The World Health Organization (WHO) pointed out that depression will become one of the most popular diseases in the world in the next few years, second only to ischemic heart disease.
We have to admit one truth, that heart and mental diseases are the top killers to human’s health in nowadays. Are we recognizing that they are all related to our fire of life energy problems? Does it mean humans generally are not having a balanced fire and water energy? Is their fire energy too weak to cook their life water to a certain level of temperature? Are they lacking their life energy?
Energy is invisible. From the whole Mother Earth nature system’s point of view, the total energy level is at a certain conservation point. If this human body system’s fire energy is generally weak now, where did the missing fire energy go to on earth? If human society’s fire energy is weak, then their total water energy must be excessive. Where on earth lacks this water energy then?
With the overwhelming sweep of the digital network era, social development has entered an acceleration track. From the first industrial revolution to the fifth industrial revolution that human beings are talking about, the efficiency of human society has gone from the roaring speed of steam locomotives to the digital space-time speed of 5G and AI. Unconsciously, human beings are discovering that our living space and time are being rapidly compressed by the fast pace of technology. While new technology is inevitably controlled by a very small group of people, the vast majority of people have to passively follow the development of the digital age and fall into the rapid competition of the objective material world. There exists a strong contrast between the compression of resources and the subjective consciousnesses’ staying in its place or even getting degenerated. As a long-term accumulative result, the development of the spirit lags behind the development of the material, which draws out an invisible and insurmountable gap, manifested as the mankind-depression.
How amazing it is that nature has its power in auto- balancing the energy system of the universe!
Putting words in another way, the internet-based 5G and AI carries huge high-efficiency energy. They are not only simply carrying energy at a material level, but invisible high-efficiency energy at the information level, at the intelligence level. They are fast, powerful, and dominating the world. They have the potential to challenge the human brains and take over the human brain’s responsibilities.
What does this mean? Does it mean human fire energy’s responsibilities? Their basic electric and heating characters are typical fire energy’s specialties. If we look back calmly, we would realize that the human world’s energy is highly concentrated on internet-based high technology over the past ten to twenty years. What water does this huge fire energy fire then? While that huge powerful fire energy is accelerating, there is excessive water in the human body which is lacking fire energy now. How can humans balance their world’s fire and water energy? Is the high technology energy aiming to fire the human waters?
Leave the energy theory aside, let’s go back to look at the problem of human depression.
Modern medicine treats the body and mind as two things. While, Chinese medicine calls the physical and mental body the unity of form and spirits, or body and mind. It tells us, depression is due to the body’s Yang energy is not enough and the human spirit, consciousness, and mental abilities are declining. Here let’s take two examples from our modern science and businesses for easy understanding:
Our first example is the computer. We know that a computer can install high-level operation systems and run high-level programs with good RAM[2], CPU[3], HDD[4], and the compatible motherboard. A set of matching RAM, CPU, HDD, and motherboard determines the function and price of a computer. With the old low version of any of the RAM, CPU, HDD, or the motherboard, let alone run high-level programs, you cannot even download or install too much. This set of matching versions of the hardware provides a solid qualified platform for high version soft programs to run, to manifest. A computer is a perfect combination of its hardware and software systems. Its hardware system is its body, while its software system is like its mind, its soul, its spiritual quality. They are like its Yin and Yang energy. They must match each other for a better life of the computer. The same principle works for smart mobile phones. Do we doubt that iPhone 4 is not able to support IOS14.2?
Another example is about the modern supply chains. The best balancing point in a supply chain in gaining the best cost control and the best service level is to maintain the connection between supply chain planning and execution systems synchronizing with the data and process levels in serving different customers and clients. Ignoring or focusing on any party will break the balance of the entire supply chain. In another word, the supply chain is a unity of its fulfillment planning system and consumption execution system.
If we take the internet world for example, there would have endless arguments we can talk about.
But all these words are trying to tell that the human body and mental systems are relatively connected and united. The body energy and spiritual energy of humans complement and support each other. They both form up the human’s life energy system. Similarly, when a person’s life energy is low:
- Things around him might become obstacles: He got problems in digesting food and got emotions in most physical activities and complex sports.
- His body disease occurs, such as high blood pressure, hyperlipidemia, diabetes, tachycardia, or arrhythmia…
- Emotionally, his consciousness, thinking, and social interaction are being closed. He intends to only accept certain things that he is willing to accept and starts to refuse things that he used to like.
