Something from “Nourishing Destiny”

Aloha,

I have decided to post the second half of Lonny Jarrett’s chapter “The Ontogeny Of Life” from his book “Nourishing Destiny.” His explanations of the development of the psyche according to daoism and Chinese medicine parallel psychology’s take on early trauma that shapes the character and destiny of the individual. -AA

Stage IV The Young Adult: Yin and Yang Divide

“Those who discriminate, fail to see.”
-Zhuangzi

The fetus, infant, and child-the first three stages in the seven-stage ontogeny of the human-all retain, to some degree, the spontaneous self-expression of the dao as unity. The child, however, by gaining a name and an intellect, has set the stage for the loss of original nature. At the following stage, the young adult begins to attribute meaning to life in a way that inhibits the inborn spontaneity inherent in the infant or child. Liu [Yiming] states,

“Man gradually grows from childhood…..yin and yang divide each dwelling on one side, in the center of truth there is artificiality; here knowledge and experience gradually develop, and good and bad are discriminated.”

Knowledge and experience in the world develop as the adult spends life pursuing worldly accomplishments. Having lost primal unity with dao, the adult becomes another one of the ten thousand things.

It is knowledge of the self as being separate from the unity of the dao that the Dao De Jing considers to be the source of illness:

From knowing to not knowing,
This is superior.
From not knowing to knowing,
This is sickness.

-Dao De Jing

So the dynamic process of separation from one’s true nature, as one grows from young adulthood into adulthood, begins with the separation of yin and yang that occurs with the gain of self-consciousness. This is the initial crack in the functional balance of our constitutional endowment which serves as the foundation for all healthy growth and development in life. Losing touch with the true nature imparted by heaven, we react to life by creating a false self built out of belief and colored by our interpretations of life. The spontaneity imparted by a properly functioning mingmen slowly dwindles as its fires are extinguished by the accretions of experience in later heaven. With the fire of mingmen dampened, our primal endowment of yin and yang continues to separate. Early and later heaven cease to interact spontaneously as inner nature is forgotten.

Eventually, we reject the opportunities and circumstances sent by heaven in its attempt to cultivate the seed it has sown deep within. Simultaneously, the jing and shen separate, the will (zhi) depletes the jing as our mind struggles to reject heaven’s will, both internally and externally, and to assert its own will on the world through force. As the mind depletes the jing, the kidneys function grows correspondingly weaker. The very source of life is now expended in our striving for worldly accomplishment. Here, the “gate of birth” closes and the “door of death” opens, with a corresponding separation between metal and water on the sheng cycle. The failure to make this most vital translation corresponds to failure in all spheres of human function. This condition know as the “husband/wife” imbalance is presented in Chapter 7 in relationship to the separation of yin and yang as discerned through Chinese pulse diagnosis.

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Stage V: The Separation Of The Five Elements

As yin and yang separate, the functional dynamics of one’s constitution become apparent. Liu [Yiming] explains,

“When yin and yang divide, the five elements become disordered (luan). The five elements, metal, wood, water, fire, and earth, represent the five qi. The five elements of early heaven create each other following the sheng cycle. These five elements fuse to form a unified qi. From them issue forth the five virtues (de) of benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom and integrity. [The five elements] of later heaven overcome [ke] one another following the [ke] cycle. This manifests as the five rebels of joy, anger, grief, happiness and desire.
When the five elements are united, the five virtues are present and yin and yang form a chaotic unity. Once the five elements divide, the distinguishing spirit (shishen) gradually arises. and the encrustation of the senses gradually takes place; truth flees and the false becomes established. Now, even the state of the child is lost.”

Liu goes on to say that the five organs (zang) serve as inns for the conditioned elements of later heaven, but are not gardeners of virtue in which the five elements of early heaven reside. This can be interpreted to mean that the negative effects of acquired experience accrue in the different internal organs, conditioning the five elements and eventually harming their function. In contrast, the primordial five elements empower all aspects of the “being” to flourish.

Eventually a major event occurs in each young life that knocks the child’s elemental balance off in such a way that harmonious functioning is not easily returned to. At that instant, the primordial yin and yang divide and the five elements, formerly infused one with the other, become aberrant. The child or young adult becomes “stuck” in one of the five movements of the dao as a predominant form of self-expression, the integrity of the sheng cycle is lost and the elements “overcontrol” one another in a dysfunctional relationship, following the ke cycle.

As this major event occurs, the qualitative experience of the element associated with constitutional type surges through the child and becomes strongly apparent in every aspect of being. This is the moment that one’s constitutional type becomes explicit. The quantitative feeling of this element’s expression in all domains of being, including its correlated emotion, is instantly paired in the child’s mind with the interpretation of the event that is simultaneously occurring. No longer able to react spontaneously to all situations “sent by heaven,” this event is interpreted as suggesting a fundamental truth about the child’s own nature and the nature of life itself. The child learns that it is painful and not safe to express, or be in the presence of, a given quality of feeling and its related emotional state.

For example, qualities of feeling associated with the wood element could include tight shoulders, burning in the epigastrum, resentment, anger, and thwarted creativity. These physical, emotional and spiritual states all merge and become paired with the pain felt at the moment of trauma. In the future, the child will react habitually whenever the expression of wood element in experienced in self, other, or nature. Now the child begins closing doors to full self-expression as natural spontaneity dwindles.

Liu specifies a distinct relationship between the presence of the five Confucian virtues (benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom, and integrity) when the five elements are balanced, and the inappropriate presence of emotion after the five elements have divided. To restore original nature in each constitutional type, a life transformation must occur that moves the individual from the inappropriate expression of a given emotion to the embodiment of its associated virtue.

I’ll post Stages Vi and Vii, and his summary soon… AA