Life in Seasons
Today, technology has advanced so much that we are able to access any information. We are obsessed with timing and being up to date with information. This makes our relationship with time a stressful one, as we are scared that if we miss out on any opportunity, any information or event, we will be left behind and forgotten. We have even developed a psychological phenomenon called “FOMO” – Fear Of Missing Out.
What we have forgotten is that the answer to our stress and anxiety is often not available through modern day technology. It is instead hidden in the ancient knowledge of our legends and stories, in our logos and culture. The wisdom of our ancestors has been passed on to us but we have been too busy advancing to the “next thing” that we have forgotten to learn the basics: Life does not have a “sell-by date” and life happens in cycles and seasons.
Note: Logos, (Greek: “word,” “reason,” or “plan”) plural logoi, is in ancient Greek philosophy and early Christian theology meaning that divine reason is imbedded in the cosmos, ordering it and giving it form and meaning. In this sense it relates to religion, tradition, stories, and myths.
In Chinese traditions, each season has a specific mythical beast associated with it. Each season has also been given a time of day (sunrise, midday, sunset, midnight), one of the five elements (earth, water, fire, air, and metal), as well as an orientation (North, East, South, West).
We will be exploring the meaning and attitude of each season, as well as what they represent.
Spring
Spring is represented by the Azure Dragon named “Seiryu”.
Seiryu represents the sunrise and wood, which means inspiration, growth, and new beginnings.
This mythical creature comes right after Winter, which represents a new beginning after chaotic times.
Firstly, let’s look at what dragons represent. A dragon has the jaws of an alligator, the claws of a tiger or eagle, the body of a snake, and it can fly. This is a clear representation of all the predators our ancestors faced. It is a symbol of the unknown or chaos. The dragon exists in both western and eastern cultures, and the stories they tell are often similar.
In western culture dragons are often depicted as the protectors of a treasure or a virgin. By engaging with a dragon (the unknown) a treasure can be found. This depiction most likely comes from the fact that back when our ancestors were hunters, they needed to face terrible predators. Even though facing them meant inherent danger, it also meant they could bring back food for their tribe (protein) and everyone would become stronger and healthier. During the Viking era, the skin of a bear or a tiger was often used as a trophy, which is clear praise for leadership and bravery. So engaging with the unknown also brings valor, which in turn is useful for the hunter as they can then more easily ask other tribe members to support them or fight for them.
In Chinese culture there is a similar dragon legend. There is a traditional Chinese saying “鯉躍龍門”; the literal translation of which means “Koi jumps over the dragon’s gate.” The story goes as follows: When the Koi fish (鯉) jumps (躍) over the “dragon’s gate” (龍門) it transforms itself into a dragon and flies into the air. The dragon’s gate refers to the top of the waterfall and when you swim up the waterfall and jump over it you will transform into something greater. Swimming up the waterfall is a very difficult thing to do, so it also means that enduring hardship will help you evolve to greatness.
Both western and eastern versions of dragons show how a great outcome is promised by engaging with a hard and unknown task. It also represents a large part of the spirit of Spring.
Think of it from the mindset of a farmer. In Spring, a farmer plants bulbs, which is a phase of building. They have no idea what will come out of the earth, but they believe by engaging fully with the hard work that something great will come out of it.
If you look at the symbol of the Yin and Yang, there is a small Yang within the Yin. This means there is a small amount of order that comes out of chaos. This also means that it doesn’t matter where you start when dealing with chaos, so long as you start organising / engaging.
Summer
During Summer you no longer need to plant your crops. However, it is not yet time to harvest. So, what do you do?
You manage your crops. During this phase, you go through the “choosing” or “managing” phase of your life. Back to the farmer: During the summer he manages his crops, he tries to boost the lifespan of the good crops and starts to pull out the bad ones so that the nutrients used will maximize the outcome of his work.
This is what you do while you go through the managing phase of your life. You’ve just gone through the phase of engaging with the unknown (Spring) and have gained crops out of it — be it from projects you have worked on, relationships you have nurtured, or constructed beliefs, wisdom or lessons you have learned. Now it is time to have a look at all you have planted and ask: Are there any projects I have invested in that are not giving me a fruitful return? Are there toxic relationships that have been holding me back? Are there habits that I have that are stopping me from moving forward? Is there a constructed belief that I have been holding on to that has been preventing me from being successful?
All of these are hard questions to ask and to advance there are sacrifices that need to be made. As creatures bound by time, it takes time and effort for us to keep things in balance and it takes even more time and effort to improve on things, because things deteriorate as time goes by.
Life is always about sacrifices. For instance, you sacrifice instant gratification for more comfort in the future (by working longer hours), you sacrifice the pleasure of a dessert in order to have a better figure, or when you drink you sacrifice clarity and health for instant pleasure and memories.
