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.