- – – – A prepublication work by Dirk Phirose Hien – – –
Chapter 6 Element Metal, the Gift of the Season Autumn
Now, the harvest is in, and the food has been stored away for times of need. The plant has produced and given away its fruit as nourishment and completed its function as a provider. The days are becoming shorter and cooler, and the plant’s organism must cut back and eliminate what it does not need. The plant or tree must now reevaluate what is still vital and essential to hold onto. The foliage has served its purpose and can be let go of. This demands some process that allows the accumulation of waste matter to be eliminated and taken away. Autumn winds serve this purpose by bringing down colorful leaves and branches that are too old to serve new growth in the future spring. All this debris serves as mulch and compost for the earth. In our bodies, the function specialized and perfected for this process of purification for the whole organism manifests as the Colon Official and its meridian guiding one of the functions of the Metal Element.
The turning of the leaves and their dying also produce something else: colors with awe-inspiring beauty that take our breath away, evoking a response like “Oh my God!” as an honest statement. The incredible light that falls in through the trees horizontally as bright white light, letting us see everything truly three-dimensionally and clearly, is partially responsible for such a serene appearance. The realization that this world we live in is such a special place strikes us with awe, creating an atmosphere of reverence. We want to touch and hold on to everything as if anticipating its departure from our presence. In this attempt, as children, we gathered the colorful leaves we found in Autumn like precious treasures.
What we appreciate in life and then have to let go of evokes in us the emotion of grief, the grief of losing something valuable, like losing our gold.
That’s why the Element that governs the Autumn Season is Metal. Metal is a substance obtained through purification. Smelting iron ore only retains the most precious essence, which can become stainless steel. Therefore, the Element Metal symbolizes purified substances and valuables, like silver, gold, precious metals, and jewels. The Metal Element in us gives us our sense of value and allows us to feel unique and special.
Some people who feel they have so little or have lost so much need to prove their value by collecting wealth and riches so they obtain respect from others. Some people, on the other hand, are still searching for their version of gold and are looking for their value in a world of spirituality. They long to gain acceptance and grace from a teacher, a guru, someone representing a higher power or symbolizing the Heavenly Father. Longing for the seemingly unattainable is another aspect of grief, like feeling stuck in the mud in the valley and longing for the illuminating vistas on the mountaintop so far away.
The Gift of the Colon to our Body
In the same way, as Nature gathers the fallen leaves and debris no longer needed and recycles them into compost for the earth, our colon gathers all the byproducts and toxins of our digestion. It eliminates them from our body, allowing for a daily physical purification of our system. We all have experienced a time when this is not happening as it should and then witnessed how we feel as soon as it normalizes. We appreciate Nature’s way of cleaning house.
The Gift of the Colon to our Mind
Maybe more any other season, we reevaluate what we have accomplished through the year, where we went wrong, where we feel ashamed of our shortcomings, where we no longer want to bear the burden of guilt for such failures, and therefore pray for these deeds to be forgiven and transformed into something useful. In a way, we desire to change them, much like the alchemists wanting to turn base metals into gold. The memories of the good times we had in the summer and spring, not just of this year, but the spring and summer of our life, the memories of what we have harvested and accomplished, and we deserve to hold to, form a precious storage, our personal treasure.
There are also times when we feel quite negative and hold on to judgments about others. We think we are right, what we believe the true values are, and what the acceptable thing to do should be. Often, this includes ourselves, leading to low self-esteem and feelings that we are not good enough. We remember the painful moments when we suffered humiliation and were being degraded. Value and judgment are very much linked since judgment declares value as well as worthlessness. We wish to keep only the good and eliminate the bad, purify and purge ourselves.
However, quite often, we discover that most of the judgments and opinions we have been holding onto about others, the world, and ourselves no longer serve us, like something we have been stashing to increase its value but now realize is merely cluttering our closet.
What a valuable experience it is to find out that letting go of our old judgments allows for new re-evaluations and a new, maybe more fair judgment to take its place. The blessing of the Metal Element is that it gives us a way to be able to do that. We have, so to speak, a Colon of our mind, allowing us to let go of old judgments and old models of the world.
This is the function of the “Great Eliminator,” the Colon Official. As it cleanses our body every day, we can take advantage of that process to ask this Official to cleanse our minds of these obsolete judgments and opinions simultaneously.
The Gift of the Colon to our Spirit
Seeing the mental level of elimination of judgment gives us the sense of what lies in the sense of justice in every person, the ability to know good from evil, and to be dedicated to high values. This sense of one’s role in the world allows us to play our role in society and be citizens of a community striving for the higher good. This inner sense of ethics and judgment allows a juror on a jury to judge another person’s deeds. The same inner sense of what is just and what is right is what gives us a sense of ideals in our lives.
We all know how precious the first fresh breath is when we step out into the air. One cannot get enough of this gift, yet we cannot hold on to it, and each exhalation passes it on, just like the value of money only shows us a number in our wallet or our account but becomes known for its worth when it is spent and passed on to someone else. We value the treasures we have accumulated; however, people value us when we pass our money on to them. In mythological times, we are told of treasures of kings, hordes of valuable trinkets, usually golden rings, goblets, and artifacts, whose genuine value was giving them away as gifts and thus receiving back loyal friends, allies, and servants.
