How To Live A Soulful Life: The Earth Element

Mirva Inkeri
14th Mar 2018

Season greetings! It is a time of change of season or as the Chinese Five Element theory would say it is the time of late summer. It is the time between and season in between summer and autumn. There is a fifth season in the Five Element theory.

This season belongs to the Earth Element. The Five Elements are Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal and Water. This is different from the Four Elements that many people refer to. The Five Element theory dates back to Yellow Emperor, 5000 BC.

The Five Elements is a theory. It is a universal law and principle. Everything in life has the Five Elements. Everything in life is divisible by the Five Elements. Therefore one way to understand deeper is to understand the Five Elements. When you understand the Five Elements what they are, how they function, you can start to understand how life works. Did you ever sit and ponder how life works, how things work? There must be more to life than this!?

That was me always for years until I started to truly learn wisdom. I love the Five Element theory and therefore I wanted to share snippets with you in this month’s column. So let me tell you more about the Earth Element.

In the physical human body, there is aspect of the human body that belong to each of the Five Elements. The heart belongs to the Fire Element, liver to the Wood Element, kidneys to the Water Element, and lungs to the Metal Element.

So authority organ for the Earth Element is spleen and its pair organ is stomach. There is a yin yang pair. Spleen is yin, stomach is yang. The whole body muscles relate to the Earth Element. Mouth, teeth, lips and gums belong to the Earth Element. When we have gum infection, cracked lips, issues within these areas, we may consider boosting our Earth Element, strengthening our spleen, looking at the spleen and stomach functions.

This physical body aspect corresponds to an emotional body. In the emotional body, the out of balance emotion that belongs to the Earth Element is worry. Who thinks of themselves as a worrier? Many people don’t. I didn’t. For the longest time, I didn’t relate to this emotion. But then I discovered that sometimes I couldn’t sleep because I was worried about this person and that person, and what to do in this situation and that situation, or money and the thoughts would just go round and round and round, and in the middle of the night, I thought I had been asleep, but really to only discover that I had been in a so called "dog sleep" and my head had gone round and round and round and round.

It is the incessant thoughts that go round and round in circles that are an expression of this kind of worry. It is not just worry a little bit about something. This is seriously out of balance worry that impacts our life significantly when we cannot relax, when we cannot just drop down. We cannot let something go that we just keep thinking about it. We really truly just keep worrying about it.

The balanced emotions are love and compassion. There are many things, many, many things that we can do to balance the Earth Element and every element in our lives, in our physical body, in our emotional body, mental body and spiritual body, absolutely so many things. So you can pick whatever works for you.

"Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive. " ~ Dalai Lama

You can work on balancing, harmonising, releasing the worry. You can work on increasing the state of love, the frequency of love. This is where we get lost with emotions at times. We think emotions is how deeply we feel them in our hearts. It is true and it is not the whole picture. The emotions are a state. They are a frequency that we vibrate at. So how do we change that frequency? That is the question because it is not just feeling more love for our partner, for our child, for our pet in our lives, because the quality, the frequency of the love may not be high frequency. It may have many messages of expectation, attachment, fears of being betrayed, let down and more.

These do not carry a high frequency. Part of the journey is to learn to identify, learn to differentiate in the frequency and in the quality of love and compassion we feel. What this compassion mean?

"True compassion means not only feeling another's pain but also being moved to help relieve it. " ~ Daniel Goleman

I remember many years ago when I started to learn about compassion. I really didn’t even know what it meant. Somebody introduce me to this goddess called Kuan Yin. I was told she was the Goddess of Mercy.

There are many, many articles that you can find on Google about Kuan Yin. Her name is spelled in many ways, in the Sanskrit tradition, her name is very long and in some traditions and lifetimes, She is considered a male also. The Buddhist considered her a Bodhisattva. She embodies this quality of compassion. Her acts are that of compassion. Her purpose is that of helping to relieve suffering of humanity, of all souls on Mother Earth.

How do we learn compassion? One of the ways to learn compassion could be that when we are in a challenging situation, when we are challenged by someone or something that instead of feeling that how we are challenged and focused on how something and someone is challenging me, that I choose to look at the other people involved and see them through the eyes of compassion.

What is their suffering?
Why is it that they are saying what they are saying?
What is the pain behind those words?
Why are they speaking in a manner they are speaking?
What is the suffering that is driving that way of thinking and speaking or behaving?

When we start to view situation and other people through these kinds of views and eyes, we start to see beyond ourselves. We start to see others' suffering. When we start to see and recognise it, our view, our perspective may change and shift.

"I have just three things to teach: simplicity, patience, compassion. These three are your greatest treasures." ~ Lao Tzu

These are the beginning of glimpses of experiencing compassion. Then we can start to understand what it possibly might be like for them. Too often we say, "I understand" when we don’t really. When we pause and really step back and consider, what they might be feeling. What might they be experiencing? We gain the perspective that it could be actually such a myriad of things that we probably don’t have a clue. Really, how truly the other person is feeling or what they are experiencing. The possibilities and probabilities give us the scope and the scale of beginning to understand.

Some people equate kindness to compassion. It is easier to be kinder when we recognise and acknowledge others suffering. The truth is spiritually every soul on Mother Earth is suffering one way or another. Very often it is not obvious, detectable, definitely not shared.

"Our human compassion binds us the one to the other - not in pity or patronizingly, but as human beings who have learnt how to turn our common suffering into hope for the future." ~ Nelson Mandela

Spiritually we have all come to resolve our karmic patterns and karmic lessons in this lifetime. That inherently carries the message of suffering from our karma. Some people say that there is no such thing as karma. Wonderful. You can believe whatever you like. Everyone has a choice and freedom. But if there was no more karma, why is it that everyone isn't perfectly flourishing, happy, joyous, free, abundant in every aspect of their lives? Why is there sickness? Why is there emotional imbalances? Why is there financial struggles?

I don’t know, may be you have your own answers and that is perfect. There is an ancient Buddhist teaching of what you chant is what you become because the mantra carries a frequency. When you chant that mantra or a healing sound there are many mantras that do not translate into our mother tongue exactly. But they are a sound and they carry a frequency. When we repeatedly sing or chant, that frequency, every cell, cell unit, RNA, DNA in our soul heart mind, energy and matter (inside the cells) starts to change, shift and align themselves with that particular frequency. This is how we change how we are feeling because we are changing our frequency, the frequency that our physical body vibrates at. That then affects our emotional body, our mental body. Therefore the thoughts can start to change and dissipate. The negative emotions start to release. This is how we change the quality of love we feel and have in our lives. Remember I mentioned that earlier.

So what to chant, what to sing? It is important to choose wisely and carefully, to choose the highest frequency, sound or mantra. Many mantras have existed for eons. Some are new. Both are excellent.

I remember when I first learn about mantra meditation and the teacher said, ‘you could chant repeatedly the word, "tip truck" but it wouldn’t carry the same frequency – that’s the difference. This is why some mantras have been passed on from a teacher to a student for eons.

Some people say I don’t need a teacher. I am my own teacher. Wonderful! But are you learning from books? Are you learning from audio materials? Do you occasionally do an online seminar, webinar whatever? You are learning from others. They are your teachers. To be teachable is humility, which opens the heart to love and compassion.

I want to teach you a new mantra. In English it is called Greatest Compassion. This is beyond the human compassion. This comes from the Source – Da Ci Bei in Chinese Mandarin. Da means big, the greatest. Ci Bei means compassion – Da Ci Bei.

So I would like you to do a practice with me for a few minutes. The longer you do this, the better. We will follow the simple Four Power Techniques:

Body Power: Please sit up straight or you can stand up if you like. Place your left palm on your navel and your right palm in the middle of your chest, your heart chakra. Have your palm relaxed. Where we place our hands energy goes. The palms are like gathering tools. Important is to have your spine straight. Roll your shoulders up, back and down. So you open your chest cavity where the heart chakra resides, but you also open your whole central channel so that qi can flow freely.

Mind Power: is creative visualisation. Visualise golden light in your heart chakra. Visualise like a golden light ball, fist-like light ball, or like an orange. Imagine, visualise or just think this golden light. Imagine it coming into your chest cavity from every direction, 360 degrees. It is spinning, twirling, radiating, shining and is growing in size, finally to fill your whole body, your entire body.

Soul Power: You can read this first and then you close your eyes.

"Dear soul mind and body of the mantra Greatest Compassion – Da Ci Bei, please open my heart further, wider, more fully. Please purify my heart to embody more love, more compassion. Please help me to embody the Greatest Compassion, your frequency and vibration so I may uplift my frequency and vibration. Thank you so much."

You could even ask for physical healing. If you have issues with worry, mouth teeth lips gums, your physical body. If you know you have stomach issues, spleen issues, you can jot that in. Then you say, ‘thank you so much’. Expressing gratitude and appreciation is crucial. Then close your eyes, breathe in and out gently, yet deeply. Continue to visualise the golden light. And now you are going to repeat. You can sing to whatever tune you like or you just repeat the words.

"Da Ci Bei
Da Ci Bei
Da Ci Bei
Da Ci Bei
Da Ci Bei
Da Ci Bei"

Repeat this slowly as you would like.

"Greatest Compassion
Greatest Compassion
Greatest Compassion
Greatest Compassion
Greatest Compassion
Greatest Compassion
Greatest Compassion

Da Ci Bei opens my heart
Da Ci Bei opens my heart
Da Ci Bei opens my heart
Da Ci Bei opens my heart
Da Ci Bei opens my heart
Da Ci Bei opens my heart
Da Ci Bei opens my heart

Greatest Compassion heals my heart
Greatest Compassion heals my heart
Greatest Compassion heals my heart
Greatest Compassion heals my heart
Greatest Compassion heals my heart
Greatest Compassion heals my heart
Greatest Compassion heals my heart."

Repeat as long as you would like, 5 to 7 minutes would be great. The longer the better, the longer you chant and meditate with us, the more you will receive benefits, the more your vibration will start to change to align with the frequency of Greatest Compassion.

Sometimes our heart needs healing, to heal our own wounds so we can increase of our love. You can use whatever sentence to add to this.

Greatest Compassion, Da Ci Bei has the power to transform anything and everything becomes it comes from the Source. It’s way beyond this physical plane. To complete the practice, say 3 times.

"Thank you Thank you Thank you.
Hao Hao Hao."

"Hao" is Chinese Mandarin and it means "perfect, get well." It is like an affirmation at the end. I would love to hear from you how you find this practice. May it serve you well.

I love my heart and soul
I love all humanity
Join hearts and souls together
Bring Love Peace and Harmony
Bring Love Peace and Harmony.

With love and compassion,

Master Mirva