Beautiful! My Minnesota childhood was in Bloomington, a ginormous suburb of Minneapolis, way back in the 1960s, but yes, winter was grand but spring was always anticipated and enjoyed. It felt like someone flipped a switch, and at long last winter began to slowly slip away.
Your skill with words is much appreciated. Potential to kinetic is a keeper! And your insight into the abortion issue is a breath of fresh air. So many of us seem to need to see everything in black and white...oops! There's another one...
Touched my heart again! When you write from the awareness within your senses, language flows through you unlike anyone else I have ever read….thank you!❤️
Your phrasing "infinite cycles from potential to form and back again" is evocative of exactly what the "tai ji tu" symbol is trying to represent.
The TCM teaching I have received postulates a lifetime as a natural "arc" in which a being which begins as pure "jing" (or, [inherited] potential), continually transforms "jing" into "shen" (spirit/experience/consciousness) through the processes of living, and naturally ends the process when it has transformed all of its "jing" into "shen".
Obviously, many people do meet a premature, non-natural end, "before their time" as it were, and yet all of us are somewhere on a natural lifetime's trajectory that has a natural beginning and a natural end, between which lie endless transformations.
Thank you for celebrating the "upswing" (which in the Chinese 5 phase theory corresponds to the springing upward nature of Wood. :)
Thanks Scotlyn for sharing the TCM understanding of the upswing. Is there an equivalent conversion of "shen" into "jing" that corresponds to ripening, pregnancy, creation of new potential from form/consciousness?
I also wanted to thank you for all of your perspectives on JMG's forums advocating for for seeing individuals rather than ideologies and questioning the fear that seems to percolate from all sides. I only wish that perspective could become more widespread :-).
Now there is a question! And I realise the answer would require me to draw symbols which are beyond my power to do here. Still, "jing" "shen" and "qi" are seen as the three treasures. "Jing" relates to earth and is the most concentrated/condensed, "shen" relates to heaven and is most diffuse, and "qi" relates to earth and is the go-between or harmoniser betwen heaven and earth which creates the human (or any other living being). Each human (or each being) has a lifetime "arc" which only goes in one direction, but the processes become cycles as one life has the capacity to make the "packaged potentiality", or seed, or condensed "jing", to connect to new life and set the cycle in motion again. Earth diffuses its moisture up to heaven, and heaven condenses to water the earth, and in between these two motions, living beings who carry out all of the transformations (using their "qi"), live and breathe.
Well, we all have to live and breathe, as best we can... is this not so? :)
I just had my first experience with TCM and acupuncture today, partly at the recommendation of a friend but also based on your discussions of it on JMG's forums. I think it will be a good fit for me.
Beautiful! My Minnesota childhood was in Bloomington, a ginormous suburb of Minneapolis, way back in the 1960s, but yes, winter was grand but spring was always anticipated and enjoyed. It felt like someone flipped a switch, and at long last winter began to slowly slip away.
Your skill with words is much appreciated. Potential to kinetic is a keeper! And your insight into the abortion issue is a breath of fresh air. So many of us seem to need to see everything in black and white...oops! There's another one...
I love this.
Touched my heart again! When you write from the awareness within your senses, language flows through you unlike anyone else I have ever read….thank you!❤️
This is a deep meditation.
Your phrasing "infinite cycles from potential to form and back again" is evocative of exactly what the "tai ji tu" symbol is trying to represent.
The TCM teaching I have received postulates a lifetime as a natural "arc" in which a being which begins as pure "jing" (or, [inherited] potential), continually transforms "jing" into "shen" (spirit/experience/consciousness) through the processes of living, and naturally ends the process when it has transformed all of its "jing" into "shen".
Obviously, many people do meet a premature, non-natural end, "before their time" as it were, and yet all of us are somewhere on a natural lifetime's trajectory that has a natural beginning and a natural end, between which lie endless transformations.
Thank you for celebrating the "upswing" (which in the Chinese 5 phase theory corresponds to the springing upward nature of Wood. :)
Thanks Scotlyn for sharing the TCM understanding of the upswing. Is there an equivalent conversion of "shen" into "jing" that corresponds to ripening, pregnancy, creation of new potential from form/consciousness?
I also wanted to thank you for all of your perspectives on JMG's forums advocating for for seeing individuals rather than ideologies and questioning the fear that seems to percolate from all sides. I only wish that perspective could become more widespread :-).
Now there is a question! And I realise the answer would require me to draw symbols which are beyond my power to do here. Still, "jing" "shen" and "qi" are seen as the three treasures. "Jing" relates to earth and is the most concentrated/condensed, "shen" relates to heaven and is most diffuse, and "qi" relates to earth and is the go-between or harmoniser betwen heaven and earth which creates the human (or any other living being). Each human (or each being) has a lifetime "arc" which only goes in one direction, but the processes become cycles as one life has the capacity to make the "packaged potentiality", or seed, or condensed "jing", to connect to new life and set the cycle in motion again. Earth diffuses its moisture up to heaven, and heaven condenses to water the earth, and in between these two motions, living beings who carry out all of the transformations (using their "qi"), live and breathe.
Well, we all have to live and breathe, as best we can... is this not so? :)
Thanks for the additional interpretation!
I just had my first experience with TCM and acupuncture today, partly at the recommendation of a friend but also based on your discussions of it on JMG's forums. I think it will be a good fit for me.
Best wishes with this!
Apologies, I should have said that "qi" relates to the human *between* heaven (shen) and earth (jing).