Spring Growth

How Family Shapes Us through the Wood Element in Five Element Theory

Like the Winds force stirs up the Fire releasing the energy stored within it, we too move out into the Springtime landscape by the grace of the unconditional love and acceptance of our family experience. This story is told as the baby emerges from the black of the womb, as the child ventures out into the community after the closeness of childhood, and as the young adult moves to maturity, marriage and children of their own.

The Winds of Spring and Family Influence

It is a lifetime migration that is also mirrored, and up for review, as each Winter emerges into Summer along the bridge of Spring. The contrast of the comfortable darkness of our winter reveals our own deepest colours as Spring takes its course to summer.

From Winter's Darkness to Spring's Light

Family is the place where we know unconditional support, it may be a bloodline, or it may be a group of people that just get us. It is where we go out from and come back to in an alternating rhythm that ultimately grows, shapes and becomes us. Just like in the forest, the natural selection that occurs in our family units drives the divergence of our character, the more diversified we are, the more unique, the more individual, the better our chances of survival and success.

Family as a Source of Growth and Individuation

We find safety and nourishment in the family, but we also find the conditions that fan the flames close to the hearth, the conditions that ultimately shape the rarefied nature we will come to be known by. The masters said, "There is no greater joy than to examine oneself and be sincere", our family life is the gift that enables us to do just that, and by doing so to see our real face reflected in their mirror.

You seek a haven and find a stone.
But the stone will shape you of your own likeness.
- I Ching 

If our family life was more shameless than The Brady Bunch then it may feel like we were handed a stone, however, its hard surface is the gift of individuation that enables us to sharpen our swords and become all of who we are. The greatest teachers and wise (wo)men have often risen from a rocky first family experience.

Carved by Wind and Fire: Growth Through Challenge

The family can be a source of support while their dysfunctional dynamics shape us in the same way the wind carves a mountain. We stand in the present as life’s best example of one variation of the line we carry forward. As the Wind and the Flame glow brightest near the hearth, it will reveal the unique tool kit we will carry forward into the world. To be in the family is to do the work of Winter so that as Spring comes, we know our value and can offer it forward in the world for the good of all.

Learn more about the seasons and the flow of the Five Element Theory here