6. The Elements (G4)
Emotions are strong. They are elemental. Anger can be volcanic. Grief can be a tidal wave. A torrential downpour. Our emotions are Nature speaking through us. Remnants of a lifetime (or Nature’s earliest software version) where we were no more than droplets in an ocean; but what is water is water is water. The essence is the same, no matter what version is it is at.
They say don’t try to fight fire with fire. It is true. And it takes quite a bit of self-discipline to not react with fire. It’s hot and it burns, of course we want to snap back with our own fire.
Sometimes that fire is a righteous rage. Sometimes it is necessary - there is a positive and a negative to each element. But when it is in the negative, just to hurt someone the way they've hurt you, all we get is a feedback loop of "hurt people hurt people". By not breaking that pattern, we continue the macro negative pattern of passing down hurt. Generation to generation.
At some point someone has to make the decision to stop the pattern. And fortunately, we all get that opportunity with every single decision we make, every single day.
It is why managing our attention is the first geometry. With a strong relationship with our attention, have the ability to recognize an emotion when it arises, as well as the context in which we currently exist. Our brain has to run a bunch of algorithms to identify if all logic points to true - react with X emotion, or false - do not react.
So can we use these identifiers to recognize with our attention the element we are feeling? And have the self-discipline to hold, hold, hold - breathe, breathe, breathe; to not run the program just yet so we can take the moment to create our algorithm.
What would the counter reaction to fire be? Empathy (water), breathing (air), and grounding (earth). Maybe it is space (air). Maybe it is boundaries (earth). Maybe it is a hand, a hug, or a gentle nod (water).
And it's not about not feeling the emotion. That is actually a requirement in order to process it. It's just about creating the self-discipline to know when, how and where to process the emotion. So we deeply need good algorithms to know the when, how, and where in order to get the optimal result from the code.
What happens to anger that is suppressed? Grief? Hurt? Those emotions have a vibration to them, and a section of the body where they are generated. If we don't process them correctly, they get stuck and start to jam up the human operating system. If we're not careful, we'll blow a circuit and have to reset the enter system, wait for it to reboot, and hope for a different outcome the next time.
We can feel what those emotions feel like just by reading the word. Where in the body does one feel anger when it is thought of? Likely the solar plexus and the throat.
The four elements are the most basic of emotional patterning. Once we start to find the ecotones (areas of overlap - something we will come back to as we move into social soil), we can start to compute more complex emotions like confusion (fog - water/air), feeling stuck (mud - water/earth), shock (lightning - fire/air), and then experiencing any emotion becomes more of an objective curiosity, a game, where we consciously are identifying what we are feeling and what the counter element would be to help us process the emotion.
Again, it is worth emphasizing that the geometries are buckets for patterns. The elements is one pattern that fits in a geometry of 4 buckets.
The buckets are essentially the Logos (the structure, context/container) and what you put in the buckets is the Pathos (the feelings, the unknown, the essence). Then it's utilizing our Ethos program to see if what we're feeling, sensing, making decisions on is Fair - is that the best way to react given all the logic of the situation and taking into account the emotions of the other party? If yes, run program, if no, stop and recalculate.
And the beauty of the geometries is that it doesn't matter what you put in the buckets so long as they create an equilibrium between all the variables.
There are a LOT of G4 examples, many of which have to do with personality. And if we imagine taking all of these little assessment tests and getting our result (which we'll discuss at some point here - just think of your result as a "snapshot" of where you are currently in this present moment - it is not a static forever result!).
The Control Dramas will be something we come back to as we start looking at the negative patterns in human behavior and the way that we steal energy from each other vs generate energy for ourselves.
Onward!