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.