Terrestrial Elements

I am walking along a path, the topmost layer of which consists of black and brown cinders. I am entirely focussed on the cinder path, so I do not notice what is happening around me.

All my attention is on the crunching cinder path. I even feel the crunching under my feet as if I were really walking on it.

The path winds towards the horizon.

On both sides are poles at even distances and between these poles barbed wire is fitted. This barbed wire prevents wandering off, and if I do not want to hurt myself on the wire, I shall have to stay on the path.

In the distance mountains are visible and I see a bare, rolling landscape without any trees, shrubs or bushes. The surroundings are grey and emanate a desolate bleakness in which the path and the barbed wire fencing stand out clearly.

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The entire entourage shows a situation which any one of you will have experienced several times at least in your life. You find you are left with the bleakness, the feeling that everything, everybody has deserted you.

Just look at the path; it is a cinder path, meaning that it consists of the residues of burnt coal. Coal is used to create heat in order to make life somewhat more comfortable for the human. But these cinders do not provide any kind of heat, and therefore this path does not give a human in this situation what he needs.

The human who embarks upon this path follows a very narrow path, thinking that he should stay within the fencing.

As he walks along this narrow path this human does not gain any more impressions, neither is he stimulated by the surroundings which is what the barbed wire symbolizes.

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The entire scene is one of bleakness, but we know that the human first has to be conscious of these periods of desolation for we often see that he takes much trouble trying to get rid of such a feeling of bleakness. He undertakes lots of things in order not to feel it… he goes to see people, he goes to a sports club or he immerses himself in his work. Everybody has his own personal survival mechanism in order not to have to think about such things, If I allow these feelings, I might sink even deeper and I do not want to do that. So I do everything in my power to try to keep going and to continue on my path.

But if the human closes his eyes to his actual situation, it will keep pursuing him. So if you close your eyes to your own depression, your own grief, your own anger, or whatever other emotion, and if you think, It is no good, this is not allowed, I must do something positive to set against it, you will see that things will be okay for quite a while, until you have a weak moment, when all these old, uncoped with emotions will come back to face you again.

So you had better go through these emotions quickly, rather than look the other way and not do anything.

You will gradually begin to understand why these emotions are there, and that would not happen if you walked away thinking, What I am feeling is bad and this should not be, or people will find me a bore and will not want to know me anymore.

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But if a human stops for a while and wonders what is actually happening to him, where did he pick up this grief, or what is his anger focussed on, then he will learn to understand himself better. He will discover that this layer of emotion mostly conceals a lesson.

Everybody knows that in the World of Wisdom the essence has already seen which lesson is needed in order to progress on the path. It comes to this planet and chooses a body and a social environment, where the lesson can best be learned, and particularly a human who has advanced on the path, who has at least reached the blue vibration, will be forcefully confronted with the lessons of his essence that can only be learned through the emotions.

Once the human knows this, he can examine his emotions and go through them so as to gain insight into the associated lesson, or what is not as yet understood.

That is different for everybody, because every human is unique and deals with this in his own particular way. When a human is confronted with his emotions, this is not just a matter of the thinking hat, because the individual’s genetic material and character also determine in part what those emotions are like.

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For the human on this path things seem very confusing. He does not seem to be able to find a way out and so life becomes very tough, and he also has to find out where this toughness comes from. All too often we see humans sigh:

‘This is too much, count me out, I do not want any part of it!’

We hear that often enough, but we know that these emotions are needed so as to gain an insight into the lesson the essence has brought along.

You may assume that nobody is going to be overtaxed by the World of Wisdom. So if your essence has a lesson and tries to learn it, it must also take into account the body it uses.

When you feel, I do not know, life is very tough for me, I am swamped with emotions, we hope you will be able to say to yourself: ‘Okay, I will slow down and wonder, tears are allowed, grief is allowed, anger is allowed, I am not going to condemn myself because of this.’

If you can accept that you have these emotions, since you know that it is a lesson for your essence, you will give yourself a chance to go through the emotion to the lesson.

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It is never much fun to be confronted with emotions and their associated lessons, but if you know that these are not your lessons, but the lessons of your essence, you will accept them more readily. A human often thinks, I must keep up appearances; I must show the outside world that I can deal with it.

