{"id":176,"date":"2010-11-30T20:06:57","date_gmt":"2010-11-30T20:06:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wellnessandspirituality.net\/?p=176"},"modified":"2011-01-07T12:43:41","modified_gmt":"2011-01-07T17:43:41","slug":"song-of-the-west-wind-oh-human-know-thyself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wellnessandspirituality.net\/?p=176","title":{"rendered":"Song of the West Wind: Oh Human, Know Thyself!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Introspection is the art of looking inward at the Self.\u00a0Hear then, the Song of the West Wind: Oh Human, Know Thyself!<\/em><\/p>\n

Were you\u00a0 taught as a youngster\u00a0to look at yourself and\u00a0examine your\u00a0behavior, your strengths and your weaknesses, talents and flaws? Do you see yourself as a victim or as a powerful person who controls their own life?\u00a0Were you given skills\u00a0 to\u00a0overcome character flaws, inappropriate behavior, or any trait\u00a0one might find in one’s self\u00a0 that\u00a0is what psychologists call “dysfunctional”? I doubt it.<\/p>\n

So many of us grew up in a family in which blame <\/em><\/strong>was assigned to something outside ourselves.\u00a0Unhappy conditions,\u00a0problems, ugly situations and so forth were attributed to others. In this manner, we were essentially taught to “give our power away,” because if others are to blame for our unhappiness and problems, how can we possibly hope to change all those\u00a0outward circumstances sufficiently?<\/p>\n

But if we recognize that we have control of our own inward spaces, of our own feelings and thoughts, we\u00a0keep\u00a0our power and control our own destiny.<\/p>\n

Grandmother Parisha has taught her Circle the wisdom of the Medicine Wheel. In it’s basic form, it is\u00a0\u00a0symbolic of the universe and it consists of seven directions– Above, Below and Center; and the North, South, East and West “gates.”<\/p>\n

The Medicine Wheel wisdoms developed through centuries of\u00a0observing \u00a0the natural beings, phenomena\u00a0and elements that were associated with each direction. For instance, each direction is associated with a season and time of day–the East, where the sun rises, is associated with sunrise and spring; the\u00a0South, with\u00a0“high sun” and summer; the West, where the sun sets, with dusk and\u00a0autumn, and the North, with midnight and winter.<\/p>\n

Imagine, if you will, the Great Black Bear, the gatekeeper of the West, who eats her fill and heads into the cave to hibernate during the late fall.\u00a0 This is an image of\u00a0 what a human being can do on a regular basis but especially\u00a0during the months of fall, when the skies cloud over and turn to gray and\u00a0 the bare bones of\u00a0 trees are revealed. The spring and summer sun that lifts our spirits wanes and a kind of thoughtful melancholy can descend. It is in the autumnal hush that\u00a0the\u00a0human can hear then the Song of the West Wind:\u00a0 Oh Human, Know Thyself!\u00a0\u00a0Take\u00a0Time to\u00a0venture\u00a0into the cave of the mind and soul, peer into the darkness–introspect–look within!<\/p>\n

As the Tao Te Ching advises:<\/p>\n

Knowing others is intelligence. Knowing\u00a0yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength. Mastering\u00a0\u00a0yourself is true power. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Introspection is the art of looking inward at the Self.\u00a0Hear then, the Song of the West Wind: Oh Human, Know Thyself! Were you\u00a0 taught as a youngster\u00a0to look at yourself and\u00a0examine your\u00a0behavior, your strengths and your weaknesses, talents and flaws? Do you see yourself as a victim or as a powerful person who controls their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[8,34,33],"class_list":["post-176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wellness-and-spirituality","tag-grandmother-parisha","tag-know-thyself","tag-medicine-wheel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wellnessandspirituality.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wellnessandspirituality.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wellnessandspirituality.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wellnessandspirituality.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wellnessandspirituality.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=176"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/wellnessandspirituality.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":775,"href":"https:\/\/wellnessandspirituality.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176\/revisions\/775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wellnessandspirituality.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wellnessandspirituality.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wellnessandspirituality.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}