of brunt grass and tree limb, of bonfire and leaves. It’s sharp and forward in the nose, scratchy in the throat, high, elevated, wiffy.
9/3/2010 – Earth and Metal
Its 3pm on the Gregory Canyon trail on a sunny afternoon – the apple trees cover the canyon floor and shed their ripening fruit. The insects burrow inside, leaving small holes in the round yellow and red apple bellies. It's a cloudless, gorgeous sky. When I walk along this trail I see so much abundance of fruit, berries and flowers. The bees are circling around, butterflies settle on the flowers and nature is abuzz eating the bounty. The smells are lightly fragrant. The seedpods wither, becoming musty yellow. The Earth is sympathetic to all forms of life. Everything walks, tramples and trashes all over it. It accepts it all, takes it all in, in stride.
Because all of life manifests upon it, it is abundant and constantly overflowing. But because it is slow moving, it churns very slowly to integrate the abundance that is occurring around it. Fire is also needed to purify the earth of all the stuff that happens on its surface. All the unneeded unnecessary growth must be cleared so that all the ideas of Wood don’t overwhelm Earth’s ability to provide results. Too much growth in all directions in life would sap the Earth of all its nutrients and ability to integrate the experience.
Through the power of Wood we have a million ideas a day, and an abundance of growth in all directions feeds the fires of purification. Through purification, the essence of the plans and ideas are given over to the Earth to integrate into itself. Through Fire’s purification the ideas of Wood are turned into fertile soil.
We simply cannot integrate everything that's possible to integrate in life. There are too many ideas, too many possible avenues and plans, and we can become exhausted trying to integrate everything faster than our capacity to chew over it, break it down, and integrate it into our lives.
I’m reminded of the Stomach point XI 23, Great Oneness which can help the Stomach to break down all of life’s experiences into a meaningful and integrated whole. Among other things, this point would be useful for someone who’s life appears or occurs as an accumulation of unrelated, fragmented, and disjointed experiences. This point can help integrate these experiences into the self so that the individual can learn from them and move on in their life.
I just saw the minerals sparking in the ground. The Earth contains the Metal, the Earth contains the Earth, the Earth contains the plants of life, the Earth contains the Water, the Earth contains the purifications of Fire – therefore Earth contains them all and when Earth contains all, it has everything it already needs – because it’s all part of itself. In it’s motherly embrace, all can grow.
I’m reminded of the Spleen point, XII 21, Great Enveloping. This point empowers us to feel surrounded by the unconditional nourishment and love of the mother in our lives as though we’re in the womb. When we feel cut off from sources of nourishment in life, Great Enveloping wraps our whole being in the gentle care of the Earthly mother’s warm blanket.
The temperature here is cool, the hot summer sun has waned and the temperatures are receding and cooling down to a comfortable medium level. The smells are still primarily scorched of the pine and of the yellowed grass heated by the sun. So within its scorchiness there is a sweetness to the grasses, flowers, and definitely a sweetness to the fruit that right now is still not fully ripe. This stability of Late Summer ambience is reminiscent of the stability of a lot of Earth constitutional characteristics – running neither hot nor cold, just occurring at a stable, steady, rhythmic pace, changing slowly and methodically.
I came across a wonderful bee airport. As they’re buzzing, taking off, and coming in for a landing, and taking off again – they all congregate around their nest, bringing nourishment in during the season. As they do so, a hum, a buzz emanates from the hive. The droning hum provides a rhythm, a song for their busy work – signing why their work.
Like the bees, the Earth constitution can become preoccupied with the harvest year round, never ceasing, never resting. Obsessed with acquisition of more experiences, knowledge, information, education and self care, the Earth constitution can open up, like a hungry pit, ready to ingest more, become more, and integrate everything they possibly can. With an insatiable appetite, yearning for that which will nourish them the most, they are never satisfied with what they have attained. Likewise, they can be unsatisfied with the amount of attention, help, care, support and nourishment they have received from others, their relationships or their occupational and educational pursuits. Obsessed with getting, learning, making, harvesting – things are never enough.
I’m reminded of the Stomach point, XI 45, Hard Bargain. This point can be excellent for the individual who feels that their needs are never met. This person may be constantly whining, complaining and demanding sympathy for their self-imposed burdens. Running a million miles an hour and obsessively harvesting, this point can calm the Earth’s need to constantly harvest by instilling the virtues of Metal in the Earth’s constitution. XI 45 can provide the self-recognition of what food brings the highest level of nourishment, and the balanced required to wisely taking in and letting go of what no longer serves. By this the Earth is better able to make clear choices about which sources of nourishment are the best, and discard that which doesn’t nourish it anymore. This point can help a person let go of that for which they no longer have appetite for, but which they continues to chew over out of habit and worry that something tastier will never come along. This can manifest as being stuck in lifeless and unsatisfying routine, job, or profession which the Earth is bound to repeat endlessly but form which it no longer receives any nourishment.
By getting the Earth constitution unstuck from their poor sources of nourishment and obsessive harvesting, XI 45 can restore the Sheng cycle for the stuck Earth Element. Through clarity over what truly nourishes, and what doesn’t, the Earth can let go (Metal), take confidence in their available resources and skills (Water), create ideas, make plans, get into action and execute decisions to pursue what will be most nourishing (Wood), and get back into communication with the community of support (Fire), to once again harvest the most satisfying and nourishing fruit of their labor (Earth).
XI 45 can also mitigate the excess presence of Metal in the Earth constitution where an individual has become cold, rigid and inert, manifesting as a lack of sympathy towards the self and towards others, resulting in ruthlessness in their pursuit of fulfillment. Such a point selection may be coupled with XI 20, Receiving Fullness, to provide satiation to one’s needs, so that one can experience abundance in life without wallowing in feelings of neediness and over production.
…
Now atop the mountain, I’m looking at a big rock and seeing all the lines of structure that compose it. It’s very linear, straight forward, very direct, clear in its demarcation of mineral content. Here’s what’s precious and refined, and here’s what’s not. Metal builds such lofty edifices to its purity. The rocks climb ever higher, creating treacherous terrain, treacherous pinnacles and peaks of the highest discernment, ever reaching towards the perfection of heaven.
We human build ivory towers, belief systems and ways of thinking, and declarations of our ideals. Through our elevation of what is precious, we create that which is hard to get to, and out of reach like the heights of the mountain. The higher we climb in our thinking, the further we can fall. As you stand at the precipices of these lofty places you feel a fear. You feel yourself freezing as danger lurks.
The mountain is the perfect metaphor for our spiritual lives. I climbed one of these edifices of perfection, and though the climb was treacherous, and firm footing hard to find, I made it to the top. And on who’s made it to the top definitely has a loftier perspective and call see all that is below in all directions. The question is what we do once we’ve reached new perspectives? Do we throw stones, judge and condemn all that’s below, or do we commune with the unity of all that we behold?
On this rock I had a 360 panorama for miles around, I surveyed all of Boulder county and the mountains behind me. With this amount of knowledge these places offer, no wonder these lofty places have so much attachment for us as human beings. We quest for these spiritual experiences even though they are dangerous and we can fall very far, the further up we climb. We listen to inspiring preachers from on high. We believe. We listen for the word of the Lord from on high. We believe. We climb mountains of self-knowledge, and deep penetrating insight through meditation, prayer and contemplation. We join religions, cults and groups, have drug-induced spiritual experiences, ecstatic dancing, speaking in tongues, snake charming, etc - all of these pursuits to give us insight. My, what lofty mountains of world-perception and potential self-righteousness we climb, being blissfully unaware that we may fall from our perches at any moment.
The Earth says – it’s safe to stay low to the ground. Don't stir the pot. But Metal stays - reach for the skies so that you can fall in wondrous delight, and can plummet into the depths once you have touched Heaven itself.
Because all of life manifests upon it, it is abundant and constantly overflowing. But because it is slow moving, it churns very slowly to integrate the abundance that is occurring around it. Fire is also needed to purify the earth of all the stuff that happens on its surface. All the unneeded unnecessary growth must be cleared so that all the ideas of Wood don’t overwhelm Earth’s ability to provide results. Too much growth in all directions in life would sap the Earth of all its nutrients and ability to integrate the experience.
Through the power of Wood we have a million ideas a day, and an abundance of growth in all directions feeds the fires of purification. Through purification, the essence of the plans and ideas are given over to the Earth to integrate into itself. Through Fire’s purification the ideas of Wood are turned into fertile soil.
We simply cannot integrate everything that's possible to integrate in life. There are too many ideas, too many possible avenues and plans, and we can become exhausted trying to integrate everything faster than our capacity to chew over it, break it down, and integrate it into our lives.
