Five Elements Course

THE ELEMENT OF EARTH

A DEEP DIVE

POSITIVE ATTRIBUTES.

NOURISHING. COMFORTING. STRONG. RESILIENT. HUMBLE. SELFLESS.

DANGERS.

LETHARGY. UNIMAGINATIVE. SELF PITY. SEDENTARY. LIFE ABSORIBING.

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EARTH AND HEART

Fire is inseparable from the heart. Something woven through songs, poems, and tales that go back for centuries, if not thousands of years. Fire is also one of the most important aspects of love, whether that is love of a person. A job, something divine, or even just our love of a given day when all seems right and our hearts are just happy to be alive. This leads us to a key pursuit in life, which is what fire is on us to generate and share, and what is the fire in others we need to connect to in order to energize our journeys In life? If we are always waiting for the fire of another to get us going, are we ignoring, perhaps negating the importance of our own internal fire? And is our mind fooling us as to what it is that can ignite our hearts, have we trained them to misunderstand the power and purpose of fire, our passion and sense of warmth and connection?

To dig a little deeper I would like to address one misconception about fire and our hearts. There is a romantic notion that if we just open our hearts and share our fires, somehow the world should respond and shower us with a means to share our passion. In reality we have two aspects to fire. One is the inspiration and passion we foster within them, which must be kept in balance lest we become blinded and overwhelmed by passion. The other is something we learn often the hard way. That is the protective layer we must develop around our hearts. This must be something that breathes, yet protects us from the foolishness that can allow others to steal or snuff out our fires. In tis, Chinese Traditional Medicine recognizes the pericardium as a very important part of our health. This is essentially the physical protective layer around the heart. Symbolically, it represents our ability to obtain and energize wisdom. Without this, our hearts are open targets. This is just life. It is not that anything has chosen to get us specifically. Welcome to life. There is a jungle aspect to life, a thing of predators and prey, and the sooner we get over that, the paranoia part of it, we can start to craft wiser souls. So, let’s investigate this relationship a little deeper starting with wisdom and fire.

Interesting fact. It is not your heart that creates the warmth in your body. This actually starts in the lungs. Oxygen exposed to chlorine in your system creates combustion like an engine, which is why we can breathe cold air and still create warmth. The heart’s job is to move that warmth around along with everything else that our blood distributes through body, nutrients and oxygen.

EARTH AND WISDOM

There are many ways to look at life, angles we can interpret life by. To this we need to discuss this notion of wisdom. Wisdom in the world of understanding life is greater than knowledge. Knowledge is information that may or may not have any value to us. We go to school to get information and much of this turns out to be useful, yet we also discover how useless much of it is. We enter life to get wisdom. Wisdom has to account for chaos, for change and for the reality that some situations present multiple equally valid solutions to them depending on where we are standing and what our goals are. Wisdom also must account for people, processes of interacting and relating and for emotions, as these come into play in many situations in life, whether those are ours or that of another. So what does this have to do with fire and with our hearts?

In many schools of Eastern philosophy wisdom is considered to be housed in our hearts, not in our heads. Perhaps this is because our heads tend to lean to the logical side of life and logic represents only half of life. Our minds are also prone to falling into fear and delusion. Fire is perhaps our most fearless element, as it is fire that often summons our courage. Our hearts like to cut to the chase. They are either nourished or they are not. Our minds love a good runaround. Our hearts, like our minds, must earn their wisdom through experiences, often the painful kind. Passion, like lighting a match is the easy part. What fire ensues? A wise fire or runaway inferno? Inspiration, jumping up and down with pom poms is also the easy part. Even compassion is easy as it is not hard to extend compassion to anything, but is that wise? Fire demands wisdom as wisdom as much as anything. What is more painful than a heart that is paying the price for acting blindly or foolishly?

Wisdom must find a home in the heart not just because that is where it belongs, but because it really has no option unless we want to fall into a life of cold bitterness. Without wisdom and protection, love is a fleeting thing that will always bring us more suffering than joy. And it is when the latter settles in, we turn to substances and unhealthy distractions. Fire is one of our most, probably the most desired elements. What is a cold life, an empty house in our soul as an end game? Is this something we can ever truly be comfortable with? One could argue that all we do, accomplish, strive for, create, is to make some room for a little fire to burn and perhaps grow in our lives.

When we think of wisdom, we can think that the goal is to be wise so we can be smart. I am a smart guy., maybe to the smartest guy, but relatively smart . I hit a point in my life when smart wasn’t doing anything for me and much as I tried to leverage that in the best way possible. We can be very smart, yet live in a cold world inside our soul. Wisdom is not about being smart. It is about learning the art of being alive. It is about learning the rules that allow our hearts to prevail and our “fires” to find their own places to wisely burn and engage with life. It is about knowing where to put our inspiration and passion, what to bond to, and how to express compassion, knowing that there are best practices to everything. Selfishness will ultimately collapse in on our hearts. There is a shelf life to selfishness, one we can extend for a fair amount of time. Selfishness disrupts the protective layer around our hearts. It cannot breath. It becomes a thing of demands and expectations. In this we are living outside of our heart and not within it. We are, how do you say, playing with fire. IN the end life wins. The rules prevail. It is all choices and outcomes. Wisdom is the path to anything rewarding, and wisdom is just that, a path, not an answer. You want to master fire? Wisely engage with love? You better sign up for wisdom.

AN ASSESSMENT FOR YOU

1. Do you understand and embrace that it is a process to develop a wise heart? That it can take many many years to gain the experiences necessary to forge such a thing?

Learning to use fire wisely is a craft. Tending to fires, knowing where and when to burn them and how to use and for what. Keeping them from destroying ourselves or others, is this not an art? Our hearts are the most impatient part pf us and yet we must remind them it is a long journey. Fire requires patience and restraint. When it is in the right place it burns just fine on its own.

2. Do you take time to think about wise ways to protect your heart without closing it off completely?

Another art of fire and life is that sometimes it is a fine line between closing our selves off in fear, and protecting our fires while giving them room to breathe. Fires breathes air just like we do. In fact, they live by breathing and sometimes that is all we need to do is just breath and trust our hearts will open more fully when they are ready.

3. Do you only associate fire with love and romance?

This is a great mistake as our hearts need balance. We need to be able to fuel our fires from many sources so we do not overburden any one of them. We need to find inspiration in friendships, in work, in service to others. If we are foolish enough to think that romance alone will keep our hearts alive and healthy, we will wind up on a rollercoaster ride of emotion we can never tame. Do not settle for that. It is unsustainable in the long run. Whatever we build on this notion will all come crashing down. Put your fire in more than one place. Maybe one to start, but know that your heart needs branches.

4. Do you take time to observe people who seem to be living wisely and take notes, or do you rely on the sensational stories in media to guide your notions of an inspired life?

We see what we want to see to validate the stories we want to be true. We can romanticize the worlds of others. Being in close proximity to those who wisely manage their hearts reveals a clearer story of the work and compromises required to keep our fires durning. We need mentors and perhaps it is those who have come to understand the workings of the heart and the element of fire as our most desired mentors. These are people who have put aside romantic notions in favor of real practical practices that can nourish heart driven lives.

EARTH AND EXCITEMENT

When we talk about the elements, we address must states they all have. All elements have their states of balance, their states of overactivity, and their states of weakness or collapse. The first thing to address is that we are human and vulnerable. This means we will all fall out of balance from time to time, one way or the other. Life is a balancing act not a rigid thing of forging perfection. Perhaps it is regarding the fire of our hearts that experiences this change of states most profoundly. Looking back on our lives how can we not see those phases our hearts were wide open, slammed shut, hiding in a corner, or perhaps coasting along in a sweet spot? These states are unavoidable. All of them. What we want is softer transitions between them and less of a mad rollercoaster ride so we can allow our hearts need to breath, heal and recover, strengthen, and expand and contract with life. This is how we gain that allusive wisdom. We assimilate wisdom when we withdraw. We empower that wisdom when we open up and connect. Excitement, which is considered to be an imbalance. is our hearts on overload. Feeling excitement is not our enemy. Clinging to excitement is our danger. Wanting excitement out of its place and time, as it is only a spark, is our ignorance.