Since there will always be sacrifices, it’s best to choose what you prefer to sacrifice, otherwise life will choose for you. This is when the managing (Summer) phase comes into play: You choose what to sacrifice in order to move on with life – just like the farmer manages his crops in the Summer.
As we journey in life, we build up constructed beliefs out of lessons we learnt from the past. These constructed beliefs become the framework we operate in. As times goes by, more people contribute to the world and more people input their ripple effect into the world, which sometimes means old, constructed beliefs we developed in the past become outdated. We need to learn to abandon them because they stop being a useful tool. These can even sometimes turn into problems..
For example: Let’s say you are a bachelor who lives alone, so out of survival you have learned to cook. To cook well you bought a great, sharp knife. In this phase of your life, your sharp knife is amazing. It cuts through meat easily, makes your cooking life easier, and proves to be a very useful tool in your eyes. As you move through life, your amazing cooking has allowed you to meet a partner. You decide to build a family together and now you have a child in your house. Your useful tool of the sharp knife suddenly seems to be less of a tool and more of a problem, as no matter how careful you are, this knife is too sharp and any accident can cause your child to get hurt.
At this point, the constructed belief of “this knife is a useful tool” is no longer applicable, as circumstances change and that knife becomes a problem. So even though that tool was once useful to you, no matter how painful, you need to let it go.
Every nine years, all of the cells in our body are renewed. The old you from nine years ago and the current you are two totally different cells. However, this change is done slowly and periodically. Because when cells reproduce too quickly or slowly they can become cancer cells. If you don’t get rid of dead cells they stay in the body and mutate and become cancer, but if they’re too active, they can also develop into cancer cells. You need a balance.
In order for you to evolve and move on you need to burn your old, constructed beliefs, as they become dead wood. Forests have a natural function for this. They build up dead wood so that when a forest fire breaks out, the outer dead wood is burned off and the forest can grow back stronger and more vitalized after the fire. Unfortunately, we as humans try to prevent forest fires from happening. So our woods build up too much dead wood and when a fire suddenly occurs, the entire forest burns to the ground and no life can sustain itself; this is how deserts are made.
This is nature’s way of telling us that we need to burn off dead wood periodically. If we don’t, we will fall in love with the constructed belief that we created for ourselves, and, if one day we find out all our beliefs are no longer useful, we may not have much of ourselves left.
It comes as little surprise that the symbol for Summer is the phoenix. It symbolizes a rebirth through the ashes of the old self. In order to move forward in life, every once in a while, you need to reconstruct your beliefs from the husk of your old system. The phoenix is a bird, which means they can see very well and very far; and, just like the Eye of Horus, you need to pay attention to your surroundings and observe the tools you can use.
Birds can see very far, which means that you need to be observing things in a long-term way for them to work out best for you. Think of it like a functioning society. When does an economy work well? When people have an optimistic and stable long-term vision of the future. People are more willing to invest which pushes the economy to flow.
And when does economy suffer? When people are pessimistic about the future, so they seek to have immediate gain, they look for security so are unwilling to spend and invest. The phoenix reminds us to have a long term, optimistic vision of the future.
Fire is also passion, which reminds us to pay attention to our emotions, as emotions are an indicator of our values. Our emotions act as a GPS. When we are happy, they indicate that we are empowering our value; when we are sad it means that a value of ours is being robbed; and when we are angry it means there is an obstacle in the way of us achieving our value.
By paying attention to our emotions, we can figure out our values; and by figuring out our values, we can work out a hierarchy system. By figuring out a hierarchy system, we can determine which value we should sacrifice when the time comes to make a clear choice of which value we need to sacrifice.
Autumn
Autumn is a time for harvest. It means you will be receiving the fruitful effects of what you planted in Spring. It is also the direct result of the managing you did during the Summer phase.
Autumn reminds us that we need to take time to relax and have fun. We need to enjoy the process of our hard work, otherwise what is the point of working hard? It is also a time of gratitude – to take time to identify what you have around you and be thankful for it. So, it also encourages you to view the tools in your life.
The white tiger, the mythical creature of Autumn, is also a creature that exists in our world. It reminds us that although it is nice to have a vision and think about how our life could be, it is also important to focus on the physical world. We need to engage with the present to build our future, and our past can only be used a tool of reference, as no matter how much energy we invest we cannot change the past. Therefore, we need to focus on what we have in the moment.
If you break down all the elements or facts you have in life, you can place them into two categories: Tools or problems. You can choose to focus on the problems in your life or you can choose to focus on the tools.
By focusing on the problems in your life, you only add in more information into your mental being, which affects your ability to notice opportunities around you. No matter how real your problems are, focusing on them does not make them go away.
Instead, if you focus on the tools in your life, even though it doesn’t mean all your problems disappear, you may be able to solve at least ONE problem. And just like that, you will hopefully have ONE LESS problem to deal with. You free up energy to focus on the opportunities you have in your life.