I’m reminded of the Stomach point XI 23, Great Oneness which can help the Stomach to break down all of life’s experiences into a meaningful and integrated whole. Among other things, this point would be useful for someone who’s life appears or occurs as an accumulation of unrelated, fragmented, and disjointed experiences. This point can help integrate these experiences into the self so that the individual can learn from them and move on in their life.
I just saw the minerals sparking in the ground. The Earth contains the Metal, the Earth contains the Earth, the Earth contains the plants of life, the Earth contains the Water, the Earth contains the purifications of Fire – therefore Earth contains them all and when Earth contains all, it has everything it already needs – because it’s all part of itself. In it’s motherly embrace, all can grow.
I’m reminded of the Spleen point, XII 21, Great Enveloping. This point empowers us to feel surrounded by the unconditional nourishment and love of the mother in our lives as though we’re in the womb. When we feel cut off from sources of nourishment in life, Great Enveloping wraps our whole being in the gentle care of the Earthly mother’s warm blanket.
The temperature here is cool, the hot summer sun has waned and the temperatures are receding and cooling down to a comfortable medium level. The smells are still primarily scorched of the pine and of the yellowed grass heated by the sun. So within its scorchiness there is a sweetness to the grasses, flowers, and definitely a sweetness to the fruit that right now is still not fully ripe. This stability of Late Summer ambience is reminiscent of the stability of a lot of Earth constitutional characteristics – running neither hot nor cold, just occurring at a stable, steady, rhythmic pace, changing slowly and methodically.
I came across a wonderful bee airport. As they’re buzzing, taking off, and coming in for a landing, and taking off again – they all congregate around their nest, bringing nourishment in during the season. As they do so, a hum, a buzz emanates from the hive. The droning hum provides a rhythm, a song for their busy work – signing why their work.
Like the bees, the Earth constitution can become preoccupied with the harvest year round, never ceasing, never resting. Obsessed with acquisition of more experiences, knowledge, information, education and self care, the Earth constitution can open up, like a hungry pit, ready to ingest more, become more, and integrate everything they possibly can. With an insatiable appetite, yearning for that which will nourish them the most, they are never satisfied with what they have attained. Likewise, they can be unsatisfied with the amount of attention, help, care, support and nourishment they have received from others, their relationships or their occupational and educational pursuits. Obsessed with getting, learning, making, harvesting – things are never enough.
I’m reminded of the Stomach point, XI 45, Hard Bargain. This point can be excellent for the individual who feels that their needs are never met. This person may be constantly whining, complaining and demanding sympathy for their self-imposed burdens. Running a million miles an hour and obsessively harvesting, this point can calm the Earth’s need to constantly harvest by instilling the virtues of Metal in the Earth’s constitution. XI 45 can provide the self-recognition of what food brings the highest level of nourishment, and the balanced required to wisely taking in and letting go of what no longer serves. By this the Earth is better able to make clear choices about which sources of nourishment are the best, and discard that which doesn’t nourish it anymore. This point can help a person let go of that for which they no longer have appetite for, but which they continues to chew over out of habit and worry that something tastier will never come along. This can manifest as being stuck in lifeless and unsatisfying routine, job, or profession which the Earth is bound to repeat endlessly but form which it no longer receives any nourishment.
By getting the Earth constitution unstuck from their poor sources of nourishment and obsessive harvesting, XI 45 can restore the Sheng cycle for the stuck Earth Element. Through clarity over what truly nourishes, and what doesn’t, the Earth can let go (Metal), take confidence in their available resources and skills (Water), create ideas, make plans, get into action and execute decisions to pursue what will be most nourishing (Wood), and get back into communication with the community of support (Fire), to once again harvest the most satisfying and nourishing fruit of their labor (Earth).
XI 45 can also mitigate the excess presence of Metal in the Earth constitution where an individual has become cold, rigid and inert, manifesting as a lack of sympathy towards the self and towards others, resulting in ruthlessness in their pursuit of fulfillment. Such a point selection may be coupled with XI 20, Receiving Fullness, to provide satiation to one’s needs, so that one can experience abundance in life without wallowing in feelings of neediness and over production.
…
Now atop the mountain, I’m looking at a big rock and seeing all the lines of structure that compose it. It’s very linear, straight forward, very direct, clear in its demarcation of mineral content. Here’s what’s precious and refined, and here’s what’s not. Metal builds such lofty edifices to its purity. The rocks climb ever higher, creating treacherous terrain, treacherous pinnacles and peaks of the highest discernment, ever reaching towards the perfection of heaven.
We human build ivory towers, belief systems and ways of thinking, and declarations of our ideals. Through our elevation of what is precious, we create that which is hard to get to, and out of reach like the heights of the mountain. The higher we climb in our thinking, the further we can fall. As you stand at the precipices of these lofty places you feel a fear. You feel yourself freezing as danger lurks.
The mountain is the perfect metaphor for our spiritual lives. I climbed one of these edifices of perfection, and though the climb was treacherous, and firm footing hard to find, I made it to the top. And on who’s made it to the top definitely has a loftier perspective and call see all that is below in all directions. The question is what we do once we’ve reached new perspectives? Do we throw stones, judge and condemn all that’s below, or do we commune with the unity of all that we behold?
On this rock I had a 360 panorama for miles around, I surveyed all of Boulder county and the mountains behind me. With this amount of knowledge these places offer, no wonder these lofty places have so much attachment for us as human beings. We quest for these spiritual experiences even though they are dangerous and we can fall very far, the further up we climb. We listen to inspiring preachers from on high. We believe. We listen for the word of the Lord from on high. We believe. We climb mountains of self-knowledge, and deep penetrating insight through meditation, prayer and contemplation. We join religions, cults and groups, have drug-induced spiritual experiences, ecstatic dancing, speaking in tongues, snake charming, etc - all of these pursuits to give us insight. My, what lofty mountains of world-perception and potential self-righteousness we climb, being blissfully unaware that we may fall from our perches at any moment.
The Earth says – it’s safe to stay low to the ground. Don't stir the pot. But Metal stays - reach for the skies so that you can fall in wondrous delight, and can plummet into the depths once you have touched Heaven itself.
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
9/30/2010 – Flagstaff Mountain
It's a sunless, balmy Late summer morning, its 10:43am as I survey the mountains atop Boyscout Trail. The hills undulate, rolling, rolling, rolling – like mounds of flesh, like bellies, muscles and ridges of the Earth’s surface. The hills undulate in way that the singing voice of the Earth constitution undulates. It’s the same quality as the echoes that reverberate through the hills - echo, echo, echo echo…
The seeds are starting to turn, becoming yellowed, and darkened. Various shades of orange start to scatter across the mountain. Few leaves change here. It’s hard to notice the full splendor in the trees, yet the cones are getting full and the grasses are yellowing. The air stands motionless here, without churning. Only in the slow movement of the trees roots is the earth being moved through action.
It is the power of the Wood element across the Ko cycle that prevents the Earth element from stagnating and becoming barren and lifeless. When the earth is constantly turned over and over, old growth is integrated to make the soil abundant and productive. Without integrating the activity that occurs superficially on the Earth’s surface back into its depths, the Earth soon becomes barren and cannot support newness.
This reminds me of the Spleen point XII 9, Earth Motivator which takes a shovel to the earth and turns it over, integrating the experiences that have occurred on its surface so that those experiences can be turned into the earth and absorbed. Without movement, and integration, whatever experiences we have do not produce any new knowledge, no lessons are learnt, and we cannot overcome inertia to produce any new and fresh sources of nourishment in our lives. When we can’t integrate our experiences, we do not feel nourished by the work that we do. This point can help an Earth constitution grasp a hold of their desires and create action around manifesting them in their life and absorbing the results into the self. It is only through integrating experiences that we become the product of our endeavors. When an Earth element turns over too slowly, it is unable to absorb all the nourishment it needs from its environment and literally embody those experiences as knowledge, ability, and capacity to nourish others. Earth Motivator helps speed the process along to ensure that taking in of experience and integration occurs appropriately and that once nourished, this abundance of food can be given away to the community.
The seeds are starting to turn, becoming yellowed, and darkened. Various shades of orange start to scatter across the mountain. Few leaves change here. It’s hard to notice the full splendor in the trees, yet the cones are getting full and the grasses are yellowing. The air stands motionless here, without churning. Only in the slow movement of the trees roots is the earth being moved through action.
It is the power of the Wood element across the Ko cycle that prevents the Earth element from stagnating and becoming barren and lifeless. When the earth is constantly turned over and over, old growth is integrated to make the soil abundant and productive. Without integrating the activity that occurs superficially on the Earth’s surface back into its depths, the Earth soon becomes barren and cannot support newness.
This reminds me of the Spleen point XII 9, Earth Motivator which takes a shovel to the earth and turns it over, integrating the experiences that have occurred on its surface so that those experiences can be turned into the earth and absorbed. Without movement, and integration, whatever experiences we have do not produce any new knowledge, no lessons are learnt, and we cannot overcome inertia to produce any new and fresh sources of nourishment in our lives. When we can’t integrate our experiences, we do not feel nourished by the work that we do. This point can help an Earth constitution grasp a hold of their desires and create action around manifesting them in their life and absorbing the results into the self. It is only through integrating experiences that we become the product of our endeavors. When an Earth element turns over too slowly, it is unable to absorb all the nourishment it needs from its environment and literally embody those experiences as knowledge, ability, and capacity to nourish others. Earth Motivator helps speed the process along to ensure that taking in of experience and integration occurs appropriately and that once nourished, this abundance of food can be given away to the community.
08/16/2010 – Santa Fe
I’m traveling through Santa Fe en route to Colorado. Its 1:30pm, and the sun is hot, the air is dry. The people of Santa Fe, the brown-skins, and the ultra pasty whites with their dripping Jewelry adorn this place with their contrast: the haves and the havenots. People with resources, and people without. People with Water, and people without.
Driving through all the Indian reservations, and the towns stricken with poverty, Casinos litter the place. Casinos - places of the promise of money in an area where there is absolutely none. Living on the hopes, dreams and possibilities and false hope. The faces of the people that live here are hard. Hope can quickly change into despair and fear when you have no access to true Water.
When you have no money, you use what skills you have to survive. Skills are always means of acquiring resources. Whether you’re a craftsman, or an officer worker – the means are unimportant, the purpose is to pull on your skills, on your inner Water. It’s always fascinating to see how people make their money. When driving through these towns it certainly isn’t obvious. Yet these people live, and survive. Many are artisans and create amazing art.
If we have no relationship to our deep inner reserves, what other way is there to be in the world but to fear for our lives and our very survival. The power of the Water element is wisdom and courage derived from self-reflection. Why are we so afraid to look within? Will we actually find that we are powerful beyond measure?
…
Now I’m driving through the desert. The roads are straight and merge into a hazy horizon. I stop on the side of the road to survey the expanse before and below me. I can see down into a plateau in the East. I can see for over 50 miles. I see two storms pummeling the desert with their diagonal beams. Like huge jellyfish, these cloud monsters traverse the sky and send down lightning and tendrils of rain, like curtains that touch and caress the land. This area is completely unpopulated, and fully owned by the diety that rules over this place – a place undisturbed by man’s powers. The fields almost seem to reach up and embrace the storms, opening their faces to receive the gift of life, of wisdom, of possibility for a new future itself.
Do we reach out to our community and regard them as resources, or as threats and competition? Do we trust our inner wisdom, or do we feel like we have nothing that others can use or benefit from? Are we afraid to live, or are we courageously following the storms in our lives?
I’m reminded of a Kidney point, IV6, Illuminated Sea which grants us the experience of illuminating the depths of our potential, providing us with reassurance and the illumination of our inner wisdom. As we reflect on the vastness and expansiveness of our reserves we no longer fear the depths but are present to the resources to manifest our potential. When this knowledge is present, we can live at peace even in the desert, knowing that we will not just survive, but thrive.
Driving through all the Indian reservations, and the towns stricken with poverty, Casinos litter the place. Casinos - places of the promise of money in an area where there is absolutely none. Living on the hopes, dreams and possibilities and false hope. The faces of the people that live here are hard. Hope can quickly change into despair and fear when you have no access to true Water.
When you have no money, you use what skills you have to survive. Skills are always means of acquiring resources. Whether you’re a craftsman, or an officer worker – the means are unimportant, the purpose is to pull on your skills, on your inner Water. It’s always fascinating to see how people make their money. When driving through these towns it certainly isn’t obvious. Yet these people live, and survive. Many are artisans and create amazing art.
If we have no relationship to our deep inner reserves, what other way is there to be in the world but to fear for our lives and our very survival. The power of the Water element is wisdom and courage derived from self-reflection. Why are we so afraid to look within? Will we actually find that we are powerful beyond measure?
…
Now I’m driving through the desert. The roads are straight and merge into a hazy horizon. I stop on the side of the road to survey the expanse before and below me. I can see down into a plateau in the East. I can see for over 50 miles. I see two storms pummeling the desert with their diagonal beams. Like huge jellyfish, these cloud monsters traverse the sky and send down lightning and tendrils of rain, like curtains that touch and caress the land. This area is completely unpopulated, and fully owned by the diety that rules over this place – a place undisturbed by man’s powers. The fields almost seem to reach up and embrace the storms, opening their faces to receive the gift of life, of wisdom, of possibility for a new future itself.
Do we reach out to our community and regard them as resources, or as threats and competition? Do we trust our inner wisdom, or do we feel like we have nothing that others can use or benefit from? Are we afraid to live, or are we courageously following the storms in our lives?
I’m reminded of a Kidney point, IV6, Illuminated Sea which grants us the experience of illuminating the depths of our potential, providing us with reassurance and the illumination of our inner wisdom. As we reflect on the vastness and expansiveness of our reserves we no longer fear the depths but are present to the resources to manifest our potential. When this knowledge is present, we can live at peace even in the desert, knowing that we will not just survive, but thrive.
08/07/2010 – Perspectives
Boulder creek, sunless, cloudy day: the time is 2pm and I’m standing overlooking the flowing river. The air is cooler and still. There aren't any specific signs that we are in the heat of summer. All nature and insects stand quiet and still. The only movement is the river. All 8 winds are blowing equally in all directions, and the sum of their forces creates a perfect opposition - a complete stillness.
I love looking at the wind from the perspective that it is always present – much in the same way that one can see a fishing net as a new full of holes, or as a bunch of holes tied together with string.
As I move, my perspective moves and change is created in the world. If I stand still and observe this creek, only the creek moves. The trees and rocks stand in absolute stillness and immobility. No change rocks them. But as I move, my perspective changes, and so do all the things become alive and shift in reality before my eyes. With each step the trees behind reveal themselves. The rocks reveal their crevices and personalities.
Without movement in the world, our experience of reality would be quite shallow, one-sided and flat – two dimensional - black and white. The wind in us is the force of the Wood element which allows us to change direction, see multiple perspectives, try out different thoughts about our life and our environment. If the mind is moving, it is also ever changing, evolving and growing. Without the Liver’s planning to provide direction, and the gallbladder’s initiation into action our head wouldn’t move, our neck wouldn’t turn, our torso wouldn’t rotate, and our legs would never permit us to change our location and offer new perspectives.
Likewise, trees cannot grow, cannot be pushed, stretched, or prodded into flexibility without the wind. It is through the wind that the tree learns to be flexible, to be strong and adaptable. It is through the wind that their ideas are spread in the world and root in new soil. If we have no internal wind to motivate our actions, we too would never develop flexibility of mind, body, or spirit and there would be no reason to change our fixed location and way of being. Our lives would stagnate in inaction, and our mental and spiritual gears would grind to a halt.
In this way, change is our friend. It is the promoter of growth and new perspectives. It is always at the incipience of new ideas. Without challenges we wouldn’t grow. Its now clear to me why anger and frustration at change is the bittersweet friend and foe to the Wood constitution. While the Wood element gives us ideas and allows us to move in accordance with change, if our constitution is primarily Wood, we have a skewed relationship towards change and see it as our enemy and the promoter of all our woes.
I wonder if there ever was a time, before the story of the fall where Adam and Eve lived in the Garden of Gods for millennia, at peace with creation, the environment and natural laws. What if there was no constitutional imbalance ever present in those early humans until they diverted from natural law so completely and started to control, manipulate, and resist their environment.
When I consider the nature of the suffering of each of the elements, I see a dysfunctional relationship to, and understanding of man’s place in nature by the self.
The Wood element responds to the change in the environment as a threat to its plans and ideations. At the same time, the very thing it lacks to cultivate is inner vision and perspective that change is the nature of God, and by that same token, change is who we are by nature.
The Fire element responds to love in the environment as something that it desperately craves, without which its life is meaningless. At the same time, the very thing it lacks is the recognition that it is already fully loved and that we are the very expression of love incarnate. Once realized, the Fire element would recognize the warm glow of inner love of its own being, the recognition of the beating heart as that of the God itself.