Now, he unconsciously becomes a “compressed person”: his body, mind, and spirit are compressed; his time, space, society, and life, as well as everything around him, are compressed even when he didn’t necessarily realize it. Briefly, his fire energy of life is blocked. Either his fire is too weak, or his fire and water cannot interact. His fluid circulation system is going abnormal, which is shown in his hormone secretion, his blood circulation, and his breathing, then his digestion functions start to get abnormal. He becomes a patient of insomnia, phobia, anxiety, hypochondria, obsessive-compulsive disorder, neurasthenia, neuropathic vomiting, etc. Simply state it, a disease of depression.
The current medical view is that depression and psychological problems are caused by changes in the chemicals in the brain. From some point of Taoism’s view, this is correct, as it reveals that this is a problem related to the human brain, but it only looked at a tiny point of a big problem. Therefore, they think people with depression and certain mental illnesses are diagnosed to take drugs that inhibit these chemical elements or stop their minds from working. But the effect is not very good. How can it be good??? To stop the minds from working, it’s like trying to put out the fire when their fire is very weak already!!! This seems to be different from using drugs to repeatedly and intensely stimulate the excitement of the human brain and contempt for cheerful neurotransmitters, but are they all trying to conceal the emptiness of the human spirit? So, where does all human energy go?
For a person as a whole, his life attitude and lifestyle, his emotions, thinking, cognition, and behavior patterns just simply change due to changes in these chemicals? Could it be the other way around? Could it be that their thoughts, minds, and spirits have problems that have caused these chemical changes? That their fire energy of life is not strong enough to ignite their brain’s full functionalities? And as a result, that has caused their brain’s degeneration which is shown as the chemical changes?
People are easily brainwashed and worship authority. Whatever the popular media says, what the doctor says is what they think it is. When the doctor tells you that you are diagnosed to have depression and need to use antidepressants to control it, most people’s response is to take the medicine as soon as possible to cooperate with the doctor, and repeatedly strengthen and tell themselves in their minds: “I have depression”.
But, in the face of depression, it is impossible to treat depression without investigating and finding its root cause. In the eyes of TCM, it doesn’t make much sense to analyze the types of depression and the diagnostic criteria. They ask: What is behind the psychological problems? TCM thinks that it’s about a person’s physical and mental health. They think it is about how much you know about yourself; about whether you are willing to understand the true self, about whether people are willing to understand this real-world, about if people want to understand what’s wrong inside them; about if people want to understand how to deal with the problems; about if people want to understand how their mind and body are exchanging between their inner and outer world.
Everything comes back to the heart, where the body Yang Qi energy sublimates into spiritual minds and thoughts, the higher level of the human fire energy of life.
Disease and health are problems that everyone will encounter. Both traditional ancient medicine and modern medicine are revealing that most diseases generally start from the emotional body, which is manifested in the physical body as stasis. Usually, mental and physical problems cause emotional stasis; eventually manifest as disease.
The human body is wise. Not only does it respond highly sensitive to what it absorbs, such as food and water, it also responds equally sensitively to emotions, feelings, and thoughts. The body is the communication tool between the human and the conscious mind and soul. The soul communicates with people in many ways, specifically through intuition: including subtle emotions, hunches, and whispers of the mind.
Whenever people are seriously disturbed by emotions, they have to find their cause and meaning. As long as people calm down and listen inward carefully, the soul will tell them the answer. If people resist or deny their emotions, their soul will speak to them through their bodies. When the soul expresses itself in the form of the disease, how can people understand its language? They may not know its message sent through the disease, but in fact, it has been a long time since they started denying emotions.
Understanding the spiritual meaning of disease is an inner journey of exploration, by which people can gradually restore their communication with the soul.
Incredibly, when a person possesses the ability to clearly answer the above questions, he is less likely to fall into depression, because even if he is uncomfortable and unhappy with big emotion now, he knows: this is a necessary thing in life as life is all about all kinds of ups and downs, joys and sorrows, happiness and anger…, full of tastes and colors.
The same is true for physical health. When a person’s body is not very good for a while, knowing it is a normal process of life, he will not panic looking for a doctor or medicine. But he reflects if he is too closed in his life circle or insisting on something necessarily requiring persistence and he adjusts his diet, sleep, and exercise. With these positive shifts, soon, his physical and psychological problems will get better, even disappear.
Before people know it, their water energy and fire energy have started to intersect and they are returning back into a state of Tai or Jiji.