When we lose people or things precious to us, we grieve and mourn them, missing the experiences and moments we had with them. However, the wisdom that comes out of the grieving process reminds us that despite our loss, we still own the memory of them and can appreciate the blessing of having been given the experience of being in their presence.
Such realization transforms our grief into nostalgia that can inspire our lives. This process of letting go of our sense of loss by cherishing the memories is reflected in the old saying:” Be not sad about what you have lost; be grateful for what you had.”
The Gift of the Lungs to our Body
We can survive for days without water and food but no longer than 5 minutes without air. Our connection to the atmosphere through our breath is our number one lifeline. Our brain, our heart, and our kidneys become starved of oxygen, become damaged, or shut down. For good reason, we speak of the breath of life. However, breathing not only involves taking in oxygen but also allows for the elimination of carbon dioxide and other metabolic toxins through exhalation. The ancient Taoist physicians were also aware of the fact that our skin actually acts as our third lung: we are eliminating through our skin, as well as absorbing from our environment, which explains the importance of washing and brushing the skin.
The Gift of the Lungs to our Mind
Many traditions explain that the mind is not the brain but rather like a radio receiver tuned in to receive radio waves and allow them to manifest as sound; the brain receives ideas and thoughts for the mind to think. That is why we often refer to this process as inspiration.
As we have explored in the previous Elements and Officials, the Ancient Taoists were aware of this body/mind/spirit connection and understood how, as a function of the Lung Official, a person’s mind could be “inspired” and receive ideas much like an inhalation. We all know that when our mind is at wit’s end, we often realize that we are not breathing correctly, holding our breath in anticipation, or breathing very shallowly as we think and concentrate. Taking a moment to take some deep breaths often will clear our mind, allowing for a solution to become evident or our emotions and impulsive responses to diminish. This is the power our breath has over our minds.
The Gift of the Lungs to our Spirit
We know how important inspiration can be in life, and inspiring is what our Lungs do. The words inspiration and respiration both contain the root word “spirit,” the highest essence in us and what keeps us alive.
From the heavens above comes the air, the atmosphere, which touches on outer space. We can imagine that with each breath we take, we create an airflow and a temporary ripple or dent in the atmosphere. This invites outer space to come in closer to Earth, closer to us, and enters our lungs, our life, and our consciousness. Heaven touches the earth, touches us, and we are thankful for the favor, the gift from heaven, giving us life here on earth, vitality, as well as meaning and validation of our worth and our purpose, being part of the cosmos and creation.
Many spiritual practices emphasize breathing practices to get closer to our inner core and purify us like oxygen purifies iron ore into stainless steel. Many religions have used the riches of gold and jewels to decorate temples and churches to create an atmosphere of the “Beyond” and the promise of paradise for the seeker of spiritual values. Precious metals symbolize the everlasting nature in the midst of an impermanent world. The sound of metal reinforces the atmosphere of spiritual attunement in the form of temple and church bells, gongs, and chimes, all instrumental in attuning the seeker to a state of awe beyond ordinary daily matter and, therefore, closer to the everlasting heavens.
This aspect of the world is what the lungs provide for us, which makes our body a temple for our mind and our spirit. There is a Sufi practice where one repeats the phrase: ” This is not my body; this is the temple of God.” The purpose of this practice is to remember that everything in Nature is part of Creation, including our body, and to remain aware and conscious that our spirit is merely temporarily living in this physical organism, as renters, so to speak. What a beautiful way to appreciate being alive. This reminds me of the health poster, which states:” Take care of your body; it’s the only place you have to live.”
The imbalanced Metal Element manifests in the following way:
Color: white, silver, like a shine, shimmer above the skin
Odor: Rotten, like composting leaves, decay or metallic, like solvent
Sound: weep, slow and even, heavy, with reverence, importance
Emotion: grief, reverence
Summary of the Gifts of the Element Metal
Attributes: Elimination, purification, inspiration, devotion, validation
Official: The Lungs
Attributes:Inspiration, devotion
Official: The Colon
Attributes: Elimination, purification, validation.
Note: The Metal Meridians begin or end in our hands, connecting us with Heaven when raised in prayer. The hands are also the instruments of giving and receiving
Meditation Practice:
- Open the window or go outside and feel the rush of fresh air filling your lungs.
- Then slow it down and maybe count to 4 with each inhalation and count to 4 with each exhalation until you can observe your breath being in an even rhythm.
- Now, think of something you don’t like about yourself with each exhale and think of an ideal you aspire to with each inhale. Pick one for each, rather than creating lists, because you will be caught in your thoughts instead of experiencing your breath.
- As you observe your breath and experience the air going in and out of your lungs, try to see how the air is connected to the rest of the atmosphere, “the ocean of air.”
- Now, versus seeing your inhalation as you are taking a sip of this ocean, the atmosphere, try to visualize the atmosphere as a “Being” entering your lungs. So, the atmosphere is breathing you versus you are taking a breath from the atmosphere.
- When you go to the toilet to empty your bowels, think of all the negative experiences you had the day before or in the past and feel them leaving your body, your mind, and your spirit since not just your body but also your mind and your spirit are performing a ritual of purification. Now, you can do this with consciousness and experience feeling refreshed and purified.
One World 