The Earth element responds to nourishment and experiences as insufficient to provide it with safety and security and a feeling of contentedness. The very thing it lacks is an inward recognition of already having everything it needs to live life in absolute contentment, surrounded by abundance.
The Metal element responds to sacredness, preciousness and impermanence in the environment with attachment to, and longing for things to never return to the void. The very thing it lacks is an inward appreciation of the deep void within the self that only the eternal presence of spirit can ever fill.
The Water element responds to the environment as threatening to its survival. The very thing it lacks is the inward knowledge of wisdom and security that it can only obtain through self-introspection.
All the constitutions feel separate from the nature of things and are trapped to constantly reacting to the environment, or resisting the environment as it is – because we fail to recognize our place in nature as part of nature itself. Because we think that we’ve been unfairly put on this rock in order to survive it, we fail to realize that we are as much a fruit of the planet, as an apple is the fruit of the apple tree. The apple tree apples, and the earth peoples.
The few who spend their life accepting, welcoming, choosing and creating the environment as self, live out their life in oneness with the nature of change – the nature of God, and as such are never separated from him.
I love looking at the wind from the perspective that it is always present – much in the same way that one can see a fishing net as a new full of holes, or as a bunch of holes tied together with string.
As I move, my perspective moves and change is created in the world. If I stand still and observe this creek, only the creek moves. The trees and rocks stand in absolute stillness and immobility. No change rocks them. But as I move, my perspective changes, and so do all the things become alive and shift in reality before my eyes. With each step the trees behind reveal themselves. The rocks reveal their crevices and personalities.
Without movement in the world, our experience of reality would be quite shallow, one-sided and flat – two dimensional - black and white. The wind in us is the force of the Wood element which allows us to change direction, see multiple perspectives, try out different thoughts about our life and our environment. If the mind is moving, it is also ever changing, evolving and growing. Without the Liver’s planning to provide direction, and the gallbladder’s initiation into action our head wouldn’t move, our neck wouldn’t turn, our torso wouldn’t rotate, and our legs would never permit us to change our location and offer new perspectives.
Likewise, trees cannot grow, cannot be pushed, stretched, or prodded into flexibility without the wind. It is through the wind that the tree learns to be flexible, to be strong and adaptable. It is through the wind that their ideas are spread in the world and root in new soil. If we have no internal wind to motivate our actions, we too would never develop flexibility of mind, body, or spirit and there would be no reason to change our fixed location and way of being. Our lives would stagnate in inaction, and our mental and spiritual gears would grind to a halt.
In this way, change is our friend. It is the promoter of growth and new perspectives. It is always at the incipience of new ideas. Without challenges we wouldn’t grow. Its now clear to me why anger and frustration at change is the bittersweet friend and foe to the Wood constitution. While the Wood element gives us ideas and allows us to move in accordance with change, if our constitution is primarily Wood, we have a skewed relationship towards change and see it as our enemy and the promoter of all our woes.
I wonder if there ever was a time, before the story of the fall where Adam and Eve lived in the Garden of Gods for millennia, at peace with creation, the environment and natural laws. What if there was no constitutional imbalance ever present in those early humans until they diverted from natural law so completely and started to control, manipulate, and resist their environment.
When I consider the nature of the suffering of each of the elements, I see a dysfunctional relationship to, and understanding of man’s place in nature by the self.
The Wood element responds to the change in the environment as a threat to its plans and ideations. At the same time, the very thing it lacks to cultivate is inner vision and perspective that change is the nature of God, and by that same token, change is who we are by nature.
The Fire element responds to love in the environment as something that it desperately craves, without which its life is meaningless. At the same time, the very thing it lacks is the recognition that it is already fully loved and that we are the very expression of love incarnate. Once realized, the Fire element would recognize the warm glow of inner love of its own being, the recognition of the beating heart as that of the God itself.
The Earth element responds to nourishment and experiences as insufficient to provide it with safety and security and a feeling of contentedness. The very thing it lacks is an inward recognition of already having everything it needs to live life in absolute contentment, surrounded by abundance.
The Metal element responds to sacredness, preciousness and impermanence in the environment with attachment to, and longing for things to never return to the void. The very thing it lacks is an inward appreciation of the deep void within the self that only the eternal presence of spirit can ever fill.
The Water element responds to the environment as threatening to its survival. The very thing it lacks is the inward knowledge of wisdom and security that it can only obtain through self-introspection.
All the constitutions feel separate from the nature of things and are trapped to constantly reacting to the environment, or resisting the environment as it is – because we fail to recognize our place in nature as part of nature itself. Because we think that we’ve been unfairly put on this rock in order to survive it, we fail to realize that we are as much a fruit of the planet, as an apple is the fruit of the apple tree. The apple tree apples, and the earth peoples.
The few who spend their life accepting, welcoming, choosing and creating the environment as self, live out their life in oneness with the nature of change – the nature of God, and as such are never separated from him.
Monday, October 25, 2010
10/08/2010 – City of Lost Angels
A sharp sulfurous smell coupled with a rancidity of burnt oils mixed with the rot of garbage and grease oil of an ever-churning machine: Los Angeles in the middle of Late Summer. Its cool, muggy, foggy and filled with a stench. My lungs refuse to inhale, I turn my nose away unwilling to be filled with the molecules of the polluted spirit people breath in and out here, exchanging illusory smoke and blowing hot air at eachother. Ahh Lost Angeles – smoke and mirrors, and hot air. This city combusts the fossil fuels at an alarming rate. Burning the remains of our dead, as their ghosts fill the air with decayed and dead dreams, possessing the city in a gray brown cloud.
Its 4pm and I just got to my strange hotel straight from the airport. The ghosts that manned the hotel lobby looked at me with resigned apathy, as they stared at me with the sallow look of a droopy eyed cow, chew the same cud over and over again. One mooed an apathetic hello at me, cigarette dangling from her mouth, and proceeded to checked me in. When I asked her what she does when she’s not working at the hotel, her face lit up as we meandered into her stories about her joy of teaching kids and wanting to change her profession from a biomed student to education – a sentence that began with: “when I get out of this shithole”. Having helped remind her of some light of a better future, I got rewarded with 5 free ticket vouchers for free champagne, a voucher for free food from the restaurant and instructions to come back to her if I wanted more. I thanked her and donated the drink coupons to the trashcan shortly thereafter.
In the hotel courtyard and pool area, college kids played pool, arcade games, or downed beers and cigarettes while hovering over their laptop screens. Strangely the plant life grew happily and flowered in glorious blooms despite the deadness of the spirit and living graveyard of this LA hotel.
The people of this city of superficiality, materialism, and ‘looking good’ wear plastic smiles while their eyes stare blankly into nothing. They walk around the streets, heads held low in resignation, or held high in determination. If ever a place needed IV24, Spirit Burial Ground, this is it. Heated by temporary joy of the blazing heat of Hollywood starlets, uninspired, and uninspiring, they move along the streets, oppressed by pollution. The air and the morning fog obscure vision and clarity. Living on hope, rather than inspiration, I would imagine that this city would collectively manifest an entry/exit block between the Liver and Lung Official. People hopeful of monetary success, stardom with no true spiritual inspiration. VIII 14, Gate of Hope would open up to IX1, Middle Palace (Some sources refer to this point as Gate of Inspiration). Hope, once inspired causes us to get reconnected to the heavens and a higher purpose of our lives. Hope is pointless if it doesn't lead to breathing life into us in the form of inspiration?
The city lives on superficiality and false hope, as if playing a lottery ticket its whole life, blindly hoping to win. What would this city be like if each Lost Angel could once again see a glimpse of its wings?
Its 4pm and I just got to my strange hotel straight from the airport. The ghosts that manned the hotel lobby looked at me with resigned apathy, as they stared at me with the sallow look of a droopy eyed cow, chew the same cud over and over again. One mooed an apathetic hello at me, cigarette dangling from her mouth, and proceeded to checked me in. When I asked her what she does when she’s not working at the hotel, her face lit up as we meandered into her stories about her joy of teaching kids and wanting to change her profession from a biomed student to education – a sentence that began with: “when I get out of this shithole”. Having helped remind her of some light of a better future, I got rewarded with 5 free ticket vouchers for free champagne, a voucher for free food from the restaurant and instructions to come back to her if I wanted more. I thanked her and donated the drink coupons to the trashcan shortly thereafter.
In the hotel courtyard and pool area, college kids played pool, arcade games, or downed beers and cigarettes while hovering over their laptop screens. Strangely the plant life grew happily and flowered in glorious blooms despite the deadness of the spirit and living graveyard of this LA hotel.
