Earth
Receiving
Earth holds the center. This is the one everything else leans on: the harvest, the household, the steady hands. This is where you take in the world and make something of it. When your digestion complains — the bloat, the gut that churns, the nausea, the inflammation — Earth is speaking. It is time to listen.
Within Earth, there is a deeper question of nourishment. Yes, what am I taking in, but also: how am I nourishing myself and what is the substance of it? What food? What thoughts? What habits? What friends and love and community? What media and information? Or perhaps even bigger: by caring for others, all the time, am I even caring for myself?
“The worried mind and the considerate mind are the same soil.”
“Empty yourself of everything.
Let the mind rest at peace.
All things rise and fall,
and each returns to its root.
Returning to the root is stillness.”
Nourishment runs two ways. You sow, you provide, you hold the middle — central, but off to the side. Taken for granted, even by yourself. Remember to care for yourself along the way. This is a huge lesson in life, especially for men. What can we actually provide, if we are not also caring for ourselves on some level?
The gut that cannot transform or process the food that enters it often belongs to a man swallowing more than food. So, that begs the question - what are you consuming that is not meant for you or not nourishing to the entire You?
Consider your life and your brain to be like a sponge. We take things in, even when we do not realize it. Our subconscious absorbs more than it should - and that’s part of the world we live in and it’s part of the work that we can do as humans, in this day in age. On some level, we must find our own boundaries. What comes in and what stays out?
The slights, the worries, the desires or preoccupations that you have decided not to have, that is very significant. That is progress. And there is always more work to do: how can we quiet the mind to help bring us back into our own center of Earth? How can we honor this body through our daily habits and choices?
The mind that churns the same thought all day — that's Earth too. Rumination is digestion with nothing new to digest and not knowing how to make something of it.
“By caring for others, all the time, am I even caring for myself?”
Video: conscious nourishment, warmth, movement, choices, find center, simplify.
Ruminate wisely!
The worried mind and the considerate mind are the same soil. In this tradition, the churning — the endless turning-over of what he said, what might happen, what you should have done — is not the opposite of care. It is care with no ground to land in. Thought that cannot become nourishment. And the quiet complaint underneath it — the ledger of everything given and nothing returned — is trust, wounded.
The work of Earth is not to stop caring or to give more. It is to let something in. To be fed. To trust that the ground holds you, too. And in life - let your relationships nourish you as much as you nourish them.
Ultimately, how can we come into right relationship with the world that spins around us? While we are strong, stable and caring, can we also not lose ourselves along the way?
In the long run, we are being drained: physically and emotionally, leaving us depleted, worn out and a bit hollow. We've lost our center. We are left with questions of where we can shore up our daily practices, our food relationships, our life relationships — to heal, to mend and to find our strength again, beginning from within.
Questions to sit with:
What am I taking into my life that isn't food?
Who truly nourishes me — and do I allow myself to receive it?
What is the thought I keep turning over — and what is it keeping me from digesting?
For when you are ready:
Where did I learn that my needs come last?
What grievance have I been keeping a quiet ledger of — and what has holding it cost me?
If I trusted that I would be supported, what would I finally set down?
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