The Wood Energies
The immense energies that drive internal transformations are referred to as wood energies - like the energies pushing a sprout through its seed casing to become an ash, a maple, or a pine that reaches up and out. In the body, the wood energies are represented by the liver.
The liver resides in the upper right-hand side of your abdominal cavity, tucked under your ribs. It is a large organ with many branches that reach out to purify the body of its toxins. The liver stores, filters, and regulates the blood supply, produces proteins, metabolizes hormones, and rids the blood of anything that is not useful. The liver represents new beginnings, just as the wood energies symbolize rebirth and move us away from thought patterns and emotions that keep us stuck in time. Liver or wood energies grow, expand, and generate.
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Think of the tremendous amount of energy required for an infant to become a teenager. That incredibly expansive energy is within you right now, governed by wood and depicted by the color green, the color of growth in nature. Your wood energy can take the power of water, which I talked about in Secret 2, and turn it into something new, the way water feeds a seedling and enables it to turn into a tree.
The wood energies take us from where we are now to our future. But they can be very uncomfortable: resisting the change may cause pain, leading us to try anything, such as taking anti-depressants, to make the pain go away. How To Know Fertility
If we allow ourselves to grow and flow with the world - the way a palm tree bends to survive a hurricane - our powerful wood energies will raise us to new levels, help us survive passing storms, and bring us new possibilities.
Wood energies govern the hun, or ethereal soul, that aspect of all people that has always been and always will be. The ethereal soul connects us to the collective unconscious and governs intuition, aspiration, and the symbolism of our dreams. Described as rarified energy like mist, the ethereal soul directs our movement through life in any direction, taking our life experiences and learning from them in order to bring us to higher levels where creative visions, imagination, projections, and plans can arise.
Fulfilling desires
In addition to moving us forward, the wood energies also promote aspiration. While many spiritual traditions have difficulty with external longing, traditional Chinese medicine teaches that the creative power of yearning can manifest in happiness and fulfilled dreams. The greatest obstruction to healthy liver function is living in a state of unfulfilled desires.
The Taoist way is to reduce desires, not attempt to fulfill them. Taoist philosophy teaches that when we wish for something, we must not hold on to its outcome. Dreams and hopes may become intent that leads into action, but it's important to let go of the outcome. Holding on to what we think should happen produces suffering; unfulfilled desires can result in anger and resistance. For example, here's the way some women try to fulfill their desire to have a baby.
She desires a child. She tries to conceive. It doesn't work. She tries harder. It still doesn't work. She prays that God will bring her the child she desires so deeply. She may even bargain with God to make this happen. She goes to see a doctor. The doctor says there is something wrong, but can try to make her pregnant through this or that intervention. She tries it. It doesn't work. She tries harder. She prays harder. It still doesn't happen. She gets frustrated, angry, depressed, and further and further away from her goal.
This is a typical reaction to a desire that someone fears may not be fulfilled. Children often use this approach - a forceful yang approach that goes only toward the light, rather than dealing with the dark, or the yin aspect of the situation. This approach only recognizes the desire, not what it takes to manifest the desire. But taking care of the depths can help to transform our lives and reach a higher level of fulfillment.
In contrast to the ego-driven approach, look at how the creative Taoist works to fulfill the desire to have a baby. She desires a child. She tries to conceive. It doesn't work. This is all this approach has in common with the previous approach. Instead of trying the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result and becoming more and more frustrated when it doesn't happen, a follower of The Way lets go, allowing creation to occur.
When someone surrenders this is how they view desires: How To Know Fertility
She stops struggling. She looks at what needs to be adjusted in her world in order to allow her desire to manifests. She says, "I align myself with the creative force of the universe, so that creation - be it a new relationship, a new profession, a better stare of health, a new interest or purpose, or a baby - may come to be. I look at the contrast in my life that is preventing growth and creation and I release it."
Wood energy imbalances
Wood energies give us the strength to overcome obstacles, just as trees have the power to break out of a seed casing, imbed in the ground, drink in moisture, emerge through the soil, become a seedling, then a sprout, then a shoot, and then weather the vicissitudes of nature to grow strong and tall. Wood or liver energies also allow us to leave harmful situations and empower us to say no when that's what we need to say. The liver imbues us with the power of anger, so that we can overcome resistance. But the liver also regulates the smooth flow of emotions. Healthy liver energies allow us to feel frustration, express anger, and then release it and let go of any outcome. These powerful, regenerative forces allow us to both overcome obstacles and accept what comes.
Liver energies that are unhealthy or imbalanced, however, depleted through blood loss, an overactive life style, too much stress or exercise, or too little rest and self-care, lose their ability to smooth the emotions. Then even small annoyances can become exaggerated and result in frustration, and we become inflamed with anger that results in self-hatred, depression, or rage. If these conditions persist, the liver loses its ability to transform and it becomes difficult to glide through life.
Overwork, in particular, can result in disturbances of the liver. Many workaholics resort to the escape valve of alcohol to overcome internal tension caused by overwork, which worsens the effect on the liver. When wood energies become disturbed, women may try to force their way into the world and resent others for not playing according to their rules. They may get stuck in the unfulfilling horizontal plane of mere survival and feel increasing internal pressure and an inability to relax.
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Overdoing, drinking alcohol, and resisting your natural inclinations create obvious imbalance, which blocks you from your true center. Manifestations of liver imbalances include migraine headaches, vision difficulties, light sensitivity, heartburn, high blood pressure, premenstrual tension, abdominal bloating, and breast pain. Difficulty falling asleep at night due to inner frustration indicates stagnated liver energies as well, as does having a bitter taste in your mouth - literally and figuratively.
Inner stillness or inner spaciousness nourishes a healthy liver. So when you feel your blood pressure rising and there is no appropriate action to take, retreating to your inner stillness to meditate on your source can help you regain your strength. Life is a fluctuating interplay of action and withdrawal. If it is time to draw back but you continue to act, your soul will send you messages that you need to retreat. Those messages may come in the form of tension between the eyes, conflict with coworkers, or infertility, and if they don't resolve through physical or emotion based solutions, life may provide a boost by taking away a job or a relationship that is hindering your highest good. To learn more, you can check out How To Know Fertility.