The people of this city of superficiality, materialism, and ‘looking good’ wear plastic smiles while their eyes stare blankly into nothing. They walk around the streets, heads held low in resignation, or held high in determination. If ever a place needed IV24, Spirit Burial Ground, this is it. Heated by temporary joy of the blazing heat of Hollywood starlets, uninspired, and uninspiring, they move along the streets, oppressed by pollution. The air and the morning fog obscure vision and clarity. Living on hope, rather than inspiration, I would imagine that this city would collectively manifest an entry/exit block between the Liver and Lung Official. People hopeful of monetary success, stardom with no true spiritual inspiration. VIII 14, Gate of Hope would open up to IX1, Middle Palace (Some sources refer to this point as Gate of Inspiration). Hope, once inspired causes us to get reconnected to the heavens and a higher purpose of our lives. Hope is pointless if it doesn't lead to breathing life into us in the form of inspiration?
The city lives on superficiality and false hope, as if playing a lottery ticket its whole life, blindly hoping to win. What would this city be like if each Lost Angel could once again see a glimpse of its wings?
09/20/2010 – Abundant Splendor
We gathered together as a class at the Wildlands Restoration Project to collect seeds from the prairie grasslands afoot the front-range due south of Boulder. We were a group of 15 community volunteers that gathered together to harvest wild grasses. The purpose of our endeavor was the collect a specific plant so that each seed could be turned into thousands more. These seeds in turn would be used to repopulated areas ravaged by landslides and wild fires so as to prevent erosion and repopulate affected area with native species. Many foreign species have moved into Colorado and so part of this project seeks also to preserve the natives species so as to prevent major changes in the fragile ecosystem.
We were shown a sample of the prairie drop seed grass which we were to collect, and we moved out into the prairie in front of us with our bags and sheers in hand. The prairie ahead was hidden in the thick mist that had rolled in while preparations and discussions were under way.
As we moved into the cold mist, I got chilled and put on my sweater. It didn’t take long for me to have a startling realization about this place. What looked like a dry, yellow, boring, barren, flat and unexciting patch of land which I’d drive by without a slightest acknowledgement, became an incredible fantasy land of vegetation and life that was as rich as any rainforest I had seen prior. The more time I spent looking, the more detail and variety I beheld.
Gazing through the mist onto the fields around me I saw more shades of color than I had noticed before. The yellow flat land became a sea stretching out in all directions which undulated in waves of patches and ripples of various shades and hues as certain plants spread more immediately within their surrounding. What looked like a field of one grass became a field of a hundred to two hundred grass varieties each with a different texture, shape, stem, and color gradient which could be seen as undulating patches of brilliant color. The generic color ‘yellow’ had now become gold, crimson, brown, auburn, rust, copper, canary yellow, white, frosted yellow, gray, burgundy, strawberry, brick, mauve, orange, and beige.
The presence of the cool, moist mist that softened my face, opened my pores, enveloping me in its blanket, made me pause, take in, and become present to what was. The gray monotone of the mist revealed all these shades to me, as I was no longer distracted by the mountains to which I normally would raise my gaze. As my face began to feel supple, I saw the plant life around me was supple, bulging, and rich in its seed.
Hunting for the one seed I needed to find made me focus incredibly. While looking for the one thing I needed to find – so small, hard to see, and inconspicuous, I found everything else that wasn’t it, and everything that looked like it, but wasn’t. I honed in within a few minutes on the specific differences that made the plant unique, its specific type of undergrowth, twig pattern, color differences at various stages of maturity, and seed pod organization. Soon its uniqueness stood out.
I started to wonder if there are creatures out there that only eat this type of seed but none other. What I saw around me was the buffet of food available for the hundreds if not thousands of prairie species that feast every day off of this land.
The earth beneath the plant life glistened with mica and other minerals – her beige rocky clay provided the container for all these life forms to be taken into her bosom, nurtured, held, mothered and birthed. Whatever she had, she’d given freely. Whatever water was given to her, she passed on to her children. Whatever folds in her flesh gave way to grooves, mounds, dips, basins, or hollows permitted her to capture and receive more moisture herself, so that she could give it all the more abundantly to the children that dwelled therein.
Whatever life occurred on her surface she folded into herself and integrated over time – she herself becoming the product of all the food the children left behind, trusting that there will always be enough for her. Giving first, and receiving second, with no ‘in order to’.
I’m reminded of the point Abundant Splendor (XI 40) where the self-realized Earth constitution becomes present to all the abundance that is available and already present in her life so that she no longer feels so compelled to overproduce, overharvest and obsessively store and yearn for more sustenance, not realizing she’s already full and straining to capacity.
When we obsessively overharvest, we stuff our faces, spirits, and minds with food of indiscriminate quality for fear that there will never be enough for ourselves. Whatever we can get our hands on will simply be good enough. The irony is that all the effort we put in to harvesting literally leaves us never enjoying the fruit of our labor. We become heavily laden with our harvest and burdened by our commitments, but never have enough time to process, fully absorb and be nourished by our work.
The poor quality and quantity of harvest ends up clouding out minds, our spirits, and manifests as phlegm, fat, or turbidity within the body, mind and spirit. In this way, like a bog or mud pit, we absorb everything around, obsessively collecting, never satisfied and never full. Ultimately, a bottomless pit, we end up accumulate experiences, toys, books, papers, garbage, memories, heavy emotions, physical and emotional fillers and trash – like the gaping yaw of a landfill.
As a junction point between the Stomach and Spleen Official, Abundant Splendor grounds the Stomach’s Yang and curbs the Stomach’s obsessive need for ingesting more and more by connecting its hunger to the deep stores of food that have already been taken into the self, so that the food can be fully absorbed and integrated. When the Yang of the Stomach no longer orients itself to the external acquisition of abundance, its Yang can go to the Spleen to help it in transforming whatever mundane and lesser substances the Stomach acquired in its voracious hunger into food that nourishes the spirit, the soul, and the mind. The stinking bog becomes dried out by the Earth’s transformative power into rich peat and compost which bursts into life like an oasis, once again giving of its abundance rather than constantly absorbing it.
It is in this way that the Yang of XI 40 helps the Spleen process, transform and transport out acquired mundanity such as excess fat, phlegm, fluids and bodily accumulations that were acquired in haste due to poor diet, poor nourishment, and lack of proper processing of food into compost which serves to nourish our lives. The phlegm and turbidity are evaporated and life starts to bloom, over-absorption ceases, and abundance starts to pour forth. The accumulation of experiences, possessions, and a material harvest cease having the same importance they once had, as we integrate them, get nourished by them, and move on to give out what we’ve learned.
Similarly, if the person is empty, having harvested nothing and integrated nothing, like hardened clay, unable to absorb any nutrients, Abundant Splendor can reorient the barren, malnourished, and despondent soul back towards the outside world from where nourishment can once again be absorbed. In this case the Stomach Official has ceased to be interested in the external world and shuts down the function of receiving. When we’ve lost the ability to see the world as full of abundance, and our inner world as malnourished, food which we have rejected and found undesirable begins to get collected, enjoyed, and integrated once again as we start feeding ourselves once more. Needling this point brings a shovel to hard and barren clay, breaks it up, creating space for water and seeds of new possibility to arise.
In this way XI 40, Abundant Splendor is an important point in mitigating both bulimic and anorexic patterns of behavior and restoring balance to process of harvest and integration.
We brought in the harvest at lunch time and sat around sharing our food with eachother. After lunch the sun came out and the prairie took on a bright showy coat of splendid colors as seed pods opened, flowers expanded, and insects buzzed with excitement – resuming their busy harvest to stock up for the long winter to come.
We were shown a sample of the prairie drop seed grass which we were to collect, and we moved out into the prairie in front of us with our bags and sheers in hand. The prairie ahead was hidden in the thick mist that had rolled in while preparations and discussions were under way.
As we moved into the cold mist, I got chilled and put on my sweater. It didn’t take long for me to have a startling realization about this place. What looked like a dry, yellow, boring, barren, flat and unexciting patch of land which I’d drive by without a slightest acknowledgement, became an incredible fantasy land of vegetation and life that was as rich as any rainforest I had seen prior. The more time I spent looking, the more detail and variety I beheld.
Gazing through the mist onto the fields around me I saw more shades of color than I had noticed before. The yellow flat land became a sea stretching out in all directions which undulated in waves of patches and ripples of various shades and hues as certain plants spread more immediately within their surrounding. What looked like a field of one grass became a field of a hundred to two hundred grass varieties each with a different texture, shape, stem, and color gradient which could be seen as undulating patches of brilliant color. The generic color ‘yellow’ had now become gold, crimson, brown, auburn, rust, copper, canary yellow, white, frosted yellow, gray, burgundy, strawberry, brick, mauve, orange, and beige.
