Even the archetypes of darkness have been demonized. Less attention is given to our dreamlife, the musings of the mind while sleeping, minimizing the potential symbolic meanings to either superstitious silliness or simple regurgitations of our waking realities. And even sleep, a relatively yin activity, while it is encouraged, it is encouraged in service to yang endeavors, preparing us for ‘successful’ and productive daytime activity. We celebrate the new beginnings of birth, marriage, and business, but hide our grief, loss, and experiences with death. We cherish our youth, but quietly house away the elderly in nursing homes. We encourage assertiveness at work and discourage quiet passivity. Modern cultures have adopted a preference for yang over yin, considering yang activities to be more pleasurable, desirable and good, while viewing yin activities as undesirable, unpleasant, or even ‘evil’ or bad. The era of industrialization and more recent technological revolutions have increasingly driven us to live faster, more productive, more profitable, and more intensely yang existences, while relegating the more yin parts of our nature as a less attractive state of being. In our modern day existence, the balancing harmony that is represented in the Taiji symbol is skewed to reflect excess yang. This patriarchy can be interpreted as an over-valuation of yang forces, while undervaluing the yin aspects of our existence. In recent centuries, in the modern age, world civilizations have been evolving into increasingly more patriarchal societies, to greater and lessor degrees. Yang is represented in the intellect and the critical-thinking mind in contrast to the more yin unconscious mind dark, mysterious, and mystical. Yang energy is active and productive, while yin energy encompasses breaking things down, letting go, and disintegration into darkness or the Great Abyss. Yang energy embodies the ethereal heavens, while yin energy is heavier and more substantial, in and of the body and the flesh. Yang energy is fast and impulsive, while yin energy is slower, receptive. Over time, yin and yang began to imply masculine and feminine aspects of nature, as well as the differing qualities of energies. For example, water is yin compared to fire, but water is more yang compared to ice. They reflect relative degrees of yin in comparison to yang. Yin and yang are also always in relationship to one another. For example, the yin aspects of a mountainside are the darker, more shady parts of a mountain, in comparison to the more yang, sunny, or higher parts of a mountainside. Yin and Yang were originally used as descriptions of topography. The origin of the Taiji is found in the ancient Chinese time-keeping system, which used a pole to measure the changing lengths of shadows over the solar year as long ago as 600 BCE. We see the Tao flowing year to year, in the wheat that grows to maximum height in the peak of the summer and then dies away to seed by the end of the fall, only to sprout again the following season. Nature unfolds in this rhythm, as seen day by day, in the arc of the sun moving across the sky, then joined by the moon in the evening and the stars revolving around the North Star in the night. Even at maximum states of yang or yin, there is always a little spark of opposing energy, as reflected in the small circles of dark or light at the top and bottom of the Taiji wheel. There is never yang without yin, nor yin without yang. Yang energy is seen in the light half of the Taiji, rising to the top of the wheel, and yin energies flow to the bottom. It reflects our inner nature and the natural forces all around us. It reflects the harmonizing creative powers flowing unendingly, swirling and twisting about each other. The Taiji is an ancient Taoist symbol representing this balance and wholeness. The Philosophy of the Tao te ChingĪccording to the Taoist origin story, there was once a divine unity of everything in the universe. Once there was One, and then One divided to create Two two opposing yet complementing forces, yin and yang. The Tao directs the unfolding of every aspect of the Universe. The Tao also embodies a sense of wholeness, as well as the unknowable and ineffable unity with the Divine. The Tao is reflected in the path a river takes, cutting between mountains to form a valley over thousands of years, or the way clouds change shape in response to the moving air currents above our heads. Perhaps the best translation is “The Way” or “The Path”, such as the way of nature or the path of existence. There is no exact translation or definition for The Tao in English.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |