When talking to my clients, I’ve made many a metaphor of life. Most recently I’ve compared life to water. I compare how we live our lives to how water behaves and how to use the concept of water to better deal with life’s challenges.
First, there is the scientific fact that we are seventy percent water. Water is unique in that it is a joining of two explosive gases that form a liquid that extinguishes fire. Accepting this, we understand that energy affects water in several ways.
Run the kitchen faucet. Then hold a magnet alongside the stream of water flowing from the faucet. The magnet will pull the water towards it, affecting the direction of the flow. We can infer that unseen energy can affect water. Again, we are seventy percent water. Outside forces can alter the natural flow of water within each cell of our bodies.
Emotion is an example of unseen energy. Emotions aren’t just some abstract concept. When you are afraid or startled, angry, heartbroken, dreadful, you feel it physically in your body. This energy is real enough to affect the structures of our bodies, simply because we are water. We can examine our emotional energy with Kirlian photography, which displays a multicolored aura around us. As our emotions change, the color and displacement of the aura’s colors change in response. I’ve seen Kirlian photography before and after meditation, and the difference is remarkable.
Dr. Masaru Emoto spent decades performing experiments on how emotional energy affects water. He invented a way of photographing water the moment it freezes to capture the matrix it forms. Water that had been exposed to negative words like hate and war created irregular, unattractive globs. Water that had been exposed to positive emotions like joy and love formed beautiful mosaic snowflake arrangements. He even wrote the words on tape which he affixed to the bottles noted the same results.
We feel our emotions in our gut. The gut is the storehouse for much of what we are and how we operate. (Remember when I said the Chinese called this area the Dan Tien? it means elixir (Qi) field or sea of elixir - storehouse of energy.) Four of our neurotransmitters are made in the gut. Our immune system is in the gut. Digestion, absorption, and elimination take place in the gut. But this is a topic for a future letter to you, my dear reader.
How can we live so our energies don’t negatively affect our health and happiness?
I propose we approach life as water.
One, water is still.
If one wants to see to the bottom of muddy water, he must let it settle and it will soon become clear. We cannot find solutions to life’s issues if our minds are cluttered. We must let our minds settle and be still if we want to think clearly.
The first step to clearing the mind is to focus on one thing. The one thing we hold with us each day is our breath. We will now focus on our breath.
Straighten your spine, whether you are standing or sitting, to try to become taller. Imagine adding space between your vertebrae, allowing blood, oxygen, and Qi (life energy) into the discs. Focus on your breath. It is not necessary to lengthen, hold, or count the breath. Simply be aware of how the breath feels as it moves through the body. Aim your breath toward the lower abdomen. Imagine filling a balloon in the space two inches below your navel and in the center of your body, directly in front of your spine. The Chinese call this space the Dan Tien. As you inhale, the belly expands, it moves away from you, gets tighter against your waistband. As you release the breath and empty the lungs, the belly moves softly toward the spine.
During times of stress and anxiety, the diaphragm locks up. We start breathing with the muscles of the ribs and upper shoulder girdle. This only fills the top third of our lungs. When the diaphragm freezes, it agitates the Vagus nerve. This increases the blood pressure and initiates the fight or flight reaction. Breathing with the diaphragm reverses this process. Blood pressure decreases and the body pulls away from the sympathetic nervous system (fight or flight) and reverts to the parasympathetic nervous system (rest and digest). There is so much more to this, but this rudimentary explanation will suffice for now.
Now pull your inhale across the top of the sinuses. Feel the breath moving down the back of your throat. It only takes a small effort and a tiny movement of the base of tongue to accomplish this. When done correctly, you should hear the wind moving through the middle of the brain.
Now that our breath is under our control, begin to analyze the activity of your body. What muscles are flexing to keep your balance, how much are you swaying, can you feel your heart beating? Feel the belly moving with the breath, feel the breath moving across the sinuses and down the throat.
Now expand your awareness to all that is happening around you. Sounds in the room, the creaks and pops of the building heating up in the morning or cooling down in the evening, let your subconscious mind search the size and space of the room, feel the temperature of the air against your skin, listen to the traffic outside, or any birds chirping.
It is important to remind yourself you are simply aware of all this. It is happening at this moment. But you are not attached to any of it. Do not let your mind follow any of these things to any conclusion. Simply maintain awareness that at this very moment, all these things are happening within and without you.
Your mind will begin to settle. You have found one thing upon which to concentrate. Meditation is not the expulsion of thoughts from the mind, or trying not to think. Meditation is being aware of all that is happening exactly right now, without becoming attached to any of it.
There is an adage of a man who sought the guru about how to meditate. He asked the monk how he would know when he finally got it right. The monk responded that when he meditates and no longer thinks of the blue elephant, he would succeed.