The presence of the cool, moist mist that softened my face, opened my pores, enveloping me in its blanket, made me pause, take in, and become present to what was. The gray monotone of the mist revealed all these shades to me, as I was no longer distracted by the mountains to which I normally would raise my gaze. As my face began to feel supple, I saw the plant life around me was supple, bulging, and rich in its seed.
Hunting for the one seed I needed to find made me focus incredibly. While looking for the one thing I needed to find – so small, hard to see, and inconspicuous, I found everything else that wasn’t it, and everything that looked like it, but wasn’t. I honed in within a few minutes on the specific differences that made the plant unique, its specific type of undergrowth, twig pattern, color differences at various stages of maturity, and seed pod organization. Soon its uniqueness stood out.
I started to wonder if there are creatures out there that only eat this type of seed but none other. What I saw around me was the buffet of food available for the hundreds if not thousands of prairie species that feast every day off of this land.
The earth beneath the plant life glistened with mica and other minerals – her beige rocky clay provided the container for all these life forms to be taken into her bosom, nurtured, held, mothered and birthed. Whatever she had, she’d given freely. Whatever water was given to her, she passed on to her children. Whatever folds in her flesh gave way to grooves, mounds, dips, basins, or hollows permitted her to capture and receive more moisture herself, so that she could give it all the more abundantly to the children that dwelled therein.
Whatever life occurred on her surface she folded into herself and integrated over time – she herself becoming the product of all the food the children left behind, trusting that there will always be enough for her. Giving first, and receiving second, with no ‘in order to’.
I’m reminded of the point Abundant Splendor (XI 40) where the self-realized Earth constitution becomes present to all the abundance that is available and already present in her life so that she no longer feels so compelled to overproduce, overharvest and obsessively store and yearn for more sustenance, not realizing she’s already full and straining to capacity.
When we obsessively overharvest, we stuff our faces, spirits, and minds with food of indiscriminate quality for fear that there will never be enough for ourselves. Whatever we can get our hands on will simply be good enough. The irony is that all the effort we put in to harvesting literally leaves us never enjoying the fruit of our labor. We become heavily laden with our harvest and burdened by our commitments, but never have enough time to process, fully absorb and be nourished by our work.
The poor quality and quantity of harvest ends up clouding out minds, our spirits, and manifests as phlegm, fat, or turbidity within the body, mind and spirit. In this way, like a bog or mud pit, we absorb everything around, obsessively collecting, never satisfied and never full. Ultimately, a bottomless pit, we end up accumulate experiences, toys, books, papers, garbage, memories, heavy emotions, physical and emotional fillers and trash – like the gaping yaw of a landfill.
As a junction point between the Stomach and Spleen Official, Abundant Splendor grounds the Stomach’s Yang and curbs the Stomach’s obsessive need for ingesting more and more by connecting its hunger to the deep stores of food that have already been taken into the self, so that the food can be fully absorbed and integrated. When the Yang of the Stomach no longer orients itself to the external acquisition of abundance, its Yang can go to the Spleen to help it in transforming whatever mundane and lesser substances the Stomach acquired in its voracious hunger into food that nourishes the spirit, the soul, and the mind. The stinking bog becomes dried out by the Earth’s transformative power into rich peat and compost which bursts into life like an oasis, once again giving of its abundance rather than constantly absorbing it.
It is in this way that the Yang of XI 40 helps the Spleen process, transform and transport out acquired mundanity such as excess fat, phlegm, fluids and bodily accumulations that were acquired in haste due to poor diet, poor nourishment, and lack of proper processing of food into compost which serves to nourish our lives. The phlegm and turbidity are evaporated and life starts to bloom, over-absorption ceases, and abundance starts to pour forth. The accumulation of experiences, possessions, and a material harvest cease having the same importance they once had, as we integrate them, get nourished by them, and move on to give out what we’ve learned.
Similarly, if the person is empty, having harvested nothing and integrated nothing, like hardened clay, unable to absorb any nutrients, Abundant Splendor can reorient the barren, malnourished, and despondent soul back towards the outside world from where nourishment can once again be absorbed. In this case the Stomach Official has ceased to be interested in the external world and shuts down the function of receiving. When we’ve lost the ability to see the world as full of abundance, and our inner world as malnourished, food which we have rejected and found undesirable begins to get collected, enjoyed, and integrated once again as we start feeding ourselves once more. Needling this point brings a shovel to hard and barren clay, breaks it up, creating space for water and seeds of new possibility to arise.
In this way XI 40, Abundant Splendor is an important point in mitigating both bulimic and anorexic patterns of behavior and restoring balance to process of harvest and integration.
We brought in the harvest at lunch time and sat around sharing our food with eachother. After lunch the sun came out and the prairie took on a bright showy coat of splendid colors as seed pods opened, flowers expanded, and insects buzzed with excitement – resuming their busy harvest to stock up for the long winter to come.
08/02/2010 – Rainy Day
I feel completely without joy. The gray of the day and the rain falling outside and tearing on my windowsill reflects my melancholy mood. The ashen color of the sky – bluish gray reflects the sad and beaten down energy I am feeling after enduring a sickness and exhaustion that has lasted with me now for two weeks. Even the warmth of light bulbs inside my home isn’t doing enough to warm my fire and bring me comfort.
The winds are blowing and agitating the branches which sway back and forth and the rain stops and the tears on my window start drying. This energy is the opposite of expansion. People withdraw inside. I find myself staying in to conserve my resource. For me this is frustrating as I’ve been closed off indoors from my flu for too many weeks. This rain isn’t refreshing, its oppressing.
No one is outside. A few cars drive by a little slower and encumbered towards their destination. As the rain frustrated my progress of expanding my life – it has me start reflecting on what’s around me. I find this reflection stifling and depressing in this moment.
What is someone’s life constantly occurred as if a cloud throughout their life was following them around? A life without joy, or lightness, but one filled with heaviness, responsibility, thwartations, overwhelm, apathy, and resentment? I’m reminded of the point Cloud Gate which could life this cloud from a person’s life and see the joy in every moment.
The winds are blowing and agitating the branches which sway back and forth and the rain stops and the tears on my window start drying. This energy is the opposite of expansion. People withdraw inside. I find myself staying in to conserve my resource. For me this is frustrating as I’ve been closed off indoors from my flu for too many weeks. This rain isn’t refreshing, its oppressing.
No one is outside. A few cars drive by a little slower and encumbered towards their destination. As the rain frustrated my progress of expanding my life – it has me start reflecting on what’s around me. I find this reflection stifling and depressing in this moment.
What is someone’s life constantly occurred as if a cloud throughout their life was following them around? A life without joy, or lightness, but one filled with heaviness, responsibility, thwartations, overwhelm, apathy, and resentment? I’m reminded of the point Cloud Gate which could life this cloud from a person’s life and see the joy in every moment.
08/01/10 – Dream Canyon
The sky was overcast with a dark blue sheen to the ominous clouds. Rarely a ray of light would make it through, endowing the canyon forest with a cool light. The forest was mostly quiet today save for the few scurrying chipmunks and the occasional chatter of birds – chatter which resembled interested conversation about the hiker in their midst. The bluish tint to the environment hinted of the coming of the waters. I knew I didn’t have that long before the storm would descend.
As I sat atop the canyon overlooking boulder creek, I saw 3 small moving specs. Being 300 feet above the hikers, I saw only their general milling as they and a dog tried to ford the rushing stream over a log they had positioned for said purpose. As one by one, they crossed the log, they waived their arms from side to side to remain in balance while the white-capped river churned below them.
The dog was visibly upset for having been left behind as there was no visible crossing to be had. The hikers moved on, leaving their dog behind. I moved to a different vantage point along the upper cliffs. The shades of shale intermingled with the light green mosses and lichens gave this place a worn appearance. The spectrum of color washed the hills with mostly dark blue green evergreens, and the fluorescent shades of lichens. The air was teetering on the verge of cold, yet it was heavily laden with moisture – ready to congeal into rain.
Looking at the churning of the river I wondered why when water becomes upset that it churns with such madness – becoming white and frothy? Like crazed anxiety is perturbs the surface, revealing nothing of its depths below and hissing with its roiling and churning about. If I were to encounter someone in clinic who exhibits this, I would think that their turmoil in the present was a distraction against the real issues in the depths below and that all I was seeing was the surface superficiality. I’m not quite sure what this symbolizes for me as yet.
As I looked towards the west I heard rolling thunder – as if several large boulders were loosed and rolling down the mountain crushing all in their way. The storm announced itself with a shout throughout the stratosphere and the ground below that the coming of the deluge is nigh. This is why nature has been so quiet. All animals ready themselves and retreat from the tyranny that is to come. In the I Ching, the Chinese saw that the power of Thunder was likened to a vast arousing, an awakening, and taking action in an area of life in which Thunder echoed. It symbolized the thrust of wood energy creating birth between the gates of creation – the mixing of the Water element with the Fire at the Gate of Life. The exact opposite of stillness – it alerts the distant and frightens the near – not necessarily to retreat into hiding, but to take action and move from complacency.
Perhaps we as human beings need this kind of shock to our system every now and again to wake us up from slumber over issues we’ve not been taking care of. When we’ve not been watering our gardens, our minds, our spirits, our friendships, our relationships – a shocking symptom comes along like thunder to shock us into reality and instill some much needed fear that we’re not immortal and cannot do as we please without taking action to ensure our long term survival.
As the thunder rolled in the west, my eyes were drawn to the east. Something so obvious which was unclear to me before, had become clear. While I knew that vision and planning were powers necessary for all plant life to extrapolate a direction for its growth, I wondered how these powers translated from plants into creatures who’s growth is more flexible, self-directed, and not as fixed as plants themselves – for plants don’t have a vision of what is beyond their immediate environment. They grow where they are and don’t move about the place in the form of anything other than seeds – and as seeds, when they find themselves in a location – they make do with what they have available without complaining that the circumstances didn’t bring them into greener pastures.
Plants are ruled more by fate than they are by destiny – for their destiny is to be great – yet fate can deliver them into resources that aren’t necessarily favorable to them fulfilling that destiny. Humans and other animals live as nomads – using their powers of vision, planning, and cunning to locate the most favorable conditions to their self-expression. Again, our destinies are colored by fate – but we have the option to move ourselves, and not become resigned to our circumstances.
As I gazed on the receding landscape I became clearer on the issues of perspective, the future, and issues of clarity over life’s path. As the canyon walls receded away from me, they showed behind them the next canyon valley. Outlined by that mountaintop was the shape of the next mountain, and the next one after that. Each subsequent mountain in the distance became less detailed, more far away, less known, and fuzzier. While I could see across the canyon with great fidelity and was aware of each crevice and surface if I cared to caress it with my eye, the further I looked the less clear the shapes and structures would become. Where I could see individual trees ahead, beyond all I could see were forests on mountains, and beyond that, all I could see were mountains – even the colors receded from clarity to indistinctness – from patches of various greens, blues, and grays to washes of greens, blues, and misty grays off in the distance. The further I looked, detail turned into generality - predictable, to the unpredictable.
Is this not how our plans for our lives, our ideas, hopes, dreams, and destinies are structured? What we see right in front of us can be seen clear – and we can calculate our next step towards maneuvering around a canyon. We can make decisions and choices in light of our existing circumstances – but our visions into the future are general, indistinct, fuzzy, and shapeless. We are no clearer about our future than when we are looking at a receding mountainscape to know that the mountain ahead can be reached, nor what it will look like upon closer inspection. Will there be water? Will there be shelter? All we can say is that round the bend, there will be another mountain – but beyond that we can have no certainty of anything unless we’ve been there before.
As a species we spend so much time gazing into the unknown future, and even more time gazing into the past. The past gives us details, informs us of what to expect, and allows us to make predictions about what is likely to occur round the next bend. This is the key distinction between creatures that live in the hands of the gods, and those who seek to constantly define their own destiny. Those who rely on the past, and predict the future can thrive or be immobilized by it as all decisions for action or inaction are made in the light of them. Those who live in the hands of the gods do not need to know as much about what is round the next bend and all decisions for action or inaction are made in the light of the present moment. To our species, planning is more necessary to our survival than to other species who can rely on food and shelter always being present. The deer can live in the hand of the gods for it knows that the grass will sustain it, and the tree will shelter it from the rain. But us humans, we need to know where the deer will be staying for the night, so we need to map out its routines, and make appropriate plans for it, letting none go to waste, for we don’t know when we’ll be able to hunt the next one.
As hunter-gathers, we learned to make predictions about whether our pray would be round the corner or not, through experience, and following the tracks – but our survival was based on hope that the indistinct vision of our future would bear detail when we walked towards it – and that this detail would contain deer and elk for our survival. We can’t escape from this decision-making system that relies on past and future – but perhaps we can learn from the dear, and from the hunter-gatherer that decisions are based just as much on the present moment than they are on the past and the future.
As a culture we practice the art of prediction from morning to night. Our whole business of invention and science is the institutionalization of prediction. Technology is the art of thwarting the future by predicting it, and coming up with a solution to either make that future happen more frequently, or less frequently. Our educational institutions exist to teach us about the past so as to predict and manipulate the future. We’ve invented mathematics, physics, chemistry, and medicine all to understand the past and predict the future. Mathematics is our new fortune-teller.
Our need to control the circumstances and the outcomes of every action have us turn the beauty of the unknown mountainscape into maps to represent our territories and our future lands of conquests.
As practitioners of medicine we too are priests of affecting the future, we take a case history, create a prognosis (pre-knowledge), and a treatment plan to arrive at the prognosis. This is taking the work of the Tao out of the hands of the Tao and into our own. No wonder we’re all so exhausted. There must be a balance between planning and decision making and simply being?
The more planning and decision making we do – the more we try to outsmart the gods and take the mysterious mountainscape and paint detail on it – the more we become resigned and cynical to being surprised by life. We micro-manage our environment. We many have a sick planner if he/she is working on overdrive – leaving the person in a perpetual state of anxiety over the future, needing to plan ever-increasing levels of detail – and leaving the person uncomfortable in the present moment being just as it is.
Personally I’m not comfortable sitting at the top of the mountain of my life and seeing vague visions of who I will be, what I will do, where I will live, how will my practice work. If I plan it all out now, I know I will not have as much fun discovering it along the way – but, if I do plan it out more, I can rely on certain things to be there – and for the future to not be as scary. For right now, I’m enjoying sitting on top of a mountain, not knowing what is round the corner of the next bend and leaving it in the hands of the gods – in the hands of mystery.
I can learn a lesson from plants here – and be content in the soil I am growing in, for living in the hands of the gods is a wonderful and bountiful place, and doesn’t require my intervention if I trust that the mysterious mountainscape is mysterious for a reason. And because I’m not a plant – I know that I have a destiny somewhere round the next mountain – but perhaps I won’t be in such a hurry to get there.
As I look down on the hikers – there’s now four of them. The one in the orange shirt is the visible leader. He’s forging ahead, analyzing the territory, making decisions and plans about which direction to go next – back packs on their shoulders – no doubt they’ll need to camp to get out of the storm soon. The other three are meandering their way behind him. One directly on the first’s path. The other two on their own meandering path towards the same destination. Two have an objective and are more concerned with what is round the bend, and two are more concerned with what is present and available in the moment.
Modern day dogma, led by western purveyors of eastern thought, brings to the west the mysteries of the present moment. Books such as “The Power of Now”, self-development workshops of all kinds, meditation classes, etc – all call us to spend time in the present. As a species we have forgotten what comes to all of nature completely naturally – and that is the state of simply being in the here and in the now. But this practice or art of being present is really an art that is natural to plants, and animals, and not to humans evolved into today.
The following is excerpted from Wikipedia: The present is the time that is associated with the events perceived directly, not as a recollection or a speculation (artifacts of the mind). The present can be perceived as the 'eliminator of possibilities' that transfers future into past.
Hmm. I could spend a good many hours contemplating the last statement. But in essence – perhaps the reason we don’t like spending time in the present is that it leaves us feeling robbed of something else that we could be moving towards. The present seems to steal my future! The unspoken cultural conditioning is that I should be doing something about my future in every present moment. Just like now, sitting at the top of the mountain – I should be analyzing the elements, getting brilliant insights, and furthering my education.
I found that when I try, I get nothing useful. Its only when I stop trying and simply stare into space do things start coming up.
As I sat atop the canyon overlooking boulder creek, I saw 3 small moving specs. Being 300 feet above the hikers, I saw only their general milling as they and a dog tried to ford the rushing stream over a log they had positioned for said purpose. As one by one, they crossed the log, they waived their arms from side to side to remain in balance while the white-capped river churned below them.
The dog was visibly upset for having been left behind as there was no visible crossing to be had. The hikers moved on, leaving their dog behind. I moved to a different vantage point along the upper cliffs. The shades of shale intermingled with the light green mosses and lichens gave this place a worn appearance. The spectrum of color washed the hills with mostly dark blue green evergreens, and the fluorescent shades of lichens. The air was teetering on the verge of cold, yet it was heavily laden with moisture – ready to congeal into rain.