If you know that the essence has chosen you for its cloak, it is easy to see that what is happening now is a lesson of the essence. Just go with it. You will see that the desolate situation in which you might frequently find yourself is not so desolate after all, but that it has to do with a certain resting period. This period is necessary for life to thrive again, like in a desert where the land seems barren, but many things are happening below the surface.

Every human must have the possibility to take a rest, so that something new can spring forth in that restful period. This is a spiritual law present on this planet as well as in you, and because your body is part of the planet, your body as such does not go to the World of Wisdom; only your essence goes to the World of Wisdom.

This body belongs to this planet and all bodies are part of the laws that govern this planet which affect the body.

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If you begin to see the laws of the nature of this planet, and in yourself too, everything becomes clearer and you will find that you neither have to reject yourself, nor the people around you. You will be able to accept this as part of the laws of nature, as they appear at this very moment.

It is not all that far away from you, your thinking hat just makes it very dramatic.

The individual thinking hat thinks it is above the laws of nature, but because your body is part of this planet and part of all the laws of nature, whether the thinking hat likes it or not, it will have to come to realize that this is true. It will then realize that the same applies to its own body.

The thinking hat can become very obstinate and say: ‘Come on, that’s all very well, but damn it, I have a lot more going for me than what that law of nature has to offer’, and thus a human is constantly confronted with the bleakness of his own life. However, if you say: ‘Okay, the body is part of the nature of this planet, so all the workings of this planet also suit my body’, you will accept more easily the various ups and downs in yourself.

Just like the four seasons on this planet you too will learn to experience four seasons in your own body. The fun part of it is that it is not without reason: since the body is part of this planet, it too has certain qualities that have to do with nature.

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Let’s take a look at this planet. It consists of four elements: air, water, earth and fire. Each of the four elements is a certain form of energy. When you are born the body receives a certain input from one of these elements. So it is not just your character, your thinking hat or the lessons of your essence that bother you sometimes, but it is also one of these elements that incites your body to take certain steps, to react in certain ways.

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Many humans are into astrology and talk about fire sign or earth sign et cetera, but we are not into astrology, we are into this planet and talk of the four elements: fire, water, air and earth.

Because of these elements the human may react in a certain way, as each element has its own way of reacting. It is a psychological imprint on the body.

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Suppose a body is in the water element, meaning that psychologically speaking that human has the possibility of flowing along. This is somebody who does not really stand for his own convictions: his reaction is something like:

‘Good, if you think so, I can live with it.’

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Someone with the air element does not like being on earth and is constantly in flight. This is somebody who tends to be free floating or is occupied with knowledge: he is always seeking to go higher up, and considers thinking very important.

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Then there is the earth element: the human in this element feels no roots, and doesn’t feel at home anywhere. This person feels slightly hunted and psychologically speaking he will take to his heels and run away when problems arise.

 

The human under the influence of the fire element makes himself very big: ‘I will show who I am’, and in this way makes others feel very small. That is the psychological mechanism of the fire element.

 

We have now shown you the four possibilities:

-    fire element means making oneself big.
-    air element means losing oneself in thoughts, science.
-    water element means flowing.
-    earth element means not feeling at home anywhere.

So try working out which is your element!

This requires being alert, observing yourself and, especially in conflicts, observing how you react to the situation; then you will soon discover which of the four elements is yours.

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The moment you realize which element commands your body, given that it is just a stimulus for the body, you will learn to see what impact it has on your reactions. So next time you let yourself be guided by the element you can say:

‘Okay, so it was the element that made me react like this, and next time I will react from my essence.’

When you want to react from the essence, eight times out of ten the old habit may still intervene, but as we said:

'Please do accept, accept, accept yourself!’ Then you will find that the elements will not have such a strong influence over you anymore.

As long as you keep feeding your thinking hat with, Oh heck! I should not have behaved like this, then you will remain depressed, sad and angry with yourself. You are simply allowing the emotions dominated by the air, water, earth and fire elements to influence your behaviour, and you will continue to be worse off.

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We really hope this text will help you to get on with yourself somewhat better and that you will accept yourself for who you are, but most of all that you get an idea as to which stimuli from which element are bound to your body.

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