EAST

Color- Yellow

Teaching- Spirit, Enlightenment and Illumination.

Element- Fire

The East teaches us of our connection to Spirit. Spirit is the transforming element for all of Life's energies. Like the element of Fire, Spirit changes whatever is fed into it. Physics teaches us that matte is not created, it is transformed. So it is with all things in not only the Material world, but the spiritual as well.

Carl Jung insisted that most humans at some point in their lives begin a search for meaning. This search is at the core of all spiritual search. The Medicine Wheel teaches us that the journey is of self-ownership. A human who is truly self-responsible cannot help but honor all life, for they know and understand that all living things are connected. It is a very difficult thing to be self -responsible, for it forces us to rely on our relationships to other humans, to the earth and to self-honesty for our very survival. Self-responsibility can yield only humility. It is a state of "not knowing". It is being truly present.

The East gives us a place of transformation. Each new idea and understanding we obtain as we grow into being responsible is like food. It nourishes us for a brief while, and then becomes something we must discard. It becomes a part of us, yet we must release what is no longer useful to our growth. It is easy to view food this way, and more difficult to understand that what we think and feel is every bit the same as food for our soul.

When we surrender our ideas and experience to Spirit, we are allowing for the possibility of new growth, of a greater "being in present". What we think and feel or how we look is no longer the Master of the moment, and we are available to experience what truly exists for us in that moment. This is an elusive sensation. Creator gave us Ceremony so that we could break down the ideas and feelings we have come to define ourselves with in order to experience the transformatitive teaching of the East.

The East is one direction of our human Circle of Being. It balances with the emotions, body and mind of the other three so that we may learn balance as humans.

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