Looking at the churning of the river I wondered why when water becomes upset that it churns with such madness – becoming white and frothy? Like crazed anxiety is perturbs the surface, revealing nothing of its depths below and hissing with its roiling and churning about. If I were to encounter someone in clinic who exhibits this, I would think that their turmoil in the present was a distraction against the real issues in the depths below and that all I was seeing was the surface superficiality. I’m not quite sure what this symbolizes for me as yet.
As I looked towards the west I heard rolling thunder – as if several large boulders were loosed and rolling down the mountain crushing all in their way. The storm announced itself with a shout throughout the stratosphere and the ground below that the coming of the deluge is nigh. This is why nature has been so quiet. All animals ready themselves and retreat from the tyranny that is to come. In the I Ching, the Chinese saw that the power of Thunder was likened to a vast arousing, an awakening, and taking action in an area of life in which Thunder echoed. It symbolized the thrust of wood energy creating birth between the gates of creation – the mixing of the Water element with the Fire at the Gate of Life. The exact opposite of stillness – it alerts the distant and frightens the near – not necessarily to retreat into hiding, but to take action and move from complacency.
Perhaps we as human beings need this kind of shock to our system every now and again to wake us up from slumber over issues we’ve not been taking care of. When we’ve not been watering our gardens, our minds, our spirits, our friendships, our relationships – a shocking symptom comes along like thunder to shock us into reality and instill some much needed fear that we’re not immortal and cannot do as we please without taking action to ensure our long term survival.
As the thunder rolled in the west, my eyes were drawn to the east. Something so obvious which was unclear to me before, had become clear. While I knew that vision and planning were powers necessary for all plant life to extrapolate a direction for its growth, I wondered how these powers translated from plants into creatures who’s growth is more flexible, self-directed, and not as fixed as plants themselves – for plants don’t have a vision of what is beyond their immediate environment. They grow where they are and don’t move about the place in the form of anything other than seeds – and as seeds, when they find themselves in a location – they make do with what they have available without complaining that the circumstances didn’t bring them into greener pastures.
Plants are ruled more by fate than they are by destiny – for their destiny is to be great – yet fate can deliver them into resources that aren’t necessarily favorable to them fulfilling that destiny. Humans and other animals live as nomads – using their powers of vision, planning, and cunning to locate the most favorable conditions to their self-expression. Again, our destinies are colored by fate – but we have the option to move ourselves, and not become resigned to our circumstances.
As I gazed on the receding landscape I became clearer on the issues of perspective, the future, and issues of clarity over life’s path. As the canyon walls receded away from me, they showed behind them the next canyon valley. Outlined by that mountaintop was the shape of the next mountain, and the next one after that. Each subsequent mountain in the distance became less detailed, more far away, less known, and fuzzier. While I could see across the canyon with great fidelity and was aware of each crevice and surface if I cared to caress it with my eye, the further I looked the less clear the shapes and structures would become. Where I could see individual trees ahead, beyond all I could see were forests on mountains, and beyond that, all I could see were mountains – even the colors receded from clarity to indistinctness – from patches of various greens, blues, and grays to washes of greens, blues, and misty grays off in the distance. The further I looked, detail turned into generality - predictable, to the unpredictable.
Is this not how our plans for our lives, our ideas, hopes, dreams, and destinies are structured? What we see right in front of us can be seen clear – and we can calculate our next step towards maneuvering around a canyon. We can make decisions and choices in light of our existing circumstances – but our visions into the future are general, indistinct, fuzzy, and shapeless. We are no clearer about our future than when we are looking at a receding mountainscape to know that the mountain ahead can be reached, nor what it will look like upon closer inspection. Will there be water? Will there be shelter? All we can say is that round the bend, there will be another mountain – but beyond that we can have no certainty of anything unless we’ve been there before.
As a species we spend so much time gazing into the unknown future, and even more time gazing into the past. The past gives us details, informs us of what to expect, and allows us to make predictions about what is likely to occur round the next bend. This is the key distinction between creatures that live in the hands of the gods, and those who seek to constantly define their own destiny. Those who rely on the past, and predict the future can thrive or be immobilized by it as all decisions for action or inaction are made in the light of them. Those who live in the hands of the gods do not need to know as much about what is round the next bend and all decisions for action or inaction are made in the light of the present moment. To our species, planning is more necessary to our survival than to other species who can rely on food and shelter always being present. The deer can live in the hand of the gods for it knows that the grass will sustain it, and the tree will shelter it from the rain. But us humans, we need to know where the deer will be staying for the night, so we need to map out its routines, and make appropriate plans for it, letting none go to waste, for we don’t know when we’ll be able to hunt the next one.
As hunter-gathers, we learned to make predictions about whether our pray would be round the corner or not, through experience, and following the tracks – but our survival was based on hope that the indistinct vision of our future would bear detail when we walked towards it – and that this detail would contain deer and elk for our survival. We can’t escape from this decision-making system that relies on past and future – but perhaps we can learn from the dear, and from the hunter-gatherer that decisions are based just as much on the present moment than they are on the past and the future.
As a culture we practice the art of prediction from morning to night. Our whole business of invention and science is the institutionalization of prediction. Technology is the art of thwarting the future by predicting it, and coming up with a solution to either make that future happen more frequently, or less frequently. Our educational institutions exist to teach us about the past so as to predict and manipulate the future. We’ve invented mathematics, physics, chemistry, and medicine all to understand the past and predict the future. Mathematics is our new fortune-teller.
Our need to control the circumstances and the outcomes of every action have us turn the beauty of the unknown mountainscape into maps to represent our territories and our future lands of conquests.
As practitioners of medicine we too are priests of affecting the future, we take a case history, create a prognosis (pre-knowledge), and a treatment plan to arrive at the prognosis. This is taking the work of the Tao out of the hands of the Tao and into our own. No wonder we’re all so exhausted. There must be a balance between planning and decision making and simply being?
The more planning and decision making we do – the more we try to outsmart the gods and take the mysterious mountainscape and paint detail on it – the more we become resigned and cynical to being surprised by life. We micro-manage our environment. We many have a sick planner if he/she is working on overdrive – leaving the person in a perpetual state of anxiety over the future, needing to plan ever-increasing levels of detail – and leaving the person uncomfortable in the present moment being just as it is.
Personally I’m not comfortable sitting at the top of the mountain of my life and seeing vague visions of who I will be, what I will do, where I will live, how will my practice work. If I plan it all out now, I know I will not have as much fun discovering it along the way – but, if I do plan it out more, I can rely on certain things to be there – and for the future to not be as scary. For right now, I’m enjoying sitting on top of a mountain, not knowing what is round the corner of the next bend and leaving it in the hands of the gods – in the hands of mystery.
I can learn a lesson from plants here – and be content in the soil I am growing in, for living in the hands of the gods is a wonderful and bountiful place, and doesn’t require my intervention if I trust that the mysterious mountainscape is mysterious for a reason. And because I’m not a plant – I know that I have a destiny somewhere round the next mountain – but perhaps I won’t be in such a hurry to get there.
As I look down on the hikers – there’s now four of them. The one in the orange shirt is the visible leader. He’s forging ahead, analyzing the territory, making decisions and plans about which direction to go next – back packs on their shoulders – no doubt they’ll need to camp to get out of the storm soon. The other three are meandering their way behind him. One directly on the first’s path. The other two on their own meandering path towards the same destination. Two have an objective and are more concerned with what is round the bend, and two are more concerned with what is present and available in the moment.
Modern day dogma, led by western purveyors of eastern thought, brings to the west the mysteries of the present moment. Books such as “The Power of Now”, self-development workshops of all kinds, meditation classes, etc – all call us to spend time in the present. As a species we have forgotten what comes to all of nature completely naturally – and that is the state of simply being in the here and in the now. But this practice or art of being present is really an art that is natural to plants, and animals, and not to humans evolved into today.
The following is excerpted from Wikipedia: The present is the time that is associated with the events perceived directly, not as a recollection or a speculation (artifacts of the mind). The present can be perceived as the 'eliminator of possibilities' that transfers future into past.
Hmm. I could spend a good many hours contemplating the last statement. But in essence – perhaps the reason we don’t like spending time in the present is that it leaves us feeling robbed of something else that we could be moving towards. The present seems to steal my future! The unspoken cultural conditioning is that I should be doing something about my future in every present moment. Just like now, sitting at the top of the mountain – I should be analyzing the elements, getting brilliant insights, and furthering my education.
I found that when I try, I get nothing useful. Its only when I stop trying and simply stare into space do things start coming up.
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