We need to be kind to our self as an entry way to any self understanding. We cannot eliminate our ability to be excited nor should we. Excitement serves a purpose. The problem is when we get addicted to excitement, when we expect things to be exciting, we can disallow our hearts from settling into a comfort zone which allows them to prevail over the long haul. Excitement is not the win. As I have matured I increasingly get scared by my own excitement. It is that knowledge that what goes up must come down. What I am really scared of is not having the wisdom to wisely manage where my excitement is taking me. To this we need trust. Excitement must lead to trust. Not trust that fireworks will endlessly shoot out of the sky, but that if our goal is to become a wise version of our self, all the lessons will arrive on time, both bitter and sweet.

Excitement is also one of the most powerful ways people self sabotage their ability to achieve their goals. If we fixate on excitement, the minute the excitement goes away, we give up. In doing so our hearts collapse. No! Our souls cry. We are just getting started! Don’t give up! But excitement always leads to a fall in energy, this is natural. It is an auto correction, like when we throw a bunch of wood in our fire and it just explodes with flames. It needs to settle. That is our entry way to wise fire, allowing fire to settle. When we allow fire to settle, it reveals our nature, even our destiny. Many people fear boring lives. In fact, many people see freedom and success as means to excitement. And this all leads to am eventual collapse as our souls love nothing more than to hum. They just want a nice little cozy fire. That is all our souls ever really want, not the excitement.

AN ASSESSMENT FOR YOU

1. Are you in any way addicted to excitement? That is do you find your self more interested in short term exciting things than long term things that are perhaps less exciting?

It must be noted that everything is relative to where and when we are in life. When we are young it is fine to pursue exciting things just to pursue exciting things. It is even fair game to be excited about things that are maybe not really that exciting. This is part of youth. As we mature we need to become masters of managing energy and this is why we must be more cautious about getting excited because excitement burns our precious energy like wasting wood on a fire that may have little reward in burning.

2. Do you feel like your heart is on a mad rollercoaster ride of igniting only to collapse more often that seems fair or appropriate?

This is an addiction to excitement and drama. The world is filled with drama and we are led to believe this is what life is all about, the best it gets, and it will all work out. It only works out when we stop creating drama, seeking drama, and we let go of our addiction to things having to be exciting. All lasting things cease to be exciting yet can still be rewarding. The loss of excitement some see as a failure, either of others or of themselves. Life softens. Soft landings is what we want. Manageable fires.

3. Do you recognize excitement as a temporary state that must give way to tasks and persistent practices that are sometimes tedious and often challenging?

This is our answer to the previous question.

4. Do have any practice of calming yourself down when things get super exciting just to keep your self grounded?

All fires lead us to work. A wise fire leads us to rewarding work. Excitement must be taken with a dose of calm humility because if we are lucky, it will lead us to lots of work, lots of rewarding work that feeds from our true nature. Being calm yet energized is another great art of life that leads to longevity and strength that applies to every element in our system.

5. Do you find your self looking at the lives of others thinking, they have such exciting lives, why can’t my life be more exciting?

One of our great curses is our comparative nature. We compare our lives to others and this is natural. This can become like staring at the flames of a fire fixated on the dancing magic in front of our eyes. Anyone can stare at a fire. This tells us nothing about fire for what it truly is. Fire can give many the illusion that they just need some magical power to get them where they need to go. There is no magic to realizing anything in life. Even the things that nourish our hearts. There is energy, wisdom, and action. Rockstars seem to live exciting lives and yet they must get on buses and show up and deliver one repetitive great show after another. They can be hounded, even stalked by fans. Many of them turn to drugs and alcohol to deal Wirth managing the madness of their lives. Exciting is over rated. Joy and contentment we can bring to anything. This is a very zen notion and reason to spend more time looking in the mirror embracing our potential to become exactly what life is asking us to become, nothing more and nothing less.

