Metal and Wood aspects ~ clarifications? |Welcome|Discussions|Nourishing Destiny

1.  Can you help clarify the difference between the exact justice in the wood element with measured, balanced, divine justice in metal?  This continues to elude me…. 

DDJ: "Repay Injury with De." CH. 63

"For example, if someone you love is killed in the commission of a crime,human justice can only incarcerate the party responsible. It cannot bring your loved one back to life or restore that aspect of yourself which may have been lost in the process. Only heaven administers ultimate justice, so eventually people each reap what they sow.80 Resolution for the woodconstitutional type often lies in the virtue of forgiveness, which manifests as grace. It is only by the grace of forgiving one’s self first, and then others, that habitual rage may subside. Our shen may once again have access to our jing in a way that empowers the vision of true self. Only when the pain of injustice does not obscure original nature has justice truly been administered. Hence the Dao De Jing advises us to “repay injury with the restoration of original nature (de).”

2.  On pg. 229 of Nourishing Destiny, you are giving an example of a heart protector constitution that operates with a secondary compensation in gallbladder, “exhibiting a habitual drive to correct injustice, which is more typical of gallbladder.”  Again, how is this “injustice” in wood you present here different than “metal injustice”?  

Lonny: Wood justice is always relative based on a cognitive assessment of data. Metal justice is absolute. Jihad, fundamentalism in all religions, is when humans hold the pretense of being the arbiters of divine justice. 

3.  Can a wood constitution present as a someone who is always dreaming (hun), planning dreams but having difficulty executing those plans / dreams in life (challenged by manifesting these dreams in material terms)?  

Lonny: I assume by "dreams" you mean "imagining a better future and striving toward goals"-it doesn't sound like you mean dreaming while asleep?

The question is, "Why aren't the dreams coming to fruition"?

1. water: Not enough potential or access to potential (jing)?

2: wood: Too much planning so resources are spread too thin?

3. fire: Not enough passion to follow through?

4. earth: Not enough earth (nourishment) to support the tree?

5. metal: Too self critical so that branches are pruned as soon as they sprout?

Human justice isn't just "an eye for an eye"......For example, in more enlightened states we don't have the death penalty. But any solution will necessarily be incomplete so a person will need to move on, forgive in a LV-13, Lv-14 (see my Clinical Practice time text) sort of way. The resolution of anger (wood) is letting go (metal). In this regard we contemplate forgiving the "unforgivable" because that is the goat leap. De 德, original nature/virtue is an attribute of liver. Only we can hold the perspective to grow around obstacles and move on, no one else can confer this on us......but there is grace (heaven).....