Often, the tools in your life are a result of your harvest. So, focusing on the tools in your life adds value to you, it gives you purpose. It also makes you feel capable and gives hope to your vision, which in turn empowers you. This is the spirit of the white tiger. You end up focusing on what is real in your life and you use that to empower yourself to move forward.
Autumn is also right before Winter, which encourages you to embrace chaos, to focus on the tools you have that will help you through any upcoming hard times. Which brings us to the next point - you need to be very careful what you associate your courage with.
Courage is the ability to say “Whatever the consequences – I will do it anyway”. In the short term, it is the ability to say “fuck it”.
You need to be very careful about what you say “fuck it” to, as it develops a neuron of association in your brain. If you associate “fuck it” with something negative, when you’re in a time of need and need courage, you may find it hard to summon it – because in the past your association with courage was a negative one.
For example: Alcoholics know drinking is bad for them but whenever they think of having a drink they will go “fuck it, I might as well do it”. This is why it is so difficult for them to break the habit. In the past, they associated courage with something negative (drinking) and it is precisely that courage that they need in order for them to abandon that habit.
So, if you need courage and empowerment to last you through the Winter, be very careful where your focus lies and how you associate things.
Finally, the white tiger also has teeth and claws, which reminds us of the importance of showing “teeth”.
You need to let people know that you can be a demon, so that your good is appreciated. If you are always “nice” by default, your niceness is not appreciated, because your niceness has no value. You end up becoming a teddy bear and you couldn’t hurt someone even if you’re thrown at them. However, if you show that you can be a demon and you “choose” to be nice, your niceness will be more appreciated, as it is a gift not a default.
The same thing can be said the other way around. If you are always a demon people will not be able to take you seriously, as it is your default mode. Since there is no change in your demeanor, there is no way to allow change and people do not see themselves wanting to evolve with you.
The spirit of Winter – Genbu — is a special one, as it is the only one made up of two animals.
The first one is the snake. It symbolizes malevolence in the world. Your contribution to the world is very limited; your vision and your control are also limited. However, the world is too widely out of your comprehension, so to make it worse, everyone is also constantly contributing to the world the way they can, with the idea of the ripple effect being into the mix, it is impossible to predict or control how things turn out.
This means that when bad things happen to you, generally speaking, it is not your fault. It is not constructive to blame yourself when things don’t turn out the way you expect them to. It means that you can only contribute to the world the best way you can and you can control how you deal with each situation – that’s it.
It also indicates that there is evil in the world, so you need to pay attention and look out for snakes that might harm you.
The other part of the spirit is the Tortoise – which is the shell. Have you grown a good enough shell to endure the outside chaos? Did you work hard enough in Spring? Did you made good choices in Summer to manage your crops? Did you harvest your crops at the right time so they are not overripe?
In the sense of life, did you engage enough with the unknown? Did you establish a good enough belief system to last you through bad times? Have you built enough good relationships to help you through bad times? Did you take time to have fun before the times turned bad so your life is balanced out?
The shell or the constructive belief in the religious sense is “Noah’s ark”. Winter is the time of the flood and a time of judgement - did you build a good enough ark? Interestingly, the associated element for Winter is water, which symbolizes change, abundance, and connection.
Depending on how you last throughout the Winter, you start to reflect and that is all you can do, because no matter how hard you try to plant things in Winter they will die. This also symbolizes a time for mourning. You need to let things breathe, you need to endure, and you need to take your pain – as pain gives you reflection and lessons about the value of your life – thus you get to understand who you are.
Since there is nothing you can do over the Winter time it is also a phase for reflection. How can I better plan in the next Spring? How can I manage matters better in my life to prepare me for the next Winter? What else do I need to look out for the next year?
Winter is the judgmental father that judges you with chaos for the choices that you made and it will reflect with your reality – this is way the tortoise and the snakes are real animals too. Like the eyes of Ra, the world as reality will judge you and you better pay attention to the lesson it is trying to tell you.
After the lesson comes the time for change. In old Babylonian times they used to take out the king and whip him to say show how he had been a bad king and how he could be a better king in the future. In the end, the king would need to place his hand on the testicle of an elder, symbolizing he was making a pact with the future — which is where the original meaning of “testify” comes from.
This is why new year resolutions happen at this time of year. You reflect on the choices you made throughout the year and make promises on how you can evolve, thus completing the symbol of Winter: embrace, reflect, and change.
Spring
To complete the cycle, we come back to Spring - which brings in another meaning - hope. Life runs in seasons, which means no matter how bad times are, Spring will always come.
See it as a reverse Game of Thrones saying: “Spring is coming”.
It also brings in the symbol of “the fool” as things start anew and times change, so you need to relearn how the world operates again.
Seiryu also represents the sunrise, as a day sets it is time you regain clarity. Pick yourself up and march towards the unknown.
Therefore, a hero’s journey always starts with the phase of the fool battling chaos. You need to be the fool occasionally to learn something new, to change, and to evolve.