FIRE AND ALLURE

We have talked about the allure of fire. The magical magnetism it seems to possess. To this we can speak to the good and not so good side of this trait of fire. While allure is engaging it can also bind us powerfully to the illusive nature of life. That is the superficial nature of life. Being attractive as a person is nice thing to have in general, but when all people see is your attractiveness, it becomes a curse. Throughout history humans have adored shiny things, whether that be gold, or diamonds or people. Yet it is all so subjective isn’t it? This is one of our skills in life, enjoying the illusive nature of it while seeing that for what it truly is. It is not the substance of life. Have most of us not dated an attractive person at some point only to discover we jumped into a fire with no real substance. We try to hide this behind our passion for the superficial, but it all leads back to something missing, some thing that we can’t live without. If we are wise we learn to put fire in its place. The illusive nature of life cannot be our standard, our goal, our means of self assessment, or we will spend ur lives chasing shadows and mirrors, literally. This is a thing programmed into us. The rich and powerful throughout history surround themselves with shiny and beautiful things. Isn’t that what we want? Is not that a testimony to what we have become? I have come to believe one of the greatest contributions and symbols of Western culture is a pair of blue jeans. Everyone has them. The rich and the poor. It is the one thing we all feel comfortable in. Human in. Jeans are not made of silk or expensive wool, they were originally made from surplus tent canvas. I think a perfect life feels like a pair of blue jeans. And a wise person feels in their sweetest spot in a pair of blue jeans. How did we get from fire to blue jeans? Who cares. It’s a good story.

AN ASSESSMENT FOR YOU

1. Do you feel in any way less of a person because you lack some form of natural ability to attract people?

Learning to use fire wisely is a craft. Tending to fires, knowing where and when to burn them and how to use and for what. Keeping them from destroying ourselves or others, is this not an art? Our hearts are the most impatient part pf us and yet we must remind them it is a long journey. Fire requires patience and restraint. When it is in the right place it burns just fine on its own.

2. Do you envy people who seem to have this gift?

Another art of fire and life is that sometimes it is a fine line between closing our selves off in fear, and protecting our fires while giving them room to breathe. Fires breathes air just like we do. In fact, they live by breathing and sometimes that is all we need to do is just breath and trust our hearts will open more fully when they are ready.

3. Do you take pleasure in being alone, solitude, not needing the approval of others?

This is a great mistake as our hearts need balance. We need to be able to fuel our fires from many sources so we do not overburden any one of them. We need to find inspiration in friendships, in work, in service to others. If we are foolish enough to think that romance alone will keep our hearts alive and healthy, we will wind up on a rollercoaster ride of emotion we can never tame. Do not settle for that. It is unsustainable in the long run. Whatever we build on this notion will all come crashing down. Put your fire in more than one place. Maybe one to start, but know that your heart needs branches.

4. Do you recognize that all rewarding things are defined by commitment and perseverance and not by the icing on top, the superficial nature they may appear to have?

We see what we want to see to validate the stories we want to be true. We can romanticize the worlds of others. Being in close proximity to those who wisely manage their hearts reveals a clearer story of the work and compromises required to keep our fires durning. We need mentors and perhaps it is those who have come to understand the workings of the heart and the element of fire as our most desired mentors. These are people who have put aside romantic notions in favor of real practical practices that can nourish heart driven lives.

5. Do you trust that when you relax and just be your self that you have a natural allure that can guide you to what is best and healthiest for you?

