To work with CV1 at the soul level requires that the practitioner commit to a lifetime of inner work. That inner work that I speak of is the hard work!! It is the reality of delving into the dark spaces that lie with in all of us and healing ourselves on every level which may be daunting. My daughter calls it the shadow self and in these times of mother earths pain it is incumbent on us as 5 element practitioners to do this work.
The karmic journey that the soul chooses within their causative factor is part of the work that has to be done if we are truly able to connect with our patients. In my experience this means really doing the challenging somatic work with a qualified psychotherapist who really has the skill set and sensitivity to challenge you as a practitioner to heal at every level.
The CF is a karmic decision by the soul to work through the element. It has often been described as a sore that just won’t heal!! As a fiery optimist I see it as a challenge and an additional layer to work through. I am always mindful of how avoidance of our issues is a permanent state of being! Each Cf has its challenges.
In many metal CF s as an example they truly believe they are connected to the divine and yet fail to really deal with their grief and the intense sense of loss that is the journey of the metal CF. Instead, many of them spend their lifetime living in a spiritual realm where they avoid dealing with their internal rubbish and subsequently choose to float on a cloud of spiritual bullshit.
To go inwards and address the cause of their grief and to truly let go is the most pain they will ever really feel. It is an excruciating pain and it is the fear of that pain that drives many of us out of our bodies. However, the pain that we all experience in life and spend our lives trying to avoid through our various addictions’ dissolves into the ether once we have allowed ourselves to truly feel it….. “you have to feel it to heal it “!!!
The inner conflict of metal lies between floating off into divinity or delving deep into the colon and letting go. As the metal Cf starts on the journey of letting go of their inner debris there is more space for self-esteem to grow.
Self esteem is the biggest challenge for the metal cf. I have witnessed many metal CF s choosing partners who seem to validate their lack of self-worth and make them feel like shit!!! Why is that?
I am still not entirely clear how the issue of self esteem is such a big challenge for Metal. Hopefully by the end of this article I may have developed more of an understanding of how and why self esteem is one of the major karmic challenges for metal.
In order to truly connect to the soul of ones’ metal they have to let go of the shit stored by the colon/bowel – be it emotional shit, spiritual shit or physical shit. Only then will there be space to connect to the higher levels of self through the lung meridian and subsequently breath in the true sense of ones’ inner nature through the lungs. Once you have let go, there is more space, there is more freedom and a lightness of being.
The lung is connected to the spiritual father, heaven and divinity. It is only once metal has truly let go of their grief that the metal CF can organically connect on a three-dimensional level to the essence of who they truly are. That is the potential of the metal Cf- to be able to truly connect to who they are is what ultimately will build their self-esteem and self-respect. After all, how can you feel any self-respect if your self-worth is stuck down the toilet!???
The cutting, knife- like comments of a metal CF can be felt deeply by the recipient. It can simply be a projection by metal of their own lack of self-worth. After all, it is much easier to highlight the faults of someone else rather than address your own lack of self-esteem! I have a patient who is metal and as I treat her, she just cannot resist saying something to make me feel bad about my work!!!
My fire element does not take it too seriously !! however, her sharp disapproval of how painful a point is or her inability to acknowledge the changes in herself could make a lesser person wilt !! the metal criticism may not even be spoken , it could just be a look of disappointment !! “You really just are not measuring up to their standards!! On an unconscious level, the more crap you feel about yourself the better they feel !! it gives them a sense of superiority – none of which is validated but at least in their minds it gives them a glimmer of self-worth!
I have spent a lot of time pondering on the issue of lack of self-worth and lack of self esteem with the metal CF. As I meditated this morning I wondered if the being “full of shit” is what leads to this lack of value and lack of worthiness? If they let go of the shit will their self esteem grow? If they truly address the father issues will they then be able to let go? Certainly, letting go is the major challenge for metal. From my spiritual therapist who was at times extremely inciteful and yet who lived in a house so full of shit that some rooms were unreachable to the metal Cf who just cannot let go of the breast feeding and continues well beyond an appropriate time to the metal Cf who just cannot let go of the father who sexually abused her. Letting go is excruciating and they will go above and beyond to AVOID letting go!!!
So why do we have to be in this pain and why do we have to experience this pain? Because it is IMPOSSIBLE to connect to the energy of another person’s pain without having truly experienced it ourselves. If we hope to assist another human into fully incarnating into themselves and if we aspire to be of assistance to that persons’ soul, then we have to have done the Buddhist work of self-observation. Self-observation does not mean naval gazing!! It is about being witness to all the parts of our ego. All the parts of the ego that notices “I do not know what I am doing ““ I want to heal this “ “ I am a healer” !!
Working on ourselves at this level then brings the treatment of CV1 to a whole other level.
To needle cv 1 at this level, I must be present and not present, I must have intention and no intention. I must be awake to my process within the process and yet also awake to my patients’ process. I must let go of an outcome and yet be present to where the patient’s soul Is hovering and what caused them to leave or maybe to never fully incarnate. I must empty to the point that I become a true vessel of healing. The old voices of the ego identification have been witnessed to the point of extinction and now there is nothingness. I am present to the patient. I am present to her pain. I feel the energy of where she /he left, did not incarnate. That is all I have to do, is to be fully present in a place of stillness and the healing happens with no effort. It is effortless and yet it is a result of 23 years intense inner work as I have slowly and gently incarnated into my body myself. My own journey has been long and hard and continues to this day. This is what it truly means to become an instrument of healing.