Wisdom

Examining the Five Elements - Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, and Water - as a foundational framework for understanding balance, pathology, and transformation in Chinese medicine

Within the Five Elements system of Chinese Medicine, Fire represents the height of life’s expression. It is the energy of warmth, illumination and relationship - the phase in which what has been growing now blooms, radiates and connects.

Within the Five Elements system of Chinese Medicine, Water represents the deepest and most inward phase of life. It is the energy of storage, rest and potential—the quiet strength that allows renewal to occur.

Within the Five Elements system of Chinese Medicine, Metal represents the phase of refinement and release. It is the energy that follows fullness and precedes rest, shaping what has been gathered and discarding what is no longer needed.

Within the Five Elements system of Chinese Medicine, wood represents the impulse toward life itself. It is the energy of emergence, expansion and directed movement—the force that pushes a seed to split its shell and reach toward the light.

Within the Five Elements system of Chinese Medicine, Earth occupies a unique and quietly vital position. While the other elements are strongly associated with distinct seasons, Earth belongs to the transitional periods, most notably late summer, when growth slows and ripening completes. It represents nourishment, stability and integration - the capacity to receive what life offers and turn it into something sustaining.

A SHUNYAMURTI SPIRITUAL WISDOM TEACHING

Every old soul whose had more than a few past lives at the end of Kali Yuga is born with a broken heart and Karma makes sure that the heart gets broken several more times in childhood so that it’s thoroughly crushed by the time it reaches adulthood.

IT IS TIME TO START LISTENING TO OUR INNER WISDOM.

Some of my earliest memories and experiences are of a sense of not belonging. I had this strange feeling that I did not belong in my family of origin; maybe I had been adopted? I had a similar experience at school. I simply did not relate to the curriculum or what was being called “education”.

Discover a different way of being in this world.

As we all know, each of us has one physical birth, from the womb out into the world. From my perspective, we also experience other significant rebirths – times in our lives when we feel we go through some sort of fundamental shift. We may end up on a different pathway or maybe we simply find ourselves being in the world in a different way. This is what I refer to when I talk about rebirth. In many religious traditions this shift is recognised. In Christianity we talk about being born again. In Hinduism and Buddhism, especially among the Sannyasins and in the Yogic tradition, individuals are often given a new name to signify a rebirth that they have experienced.

Embracing the Magic Within: A Journey Through Wizardry, Mortality, and Infinite Growth with Andrew Wallas

What if you could unlock the magic within yourself by embracing your inner wizard? Join us as we welcome Andrew Wallas, a remarkable businessman turned self-proclaimed modern-day wizard, who has carved a unique path from psychotherapy to pioneering his very own Academy of Alchemy.

How to stop seeing life as an opponent you need to resist

Before I wrote this, I looked up in a dictionary the word ‘surrender’ and the definition was “to stop resisting an opponent.” The word derives from a French word “surrendre” which is to give something up. In my experience what we need to give up is seeking to be in control. The price for peace is giving up the need for control, which we will come back to in due course. For me, all control is an illusion, so we are not actually giving up anything but an illusion or a delusion. Of course, many of us are clinging to our favourite delusions decade after decade and it is always much easier to see the delusions in others than in ourselves. I can see my wife’s delusions very clearly, but I can not see my own quite so well. Most of us, if not all of us, have been conditioned to, if not educated to, seeing the word surrender as something negative, weak, or undesirable.

Harness the events of your life for your own evolution.

Responding, or responsibility, comes from the Latin word ‘respondere’ which means to respond. So, for me, it is really all about what is our response to what is happening in our lives?

At the end of the 16th century, the meaning developed to include ‘answerable to’ or ‘expected to justify.’ In the 17th century responsibility was also extended to include the idea of accountability.

Right now, my sense is that we’ve created radically different cultures around the world in places like North Korea, Afghanistan, Norway, Iran, Australia. And in all of these different cultures there’s extraordinarily little responsibility or accountability on our planet right now. What I’m going to focus on tonight is the idea of a lack of responsibility. I’m not going to get into the debate about the difference between responsibility and accountability and I will use both these terms interchangeably.