We see what we want to see to validate the stories we want to be true. We can romanticize the worlds of others. Being in close proximity to those who wisely manage their hearts reveals a clearer story of the work and compromises required to keep our fires durning. We need mentors and perhaps it is those who have come to understand the workings of the heart and the element of fire as our most desired mentors. These are people who have put aside romantic notions in favor of real practical practices that can nourish heart driven lives.

6. Do you allow yourself to appreciate beautiful things without wanting to possess them or compare your self to them?

We see what we want to see to validate the stories we want to be true. We can romanticize the worlds of others. Being in close proximity to those who wisely manage their hearts reveals a clearer story of the work and compromises required to keep our fires durning. We need mentors and perhaps it is those who have come to understand the workings of the heart and the element of fire as our most desired mentors. These are people who have put aside romantic notions in favor of real practical practices that can nourish heart driven lives.

7. Do you tend to seek things of substance are do you generally gravitate to the superficial, surface nature of things first?

Do you tend to seek things of substance are do you generally gravitate to the superficial, surface nature of things first?

8. Do you allow others to inspire you, or do you take this an offense to your own ability or need to inspire?

Do you allow others to inspire you, or do you take this an offense to your own ability or need to inspire?

FIRE AND COLLAPSE

I always say the joyful parts of life take care of themselves. It is the challenges and pain that we need to work on most. So we are going to poke around at our hearts and their fires a little more here. Of course fire has a collapsed state and we know it. Sometimes that is welcomed, that is our hearts are just tired and exhausted and it feels good to just let them collapse for a bit. At other times this can cause us to feel bitterness, sadness, even intense despair. Here we are again. A collapsed heart. A loveless life. Why me? When will I ever feel the love I seek? The heart collapses for a reason. Life is hard on the heart. It can be tremendous cruel to anyone. We can grow up in abusive families and that abuse can be indescribably cruel and heartbreaking. We can lose people we love at any time in life. Perhaps an ailment has taken the passion for life out of us. Or, a blow to our career has kicked out of a dream job? Perhaps all we have known is hard, unrewarding work. No, it is not all self created, but much of it becomes self created. Through our highs and lows, our joy and suffering, our hearts are there and have always been there for us. People come and go, the good and bad times, but our hearts keep pumping and this we need to stop and recognize. It is in collapse that the fool only sees the emptiness, the suffering the heart can feel. The wise see the strength of the heart the potential, the ability for it to keep us moving in the hardest of circumstances. My god, I am still here! And perhaps with some patience and perseverance, I can find my way to a place where my heart gets to breath a little more, feel some love and find the wisdom to house that love.

A collapsed heart can bring up all of our fears regarding love, the future, what gives us a reason to live, whether there is anything really worth being passionate about in life. Yet we must embrace that even in most charmed life, we will wind up in places where we profoundly ask these same questions. There are people whose lives seem immensely fortunate and suddenly they lose a child, or something happens and their hearts collapse. With all the grace happening around them it is impossible for the heart to overcome such a thing, at least in the short run. The wisest of the wisest, strongest of the strong, encounter times in life when their hearts just collapse, sometimes in the most profound of ways. This is just because life is life. The capacity for joy is endless in life. It is impossible to comprehend the levels of joy we can experience, but so too is our capacity for suffering. There are places life can send any of us at a moments notice and we are humbled to the core, our fires seemingly extinguished, maybe never to return? Put your hand on your heart and feel its warmth. It is still there beating through all of this. Even if it feels painful to do so. Breath and let it relax. We seek joy when we are ready. I am the result of overcoming many phases of collapse. Many of them long, 2, 5, 12 years of repair and healing. It is worth the perseverance, the time and attention, even if happiness seems miles away, maybe out of sight,

When we see embers sitting on the ground, we do not see a fire. It is the end of a fire? Only until we can throw something on those embers. What fire burns forever without becoming a pile of embers. This is all a collapsed heart is. There is no fire. Yet the potential is always present as long as our hearts are beating.

AN ASSESSMENT FOR YOU

4. Rate the state of your heart on a scale of 1-5.

1. I am overjoyed. My heart is so full I feel like I could explode with energy. I am not even sure what to do with all of the inspiration and energy that I have in my heart. I am on fire, baby!

2. I am in a good place with my heart. I am in a sweet spot, passionate and happy about life and what I am doing.

2. I am okay. Not especially inspired, but I know what it is like to be miserable and things could be better, could be worse relative to my heart.

3. Heart is collapsed. I feel emotionally numb. It is painful when I stop to think about it.

5. Heart is collapsed and broken. It is very painful and I am in a constant state of despair.

2. In general, all things subject to change, how would you rate yourself in overcoming setbacks relating to your heart? This could be failed relations or perhaps disappointing circumstances around a career.

Of course we have times when we are more or less resilient. In general do you find yourself getting up relatively quickly or are you one to hide and fester over any form of loss. Sometimes this is a result of personal weakness but often it is a thing of disposition. Fire driven people can often tear through relationships bouncing around and rebounding much more ably than others. Water people not so much. They often need long stretches of time to process losses and emotional setbacks. We need to develop a sense of when we truly need to retreat and heal, and when we are just hiding, allowing our fear of having our hearts broken keeping us out of the game.

3. Did you have a traumatic childhood in which you felt like you entered adulthood with a collapsed heart before you even got started?

We all start somewhere. We all will wind up with broken hearts in need of repair. Fires needing to be re ignited. This is a place where we associate home, our default, as a home without a proper fire. It can haunt us, make us question our worthiness, but most importantly, it can lead us to thinking that there is a perfect way, or needs to be one. We are simply invited early to the world of the traumatized heart and it is our life's work to reclaim our hearts which is to learn the same lesson everyone else has to learn. Life is what you make it. Fires are everywhere and it is the traumatized child that can get an early start on rewriting their game of life. They have an opportunity to build strength and wisdom in their hearts, out of necessity, that can become a powerful ally to long term happiness even if life presents a great struggle in youth and young adulthood. The past should never be anyones master. It is the heart and the moment we all seek to follow. There is never a point in life when our lives do not cast a shadow or we are dealing with the shadows cast by others. This discussion goes way beyond fire, it is a a water discussion of courageous healing. It is the mind the wrestles with trauma. The heart is a spectator waiting for our minds to give them a chance to engage and overcome.

4. If so, do you have a plan, or do your recognize the need to heal and release that from your system? That you have time to do that, it does need to be an instant fix? Or do you just except that as being you? Have you identified yourself as someone that must carry that as a burden?

Hearts take time to heal. Commit to healing them. Don't place the burden or pressure of time on them. Just commit to healing them and ask for life to set you on a path of healing. Healing has two means and we need both. One is that soothing warm almost miraculous thing. The other is that painful, sometimes excruciating thing that feels like putting a broken bone back in place. For deep healing we need both and we need the time and place for those to happen where we feel safe and ready. We can make that happen. Life and our hearts will demand this of us at some point. Healing and fearlessness go hand in hand. Only the courageous get to heal the deepest wounds.

5. Do you understand and accept that it is inevitable for everyone to have times, sometimes long stretches in which our hearts feel closed, collapsed, and/or empty?

This is a tricky one. I am officially an older guy. I can say that. It is only age that has made me appreciate and understand that 5, even 10 years to profoundly heal and strengthen a part of us is worth the time and effort, even if that seems like an eternity. We make the mistake of thinking we are losing the best years four life to some issue with our heart. Life is truly a game of setting our selves up for happiness down the road. Do you truly want to see your best years as your youth and the last 30 years of your life as a slow miserable decline into sadness and despair? I hope not. The work, even the long stretches of persistence and healing can lead us to our best lives when it matters most, our later years. When wisdom finally opens our hearts we can celebrate a heart that can find joy and purpose over the long haul. If the best of you is behind you, look out. You missed something.

We will never master life. Life is it's own master. We can only be good listeners.

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Design: Wunderwerk
Images: Wunderwerk

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