What is your weakness
What ever conflict we might have in our body and minds, through disease or other aspects. We are thrown, or throw ourselves into spiral of development or growth. This we can as well, see in nature. Animals or plants defend themselves or adapt to the environment and usually it is accomplished through suffering or need. This applies to us as human beings as well and as humans we have something which animals doesn?t have and that is plenty of free choice and that means responsibility to ourselves when we make choices of good or bad which influence our health and being. We go after desires without moderation and create suffering for ourselves. Through that suffering we have to develop compassion towards ourselves, we might be forced to. That means forced discipline or natural discipline as consequence of internal compassion.
In the western society we have plenty of food and choices of it. It is this choice which makes us learn to be either healthy eating or unhealthy or somewhere in between. We can create disease in our body through our choice. For example if someone is eating very spicy food and red meat, drinking excessive alcohol, it can create lots of heat in the persons body. According to chinese medicine all these foods are very heating for the body. This person could have signs like red face, constipation created by dryness or the heat, anger, not tolerating heat very well, insomnia etc.
But since we are individuals it can come about in a different way for different people. We all have weaknesses. One can have tendency for weak stomach and someone else can have tendency for weak lungs. There we come back to yin and yang. In all of us there a weak aspect and strong aspect. What it means in practical terms is that for fulfilling life we need to work on the weak aspect and nourish or utilise our strong aspect. This can sometimes be unconscious process. The more we listen to our gut feeling and trust it, the more we get to hear it. It is very simple, if you choose to hear you will, if you choose not to hear then you won?t. That is the adventure.
For example if the lungs are weak we might choose to work on them with breathing exercises. As well we might want stop smoking. Being a smoker you might be fulfilling some need according to your weakness. But in a negative way. Smoking can be stimulating as well as calming. It could be hiding your weakness by suppressing with chemistry of smoking. Lets say it influences the lungs. In chinese medicine the emotion sadness and grief are connected to the energy of the lungs. So by smoking you are influencing the whole system towards false equilibrium and by doing that you damage it with toxins.Another example is alcohol. In chinese medicine the liver can be cause for stagnation of energy. So free flow in the body is impaired. By drinking alcohol you might release that stagnation. Also abusing any substances causes imbalance in the body which might not have been there in the first place.
So our responsibility is great. But our lack of understanding keeps us away from solution. I hope you gained a bit more understanding by reading this.
Be well.