Jet Li, the famous martial arts action hero, retired from acting a few years ago to become a Buddhist monk. Some time after this, an interviewer asked how much time each day he devoted to meditation. His response was that he never leaves the state of meditation, and that he was meditating at this moment while talking to her. Maintaining a calm mind and a serene emotional state assists us in all our dealing with everything in the world. We can choose our responses, instead of reverting back to emotional reactions.
Speaking of emotional reactions. We are on to phase two. The way water flows.
Water flows from the tops of the mountains to the vastness of the seas. The flow of water begins with a trickle and as it moves downhill it grows deeper and stronger. It finally joins the sea, where it merges with all that is.
Along its path, it meanders a curved path between trees, past rocks, around logs, over falls. It encounters all kinds of challenges along its path to a great collective of water that has traveled a similar yet different path. All water that meets the vast oceans has met dams, falls, collected rainwater and other runoff, and gotten dirty along the way. It grows deeper and faster and wider until it vanishes into itself. A drop is the ocean, and the ocean is a mass of drops.
We are born as spirit in these meatsuits. We travel along the paths of our lives. Each one different and unique, yet similar. We all encounter challenges, difficulties, and hurdles. We lose jobs and marriages, wreck cars, flunk out of college, watch our parents die, lose friends over silly arguments, and watch our houses burn down. At the end of our travels, we join the collective of the entirety of all of us. We join the vastness of spirit. When water joins the sea, it is still water, still what it was when it began. When you get to the end of your stream, stay who you are. Allow yourself only to grow deeper and stronger because of the challenges you have traversed. Never in the history of sports has the hurdler jumped his hurdle, stopped to pick it up, then run to the next one, jumped it, stopped to pick it up, and so on until he gets to the finish line, crosses the tape, then shows the crowd all the hurdles he overcame. No. He simply overcomes them and moves on. When he crosses the tape as the winner, he is simply elated that he ran so well, finished the race, and triumphed over his competition. His training paid off and he is victorious.
Feb 12, 2022, my wife and I were teaching a Reiki 1 class. We had two ladies in our class. It was time to start the attunement. Before we began, I was inspired to mention something about how we are not to be destroyed by our challenges and trials. We are to overcome them and grow stronger. At that moment, one of the ladies noticed smoke coming from an electrical panel. The breaker box in my office is connected to the house through a 4inch diameter underground conduit. When we went outside the house was engulfed in flames. The smoke from inside the house has filled the pipe and gone into my office in the barn. Flames leapt from the front window of the house and licked the edge of the roof. Windows erupted from their frames and into the grass beyond. I looked to the students and said, “remember what I said about trials and challenges? Insurance will provide us a brand-new house. All will be made new. No worries.” We did get a new house, even better than before. I am not broken down by that occurrence. My attitude was that things happen, and we move on.
In the last few years, I have gone broke, gotten cancer and diabetes, reversed them both, lost a house, changed employment a few times, gone to school, gotten a new job, moved out of my old house, lost three cars, and more. Things happen in life, but I keep flowing. I am aware of the now, this moment.
I teach a five point method of dealing with the rocks, trees, curves, and falls of our lives. Again, another article for another day. Or maybe even a book. Hmm.
The past is memory. Each event is experienced through the lens of all your prior experiences. The future is your imagination, conjuring possible outcomes to scenarios that have not yet, nor could ever, occur.
The past conjures regret, grief, and nostalgia. The future creates anxiety, worry, and fear.
Live in the now.
Water doesn’t give any thought to the one-hundred-foot falls one mile away. Or the dam it passed four counties back. Or the sharp bend in the river, or the barges riding upon it. The river flows. It is.
To paraphrase Forrest Gump. Water is as water does.
And to directly quote Bruce Lee,
“Be water, my friend.”
Weeg
Joe “Weeg” Weigant is a Holistic Health Practitioner, Metaphysician, and Empowerment Coach. He combined bodywork, energy work, sound therapy, and coaching to relieve anxiety and depression. A balanced nervous and energy system increases health in the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual bodies. Joe encourages his clients to drop the white flag of victimhood and pick up the banner of empowerment. He inspires people to stop riding in life’s trunk and start sitting in the driver’s seat of destiny.
Weeg sells herbal products by Nature’s Sunshine and Pure Herbs Ltd. and is a Representative for Juice Plus. Weeg teaches Karate and Tai Chi, Reiki Certification, as well as seminars and workshops in metaphysical and spiritual matters. Weeg is available for sessions at Tri State Holistic Wellness by appointment only.
Contact by text 812.568.5356, or Facebook Messenger to set an appointment.
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